Page 5 of Night of Shadows
He took a step closer, his thighs brushing against the silk of my skirt. He caught my chin between his thumb and forefinger, forcing me to look up into the predatory depths of his eyes. "Tell me again. Are you sure you want this? Because once I touch you, I’m not just a memory. I’m a mark."
"I'm sure," I whispered, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.
He leaned in, his nose brushing mine, his scent overwhelming every sense I had left. "Third time's the charm," he rasped against my lips. "Are youminetonight?"
"Yes."
The word had barely left my lips before he turned me, pinning me against the cool grain of the door. His hands were everywhere—mapping the curve of my hips, tangling in my hair, pulling my head back to expose the line of my throat. When his teeth grazed the sensitive skin just below my ear, a sob of pure, unadulterated want broke out of me.
He didn't just make love to me; he colonized me. Every touch was heavy, demanding, and impossibly precise. When he finally sank into me, his eyes were wide, fixed on mine with a terrifying intensity. He watched the way my face crumpled, the way my breath hitched, the way I came undone under the sheer power of him. He wasn't just watching a woman peak; he was memorizing the frequency of my soul.
He said my name—not as a question, but as a prayer and a threat. Like he’d been waiting a lifetime to taste the syllables on his tongue.
I woke up later to the sound of the shower. The room smelled of us—of sweat, expensive sheets, and the lingering ghost of his cologne.
I looked at his side of the bed, the indentation still there. I knew then. If he walked out of that bathroom and looked at me with those dark, possessive eyes, I was finished. I wouldn't just be an associate at a firm; I would be a satellite orbiting his sun. I would be the woman my mother warned me about—the one ruined by a man who knew her name before he even met her.
I dressed in the dark, my fingers shaking as I zipped the green silk. I fled not because it was bad, but because it was the only thing that had ever felt truly, dangerously right.
I left the ghost of Lex Konstantinos in that room, never realizing that you don't just walk away from a man like him. You just give him a head start.
Six weeks later, I missed my period.
Eight weeks later, I was holding a positive test in the bathroom of my firm's eighteenth-floor office at 6:15 in the morning.
Ten weeks later, I was sitting in my obstetrician's office, signing the paperwork that designated me as the single parent of record.
I didn’t put a father on the form. I left the line blank. The receptionist asked me whether I wanted to leave it blank or write ‘unknown’. I asked her what the difference was.
She said, ‘Legally, none.’
I said, ‘blank.’
I haven’t seen Lex Konstantinos in three years.
I’ve read his name in the Globe twice. Once, when his brother got married, in a wedding write-up where Lex was identified as one of the groomsmen and described as the second of four sons of the late Alexandros Konstantinos.
Once in a financial section about a charitable foundation that Konstantinos Shipping had funded for the children of shipyard workers. I haven’t searched his name on the internet. I have a rule about that. The rule has held for thirty-seven months.
Nora is the most beautiful thing I have ever made.
She has my mouth and his eyes.
And I have not told a soul.
? ? ?
The kettle has gone cold.
I look down. The tea has been steeping for nineteen minutes. It’s undrinkable. I pour it down the sink.
My phone buzzes again.
Federal detail at lobby. Lead operative coming up. ETA two minutes.
I check the time, and sigh. Two minutes to go.
I check on Nora again. Still asleep. Brontos is still pinned under her arm. The night light is still on, the small one shaped like a moon that I bought when she was nine months old and has been on every night since.
