Page 44 of After-Hours Heir

It had been a gut punch back when it had happened in the dark; it would be something entirely different now. He knew it.

There was a feeling at the center of his chest, the one that he had identified far too recently as being something that seemed to affect the ice in his core. Sylvie. It was Sylvie’s fault. And she was looking up at him with an expression on her face so much like longing. He wasn’t sure for what. For things to be easier? Simpler?

For…

“That night,” he said. “We never spoke of it.”

“Because you wouldn’t speak of it.”

“I have never… I have never experienced anything like it.”

“Then, why did you leave my text unresponded-to? Why did you treat me like I didn’t matter?”

“No one matters in my life,” he said. “You have to understand that. I am a man who fashioned himself into an island. And there is no place in my life for…whatever that was.”

“But now here I am.”

“Yes. But it’s different now. Because I know who you are.”

“Does that make it different?”

“Yes. It changes things.”

“Help me. Tell me what it changes.”

“It changes everything. Because it must. Can’t you understand that?”

“No. I can’t, Christos. I can’t understand it.”

“It is just different. It was a dream before, again. You weren’t real. You were…something that existed only on my phone, and I made a mistake… I made a mistake.”

“But it wouldn’t be the same now.”

“Of course it wouldn’t.”

“Prove it,” she said, stepping forward, tilting her stubborn chin upward. Her green eyes sparkled with rage, and he could barely breathe. He had no idea what was happening to him. The fire that was building inside of him…it shouldn’t exist. It should not be like this. Not for him. Not for Christos Onassis, a man who had learned long ago that need was the enemy. That other people were a scam. He should not feel drawn toward her. He should not burn for her.

But she was…she was Sylvie Jones. And she was his wife.

Hiswife.

His.

He growled, and he wrapped his arm around her waist, drawing her heart against the firm wall of his body. “You said that you could hurt yourself, flinging your body at me. Is this what you want?”

“I think it’s what you want. And you won’t admit it.”

“Do you want it any less than I want it? I think not.”

“Christos…”

“You want me,” he said. “Tell me that you do.”

“I want you, and I hate it, dammit. What I wanted was for you to be a different man. What I wanted was for you to be…a pleasant-looking man with glasses. That curated bugs in a museum. I didn’t want you to be you. But here we are. And I can neither control it nor stop it. But I won’t have you standing there pretending that you can. That you are somehow above it. When I’m not. Because that simply isn’t fair.”

He loved her like this and hated it in equal measure.

Because it made him feel things. And he didn’t have the patience for that. He didn’t have the capacity for it. This alchemy between them was something he was never supposed to know. Never supposed to experience. It was anathema to him in many ways. And yet he was addicted to it.