‘So how were you raised?’
He eyed her across the table and she met his censuring look with a radiant smile of utter innocence. Yeah, she knew what she was doing and he knew she wasn’t about to let up.
‘Strictly,’ he muttered.
‘You said they were absent.’ She looked thoughtful. ‘Do you see them now?’
He didn’t think of his parents much and he certainly never discussed them. Why would he? But he had to give her something—she was like a dog with a bone. The bald facts would do. ‘We have dinner once every six months. It’s scheduled—the full year in advance. We discuss returns, hotel occupancy rates, the stock market.’
Her eyes widened. ‘Twice a year?’
‘Yes.’
‘And that’s it?’
‘Yes.’ He could see her mind working overtime.
‘Do you ever take a date?’
‘Never. It’s an obligation on both sides. They never doubted I would do anything other than succeed. And they ensured I was never spoiled by the wealth I was born into.’
He pointedly stabbed a chunk of steak and shoved it into his mouth. That was enough, surely? She was more curious than a barn full of cats. And the meat tasted like sawdust and glue. He made it go down with a hard swallow. ‘Look, I know you’re worried about how little we know of each other, but it isn’t something that can be forced, or hurried,’ he said, closing off the conversation. ‘Time will take care of it.’
She still looked thoughtful. And utterly unconvinced. ‘Most people wouldn’t work as hard as you if they didn’t have to.’
‘Why not? Don’t we all need a purpose? A sense of dignity from a job well done? What makes you think I wouldn’t need that too?’
‘But to be so driven... When is it enough?’ She gestured at the furnishings in the large room. ‘What is it you have to prove?’
‘I don’t need to prove anything,’ he growled. ‘Perhaps it’s just that the goalposts shift. I make a plan to achieve one thing, when it’s knocked off I feel like a challenge for something more. Isn’t that human nature?’
A shadow crossed her eyes. ‘So you’re never satisfied with what you have?’
His chest tightened and he laughed and groaned at the same time because her effervescent curiosity was going to be the death of him. But she was irresistible. It was that manner that made her so popular with the residents at Cavendish House. She made you feel like you could confide everything in her and she’d sort it all out for you. ‘I’m satisfied,’ he growled. ‘I just want more.’
Right now he was greedy for her. She was wearing a thin old T-shirt and jeans that hung a little loose. But she was still flushed from that bath and her skin looked luminous and silky soft. She smelled tantalising and her hair was a wild, damp mess down her back and he just wanted to thrust his hands into the gorgeous length of it and bind her close beneath him.
‘I’ll tell you something, Ettie,’ he said bluntly, shoving those X-rated thoughts to the back of his mind, ‘when you come from a background like mine, you swiftly learn that people only stick around because they want something from you.’
She perked up. ‘Is that true, really?’ She looked at him keenly, a teasing smile flicking at her mouth. ‘Aren’t there any uncomplicated, nice people out there who just want to be friends?’
He couldn’t help but laugh. ‘Perhaps I’m too prejudiced to be able to spot them.’ He leaned closer and called her out on it. ‘Even you wanted something from me.’
‘But you wanted the same thing from me.’ She wagged a finger at him. ‘So that makes us even.’
‘I’m as bad as you?’ he asked in mock-outrage.
‘Possibly worse. Because you took advantage of everything you have to seduce me.’
‘And you didn’t?’ He scoffed. ‘With your wild ponytail and passionate eyes?’
‘My what?’ She looked astounded.
‘All the emotions.’ He pointed to her eyes, suddenly quite serious. ‘Here.’
‘What are my eyes expressing now?’ she asked, still but breathless.
He stared at her intently—searching those beautifully clear eyes for the signal he’d wanted for so long. And then it was there.
‘Your desire for me to take you to bed.’ He simply snapped. He didn’t want to think any more. Didn’t want to try to solve unworkable problems. Damn well didn’t want to talk around the issues or, heaven forbid, his freaking past. He didn’t want to think of her being hurt by some jerk and her mum dying and leaving her to raise her sister alone. He wanted to relax, damn it. Eat good food and kiss the beautiful woman in front of him over every inch of her delectable body until she arched and begged him to finish her hard and fast. Everything else be blowed.
Her mouth opened, then shut and he could see her deciding how to handle her reply.
‘Wow. Impressive.’ But her sass was all bluff because what he’d said was true.
He clocked her rising colour, her quickening breath, her widening eyes. And he really didn’t want to talk any more. Talking wasn’t anywhere near as effective as action. He’d thought he should back off, especially after she’d been so mortified about that woman catching them in the lift. But they needed to clear the air of this tension that kept building. There was only here and now. Together they’d find oblivion.
He pushed back from the table and stalked around to where she now sat bolt upright. He grabbed her hand and tugged her to her feet.
She thought he’d seduced her that night? That was nothing on what he was about to do. He wasn’t waiting. He wasn’t taking this slow. He wanted her beneath him, about him. He craved the welcome of her soft heat. He pulled her against his body and gazed into her green eyes. For a moment it was as if they’d romped back to that first night—soft laughter, whispered desire, sensual freedom. It didn’t need to be anything more than that.
But there was no time for whispered words and soft laughter tonight. His need was too raw. He kissed her, and in that moment it was all over.
Unrestrained, ruthless, he stripped her bare right there in the formal dining room, boldly touching every spot he revealed. The emerald and diamond ring caught the light, sending small, sparking chinks of light onto the ceiling. His pleasure intensified at seeing her wearing it—the time-worn signal that she was taken. For a second he stilled, paralysed by the sudden ferocious anticipation of seeing her belly swell with her pregnancy over the coming months. She’d be softened and ripe with his child. His mark. He wanted to mark her all over—suddenly possessed by a primal, appalling need to stamp her as his. And he gave way to it in that instant, curling his arm around her waist to lift her up and carry her to his bed.
He wasn’t making her come in five different ways before filling her this time. He wasn’t letting her come at all. Not until she was unable to bear it a second longer. Not until she begged for mercy. Not until they were both at the end of their sanity. In the cage of his arms he caressed her, alternating with licks, love bites, kisses—he teased and tasted every inch of her glorious body. She was pregnant. She was hot. And she was his.
He laughed roughly as she moaned, her hips circling, her hands seeking to touch him too. He suffered the tormenting slide of her fingertips, the delight of her hard grip, and moved to retaliate. He relished the way her muscles quivered under his onslaught. But nothing pleased him more than the look of hunger in her eyes. She was as willing, as craving, as he.
‘Leon, please. Please.’
He paused above her, soaking in the moment he’d been aching for.
‘Why have you stopped?’ she asked, her expression edged with desperation.
‘I don’t want this over too soon,’ he answered with rough honesty.
‘I’ve wanted this for weeks,’ she moaned. ‘So much.’
Satisfaction and frustration split him. Fire and fury. ‘Then why did you deny us?’ Why h
ad she put up those barriers? He was making her pay for that. ‘Why did you resist?’
How had she? But he couldn’t wait for her answer—the demand of his own body, his own need, was too strong. She moaned in soft, earthy surrender as he thrust hard, fiercely claiming his possession. He arched, his eyes closing as pleasure sent sharp bursts down his back. His body tightened more, wanted more—deeper, harder, for longer. But she lost it beneath him, about him, crying out as her sweet body was wracked with the feral convulsions of one hell of an orgasm. But this wasn’t over yet. He simply refused to let it be over yet. So he held still, his will stretched to the point of pain.
‘Leon, it’s so intense,’ she gasped. ‘So intense.’
‘All the more reason to embrace it,’ he growled, still furious with her for making them wait all these weeks.
‘Please,’ she begged, breathless and twisting and fierce beneath him. ‘Please, Leon.’
It was as much a desperate plea as a forceful command. And now he could do nothing but surrender to both. He felt torn in two by the fierce, unrelenting urges to both master and worship her body.
‘Ettie,’ he growled. Demanding. Devoted.
The give and take, the push and pull was mirrored in his hard thrusts, in the buck of her fiery hips. He roared as his shy lover responded with that fight. She was that desperate for him. Which he adored because he couldn’t get enough of her either. She made him both weak and strong. He was almost rendered unconscious by the ferocity of the pleasure as he pushed her to climax again. Yet her scream was silent, her body so taut with tension, shaking with intense delight, it couldn’t render it vocally. The sight of her in that moment stopped his heart. His release came, instant and savage and so intense he all but blacked out.
When he returned to reality and summoned the energy to lift his head, he was horrified to find her face pale, her eyes simply huge and—glistening with tears?
‘Are you okay?’ he asked warily. Guilt hit him anew.
She was exhausted and he’d just subjected her to the roughest of rides. ‘Sleep.’ He drew the coverings over her, partly to hide the resurgence of his own desire, impossible as it ought to have been. He’d wanted her too much for too long. But surely he could wait until tomorrow before having her again?
Shadows crept into her beautiful, clear eyes. ‘I can go back to my room.’
An ice-cold storm brewed in his belly. ‘You want that?’
She licked her lips and glanced away from him. ‘If that’s what you’d prefer.’