The Italian's Pregnant Virgin

by Maisey Yates

She put her hand at the center of his chest, making a shushing sound as she leaned in and kissed him gently, right against his frozen heart. “Just let me.”

  She moved lower, blazing a trail down the center of his stomach, farther still until her soft lips brushed up against the head of his arousal.

  “Esther,” he said, his voice harder than he intended. But he didn’t deserve this. Couldn’t accept it from her. She was giving him her body this way because she believed there was an emotion that existed between them when it didn’t. He was a relatively cold-blooded bastard, but even he had his limits.

  Or maybe he didn’t.

  Because when she parted her lips and enveloped him in the velvet heat of her mouth, he found he couldn’t protest. Not again.

  She tasted him as though he were a new delicacy for her to discover. Savored him. Lingered over him in a way that no other woman ever had. She seemed to draw pleasure from his, and that was a new experience. It was strange, to feel this intense, profound attempt at connection coming from someone when he was so accustomed to keeping his walls up at all times.

  They were still up. Firmly. But she was testing them.

  He wanted to pull away, but he couldn’t. Not just because he had to continue on with this pretense, but because he was incapable. Because she held him in thrall, and he could do nothing but submit to the soft, beautiful torture she was lavishing him with.

  Fire gathered low in his stomach, and he felt himself nearing the brink of completion. “No,” he said, his breath coming out in hard gasps. “Not like that.”

  He was breathing hard, scarcely in control of his actions, scarcely in control of anything. Trying desperately hard to keep everything together. He was playing a dangerous game with her. And the worst thing he could possibly do was find himself in a position where he began forgetting exactly what he was doing. Exactly what he was trying to accomplish. This wasn’t about them. It never had been.

  Of course, he wanted her to be happy. But that was incidental. As was she. The only thing that mattered was keeping his children with him. Keeping their family together, keeping Ashley away. The only thing that mattered was building a solid foundation for the rest of his life.

  It could be her, it could be any woman. Any woman whom Ashley had chosen, and he would be doing the same thing. He had to remember that. He had to.

  On a growl, he pressed her back against the mattress, claiming her mouth as he tested the entrance to her body with his hard length. She squirmed beneath him, arching into the invasion. And then he thrust deep inside her, all the way home.

  His mind went blank then, of everything. Everything but this. This need for release. This need to be as close to her as possible. Everything he had just been telling himself burned away in the white-hot conflagration of need. He gripped her hips as he moved more deeply within her, as he changed the angle and made them both gasp with pleasure.

  And then he lost his control completely, and he could only give his thanks when she cried out her release, her internal muscles pulsing around him, because he had lost any and all ability to hold his own at bay. And when it overtook him, it was like a hurricane, pounding over him, consuming him completely, leaving him spent and breathless in the aftermath.

  And as he lay there, turmoil and the aftereffects of pleasure chasing each other through his veins, he knew that he was simply in the eye of the storm. It wasn’t over.

  He moved away from her, shame lashing at him. He hadn’t felt quite so remorseful of his actions in a little over sixteen years. Everything was jumbling together. The past, the present, his future. And the reasons for his behavior.

  “I’m so happy,” Esther said, the bone-deep satisfaction in her voice scraping him raw. So now, she was peaceful, satisfied, and he was... Well, he was nothing of the kind. He felt utterly destroyed. And he couldn’t quite figure out why. He had accomplished everything he had set out to accomplish. He had secured a future just like he had set out to do.

  Had ensured that he would retain custody of his children, and that they would grow up with the family that they deserved. With the inheritance they deserved, because he was not going to allow his father to divide up Valenti to spite Renzo.

  He was confident in these things. Confident that they were right. And she was happy. So nothing else mattered.

  “Good,” he said.

  “But something’s bothering me.”

  “Something is still bothering you? After that orgasm, if anything is still bothering you then I’m going to have to revise my opinion of you. You’re a very greedy woman, Esther Abbott.”

  “I am,” she said, nodding slowly, the gesture visible in the darkly lit room. “I want to experience the whole world. And I want to have you while I do it. That’s pretty greedy, you have to admit.”

  “I have offered you both things. So there’s no reason you shouldn’t want and expect them.”

  “I want more now.”

  A surge of anger rocked him. “What exactly would you like, cara? The crown jewels, perhaps? What is it that I have denied you exactly that you feel you should have?”

  “You,” she said simply.

  “You just had me. In fact, I find I am spent due to the fact that you had me so well.”

  “That isn’t what I mean. I have a feeling you could share your body endlessly. It’s the rest of you that you find difficult.”

  His chest, frozen before, burned now. “I told you that I loved you,” he said, confident those words would end the discussion. “What more could you possibly need?”

  “It’s really great to hear those words. And I wish that they could be all that I needed. I wish that this could be everything that I needed. But unless I know what’s behind it, unless I know what love means to you, how am I supposed to feel? How am I supposed to feel secure in this? And what we have? We’ve only known each other for a few weeks. And I feel...I feel so much for you. It’s real. But you know where I come from. I feel like I don’t know half as much about you.”

  “You have had dinner with my family. Met my niece. Met my sister. What else do you need to know?”

  “Something. Something about you. You said that you married Ashley because you were punishing yourself. To prove something... To prove that you were...bad in some way. I want to understand that. You’re angry, Renzo. And I’ve done my best to ignore that because you’ve never been angry with me. But I want to know. I want to know what you’re angry at. I want to know why you married her. Why marrying me will be different. Why you feel differently about me. I have to. I have to or...”

  “You want to know whom I’m angry at?” He pushed himself off the bed, forking his fingers through his hair. “Well, cara, there is a very simple answer to that question.”

  “Give it to me. Give me something.”

  “Me. I’m angry at me.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ESTHER’S HEART RATE was still normalizing, and hearing those words come out of Renzo’s mouth made it tumble over into a strange gear again. She wasn’t sure what she had expected when she had demanded that he share something of himself.

  Denial, she supposed. Because he was such a closed door she imagined she would have to kick at it more than once in order to get it open.

  And so, she was suspicious. She had been growing more and more suspicious ever since their time together in New York. That there was more than he was saying. But he wasn’t being as honest or as open as he appeared to be.

  She was naive. She knew that. She didn’t have experience with men or with romantic relationships, and she knew that it was entirely possible some of her feelings were heightened because of the fact that they were sleeping together.

  Except, he hadn’t touched her between that first night and tonight. He had been much more careful than she would have liked him to be. Giving her more space than she ever would have asked for.

  And in that time all of the tender feelings around her heart hadn’t eased. In fact, they had only grown more intense. She knew that th
ere were all kinds of reasons that she might feel something for him that wasn’t strictly real.

  But with just as much certainty, she knew it was real.

  She just wanted it to be real for him, too. She needed to be sure. She had to know. And in order to know, she had to know him.

  “Why?” she asked. “Why are you angry at yourself?”

  “I wasn’t born a debauched playboy. I think that’s the place to begin. I was once very sincere, and I believed deeply in love. Though, I perhaps did so in a misguided fashion. But I want to say that so you know I didn’t toy with another man’s wife as a matter of my own amusement.”

  Her heart squeezed tight. Another man’s wife. If there was a more serious offense she’d heard of in all her growing-up years, she could hardly remember it. Marriage was meant to be sacred. And a man’s wife was his. Logically, she knew now that women weren’t property, even if they were married. But still, marriage vows were sacred.

  “Oh, Renzo... You...”

  “It isn’t a good story. But then, most origin stories aren’t. The man you know isn’t one of honor, so you must know that my beginnings were never going to be honorable.”

  “Don’t say things like that. You have honor. Of course you do. Look at everything you’re doing to make a life for your children.”

  “Yes,” he said, his tone going utterly flat. “But you have to understand that that need doesn’t come from a void. It was born of something. Everything is created. Everyone is created by a defining event. Something that changes you just enough, twists you in your own particular way. You know something about that.”

  “Yes,” she said, thinking of her family.

  “My parents care about me. I grew up in privilege. But I made a mistake. I fell in love with the wrong woman. A married woman. She was...my first. My first lover. My first love.” He paused, swallowing hard, a muscle in his jaw jumping. “The mother of my child.”

  Esther felt as though the bottom had fallen away from the bed. She felt as though the bottom had fallen away from the world. She couldn’t fathom what he was saying. What he meant. “Your child? But you don’t have...”

  “Not legally. No. I signed away my parental rights. I have no child. Not as far as the court systems are concerned. Genetically, however, is another matter.”

  She put her hand to her chest, as if that might do something to still her shattering heartbeat. “Tell me,” she said, “tell me everything. How old were you?”

  “I was sixteen. And it was agreed there was absolutely no point in a man like me—a boy like me—breaking up a family so that I could... Raise a child? How could I do such a thing? I was nothing more than a child myself. It would be laughable to even think it.”

  Slowly, realization dawned on her. “That’s what you meant. Proving that you were bad. That’s why.”

  “A bit melodramatic, perhaps. But since self-destruction is so much fun, how can I pass up the chance to prove I had no other option? And really, if you look at all of my exploits, how could you possibly believe that I would make a good father?”

  “But you will,” she said, her tone fierce. “Look at everything you’re doing for these children.”

  He laughed, a bitter sound. “Yes. I’m willing to do anything for these children. Because it is a wound...” His voice broke. “I did what I had to do. I did what I had to do,” he said again, as though he were reinforcing it even to himself. “You do not heal from this. You can’t. Especially not when...I see her.”

  “Your ex?”

  “No,” he said, “I have no lingering feelings for that woman. No attachment to her. I could see her every day and it would make absolutely no difference. But Samantha... My daughter. To watch her grow up across ballrooms, knowing that I can never make contact with her... It is like being stabbed in the same place repeatedly. With no end in sight. The pain never goes away, the wound never heals. There is no chance.”

  Pain lanced her, for him, for all that he’d been through. For what he still continued to go through, this man who would so obviously sacrifice everything for the love of the children she carried. This man who was already a father, and unable to be with his daughter.

  “How old is she?”

  “Sixteen,” he said. “The same age I was when she was born.”

  “So,” she said, “she’s nearly an adult. If you wanted to...”

  “And destroy her life? Her view of herself? Her father, her mother, everything? Revealing that she’s my child would decimate her entire existence. She has siblings.”

  “Does her... Does the man who raised her know that she isn’t his?”

  “I would be surprised if he didn’t. I doubt very much he and his wife were ever faithful to each other.”

  “How did she know it was yours?”

  “Jillian had a test done. Mostly because she wanted to make sure it was something I wouldn’t contest later. She wanted to know everything. Wanted to make sure that she could protect her marriage. Protect her existing children.”

  It all made a horrible kind of sense. That it was a situation bound to create casualties. And the solution they had come up with perhaps left the least amount of destruction in its wake. Except when it came to Renzo. As he spoke about it she could see that he had been destroyed entirely over it. That he continued to be destroyed daily.

  “You’re her father,” she said.

  He began to pace the length of the room, all restless muscle in the dim light, leashed strength. And she realized it was him all over. Power that he could not wield to its fullest degree. Strength that was impotent in the face of the situation that had been created.

  He was a powerful man. He was a wealthy man. But agreements aside, he couldn’t go bursting into his daughter’s life without destroying the balance. And it was more loving, more gracious, more everything for him to simply stand back and allow himself to bleed so that she never would.

  If she hadn’t been absolutely certain that she loved him before, this confirmed it. All of her earlier bad feelings about him being with a married woman sort of evaporated. Because he’d made a mistake, but it wasn’t who he was.

  Except, it had come to define him. Because the consequence was so permanent.

  She couldn’t continue to punish him by holding it against him. She couldn’t hold any of this against him. She looked at him and she saw the man she was determined to make a life with. A man who was angry, injured, broken beyond anything she could possibly understand.

  What could she offer him?

  “I am not her father in any way that counts,” he responded.

  “But you are,” she said. “You love her. Maybe more than anyone else involved in this, because the only reason that you’ve never crossed that ballroom and put yourself in her life is that you love her too much to rattle her.”

  “No,” he said, his tone fierce. “It’s not love. I can’t feel that way anymore. I don’t.”

  Those words hit her like a hammer fall. “But you said... You said you loved me.”

  “And if it makes you happy I will say it a thousand more times.”

  “If it makes me happy. But... What about if it’s not true?”

  “I am who I am. What has been done to me... It is done. There is no going back. I cannot go back in time and make a different decision. I can’t change what happened. Not me, not her. I can’t remake that decision. Don’t you understand that? And just like I can’t remake that decision, I can’t feel things with parts of myself that I burned away. It doesn’t work that way. It can’t.”

  “Then why did you tell me that?”

  “Have you been listening?” he asked, roaring now, when she had only ever heard him speak in calm command before. There was no sense of calm about him now. It was like watching him unravel in front of her, thread by thread. “I will do anything to keep my children with me. Anything.”

  “I never threatened to take them. Ever. I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t do that to you.”

  “It’s more than that.
Samantha... She has a family. She has a mother and she has a father. How could I provide less to my children now? What is my excuse? Look what I did. I ruined my life by marrying Ashley. I will not ruin my children’s lives. I was making a statement, about my unsuitability, and I nearly swept two innocent children up in that. My own children. Again. Ruined by the selfishness of the adults around them.”

  She could see it so clearly. The way that he did. That he was somehow building the family that he owed his children so he didn’t give them less than what his first child had been given.

  He had tried so hard to prove that he wasn’t able. To prove that the right decision had been made, and then he had been thrust into a situation where he had to prove himself worthy.

  But she had been caught in the crossfire. And understanding it didn’t make her any less confused when it came to her own feelings. It didn’t make it hurt less.

  “You didn’t have to lie to me,” she said.

  “I did. You made that very clear.”

  “Renzo... I... I gave myself to you. In a way that I don’t know if I could have if...” She stopped then, because she knew it wasn’t true. It had nothing to do with the way he felt, the way that she had been with him earlier. It had everything to do with the way that she felt. With how much she felt for him. But still, she was hurt, she was confused, and she wanted him to feel even a fraction of that, which wasn’t really fair considering she had a feeling he had been awash in both from the moment he had found out she was carrying his children.

  And she could see fear in his eyes. Stark, naked. The fear that somehow, another woman would contrive to take away what he wanted most in the world. And he might say he couldn’t love, but his actions were not those of a man who couldn’t love.

  She knew this was all about love. Deep, unending love that hurt him every time his heart beat.

  If he thought he was doing this out of a lack of love, it was only because he couldn’t see another way to deal with it. And strangely, she understood that. It was easy to tell herself that she was staying with him because he said he loved her. Because she was having these babies.