Hermosa. That was what Sophie was. Beautiful.
He’d noticed the changes their child was making to her body earlier but seeing it like this now, in the flesh, sucked all the air from him.
In a little under three months her athletic femininity had softened. The small breasts his hands had covered so thrillingly had grown, the flat stomach now softly rounded, her narrow hips wider. She was like a flower coming into bloom and there was not a single part of him that did not ache to see it.
Still looking at him with that open yet endearingly shy expression, she raised a hand to her hair and pulled a long pin out of it. She cast the pin aside as the blonde tresses fell down.
Heavy beats sounded around the room like a drum was playing in it.
And then he realised the beats were coming from inside him, from the rapid tattoo of his heart.
The bra was the next item to be removed.
Now he could hear his breaths too as he forced air in and out through his nose.
Her bare breasts jutted out, ripe, beautiful and more tempting than the apple in the Garden of Eden.
Then she put her hands to the band of her knickers and down they went too. When she stepped out of them, she stepped out of the shoes, naked from head to toe, every trembling part exquisite.
Her shoulders rose as she took a long breath, then put one foot in front of the other to stand close enough that the scented heat of her skin landed like a heady punch to his senses.
She placed a hand on his shoulder. Raising herself onto her tiptoes, she grazed the lightest of kisses to his mouth, then pulled back enough to stare into his eyes, a plea resonating from hers.
As if she had willed it—there was no conscious thought from himself in the action—his hand reached forward to rest on her hip. With no conscious thought from himself, his fingers kneaded into the warm satin skin.
All week he’d resisted the walking temptation that was Sophie, the consequences of their one coupling there in every step and every breath she took.
The detachment he’d been waiting for before making love to her had never felt so far away.
But his need for her had never been so great.
Dios, his skin burned through his shirt under the gentle weight of her hand on his shoulder.
He snatched at her hand and covered it tightly. ‘Do not expect more than I can give you, carina.’ He had to drag the warning from his tongue but he had to make her understand.
If any other woman had offered herself to him like this he would already have taken her but this was no ordinary woman and it wasn’t just because she carried his child.
Sophie was like no one he’d ever known before.
Her face drew closer to his. Her lips parted, brushing against his like a sigh. The sweetness of her breath mingled with his as she whispered, ‘I want no more than you can give.’
His heavy heart lightened although the beats continued to thump against his ribs.
The relief when Javier returned the pressure of her lips was so immense Sophie could have wept.
She’d never known she possessed the courage she’d found to strip completely naked for him. Nudity was nothing to a ballerina but this was different.
This was her opening herself to him and the very real danger of his rejection but she had known she had to keep going, known that Javier had the strength of mind and the willpower to lie beside her every night for the rest of their lives without making a move on her, and now she understood why.
He did not trust her to take him at his word that their marriage could never be about emotions.
In his own way he was trying to protect her.
She did not need protecting. Once, she’d had romantic dreams and ideals about this man but her eyes had been opened. To fall for him would be to have her heart broken.
But her desire for him had never dimmed. This was the man she had taken one look at and felt something inside her move as it had never moved before. Javier had awoken something in her. When he’d made love to her, that awakening had become a life force that refused to go back to sleep.
She didn’t want it to go back to sleep. She wanted this. All of this.
When the hand holding her hip slid round her waist and splayed on her back, the little control she had was lost. Suddenly it was Javier setting the pace, kissing her, sweeping his tongue into her mouth and filling her with his dark taste, holding her so securely that when her knees weakened at this wonderful assault on her senses there was no danger of her falling.
Such wonderful, heady kisses, deepening, tongues entwined, lips moving in a dance of their own creation, sensation fizzing through her all the way to the fingertips of her arms that looped around his neck.
Her mind closed to everything but Javier.
She shivered to feel his fingers spear her hair and then his mouth caressed over her cheek and dipped down to her neck, the stubble on his jaw rubbing against flesh she’d never known could be so sensitive.
And then she was lifted off her feet, her stomach swooping with the unexpected motion, and carried effortlessly to the bed she’d been losing hope would ever be used for anything but sleeping.
He laid her down with a gentleness that belied his strength and knelt beside her, upright, magnificent. Beautiful.
Nostrils flaring, he gazed down at her through his hooded eyes, deftly unbuttoned his shirt and threw it onto the floor.
Her heart expanded as she drank in the rugged hardness of his torso. Javier was the epitome of masculine. Whorls of dark hair covered his darkly tanned, muscular chest and thickened over the flat plane of his abdomen where his strong hands were pulling apart his belt.
Her own abdomen contracted and filled with fresh heat that burned like molten liquid inside her.
There was such sensuality to his movements and such arrogant confidence too as, his eyes not leaving hers, he pushed his trousers down and revealed the erection she’d touched and had buried deep inside her but had never looked at.
Everything inside her seemed to melt into a puddle.
With a sigh that seemed to come from her very soul, Sophie watched him rid himself of the last of his clothing and then he was as naked as she, but dark where she was light, hard where she was soft...
Those whirling eyes were devouring her in the same way hers devoured him, sweeping over every inch of her naked form.
For years Sophie had worked hard sculpting her body to be the best it could be. It had never been enough. She had never been the best.
Pregnancy had liberated her in so many ways, more than she could ever have expected, and now, for the first time in her life, under the weight of Javier’s sensuous stare, she felt beautiful.
She felt like a woman.
It came to her then that she’d been waiting her entire life to feel this way but then the thought was swept away before it had fully formed as he leaned down and set her mouth on fire with his kisses all over again.
She closed her eyes and embraced it, wrapped her arms around his neck to embrace him.
And then he made his way down her body to kiss her in places even fellow dancers’ eyes had never seen.
Over her swollen, sensitive breasts, kneading them, caressing them, so close to her he would be able to see and hear the jagged beats of her heart. Over her thickened stomach, a circle around her belly button, his tongue and mouth leaving trails of fire in their wake. He kissed and touched her everywhere with such expert precision that when he parted her legs to bury his face into her pubis her eyes flew open and, chest shuddering, she was pulled back to reality.
Sophie stared at the ceiling, a feeling rushing through her that she was part of a game that involved painting by numbers.
She was in danger of losing her mind but from Javier there was no sound other than his lips against her flesh.
The thought dissolved when his tong
ue flickered against her most feminine nub and then she did lose her mind.
Squeezing her eyes back shut, she submitted to the pleasure he was evoking in her, submitted to the pulses thickening and swelling deep inside her and let go, letting him take her high into a land where nothing but white light shone.
Only once the sensations had abated did he move back up her body and position himself between her legs.
Again came the distant thought that this was painting by numbers for him.
There was no danger of Javier losing his control.
He was going through the motions.
He had given her pleasure and now it was his turn.
But, again, the thoughts were pushed away as he covered her with his glorious body and drove himself deep inside her, filling her so completely that she was helpless to stop the cry that flew from her mouth at the sudden drive of pleasure.
Javier adjusted himself so his elbows lay by her shoulders and began to move, concentrating hard as he thrust deeply into her.
He had to keep his concentration.
Otherwise...
A black void beckoned him. It was a void falsely dressed in sunlight, a trick, a mirage, a promise of...something beautiful but which was a lie. It was a void with razor-sharp teeth hidden beneath its seductive exterior.
He had to concentrate.
He wanted Sophie to have the pleasure. All of it belonged to her. He would take his too but his would be the release of sex. He would not allow it to be anything more. He could not.
And so he gritted his teeth and kept his head exactly where he needed it to be and let Sophie’s reactions guide him.
Dios, she was so hot and tight around him...
Do not let go.
Hold on. Keep your head. Close your senses to the woman lying beneath you. This was only normal pleasure, nothing special. It meant nothing.
Nothing at all.
His resolve teetered when her fingers burrowed into his hair and he found her wide-eyed stare, full of wonder, piercing straight through him.
He shifted his position slightly and upped the pace, then screwed his eyes tightly shut and banished the sight of her open-mouthed sighs from his retinas.
But he couldn’t banish the sighs from his ears. They deepened, becoming moans. The hand tracing marks up and down his back tightened around him, the fingers burrowed in his hair grabbing as she crushed herself to him, limbs wrapped tightly around him as if she were melding herself to become a part of him.
He felt her climax as powerfully as if it belonged to him. It gripped him and pulled at him, winding him tighter and tighter...
The sensations were...
Incredible.
Dios, this was like nothing he had ever felt before, stronger and deeper than even their first time together.
He was starting to float, the void right there before him, ready to swallow him into its dangerous depths...
Right before he could fall into it, sanity found its way to him. Clenching his jaw so tightly that only the slightest extra pressure would see it snap, Javier turned his face from Sophie and forced his eyes open.
His gaze burning a hole in the wall, his attention wrenched far from the woman coming undone in his arms, he accepted the rush of his own, determinedly unremarkable release.
It was over.
When he was certain Sophie had taken all the pleasure she could, he let out a breath and rolled off her onto his back.
He swallowed hard, his gaze now fixed on the ceiling, and braced himself for her to say something.
For a long period of time the only sounds in his bedroom were their breaths, both ragged.
There was light movement beside him, the shifting of air...
He turned his head to see her slip into the bathroom.
She locked the door behind her.
CHAPTER SEVEN
SOPHIE SOAKED IN the bath she’d rerun for herself until the water went cold and her toes had turned into prunes.
She did not want to go back into the bedroom and face Javier’s cold shoulder.
What they had shared had been wonderful. It had also been awful.
His distance had made it awful.
Where she should be bathing in a heady glow at all the wonderful sensations and feelings that had erupted in her, all she wanted was to crawl under a rock and bawl her eyes out.
Javier had committed himself with his body but the part that really mattered, the heartfelt connection she hadn’t realised she craved until it had been denied her, had not been there and that had been deliberate, she was certain of it.
She did not deny that he’d been generous in his attention to her. In that respect it had been glorious but she could savour none of it because it all felt tainted.
Would he have held back so absolutely from Freya...?
She pulled at her hair and stifled a scream.
Comparing herself would do her no favours. Freya was incomparable. She always had been.
After she’d brushed her teeth and pulled her old, comfortable pyjamas on, Sophie felt better in herself, better enough to deal with the silence that would be waiting for her in the bedroom.
She rubbed her stomach and made a promise to their child that she would not admit defeat. They’d been married only half a day!
She was expecting too much from him.
She was suffering a severe case of reality trumping expectations when she should be rejoicing that she’d broken enough of his barriers for him to share their bed as it should be shared, not whinging that he hadn’t stared deep into her eyes and declared his undying love.
Whoa!
Her hand was on the door as that thought went through her head.
She walked back to the small shaving mirror and stared at her reflection sternly.
Stop thinking, she told it. You knew the man you were committing to was an emotionless control freak, so stop being surprised when he acts like an emotionless control freak and don’t give even a passing thought to love. It’s not going to happen. Javier’s incapable of love and you’re not stupid enough to fall for the man who threw you out of his home after taking your virginity and then forgot all about you.
Rolling her shoulders, Sophie tucked her hair behind her ears and walked back into the bedroom.
Her resolution almost faltered to find the bedside light still on and Javier lying in bed, an arm crooked on the pillow above his head, the sheets pulled up to his waist.
His eyes were open.
He didn’t say anything, just watched her pad to the bed.
She was glad of her pyjamas. It meant he couldn’t see her shaking knees.
She climbed onto the bed and crossed her legs, facing him.
It warmed her that his returning stare was curious rather than hostile or indifferent.
A bubble of laughter flew up her throat that she only just managed to stop from escaping, but it wasn’t the laughter of amusement, only the laughter of sadness.
She guessed he’d prepared himself for histrionics from her.
Did her calmness relieve or disappoint him?
She pulled at a loose thread at the ankle of her pyjama bottoms and, in as casual a tone as she could muster, asked, ‘What happened with Benjamin to make him hate you so much?’
His features darkened, just as she’d known they would.
This was a conversation they needed to have. Why not have it now, when they were both awake and alone?
Better to talk than lie in silence with only her thoughts.
‘That is none of your business.’
She’d expected the brusqueness of his reply. ‘I’m your wife. Like it or not, that means your business is now my business.’
He laughed mirthlessly. ‘That didn’t take long.’
‘What didn’t?’
&nb
sp; ‘For you to assert your wifely rights.’
‘It’s going to come out, you know that, surely? The world knows you and Luis took out an injunction on Benjamin and sooner or later some journalist or other will find the details and publish them.’
‘Nothing can be published. The injunction prevents it.’
‘It can in America. Do you want me to hear it from the press or from yourself? Or shall I ask Freya?’
‘You are to have nothing to do with her.’
‘Javier...’ She sighed at his bullishness. ‘Freya’s the reason I’m asking you this. You read the messages she sent me. Whatever she believes you did, she hates you for it. Whatever went wrong between you and Benjamin, I would rather hear your side first before anyone else’s.’
‘My side?’ he asked in that all too familiar dangerous tone.
‘It will be different from theirs because you will see things from your own perspective. I reached out to her today because Freya’s my oldest friend and I didn’t want her to learn about our marriage from anyone but me. She’s found happiness with Benjamin and I am very happy for them but my loyalty now belongs to you.’
‘That does not say much about your loyalty if it is so easily transferred.’
‘Freya has had my loyalty and friendship since we were eleven years old. She will always be my best friend but I did not take our vows lightly. You’re my husband. You’re the father of my child. That means everything and if your vows meant anything then you have to start trusting me. I’m not your enemy, Javier.’
Trust her? As if he would trust anyone ever again.
But there was something in the softness in those pale blue eyes and the soothing melodiousness of her voice that made Javier wish...
In that softly thickening belly lay his child.
He had observed Sophie with her parents that day and seen the bond she had with them. She had given up the support she would undoubtedly have received from them throughout the pregnancy and birth to be with him. She had signed the iron contract he’d drawn up that stated exactly what she’d suggested: that in the event of them divorcing she would be entitled to a home in Madrid and that they would share custody of any children they had.
Billionaire's Baby of Redemption Page 8
