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He said nothing, simply looked at her until the double meaning of her words hit her. He could tell when they did, because she blushed, her lips pulling into a pucker.
“With Victoria,” she said sharply.
“Very well.” He leaned back in his chair. His heart was beating faster than usual, and that surprised him. He was always in control of himself. Although, Jessica tested that, at every turn she did, and right in this moment, what he had to say to her made him feel … nervous. What her reaction might be made him nervous. “But there is a problem.”
“What’s that?”
“The same problem we discussed last night. I am currently … obsessed—” he hated the word, but it was the only one that fit “—with another woman, and I can’t possibly get engaged to Victoria, much less marry her, while I’m still wrestling with it.”
Her face paled, her green eyes looking more vivid set against waxen skin. “Me? This is me you’re talking about? Good grief, Stavros, what does it take for a woman to scare you off?”
“A blow job at midnight might not be the best way to go about scaring a man off.”
“Granted,” she said tightly, some of her color returning.
“I did some reading on endometriosis last night.”
Her mouth dropped open, a perfect, crimson O. “You did what?”
“I wanted to understand it more. To understand what you were telling me. I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t know anything about it.”
“I … Why should you?” The utter confusion on her face puzzled him.
“Because it … it seems like it’s not uncommon and like I should. But now, I especially wanted to know about it because of you.”
“I don’t really have it anymore, like I said. At least I’m not symptomatic.”
“You mentioned that, but you still don’t want to have sex?”
“It’s not that I don’t want to. I do, I just … don’t. I’m aware that that sounds stupid. But it’s … complicated. It’s wrapped up in a lot of little problems that you really don’t want me to get into.” Her green eyes chilled, hardened. “Like I said. I’m not fling material. Too many issues.”
“It’s understandable. But you also said you had a procedure that fixed most everything for you. Maybe it won’t hurt now. Maybe …”
“You know, if it was only physical pain it wouldn’t bother me. I’ve been through hell and back with physical pain. A little more would hardly wreck me. But the point is, I don’t know if I can deal with that kind of relationship again. I don’t know if I can deal with a man looking at me like I’m the living embodiment of his every crushed dream.”
“Jessica, I am not your ex. I don’t want anything from you but …”
“Sex. You want sex. And I suck at that, too. My own pain was offensive to him,” she said, her words coming out harsh, bitter. “I just had to bite my lip and deal with it because it hurt his feelings. Because crying when it hurt made him feel bad. I had to hide anything I bled on because it disgusted him. And then even when I took steps to fix the pain, when I couldn’t take it anymore, that was a failure in his eyes, too. I can’t do this right now …”
Stavros felt sick. He pushed his coffee back into the middle of the table. “Tell me.”
She looked away from him. “The bottom line is that he wanted kids, I can’t have them.”
She’d said as much last night. “I saw that endometriosis can effect fertility,” he said.
A smile curved her lips. “Yes. It can. But not for everyone. And it doesn’t mean it can’t happen. But I can’t. Because in order to try and fix my endometriosis, I opted to get a hysterectomy. He didn’t want me to. He wanted to keep trying to conceive first and I … I couldn’t take it anymore. In his mind, I gave up. Can’t very well get pregnant if you haven’t got an oven to put the bun in, right? To him, I gave up on kids. I gave up on us. I killed our dreams for my own comfort. I’m a selfish bitch. I told you that, remember?” She stood up. “Sorry. I have to go.”
She turned and walked back into the house, her expression pale and set as marble. His stomach burned, acid, anger, eating away at him.
Not at her. Never at her.
He stood, and looked out at the ocean for a moment before walking back into the villa. He was more determined now than he’d been a few moments ago.
He needed Jessica. And she needed him. Even if it was only for a while, he was determined to have her. Determined to heal some of the wounds her husband had left behind.
Determined to have a stolen moment of time that belonged solely to him.
He had not been born to be the king. He had taken hold of it when it became clear that Xander would not. He had let go of so many things. So many desires he wouldn’t let himself remember now. He had consigned himself to a marriage that was to be little more than a business arrangement.
He had given it all. Would continue to give it all for the rest of his life. He would embrace the hollowness he had carved out inside of himself, let it fill with all the duty and honor he could possibly stand.
Just now, he was filled with Jessica. With whatever it was she made him feel. Something foreign, all-consuming. Something he wanted to embrace with a desperation he couldn’t put into words.
For now, for just a little while, he would. If only she would allow it.
CHAPTER EIGHT (#ulink_c3308ae6-cf23-5302-976b-768c6be27c98)
IF POUNDING her head against a wall and repeating the “you are an idiot” mantra would have made any difference to the outcome of her morning conversation with Stavros, she would have done it. Unfortunately, no amount of self-recrimination would fix the fact that she’d vomited her emotional guts up for him to dissect whether he wanted to or not.
Yes, he’d asked. But he hadn’t known what he was asking.
I did some research on endometriosis.
Replaying those words in her mind made her eyes sting, made her skin feel tight. When had anyone in her life done that for her? Her mother, her husband, her friends? When had anyone cared enough? Or been brave enough? As far as everyone in her life was concerned her condition only mattered in terms of how it affected them.
Only Stavros had asked. Only he had made that extra effort. Why? Why did he care for her at all? It didn’t make sense.
The commanding knock on her door could only come from Stavros. She knew it by now.
“Come in,” she said. There was no point in avoiding him. He wouldn’t go away. He was like that.
The door opened and Stavros walked in, closing it behind him. “Why don’t you let me decide what’s too much work?”
She blinked. “What?”
“Can I be the one to decide if you’re too much work? Because you keep telling me you are, and that I don’t want to deal with you but … the thing is, I do.”
He looked so sincere, so deadly serious, and she couldn’t help but laugh. “Why? It doesn’t make sense. Go … have a fling if that’s what you need before you get married. There’s a whole lot of women in bikinis down on the public beaches. Or hurry up and marry Victoria, so you can get to your wedding night. But why would you want to waste your time with me?”
“I want you. And if you don’t want me, that’s fine, but I’m pretty sure your actions last night mean that you do. So if you want me, take some time with me.”
“I … I don’t think I understand.”
“Four weeks. Four weeks and I’ll ask Victoria to marry me, and until then, I want you.” He looked down. “I understand it’s not the world’s most romantic proposition, but it’s all I can offer.”
Her stomach seemed to be cold inside, and she knew that wasn’t possible. “Yes, I know. I’m over twenty-eight, I can’t have children, I probably have an annoying laugh. The reasons why I’m wrong for you are many and varied. Those are just the obvious ones.”
“Yes,” he said, the word flat, honest. “But that hasn’t stopped me from wanting you.”
“I … I don’t know whether I’m flattered or insulted. Actually, scratch that, I don’t know if I’m supposed to be flattered or insulted. I think I’m flattered, I’m just not certain I should be.”
“Because it’s a temporary offer?”
She lifted her thumb to her lips and gnawed the corner of her nail, nodding.
“I would never insult you by pretending I could offer something I couldn’t. My responsibilities won’t change. They are what they are. But I can’t get you out of my head. I can’t force myself to want Victoria when it’s you that I see every time I close my eyes.”
“No one’s ever said things like this to me,” she said, looking up at him, trying to see some hint in his expression that he was joking because … it didn’t seem real.
“Not even your husband?”
“No. He uh … he was a college student when we got together. So was I. Young and stupid and very sincere, but not very poetic.” She cleared her throat. “It didn’t last, either, for all that we thought it would.”
“Neither will this,” he said.
She nodded. “But we won’t pretend otherwise, will we?”
“No. I won’t pretend with you, ever. Promise to do the same with me?”
“Yes,” she whispered, not sure if she was agreeing to his last request, or his request for the four weeks. She was lost anyway. No matter how much she pretended she was undecided, she was lost to him. To her desire for him. Her curiosity. Yes, she was afraid, but she wanted him more than she wanted to keep hiding.
Because that’s what it really was. She wasn’t afraid of the pain of sex. She wasn’t even as afraid of failing as she’d thought. She was more afraid that she would have sex, and that it would be good. And then she would lose her excuse to hold men at arm’s length. She would lose that thing that kept her from seeking out another relationship.
She swallowed, trying to push her fear down. Fear she didn’t want. Not now.
“I need you,” he said, the words raw, lacking charm, flirtation, any kind of artifice. “I’m not sure if you realize how much. I’m not sure you could, as it’s something I don’t entirely understand. But I need … you. This. I hope you want me.”
She did understand. She needed him, too. As much as she needed to escape from the confines she’d put herself into, as much as she needed to move on. He felt like a necessity.
She hadn’t ever thought of herself as a temporary kind of woman. But then, when sex was such an ordeal it was hard to think of it as something she might do recreationally. Still … Stavros made her want a taste of the illicit.
Of something she’d never really had, first because she’d met her husband at such a young age, and then because she’d developed endometriosis. And after that, because clinging to the past, wrapping herself in the memories of the pain, had become a shield against any sort of future hurt.
It also kept her tied to her old life. Tied to who she’d been.
She needed to be free of it. She finally felt ready to be free of it. It was all well and good to wish she could fully embrace her new reality. But she wasn’t. And that was no one’s fault but hers.
“Yes,” she said again. “I want you, too. And now that you’ve given up on that fake flirting business I actually find you a lot more irresistible.”
“What fake flirting business?”
“You know. That’s not you, Stavros. This is. This is the man I can’t resist.”
He swallowed visibly, a muscle in his jaw twitching. “As long as you can’t resist me.”
“I could. But I’m not going to anymore.”
He laughed, the sound as raw and ragged as his expression. “I couldn’t resist you. That’s why I’m here.”
Her stomach contracted, her heart pounding faster. To have such a big, strong man admitting he couldn’t fight his attraction to her was … it was beyond her. And it restored something in her. Something she’d thought was so mangled beyond recognition it could never be fixed.
“This is stupid,” she said, laughing, because if she didn’t she thought she might cry.
“I know,” he said, taking a step toward her, cupping her cheek in his palm. “I know.” He rested his forehead against hers, his eyes closed.
She tilted her face and touched her lips to his, a gentle kiss, a question. One he answered with his own kiss, stronger, more certain. His tongue teased her, and she parted her mouth for him, sliding her tongue against his, the friction igniting a wave of heat in her stomach that spread to her breasts, down to her core.
“Wow. You really are an amazing kisser,” she said, a shiver sliding down through her.
“And you are very honest.”
She shook her head. “I’m not usually. I just do my very best to seem tough all the time and no one questions what I do or say too closely. They don’t want me to kill them with snark. And that way I don’t have to be honest. But for some reason, I am honest with you. I’m not sure why.”
“You have the same effect on me,” he said. “I can’t fathom it.”
“It’s the lust thing. It’s scrambling our brains.”
A smile turned up the corners of his mouth. “Is that it?”
She nodded. “I’m not familiar with it on quite this level, but I remember feeling this way in college a couple of times.”
“Yes, that sounds about right. You’d think at our age we would be impervious.” He smiled slightly and it made her knees feel a little weak.
“Hey, watch it. No age jokes.”
He kissed her again. “You are a beautiful woman. I cannot imagine you being any more attractive to me. Your dress today is lethal.”
She looked down at her demure yellow dress. “This?”
“It has buttons,” he growled. “And all I can think of is undoing all of those buttons.”
Her face heated. “Really?”
“Oh, yes, really. I want to do it now, but I don’t want to move too quickly.”
“It’s not even noon.”
“So?”
“Isn’t there a no-sex-before-noon rule?”
He laughed. “Sex isn’t like alcohol. And if that’s been your experience with it, I can tell you, you need your experience broadened.”
She swallowed. “I’m a little nervous. A lot nervous.” She wasn’t sure what he would do to her, and that fear wasn’t rooted in the fear of physical pain, but over how complete the loss of control might be. Over whether or not she would be able to hold onto her defenses.
He smoothed his thumb over her cheek. “Tell me, is there a specific act that causes worse pain?”
She nodded, finding that focusing on the physical was helpful. “Orgasm can cause pain, which … sucks.” She breathed the last word with a shaky laugh. “The worst of it always came from … penetration. In the end at least.”
