Page 29 of Pregnancy Clause in Their Paper Marriage
‘Me neither.’
‘I could look it up on my phone,’ she suggested, and, twisting away from him so he felt the loss, she walked naked to the purse she’d dropped by the door when they’d first arrived and took out her phone. Christos was aching for her to get back into bed with him, but he simply stretched out and acted nonchalant as she walked slowly back towards him, squinting at the screen of her phone.
‘It takes up to forty-five minutes for the sperm to reach the egg,’ she told him as she scrambled back into bed, and it felt both easy and right to stretch his arm out and draw her back to his chest, her head nestled into his shoulder. She fitted there so very nicely. ‘And “up to twenty-four hours for the act of fertilisation to complete”,’ she read off her phone. ‘So not a baby quite yet.’
‘Still.’
‘“The genetic make-up of the baby is complete at the moment of fertilisation,”’ she read, before tossing her phone aside. ‘Isn’t thatcrazy? As soon as tomorrow therecouldbe a tiny, tiny baby, with all its genes and everything, and all it needs to do is grow.’
‘A little bit of me, a little bit of you,’ Christos said, and she laughed softly, her breath fanning his chest.
‘Well, fifty per cent of me, fifty per cent of you.’
‘Pedant,’ he teased, and she tilted her face up to him, which simply meant he had to kiss her. He’d meant to make it something between a brush and a peck, but it ended up being long and lingering instead, and his hand tightened on her shoulder as hers drifted temptingly lower.
‘Lana,’ he growled, and she looked at him innocently.
‘What?’
‘You know what,’ he said as her hand went even lower and even though he’d thought he didn’t have it in him for another round, he now found that he did.
‘Just in case the first two times didn’t take,’ Lana whispered, and then her lips followed the path of her hands, and Christos found himself closing his eyes as he surrendered to the bliss.
They finished the champagne, ate lobster salad and crusty rolls and sweet, succulent strawberries dipped in chocolate, while sitting naked among the pillows and sheets, careless of crumbs. Christos couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so relaxed, so at ease—with himself, with the woman beside him, with the whole world.
This marriage thing, he decided, had been averygood idea. Lana seemed to think so too, even if she hadn’t said as much. He’d never seen her so relaxed, either—her hair loose and wavy about her shoulders, her limbs splayed carelessly as she popped a strawberry into her mouth, juice dripping down her chin.
He liked her like this, he realised. Seeing her now, naked in bed, he realised just how tightly held and tense she was, in her normal self. From her stilettos to the gleaming sheet of her hair—it had all been armour, a way for her to face the world down, to conquer it.
But if it was armour, Christos thought with a sudden lurch of understanding, then there was something that needed protecting underneath, and he’d gone into this marriage not wanting there to be. Lana had already showed him some of her vulnerabilities—reluctantly, yes, but they were clearly there. He couldn’t pretend, even to himself, that she was nothing more than the image she presented to the world—glossy, self-assured and diamond-hard.
‘I think I could sleep for about twelve hours,’ Lana said, stretching languorously, making Christos’s libido give yet another pulse as she arched her back, lamplight dancing over her golden skin. ‘It’s a good thing my first meeting isn’t till twelve tomorrow.’ She gave him a cat-like smile before she rose from the bed and began clearing the dishes away.
After a second’s pause, Christos started to help, even though his mind was still spinning. The sleepy, contented satiation he’d been experiencing all evening was stealing away, leaving cold hard truth in its wake.
Their marriage might be a good idea—but it was already also very complicated. And if he wanted to keep his head—and heart—intact, then he needed to think clearly about how he handled himself in the future. Lana seemed to have got the memo; hell, she’d written it. So he definitely needed to get on board.
He was still thinking that way as they got ready for bed a little while later; Lana had changed into the coffee-coloured silk nightgown she’d mentioned earlier, and that Christos already wanted to slide off her; he liked her naked. But she had, it seemed, reverted to her usual self, a stickler for protocol, and their honeymoon, brief as it was, seemed to be over.
‘Goodnight,’ she said, and kissed his cheek. They might as well have been married for fifty years.
Christos let out a growl, a purely instinctive sound, and then wrapped his hand around the back of her head so he could kiss her goodnight the way he wanted to—long and slow and deep.
‘Goodnight,’ he said, and she looked shaken for a second, before she smiled and turned out the light.
Christos lay on his back, one hand braced behind his head. As fatigued as he was from all their enjoyable exertions, sleep felt as if it would be a very long time coming. His feelings—yes, feelings—were a jumbled mess, and he wanted to sort them out.
Ever since he’d disappointed not just his mother, but all three of his sisters, he’d avoided any emotion, knowing he couldn’t deal with it because he’d just let people down as he had before, in the worst possible way.
He didn’t think he’d ever forget the agonised look on his dying mother’s face.‘Please, Christos. Let me see you. Let me hug you and say goodbye to you, just one last time.’
He’d walked away without a word. What must she have thought of him? Felt in that agonising moment? He’d never seen her again; she’d died several hours later. There were a lot of things he hadn’t had a chance to say.
I’m sorry. I miss you. I love you.
And that knowledge was like a wound inside him, a festering cancer that would never, ever heal. The safest way he’d discovered of dealing with it was never giving himself an opportunity to need to say those kinds of words again. Never get close enough to someone that they’d be expected to be said. And never letting anyone down when he couldn’t say them.
He twisted to look at Lana, who had already fallen asleep, her hair spread out on the pillow, her breathing deep and even. She looked like an elegant angel.