And he was achingly bloody aroused and despising himself for feeling like that. Where did he get off, jumping all over a woman—astranger —like some randy, feckless, uncontrolled youth—?
No wonder she’d looked at him just now as if he had crawled out from beneath a stone. No wonder she had gone back in the bedroom and shut herself away. She knew she was trapped;he knew he was trapped!
‘No, Daniella,’ he grimly cut in to her half-hysterical ranting. ‘It isyou who made the mistake two months ago. She wasnever Elise—have you got that?’
His cold tone alone had the desired effect.
‘You mean you want me tosay that I was mistaken?’
‘No. I am telling you that youare mistaken.’
‘So youhave just got engaged to marry this Rachel Carmichael—the same woman who threw herself at you tonight?’
‘Si,’ he confirmed.
‘Just like that—?’She was almost choking on her disbelief.
‘No, not just like that,’ he sighed out. ‘I have been—courting Rachel over the last few months.’
‘Courtingher—?’
Bad choice of word. ‘Seducingher, then.’
Her struck silence made him grimace and he couldn’t make up his mind if she was beginning to swallow the lies or simply being sensible for once and taking on board the grim warning in his voice.
‘Is she pregnant—?’
‘No!’ he bit out, jerking upright from the desk and swinging round as a sting of stark alarm shot down his back.
Dio,he’d used nothing to stop it from happening, and he had not thought to ask her if she was protected!
What kind of crass bloody oversexed fool did that make him? Or her for not thinking about it—?
‘And, since my personal life is no one’s business but my own,cara , can I suggest a simpleno comment from you would make me happy? Or, better still, Daniella—take the telephone off the hook!’
He cut the connection and tossed the handset back on its rest, then just stood there, not knowing what to do next.
Sex without protection with a woman he barely knew. Flexing muscles rippled all over him as he took on board the consequences which could result from such a stupidly irresponsible act.
With his luck tonight, she could already be in the process of conceiving his baby. Add all the other risks which came along with unprotected sex and he suddenly felt like a time bomb set to go off!
A growl left his throat as he turned back to the bedroom. Chin set like a vice, he pushed open the door. The room was in darkness. He switched on the overhead light and went to stand at the bottom of the bed.
She was nothing but a curled up mound beneath the duvet. ‘I did not use protection,’ he clipped out.
The mound jerked, then went still for a gut-clenching second. Then it moved again and she emerged, sliding up against the pillows, flush-cheeked—wary, defensive—sensationally delectable.
Dio, he thought.
‘Say that again,’ she shook out.
‘I did not use protection,’ he repeated tautly. ‘I am not promiscuous and I have never taken such risks before in my life,’ he added stiffly. ‘I like to think that I can respect my…partner’s history in the same way that she can respect mine.’
Rachel looked at the way he was standing there like some arrogant autocrat caught with his pants down by his bitch of a wife. Only his pants were up; it was his shirt that was missing and the bitch of a wife in this case was thegift he’d been handed and enjoyed thoroughly—before he’d thought to wonder where she had been before she’d landed in his bed!
As if it wasn’t bad enough that she was sitting in the bed belonging to a man she had only met for the first time tonight, wearing his shirt and his scents and his touch on her skin—she now had to endure the kind of conversation that belonged in a brothel!
Next he would be asking how much he owed her for her services. Give him half a chance and she knew he would love to denounce her out loud as a whore.