The Cost Of Claiming His Heir (The Delgado Inheritance, Book 2)

by Michelle Smart

  ‘Then you can doubly forget marriage if that’s going to be added to the list of things I’d have to put up with.’ Rising to her feet, she glared at him. ‘I’m going to take the boys for a walk. Let me know when you’re in a less cynical mood—we can discuss things properly then.’

  She slammed the door behind her.

  Emiliano rubbed Hildegarde’s clever head before handing the reins to a groom. He was about to walk away when the groom asked about the night shift for the forthcoming party. He almost smacked his own forehead at the reminder.

  With everything that had been going on in his life he’d completely forgotten about the party he was hosting in a couple of weeks for his polo team and all their respective staff. It had been the most successful English season they’d ever played in and it was only right he reward them for it, but a party was something he could do without right now. He needed to devote his energy to convincing Becky to marry him. And it wasn’t just the party. The break he’d given his team came to an end in a few days and practice would resume; new ponies needed to be tested, the new player he’d signed needed to bed into the team and then there were the myriad issues that needed dealing with on the non-playing side of the business and the worry of a sickness that had infected a significant number of his horses in the Middle East.

  How could he concentrate on any of this when the woman carrying his child was proving herself an enigma and refused to do the right thing and marry him?

  As he thought this he suddenly spotted Becky walking past the stables, his boys obediently at her side. As if she sensed his stare, she turned her face to him and stopped. Across the distance their gazes locked and held.

  His chest filled, cramping his lungs, forcing him to drag in a deep breath of air. All the anger that had been simmering in him since she’d stormed out of her bedroom three hours ago, anger that hadn’t abated even after a long ride on Hildegard, left him.

  He barely registered putting one foot in front of the other. One minute they’d been hundreds of yards from each other. The next, he was standing in front of her.

  A strand of hair not tied back in her ponytail caught in the breeze. He locked his hands behind his back to stop his fingers reaching for it.

  ‘That was a long walk,’ he murmured.

  She just stared at him. Her throat moved a couple of times before she said quietly, ‘I needed thinking time.’

  He knew that feeling.

  ‘Hungry?’ he asked.

  The beginnings of a smile played on her lips. ‘Starving.’

  ‘Then let’s get lunch.’

  They walked in silence until they were out of earshot of the stables. After his long, vigorous ride, the cooling breeze was welcome. It couldn’t cool the baser part of him though, he conceded ruefully, not when Becky was within touching distance.

  ‘What did you think about on your long walk?’

  Becky took her time before answering because there was no easy answer to give. She’d spent most of the walk fuming over his implication that she’d deliberately got pregnant and fuming over his reaction to finding out about her career. His arrogant assumption that she would be happy to commit herself to marriage with an unfaithful husband—a promise to ‘try’ was, in her view, an insult and, worse, a stab to a heart already filled with far too much emotion than was healthy for a playboy like Emiliano Delgado. And then she’d remembered all the family stuff he’d been dealing with and her anger had turned to an ache that made her want to cry for him.

  How did he do that? How could he anger her to such a pitch that her head could explode with rage then tug at her heartstrings enough for her to weep? And how, stronger than her anger or empathy, was it that just to look at him was enough for her to fill with so much heat it felt as if her bones were melting?

  ‘Everything and nothing,’ she finally settled on.

  ‘Evasion, bomboncita?’

  Hating that her heart skipped a beat to hear that caress from his lips, she studiously kept her gaze fixed ahead and fought to keep her voice steady. ‘Not deliberately.’

  ‘Are you still angry with me?’

  ‘No...’ She couldn’t resist turning her face to look at him for a brief moment. ‘Well, a little.’

  ‘That’s encouraging.’

  She couldn’t help the laugh that escaped to hear the old playful tone in his voice.

  But then the serious mood returned. ‘You know, I have never thought before about how I react to surprises.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What you said earlier, about my reaction to your virginity—don’t think I didn’t notice you confirmed that for me—and to your job. I reacted badly both times. I will try to do better.’

  Her heart gave a little thump. ‘Is that your way of apologising?’

  ‘I wouldn’t go that far but I can admit when I’m wrong.’

  ‘Go on then.’

  ‘Go on, what?’

  ‘Admit you were wrong.’

  ‘My reaction was wrong.’

  ‘And your insinuation that I intentionally got pregnant?’

  Emiliano’s guts plunged. He reached out for her hand and, holding it firmly, stopped walking. He could only assume it had been wounded pride at her dismissal of his proposal that had made him lash out like he had. He wished he could still believe she’d been playing a game but he was not one to indulge in self-delusion. Becky had been a virgin. She hadn’t deliberately set out to trap him.

  And she didn’t want to marry him.

  But that didn’t mean he had to accept it. People could change. Minds could be changed. He’d never backed away from a challenge in his life and wasn’t about to start now.

  ‘Wrong. For that, I do apologise.’

  She stared at their clasped hands before slowly raising her eyes to his. ‘I would never do that.’

  ‘Many women would.’

  ‘I’m not many women.’

  ‘No,’ he agreed. The breeze had caught that stray lock of hair again. This time he didn’t resist, smoothing it off her face with the hand not holding hers. If he hadn’t been studying her so closely he would have missed the little quiver his touch evoked. He stepped even closer to her. ‘You are not like other women.’

  ‘Not like the other women you normally sleep with, you mean,’ she corrected, but with a hitch in her voice that gratified him as much as her quiver had done. It emboldened him, made clear the route he needed to take to extract the change of mind he wanted from her. That it was the most pleasurable route only made it the sweeter.

  ‘That is possible.’

  ‘I’d say it’s definite.’

  ‘You have been studying my previous lovers?’

  ‘There’s not enough hours in the day to do a comprehensive study.’

  ‘There has been no one since you.’ No one since she’d come into his life...

  ‘Is that supposed to be a compliment?’

  ‘Just a fact.’ He slipped an arm around her waist and drew her flush against him. ‘Just as it is a fact that I have never desired a woman more than I desire you.’ He put his mouth to her ear. ‘Tell me it’s not the same for you.’

  ‘I...’ Becky unclasped her hand from his and pressed it against his chest, ready to push him away, but found her fingers grabbing hold of his polo shirt. The heat of his breath against her ear was doing crazy things to her, and when he took advantage of her loss of words to press feather-light kisses over her face, everywhere but her mouth, she was saturated with a desire so strong it was a struggle to even breathe.

  Somehow she summoned the strength to let go of his shirt and step out of his reach. ‘Please, we agreed...’ God, she could hardly get her voice working.

  ‘Agreed what?’

  ‘Not to muddy the waters with...this.’

  His eyes gleamed. ‘I promised no such thing.’
<
br />   ‘Then make that promise.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Please, Emiliano, I don’t want us to be at war, but...’

  ‘I prefer to make love not war.’

  She was saved from having to think of a response to words that made her abdomen clench by a huge pick-up truck stopping beside them. It was Emiliano’s head groundsman, offering them a lift back to the ranch.

  Snatching at this gift of respite, she practically flew into the passenger side. She could have screamed when Emiliano followed her in and she was forced to share the two-seat space with him and the dogs, who obediently sat themselves in the footwell. Space upfront was so tight and Emiliano so big that their bodies were tightly compacted together, thigh pressed against thigh, side against side. She folded her arms tightly across her chest but that did nothing to dull the wanton heat flushing through her.

  God help her, she prayed. Help her before she self-combusted.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE RIDE BACK to the ranch took barely two minutes. For Becky it felt like hours, time suspended in a closed environment where her senses were filled with the heat of Emiliano’s body pressed against her own and the earthy scent of his fresh sweat. It was torture.

  When they pulled up outside the front door, Emiliano thanked Gabriel before jumping out. Murmuring her own thanks, Becky budged over to get out too but, before she knew what he was planning, Emiliano’s strong hands were at her waist and he was lifting her out of the truck as if she weighed nothing at all.

  He set her gently to the floor. Legs weakened, she had to fight not to sway into him. Hands lingering at her waist, his eyes gleamed as he leaned in to murmur into her ear, ‘I’m going to take a shower before we eat.’

  There was no relief when he released his hold on her waist and bounded into the ranch, not when every part of her ached and throbbed.

  Inside, all was quiet. Or was it the steady beat of blood in her head deafening her?

  She couldn’t stop her gaze from following him up the wide staircase, the longing to follow him with more than her eyes more than she could bear. With a wrench, she turned on her heel and hurried to the kitchen for company that wasn’t hunky Argentinian male. But the kitchen was empty of everything but the scent of cooking.

  She poured herself a coffee from the prepared jug on the counter but her hands shook so much that when she tried to take a sip of it, it spilled over her shirt. She snatched at a tea towel and dabbed as much of it as she could, thankful that she liked her coffee half-filled with milk. Her skin already felt burned.

  Needing to change her wet shirt, she approached the stairs with trepidation. To get to her room she had to pass Emiliano’s, a fact she’d studiously tuned out every other time she’d walked past it.

  This time it was impossible to tune out, especially when she found the door partially open. An invitation? The mere thought was enough for her knees to weaken all over again.

  Why was she hovering there? And why was her hand reaching forward...?

  ‘You can come in, you know,’ a deep voice drawled from the other side of the door.

  Immediately she pressed her shaking hand to the place where her heart would have been if it hadn’t jumped to her throat.

  The door opened fully. Emiliano, still dressed, lopsided smile on his face, eyes dark and knowing, swept an arm behind him in invitation.

  ‘I was on a call with my English vet,’ he explained casually, as if finding Becky hovering outside his door was an everyday occurrence.

  She had no recollection of crossing the threshold or closing the door behind her.

  Since their night together, Becky had kept a firm control of herself, aware of her susceptibility to him, aware that he’d left his mark on her in a deep-rooted way that had nothing to do with the pregnancy. She’d believed the awareness of her desire made it controllable.

  She’d been a fool, she now realised hazily. The distance they’d both imposed had been the thing keeping it controlled. Now that Emiliano had breached that distance and turned those laser eyes and the full weight of his desire back on her, the walls she’d erected around herself had come crashing down. For the first time she could admit that she didn’t want to build them back up and she didn’t want to fight it any more.

  Emiliano was right. They were going to be bound together for ever so why fight the inevitable? The longing in her blood made the inevitability clear to her.

  And now she was in his room, trembling with nerves and excitement, her senses too overloaded with Emiliano to even give his inner sanctum a cursory glance. All she could see was him. All she could hear was her own heartbeat.

  ‘Join me in the shower?’ he said in that same casual tone before he pulled his polo shirt over his head.

  Her mouth opened but nothing came out. She had no idea what she would have said even if speech had been possible.

  Eyes back on her, he pinched the sides of his jodhpurs and without a modicum of shame pulled them down to his feet, stripping his underwear as he went.

  Naked, barely feet away, he stared at her.

  And all she could do was stare back, drinking in every part of his masculine perfection. She remembered so well the feel of him naked on her and in her, but to see him in the light took what little breath she had left away.

  The lean yet muscular body she’d imagined vividly was so much more. Of everything. Harder. The shoulders broader, the biceps more muscular, the thighs more powerful. A smattering of dark hair whorled in the centre of his chest, narrowing to a thin line down his flat abdomen then thickening to where his erection jutted out as hard and as big as the rest of him.

  Brown eyes darkening, he watched her soak him in.

  ‘Your turn,’ he rasped with a flare of his nostrils.

  Her hands moved with no connection to her brain. Surprisingly steady, they opened the buttons of her shirt one by one before she shrugged the sleeves off. And then she moved to her jeans.

  Emiliano’s throat had run dry. Never in his life had he been as mesmerised as he was in that moment. He’d climbed the stairs to his room with Becky’s dazed yet hungry eyes following him but no expectation that she would follow. He’d learned the hard way with Becky to expect the unexpected.

  And now she was in his room, stripping off her clothes. Shyness had brought a blush to her cheeks but her beautiful green eyes, pulsing with unconcealed desire, did not waver. It was the most erotic sight he had ever seen.

  He barely suppressed a groan when she stepped out of her jeans. The groan came unbidden when she unhooked her bra and released the breasts whose taste he remembered with crystal-clear clarity but whose image were shadowed.

  And then she tugged her knickers down too.

  He gritted his teeth and breathed deeply through his nose. Dios, a man could die and go to heaven in that curvy softness.

  She was like a milkmaid of medieval times. Creamy weighty breasts were topped with perfect raspberry nipples, the hips wide and rounded, belly softly rounded, a cloud of soft dark hair in the arrow between legs much smoother and shapelier than he’d dreamed. Everything was more beautiful and perfect than he’d dreamed.

  And he’d dreamed about her, waking and in sleep, so many times he’d lost count.

  The dream was perfected when she pulled the hairband out and her chestnut waves came tumbling down.

  Breathing deeply, he extended a hand.

  Eyes not breaking contact with his, she reached out to take it. A spark of electricity pulsed through him at the first touch.

  Becky let Emiliano lead her into the huge walk-in shower in his bathroom. The way she felt right then, she would have let him lead her anywhere. Any embarrassment at being naked in the light with a man for the first time had gone when she’d seen the effect it had on him. The heat in his eyes alone could power a station.

  She let him position her under the wide s
hower head, facing him. He stretched an arm to press a button on the wall. An instant later, water at a perfect temperature rained down on them. She shivered at the effect it had on her highly sensitised skin then held her breath as she waited for what he would do next.

  He turned slightly to fill his hands with gel from the dispenser on the wall and then, eyes on hers, lathered his magnificent body, cleaning every part he could reach. When he took hold of his manhood to clean that too, Becky experienced such a deep throb of longing that her lungs stopped functioning.

  Eyes now hooded, he rasped, ‘Turn around.’

  Trembling with anticipation, she obeyed.

  He gathered her hair and tucked it to one side over her shoulder before she heard him fill his hands with more gel. In slow, rhythmic movements, he washed every inch of her back, from the nape of her neck all the way to the base of her spine. When he gently massaged the gel into her buttocks she shot a hand out against the wall to keep herself upright.

  Already lost in a bubble of desire, when he gripped her hips and pressed himself against her, his erection hard against her lower back, and growled seductively into the top of her head, she was helpless to stop the moan of need flying from her lips.

  And then he gently turned her to face him.

  Breathing heavily, he gazed into her eyes for the longest time before reaching again for the gel. He lathered his hands then placed them on her shoulders. His Adam’s apple moved before he slowly lathered her arms, all the way to her fingers, then back up and around to the base of her throat before massaging her breasts.

  The sensations his seductive caresses were firing through her were too strong to sustain. Her legs were shaking. But the caresses were relentless and when he’d finished massaging her belly and gently moved lower she would have fallen to the floor if he hadn’t hooked an arm around her waist and carefully steered her to the deep tiled ledge running along the left of the vast space and helped her sit. The shower head must have moved by sensor for the spray followed them.

  Dropping to his knees before her, Emiliano continued to lather her body. His strong hands massaged the gel into her thighs and calves then lifted each foot in turn and rubbed his thumbs into her soles and toes. All the while, the heavy sting of the shower drenched her skin, adding to the sensation filling her.