For Charlie it was like coming home. She looped her arms around his shoulders, her fingers stroking through the silky hair of his head, and moaned her delight as she felt the caress of his hand on her breast. Heat flooded her veins, filling her body with sensual excitement as she arched against the teasing torment of his clever fingers. And she groaned out loud as he broke the kiss to dip his head and take the swollen peaks into his mouth, suckling first one and then the other. Her inner muscles clenched with need, desire lancing through her, making her hot and wet with arousal, and so very ready for him. Hungrily her hands roamed over him. He was all power and heat, and "she gloried in the perfection of his body, and shuddered as he stroked and caressed her, kissing the slight swell of her stomach, and murmuring husky words of adoration to their unborn child. Then with tongue and hands he resumed his sensual quest, finding every sensitive pulse, tasting every intimate part of her, until she was a shaking, whimpering creature, lost to everything but the erotic pleasure he gave her.
Suddenly he reared back, and she stared in mute fascination at his arousal, a magnificent potent force between his thighs, wild with wanting. Then his hands gripped and lifted her and he was there where she ached for him to be, easing into her slowly, inch by perfect inch, his sensuous probing electrifying her until every nerve in her body was screaming for release.
She wound her arms around his neck, her head falling back, as with a powerful surge he slid in to the hilt. He repeated the movement, increasing the pace, his mouth finding her breast once more. She clawed at his back and sought his skin with her teeth, wanton in her need, and she cried out as her inner muscles spasmed around him in an explosion of pleasure.
Jake gave a deep, primitive growl and increased the pace and with one final thrust that seemed to touch her very womb his body shuddered in violent release. He fell back on the bed, taking her with him, and she lay sprawled on top of him, her body quivering and her head buried in the curve of his throat.
Jake's arms wrapped around her and he stroked her trembling body, gently, softly, until she sighed and lay still in his arms.
Tenderly he rolled her onto her back on the bed and leaned over her. 'Dio, I needed you so much, amore mia,' he husked, bestowing a kiss upon her brow while his hand lazily traced the line of her shoulder and lower to cup her breast as if testing the weight, and then gently traced the swell of her stomach.
He needed her. It was music to her ears, and this time she did not object to the amore mia as a deep sense of peace flooded through her. After what they had just shared, she could let herself believe he meant it.
But she was rudely disillusioned a moment later as his hand was abruptly withdrawn and he stared down, his hooded lids lowering to shield his expression. 'But I should not have done it.'
'Leave the party, you mean?' she said softly, a smile playing around her mouth as she lazily lifted her hand to his square jaw. 'I'm sure no one will mind.' Her fingers caressed his slightly roughened chin. 'I know I don't.' She raised languorous blue eyes to his, and for a moment she saw some deep emotion in his dark gaze.
'Maybe not. But that isn't what I meant.' He placed a hand on her stomach. 'I couldn't bear it if I hurt our baby.'
'There's no fear of that. They are tough little beggars.'
'And you would know? You have had one before?' he mocked gently.
'No, but then neither have you,' she mocked back, tracing the line of his high cheekbone and up to his temple, the pad of her finger resting on the tiny pulse that beat there.
'I almost did once,' Jake murmured.
Her eyes widened on his and the anguish she saw in the swirling black depths had her hand falling from his face in shock. 'But...you...how?' she stammered. She felt the sudden tension in his long body pressed against hers, and heard it in his deep voice as he began to speak.
'I was young and careless, and five months into a not- really-serious relationship when my girlfriend told me she was pregnant. Naturally I offered to marry her. I bought her the engagement ring she wanted, and gave her the money she demanded to arrange the wedding, but when she realised I ploughed most of my money into building up my business and was not as wealthy as she thought, my fiancée spent the money on a holiday and an abortion instead of the wedding.'
'Oh, my God. That is appalling,' Charlie exclaimed, her hands involuntarily stroking his chest in a gesture of comfort. She could feel his pain as if it were her own, hear it in his voice.
'What is truly appalling,' Jake rasped, 'is the knowledge I paid to kill my own child.'
'No, you can't believe that. It wasn't your fault,' she told him. His hand pressed lightly on her stomach, but his mouth hardened as she watched.
'We are all responsible for our own actions, Charlotte, and the effect they have on those around us. She was my fiancée, not for any great love I felt for her, but out of necessity, and I should have known better than to trust her. But I learnt from it. I have never made the mistake of trusting a woman again.'
Her heart ached for him. He was such a proud man— what it must have done to him to know the woman in his life could betray him so abominably... With her new-found knowledge, she realised why he had so little trust in her sex. After what had happened to him, he had a right to be cynical. 'But not every woman is like your ex-fiancée, and you can't possibly want to live your life without trust,' she said softly.
Jake rolled onto his back. 'I've managed perfectly okay so far,' he said, pulling her into the curve of his arm. 'Forget about what I said. You have the damnable ability to make me reveal more than is good for either of us.'
Charlie leant up on one elbow. He looked so self- contained and devastatingly attractive that she felt anger mounting inside her. 'How can you say that, when it was that attitude that had you ranting and raving at me about money and proof when you discovered I was pregnant?' She paused as it hit her forcibly: Jake's insistence on marriage had not been solely about her baby, but the one he had lost. She remembered the expression on his face when she had wildly threatened to slit her belly open, convinced he wanted her to have a termination. How wrong had she been!
'That was why you insisted on marrying me. You had lost one child and were going to make sure it didn't happen again.'
'Charlotte,' he said tersely and the familiar shuttered look was back in his dark eyes. 'Does it matter why? We are married and I will support and protect you and our child.'
'The same way you protect yourself,' she said more scathingly than she intended. 'Blanking out anyone who tries to get close to you with a wall of ice around your true feelings. That's no way to live.'
He rose abruptly, and his narrowed glance held hers as he methodically picked up his robe and slipped it on. 'It sure as hell beats having to listen to your psychobabble in the middle of the night. I have to leave for Japan in the morning and I need to get some sleep. The bed next door will do me just fine.' And he turned on his heel and left.
She shivered, cold with the kind of heart-rending chill that came with rejection, and as she watched his back moisture filled her eyes. The euphoria she had felt in his arms was replaced by a growing certainty that Jake would never let himself see her as anything but the mother of his child, and a convenient lay when his overactive libido got the better of him.
Charlie brushed the tears from her cheeks, disgusted with herself for being such a fool as to lov
e a man who didn't know the meaning of the word, and didn't want to. How many times was she going to let him use her, only to be slapped in the face with rejection afterwards? She deserved better than that.