‘Yes, I can cope,’ Annie had answered him quietly, ignoring Dominic.
Now, with her pregnancy properly confirmed, there were things she had to do, plans she had to make. But they would have to be put on hold until Dominic was fully back on his feet—she owed him that.
‘Lean on me,’ she instructed him now, as he hobbled towards the door to his room. ‘The car isn’t very far away, but if you’d like a wheelchair…’
‘What I’d like,’ Dominic told her grittily, ‘is to be treated like the adult I am and not a child. I can walk, Annie.’
Only the memory of how she herself had felt whilst she was recuperating enabled Annie to bite back the sharp words hovering on her tongue.
He looked surprisingly fit for a man who had been in hospital for close on a week. His skin was still tanned, his body still full of that sensual male power that made her own tighten and shiver slightly.
As he forced himself not to give in to the pain of his bruises Dominic wondered when Annie was going to tell him about the baby. Not once during her visits had she made any reference to it, and he was angrily aware of how inappropriate their current role reversal was. He was the one who should be taking care of her, cherishing her, guarding her, protecting her.
‘Dr Spears said it might be more comfortable for you to sleep downstairs for the time being,’ Annie announced once they were in the car—Dominic’s car, not her own, because the seats were more comfortable and there was more leg room for him, even if she herself would have preferred to have been driving her own car.
‘No way! For God’s sake, I’m not an invalid!’ Dominic exploded angrily. ‘I don’t need mollycoddling Annie. In fact…’
‘In fact what?’ she challenged him sharply. ‘In fact you’d prefer me to leave? There’s no way that the hospital would have let you come home if they thought you were going to be on your own,’ she reminded him.
Want her to leave! Dominic looked out of the car window. When they had told him how she had insisted on staying at his bedside until she knew he was going to make a full recovery he had thought…hoped…But in the days since he had recovered consciousness, instead of drawing closer together, instead of him having an opportunity to tell her how thrilled he was about the baby and how much he wanted them to put the past behind them and start again, Annie seemed to have thrown up a wall between them which she had no intention of allowing him to cross.
‘We’re here,’ she announced unnecessarily as she turned into the drive and parked the car. ‘You stay here. I’ll go and unlock the door and then I’ll come back for you.’
Dominic let her get as far as the front door before he opened his own car door and struggled out.
Standing on the gravel of the drive was, for some reason, much harder and much more painful than standing beside his hospital bed—and as for walking…! Gritting his teeth, he started to move towards the house.
Annie finally realised what he was doing when she had unlocked the door and turned back towards the car.
‘Dominic!’ she protested sharply, hurrying towards him and reaching him just as he sagged heavily to one side, breathing hard.
‘I’m all right. For God’s sake, stop fussing,’ he told her curtly.
‘You’re not all right. You should have waited for me.’
‘Waited for you?’
She watched his mouth twisting bitterly.
‘What good would that do me, Annie? What good has it ever done me?’
If she didn’t know better she might have thought that there was more than just physical pain she could see in his eyes. But what was the point in tormenting herself? Dominic had told her himself that he no longer loved her.
With only herself to consider she might have been tempted into the weakness of allowing the physical desire she could sense he still felt for her to have free rein, but the knowledge that soon she would have another, much more vulnerable life to consider had given her a strength she hadn’t known she could possess. No matter how much her body might ache for him she could never now accept the shallow worthlessness of mere sexual satisfaction.
‘Dr Spears gave me some painkillers for you,’ she said calmly. ‘Once you’re in bed I’ll bring you some.’
They were inside the house now, and as she looked at the stairs, and then at him, she told him, ‘I’ve got to go back to the car for your bag, and then I’ll help you upstairs.’
‘No,’ he told her swiftly. ‘I can manage. If I lean on you it could hurt you.’
Hurt her? He was concerned about hurting her…Now! After what he had already done…Annie didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but he did have a point. If he should fall…
Helplessly she watched as he struggled painfully up the stairs. When he reached the top he leaned heavily on the balustrade. Anxiously she rushed towards him. She could see the pain etched into his face. Automatically she went to take his arm, ignoring his anger as she helped him into his room.
‘Thank you. But I can undress myself,’ he gritted. ‘Unless, of course, you want to watch!’
Her face burning, Annie fled. She, more than anyone else, understood how pain and incapacity could sharpen even the sweetest temper, but the mere thought of him naked…Pink-cheeked, she hurried back downstairs. The thought of Dominic naked was not a thought she should allow herself to have, she told herself sternly.
It was later that night when a sound from Dominic’s room disturbed her own sleep. Automatically she was out of bed, reaching for her robe, pulling it on as she hurried anxiously towards his door.
The anguished groan that reached her ears as she opened the door had her scurrying towards the bed.
Dominic was lying in the middle of it, the bedclothes pushed down to expose his naked body, the bruises still livid against his tan, the dressing on his leg a paler blur.
Hastily averting her gaze from the very visual evidence of his maleness, Annie leaned across him, intending to reach for the bedclothes to cover him up. But as she did so he suddenly opened his eyes and grasped her arm.
‘Annie,’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘I was just dreaming about you.’
Annie licked her lips a little nervously.
‘You’re so beautiful,’ Dominic told her softly. ‘So very, very beautiful.’
His fingers were caressing her arm, making her shiver, making her…
‘Dominic, stop it,’ she protested. ‘You aren’t well. You shouldn’t…’
‘I shouldn’t what?’ he demanded softly. ‘I shouldn’t make love to my wife? They said at the hospital that I should do whatever I felt able to do, and I feel very, very able to make love to you, my Annie…very able!’
His Annie! She wasn’t that now…not any more.
‘Dominic,’ she whispered in a paper-thin voice. But somehow she was still bending towards him, still allowing him to draw her down beside him to hold her, touch her, kiss her.
‘I can remember the first time we made love here,’ he was telling her, and Annie had to stop herself from responding. So can I.
She didn’t want to tell him she was leaving him until she was sure he was well enough to look after himself. She didn’t want to argue or quarrel with him at all, she recognised. Giddily he started to kiss her, and her head began to swim.
‘It was so good between us…I wish you could remember,’ he was telling her as he reached inside her robe and started to stroke his hand over her body. Was it her imagination or did they linger deliberately on the still flat plane of her tummy?
‘I wanted you so much then,’ he told her rawly. ‘I want you just as much now, Annie.’
It must be the drugs that were making him like this, Annie decided as her breathing quickened and shallowed in response to the desire that he was arousing in he
r. She could feel her nipples peaking, hardening, aching for much, much more than the delicate brush of his fingertips against them.
‘Dominic, no,’ she told him as he rolled her gently onto her back and started to kiss her throat, then her breasts.
‘Annie, yes,’ he whispered back in response as his hands warmed her body.
It was her dreams…her memories…her longings brought vividly to life—and more. She ought to stop him—now—whilst she still could. He wasn’t well and she wasn’t…But instead of pushing him away she suddenly discovered that she was holding on to him, crying out softly to him…for him—too caught up in what she was feeling herself to be shocked by the raw immediacy of his fierce possession of her.
‘Is this all right for you?’ he asked as he entered her, full and hard, and yet somehow gentle too, as though…
‘I want you to…’ To stop, she had intended to tell him, but suddenly her voice was suspended as her need for him overwhelmed her and she was crying out helplessly to him. ‘I want you to love me, Dominic. I want you to hold me, fill me…love me—’
Briefly even her baby was forgotten in her desire to absorb and accommodate as much of him as she could, and when she felt him holding back she pressed closer to him, urging him on.
‘Yes, oh, yes, that feels so good,’ she encouraged him as her fingers tightened against his buttocks and her back arched. ‘Oh, yes, Dom…Dom…Yes…Oh…Oh, yes, my darling—yes!’
‘Dominic, your leg—your bruises,’ Annie gasped in remorse several minutes later, when she had come back down to earth enough to realise what they had done.
‘What leg…what bruises?’ Dominic teased her.
She could feel the laughter rocking his body just as she had felt the passion moving it only minutes before. What she had done was wrong. Inexcusable. Tears blurred her eyes, but when she moved to pull away from him Dominic held onto her.