Claiming His Secret Son

by Olivia Gates

  Wrestling with the savagery of his need, he skimmed his hands up to her breasts. Blood roared in his ears, his loins, as their warmth and resilience overflowed in his hands. He stared at the ripened perfection of her, the need to know if she’d breastfed Mauricio scalding him, the images searing him body and mind.

  Unbidden, another image flared in his mind, heightening the imaginary inferno. Her, holding another baby, one he’d get to see her breastfeed.

  Recoiling from the agonizing visions, he squeezed her supple flesh, his fingers unsteady with emotion and mounting hunger as he circled the buds he’d tasted during so many rides to ecstasy, thicker, darker now, and much more mouthwatering. And now he knew why.

  Before he bent to silence the clamoring and engulf her nipples, she slithered from his hold and lowered to her knees.

  Mashing her face into his loins, she kissed his erection, her hands trembling over the zipper, dragging his pants down.

  “I didn’t get to touch and taste you again...”

  Her gasp of greed as he thudded heavily in her waiting grasp juddered through him. Relief and distress speared through him in equal measure as she worshipped him, the only touch and need he’d ever craved, measuring his girth, rubbing her face over his length, inhaling and smooching and nibbling. Then with a stifled cry of urgency, she opened her mouth over his crown, swirled her hot tongue over its smoothness, moaning continuously as she lapped up the copious flow of his arousal as if its taste was the sustenance she’d been starving for.

  The sight alone, of her kneeling in front of him, of her gleaming head at his loins, of her lips, deep rose and swollen and wrapped around his erection, almost made him come.

  Stepping out of what felt like burning cloth, he tried to savor it all, caressed the hair that rained over her face, held it away in one hand so he could revel in her every move and expression, bending to run his other hand over the sweep of her back, the flare of her hips. But she started rubbing herself sinuously against his legs like a feline in heat and he lost the fight.

  He dragged her up, growling. Before he threw her back on the bed and mounted her, she climbed him, wrapped her legs around his hips and ground her moist heat over his erection. He tore her panties off, digging his fingers into her buttocks, making her cry out, crash her lips into his.

  Her tongue delved inside his mouth, tangling in abandon with his as if she was bent on extracting everything inside him. He let her storm him, show him the ferocity of her craving, rumbles of pained pleasure escaping from his depths.

  Her voice, roughened by abandon, filled him. “Take me, Richard. Or should I call you Rex?”

  He could swear he heard a crack as loud as a sonic boom. It was his control snapping.

  He thrust up into her, invading her molten tightness, sheathing himself inside her to the hilt in one fierce stroke. Her scream felt as if it tore out of his own lungs. The very sound of unbearable pleasure, as his bellow had been.

  On the second thrust he roared again and staggered with her to the bed, flinging their entwined bodies on it, loving her squeal as the impact emptied her lungs, then again as his weight crushed her next breath out of her.

  He rose between the legs clamped over his back, holding her feverish eyes, tethering her head with a hand twisted in her hair, the other nailing her down by the shoulder.

  Her swollen lips trembled over her anguished demand. “Do it, do it all to me.”

  He obeyed, pounding her, each ram wrenching from their bodies all the searing sensations they could experience or withstand.

  Her shrieks of ecstasy rose until she mashed herself into him and he felt her shatter around him. Her inner flesh gushed hot pleasure over him, her muscles wrenching at his length in a fit of release. He rode the breakers of her orgasm in a fury of rhythm, feeding her frenzy.

  “Come with me...”

  He did, burying himself to her womb and surrendering to the most violent orgasm he’d ever known even with her, filling her with his essence in jet after excruciating jet.

  Following the cataclysm, he couldn’t separate from her. Couldn’t imagine he ever would. He had to have her like this always, fused to his flesh through the descent, feeling her aftershocks and fulfillment.

  He didn’t think anything of her receding warmth until she shivered. Frowning, he rose off her to reach for the covers, groaning at the pain of separating from her body.

  Securing her under them with him wrapped around her for extra warmth, he smiled in possession and satisfaction down at her. “I take it you’ve decided to take my deal?”

  “No. This was actually the closure we both needed before I told you that I won’t.”

  His hands, which had been caressing her back and buttocks, stilled. Her eyes were unwaveringly serious. She wasn’t teasing or resisting. She meant this.

  Then she told him why. “I can’t have you in my life and hope it would remain normal. I’ve struggled too long and too hard, have too many people who depend on me to introduce your disruptive, destructive element in my life. I’m the pillar of my family and if you damage me, and I’m sure you will, everything will come crashing down. I won’t have that.”

  Rising to look at her, he felt he’d turned to stone inside and out as she watched her rising, too.

  “For closure to be complete, so we’d never have any loose ends tangling us in each other’s lives, I’m also here to have everything out once and for all. It’s the only way we could both finally let each other go. For good this time.”

  Seven

  Richard let Isabella leave his side, a jagged rock in his throat. This felt real. And final.

  Anything he did now to stop her would have to be true coercion. And no matter that he was losing his mind needing her, and she’d proved again she needed him as much, overpowering considerations had made her decide to quell that need. He could force her. But he couldn’t. He had to have her not only willing, but unable to live without having him.

  He watched her careful progress to the bathroom in only her sandals, what had remained on all through. She soon exited and, without looking at him, bent to pick up her panties, dropping them again when she realized they were ruined before walking out. Pulling on his pants, he followed her as she retraced and reversed her stripping journey.

  Once beside the pool, she sat on the couch where they’d almost made love the first night and looked at him.

  And the way she did...as if he was everything she wanted but could never have.

  Before he charged her and overrode her every misgiving, her subdued voice stopped him in his tracks.

  “I’ll start.” She stopped to swallow, her averseness to coming clean clearly almost overwhelming. “I’ll tell you everything. My side of the story. But only if you promise you’ll reciprocate and tell me the whole truth, too.”

  “What if I promise, and you tell me everything I want to know, but I don’t deliver on my end of the bargain?”

  Her shoulders jerked dejectedly. “I’d do nothing. I can do nothing anyway. The first truth I have to admit is that I am at your mercy. The imbalance of power between us is incalculable. I have so many vulnerabilities while you have none. You can force me to do anything you want.”

  He made her feel this way? Defeated? Desperate? He’d thought she needed his chase before she gave in to what she’d wanted all along. But if she truly hated it, this was as insupportable, as abhorrent, to him as when she’d thought he could harm her.

  Feeling his guts twisting over dull blades, he came down to sit beside her. “You previously said you considered my word worth having. If you really think so, you have it. A caveat, though. You’ll probably end up wishing you hadn’t asked for the whole truth. It will horrify you.”

  “After what I’ve been through in my life, nothing ever would again.” Her gaze wavered. “Can I have a drink first?”

  Her unfamiliar faltering intensified his distress. He’d never seen her...defenseless before. Besides the shame that choked him for being what made her fee
l this way, a piercingly poignant feeling, akin to the tenderness only Rose had previously provoked, swamped him. For the first time he wasn’t looking at Isabella as the woman who made him incoherent with desire, a woman he wanted to possess, in every meaning of the word, but a woman he wanted to...protect. Even from himself.

  Especially from himself.

  Stunned by the new perception, he headed to the bar and mixed her one of the cocktails she liked.

  For a year after he’d left her, whenever he’d made himself a drink, he’d made her one, too, as if waiting for her to materialize and take it.

  The day he’d thrown Burton in the deepest dungeon on the planet, he’d looked at the cocktail glass he’d prepared with such care and faced the stark truth that she never would. And he’d smashed it against the wall. Then he’d furiously and irrevocably terminated every method of communication she hadn’t used. He’d been convinced she’d forgotten him. And he’d hated her then, with a viciousness he hadn’t even felt for Burton. Because he hadn’t been able to forget her.

  And all that time she’d been running, pregnant with his child, giving birth to him, facing endless difficulties and dangers he could only guess at.

  He didn’t have to guess anymore. She’d finally tell him.

  He poured himself a shot of whiskey, breaking his rule of not exceeding two drinks per day. He had a feeling he’d need as much numbness as he could get for the coming revelations.

  It seemed she felt the same way as she gulped down the cocktail as soon as he handed it to her. Even with little alcohol, for a nondrinker like her, having it in one go would affect her as much as half a bottle of hard liquor would affect him.

  As soon as he sat, struggling not to drag her onto his lap, she said, “To explain how I became Burton’s wife, I have to start my story years earlier.”

  His every muscle bunching in dreadful anticipation, he tossed back his drink.

  “You probably know my early history—that I was born in Colombia to a doctor father and a nurse mother and was the oldest of five siblings. My trail stops when I was thirteen, when my family was forced out of our home along with tens of thousands of others.

  “Though we ended up living in one of the shantytowns around Bogota, my parents gave me medical training, while I home-schooled my siblings. Everybody sought our medical services, especially guerillas who always needed us to patch up their injured. Then one day, when I was nineteen, we went to tend to the son of our region’s most influential drug lord, and Burton, who was there concluding a deal, saw me. He later told me I hit him here—” she thumped her fist over her heart “—like nothing ever had.”

  His own heart gave a clap of thunder he was surprised she didn’t hear.

  He wasn’t ready to listen to this. Not just yet.

  Rising, he strode to the bar to grab a tray of booze this time. He had a feeling he needed to get plastered. He only hoped he could achieve that.

  He poured them both drinks. She took hers, sipped it, grimaced when she realized it was a stiff one, but took another swallow before she went on.

  “He came to our domicile later to ‘negotiate’ with my parents for me. My father refused the ‘bargain’ point-blank and was so enraged he shoved Burton. Next moment, he was dead.”

  Richard stared at her, everything screeching to a halt inside him. Burton. He’d killed her father. Too.

  She adjusted his deduction. “Burton’s bodyguard shot him for daring to shove his master. Before I could process what had happened, Burton put a bullet through the killer’s head then turned to me, apologizing profusely. My mother was frantically trying to revive my father, while I faced the monster who’d come to buy me.

  “The sick infatuation in his eyes told me resistance would come at an even bigger price to the rest of my family. Though my soul wretched at being at this monster’s mercy, I’d already dealt with the worst life had to offer and knew I could do anything to survive, and to ensure the survival of my family. And if I manipulated his infatuation, someone of his power could be used to save my family, and many, many others.

  “So I swallowed my shock and anguish, said I believed he hadn’t meant any of us harm, but to give me time to deal with my shock and loss and to get to know him. He was delighted my reaction wasn’t the rejection he’d expected after the ‘catastrophic mistake’ of my father’s murder and he promised me all the time in the world. And everything else I could want. I told him I only wanted my family to be taken to the United States, to live legally in safety and comfort. He told me that would only be the first of thousands of things he’d lavish on me.

  “The next day I stood at my father’s grave with the man who’d been responsible for his murder. Before Burton took us away, I promised my friends I’d be back to help as soon as I could.”

  His hand shaking with a murderous rage he’d never before suffered, he reached for the bottle. He took a full swig and savored planning the new horrors he’d inflict on Burton.

  Isabella continued, “Within a year he got us permanent residences through an investment program. My sisters and brother were in school and my mother volunteered in orphanages and shelters. Burton pulled strings to equate my experience to college courses necessary for medical school. Then on my twentieth birthday, he proposed. Though he was like putty in my hands, from his murderous behavior with others, I didn’t doubt he could kill us all if I wavered now that he’d fulfilled his end of the bargain. I was forced to accept. With an ecstatic smile.”

  This. The missing pieces. What explained everything. Rewrote history. Made everything he’d thought or felt or done not only redundant or wrong, but a crime. Against her.

  And she wasn’t finished telling him how heinous that crime had been. “After the lavish wedding, I played the part of the doting wife, capitalized on his abnormal attachment to me. Thankfully, I didn’t have to suffer through many sexual encounters, as he rarely wanted full intimacy. I perfected the act of loving his constant pawing, though.”

  The rage that exploded inside him threatened to crack his head open as he imagined her succumbing to Burton’s touch while her every fiber retched at the violation...

  He hurled the half-finished bottle across the pool. His fling across dozens of feet was so forceful, the window smashed on impact, exploding outward. If not for the terrace, it would have rained shards on the street below.

  Isabella’s heavenly eyes turned black at his violence.

  He gestured that he’d expended it, would rein it in now, and for her to continue.

  So she did. “I was also thankful he’d had a vasectomy in his early thirties. When he said we could still have a child if I wished, I assured him my younger siblings always felt like my children, and I wanted to focus on my education, my humanitarian work, but mostly him. He was delighted, as he was with everything from me. I continued to perform the role of perfect wife to such a powerful man, appearing to make flamboyant use, as he wished me to, of his wealth, and managed to put aside millions. I wanted enough personal power, education-, money-and knowledge-wise, to plot my family’s escape from this nightmare. Then you appeared in my life.”

  Before he found words to express the torrents of regret accumulating inside him, she looked away, eyes glittering.

  “When you asked me to leave with you, promised to protect me, I believed you had no idea what you were getting yourself into, not knowing the extent of my vulnerability, or of Burton’s power and obsession with me. I thought even if you’d managed to spirit my whole family away, he’d find us, and you wouldn’t be able to protect yourself, let alone us, from his vengeance. Oblivious to your real powers, I thought you were no match for him, was certain I’d only doom all of us if I left with you.

  “Then you were gone as I always knew you would be one day and I discovered what true misery was at last. It wasn’t being trapped in this horror with my family eternal hostages, their lives depending on my ability to perfect my act forever. It was to know what passion was, then to lose it and return to m
y cage to pine for you forever.”

  “Isabella...”

  Her hand rose, stopping his butchered groan. It seemed she needed to spit this out, as she would venom. “When you put your plan in action, I knew once he became convinced I betrayed him, he would be as insanely vicious as he’d been irrationally indulgent, so I took my family and ran. Then around a year later, my ‘lady in waiting’ who was married to his new right-hand told me Burton’s bank accounts had been emptied by unknown parties and he no longer had means to buy allegiance or even protection, and that just before she’d called me, he’d disappeared. She suspected he’d been killed.

  “Not willing to gamble on that, I decided to go back to Colombia when friends enlisted my urgent assistance in relocating them. I employed all necessary secrecy methods, and used the money I’d taken from Burton to build shelters and medical centers for those I couldn’t help personally.

  “After three years of no developments, I dared to go back to the States for a conference, where I met Rose. Then four years later, when she kept persisting with her partnership offer, I made my most extensive investigations yet. It was then I discovered you’d thrown Burton into that off-the-grid dungeon for the world’s most dangerous criminals and finally felt secure enough to come back. A week later...you appeared again. And here we are.”

  Richard stared at Isabella, every word of her revelations a shard shredding his guts.

  He’d lived among corruption and perversion so long, he considered only the worst explanation for anyone’s actions. He’d condemned her at face value, hadn’t reconsidered when all his being had kept telling him otherwise.

  But what she’d been through wasn’t unique. He’d seen worse crimes perpetrated against innumerable individuals in the world he inhabited. It was what she’d achieved in spite of all the danger and degradation, the way she’d conquered all adversity, built unquestionable success and helped countless others that elevated her from the status of coping victim to that of hero.