After the glories of the night just passed, her bitterness jarred. “You’re more than that. Tell me you’re not sorry you came to me yesterday.”
His heart faltered to a halt when she didn’t immediately answer. This turned into a damned nightmare. How was it that only ten minutes ago he’d basked in contentment? Now she ripped him in half.
Just by threatening to leave.
He was right. She was dangerous. Fatally dangerous.
“Antonia?” he asked again, and hoped he didn’t sound as needy to her as he did in his own ears.
Still she didn’t speak. Instead she studied his face, as if he held the answer to every mystery.
At last she answered, her voice shaking. “No, I don’t regret it. I’ve never known such joy.” Her lips twisted into a humorless smile. “No wonder you’re famous.”
Rage surged at her final comment. “Don’t belittle what happened.”
She regarded him as if he babbled in a foreign language. “It’s only two bodies coming together, Nicholas.”
He scowled at her. “Don’t be a fool, Antonia. And don’t pretend that’s all you felt. I want you to stay. I’ve . . .”
He paused. His profound reaction left him wallowing. Putting what he felt into words tested his limits. He fell back on the safe option. “I want more than you’ve given me.”
Her lips flattened. In disappointment? Or anger or shame? He couldn’t say. When his body united with hers, nothing divided them. Communication was perfect. But when they spoke, words only created an unbridgeable abyss between them.
“Well, for once, you’re not going to get what you want,” she said crisply as though what he said, what he wanted was unimportant. “I have to disappear or there will be an almighty scandal. I can’t risk that. For Cassie’s sake. And for my brother and Mr. Demarest.”
He rarely felt at a loss with a woman. He’d felt at a loss with Antonia over and over again. Never more so than now. She wanted him. He knew that. She was willing to risk her reputation for him, or else why was she here? Surely that indicated her surrender last night was more than a trivial whim.
Yet she was so determined to leave him forever.
He struggled to come up with something to make her reconsider. “What if you’re pregnant?”
She arched a cynical eyebrow. “What if I am? What can you do about it?”
With every moment, she moved farther away. He hated it. But apart from slicing open his heart in front of her and letting her trample over the bloody remains, he didn’t know what to do.
“I can make provision for the child.”
“I’ll manage on my own,” she said in an uncompromising voice.
He quashed an evocative image of Antonia’s beautiful body growing round with his offspring. His childhood had been a nightmare. His parents provided the poorest example of nurture. He’d make the world’s worst father. If Antonia bore a baby, her shame would be complete.
Still that image of her glowing and pregnant haunted him.
“Any child wouldn’t be just yours, would it?” Hoping he worried unnecessarily, he kept his voice neutral. If he challenged her absurd independence, he risked rousing bitter resistance.
How would she support a baby? Her pride led her wrong.
“Yes, it would.” She lifted her chin in a gesture that reminded him of the woman he’d first met. That woman had intrigued him but they’d moved past that now.
&
nbsp; Or at least so he’d believed.
He snagged one hand in her hair, holding her face up as he kissed her hard. It was a kiss to compel cooperation, a travesty of the passionate kisses he’d showered on her through the night. She remained stiff and unyielding beneath his lips.
Eventually she wrenched free and glowered at him. “What does that prove, Nicholas? It’s over.”
She didn’t even sound like she minded, blast her. “Don’t say that,” he growled, tightening his hand in her hair and staring at her reddened lips.