Сара Крейвен – The Italian's Love-Child: The Italian's Stolen Bride / The Marchese's Love-Child / The Italian's Marriage Demand (страница 9)

And for a moment she hated him for it, a fierce flash of hatred for the contempt he’d dealt out, making all she’d given of herself negligible, dirty…yet everything within her sighed a sweet welcome as he entered her, plunging deep, filling the emptiness she’d known for far too long.

He paused there, sighing himself, and Skye savagely hoped it signalled the feeling of having come home—home to where his heart was. Except she couldn’t really believe it because he would never have left her if that was true.

She closed her eyes and focused on feeling him inside her, no longer caring what it meant for him, wanting to recapture all the sensations she had forgotten, the rippling pleasures of the rhythm, the buildup of intense physical excitement. And Luc delivered. He always had delivered. Not usually as roughly as this. But that had its exciting edge, too, knowing control had been sabotaged by need, adding to the power of his wanting her.

He was breathing hard.

She was, too, her body instinctively accommodating the wild pounding, exulting in it, her legs wound around his taut buttocks urging him on, her back arched, her hands raking the bunched muscles of his shoulders, the tips of her breasts brushing his chest as he rocked back and forth in a frenzy of driven possession, the tension of it becoming more and more explosive.

The shattering started, the ecstatic meltdown she had only ever known with him, and even as she started floating with it, she felt the release of his climax, the jerking spurts of heat spilling from him, mingling with her own contentment, increasing the sweet pleasure of it, the sense of fulfilment that matched the memories.

He collapsed on top of her, his face buried in the stream of her hair across the pillow, and she hugged him tightly to her, clutching the intimacy of the moment before it went away. For this little time, at least, he was hers, and she consciously shut out the realities of the worlds they occupied, feeling only their togetherness—a dream that had been lost—a dream that couldn’t last.

CHAPTER SIX

HER beautiful hair, soft, silky, incredibly sensual…the feel of it, the feel of her, had started this, propelling him down a path he hadn’t meant to take yet, and certainly not with the frenzied need that had driven his every action. He had to start thinking now, seize advantage of the knowledge that the need had been mutual.

She was clasping him tightly to her. Was it reaction to the physical upheaval of climaxing, or a desire to hold onto him? He had to move, take his weight off her before she became too conscious of it, too conscious of what she had allowed to happen, regretting it, spurning him as he’d once spurned her.

He rolled onto his back, carrying her with him, keeping one of her legs trapped by his to retain an intimate entanglement, using his hands to travel up and down the curve of her spine, over the soft roundness of her bottom, wanting her to feel him loving her, everything about her.

The sex had been too crude, too fast. He’d meant to woo her, win back her trust. Her fear of him had been intolerable, a barrier he’d had to break, though he’d lost sight of that aim as her tension had collapsed into tears. Holding her in his arms again—impossible not to remember how it had once been with her, stirring the urge to make her remember, too.

Show her, kiss her…

He hadn’t anticipated the fierce response.

Given Skye’s hostility—justified hostility—what was behind her burst of passion? He couldn’t believe it was a raging desire for him. Though there was no doubting she had wanted the sexual connection, responding to it all the way. That certainly hadn’t changed. But was it enough to build on?

It had to be because there was no going back to a more careful courtship. Besides, it would be better for Matt to have both parents as a constant in his life. And it would prove his own commitment to fatherhood to Skye, removing her fear of a transient and possibly damaging dalliance with his son. So best that he speak now, before her mind got active against him again.

Her head was resting over his heart. He wound a long tress of her hair around his hand to hold her there. He told himself she could not be more vulnerable to the idea than she was at this moment with both of them naked and intimately entwined, reinforcing what they could and did share.

It would come out baldly, he knew, but dressing it up with feelings she might scorn could very well tip the scales in a very negative fashion. She wouldn’t trust emotions. Working from her reaction seemed the most viable option. He had to use reason and do it convincingly.

Trying to keep the enormous tension he felt out of his voice, Luc simply announced what he was aiming for.

‘I want you to marry me.’

* * *

Marry him…

The shock of the proposal rolled through Skye’s sluggish mind, setting off alarm signals. She hadn’t wanted to think of what she’d done with Luc. Much easier to just drift in a haze of feeling, blocking realities out until they had to be faced. But a proposal of marriage… it was so off the wall, Skye struggled to get her head around what it meant.

She started to shift, acutely aware of his heart drumming under her ear—a soothing sound just a few moments ago—a disturbing one now.

‘No. Stay with me.’

The brusque command unsettled her further. He had no right to force her compliance to his will, not over anything so personal as this. She’d conceded his right to involve himself with Matt, but what happened between her and Luc was most certainly a matter of choice. Just because she’d had sex with him didn’t mean he could do anything he liked with her.

‘Don’t make this a fight, Luc,’ she warned, trying to gather wits enough to understand what had motivated his proposal. ‘Let me move.’

‘Why do you want to?’

‘I’ve just remembered who you are,’ she answered, not caring if it hurt him, instinctively using shock to give herself room for retreat to a less vulnerable position so she could think straight, not be influenced by the strong sexual connection he was pressing.

‘Don’t give me that!’ He whipped her over onto her back and propped himself up, one arm on either side of her so that she was looking directly into his eyes—eyes blazing with a certainty that poured into passionate words. ‘You knew who was kissing you…knew who brought you to this bed…knew who was—’

‘Screwing me again?’ she fired at him, angered by the physical domination he was exerting when she had made a clear request to be released.

His face tightened, his mouth compressing into a thin line. ‘You wanted this, too, Skye,’ he bit out, shaking his head over her accusation.

He was using it against her—the far too shortsighted surrender to what had probably always been a fantasy—her and Luc together, their love so strong it could ride through anything. It hadn’t. And he’d moved on to other women while she had struggled on by herself. He’d still be moving on, but for Matt.

‘Was it good for you, Luc?’ she asked, resenting all his infidelities.

‘Yes. And you wouldn’t have responded as you did if it wasn’t good for you,’ he retorted, determined on making her admit it.

‘So you think you can capitalise on it, move straight in and take over my life.’

‘We’re good together. We always were,’ he argued.

‘A pity you didn’t remember that when it counted.’

‘It counts now,’ he snapped back, ignoring the past, accentuating the present. ‘We have a son. We should be a family.’

Matt. She was right about what Luc really wanted. ‘There’s more to marriage than having a child. I don’t want you as my husband.’

‘You came to bed with me.’

She couldn’t leave him with that weapon to use against her. ‘I wanted you to remember what you gave up, Luc,’ she said mockingly.

His brows beetled down into a deep frown.

‘How many women have there been since me?’ she asked, hating him for moving on, leaving her behind, then thinking he could turn around and take her as his wife when it suited him.

‘They’re irrelevant.’ It was a fierce mutter, wanting her to forget them.

‘When you shared a bed with them, did you remember me?’

‘Yes, I did. Nothing was ever like what we had together.’

For a moment, his vehement reply rocked Skye out of her bitter train of thought. There had only ever been Luc for her. No one else. If he felt the same way… But he couldn’t. He’d put his brother’s word ahead of hers, his family’s view of her ahead of his own.

‘I don’t believe you!’ she cried, and with all her strength, slammed her hands against his shoulders and thrust him far enough away for her to scramble off the bed, out of reach.

‘It’s true!’ he hurled after her.

‘Be quiet! Matt’s in the next room,’ she hissed at him as she grabbed her houserobe from the one chair in her bedroom, putting it on as fast as she could, determined on shutting out any resumption of intimacy with him.

‘Our son, Skye,’ he swiftly reminded her, his voice lowered but still emphatic in delivery. ‘Don’t you think it would be better for him to have a full-time father as well as mother?’

She wrapped the robe around her and tied the belt savagely as she swung to face him again. ‘That’s what you’re after, isn’t it? Matt. Not me. Get the mother, get the boy.’