But how could she possibly stop him when she wanted him so badly?
‘What shall we do?’ he whispered.
For a moment she thought he was asking about their future—but his fingers were playing with her breasts, sending little shivers of exquisite sensation rippling like warm sun across her skin. ‘You mean how shall we…?’
‘Mmm.’
‘Use your imagination, Finn—I’m as much of a novice at this kind of thing as you are. I—oh, Finn!’ She gave an expectant wriggle as Finn turned her onto her side and began to stroke her bottom, the other hand sliding up around her waist and from there to cup a swollen breast. She felt him pressing against her, so hard and so ready.
He felt her heat, sensed her urgency. He would never normally have asked a woman if she was ready, but he needed to be sure. And not just because she was pregnant.
‘Catherine?’ he questioned unsteadily.
‘Oh, yes, Finn. Yes!’
Her senses seemed more highly tuned than they had ever been, and she was not sure whether that was down to abstinence or pregnancy. But as he entered her Catherine’s mind cleared and she identified the emotion she had not before dared analyse.
For it was love, pure and simple. She loved this man. This man who could never truly be hers. She closed her eyes tightly. Stopped thinking and started feeling. Less pain that way.
Afterwards they lay exactly as they were, like sweat-sheened spoons, their heartbeats gradually slowing along with their breathing.
He looped a careless arm around her belly and felt another kick. He smiled against her shoulder. ‘Ouch, again!’
‘You should feel it from inside!’
He levered himself up onto one elbow to stare down at her, brushing back a strand of black hair, his eyes serious. ‘I’m sorry I snapped at you.’
‘You were frustrated, I expect. Don’t worry about it, Finn—so was I.’
His face darkened. ‘You think that’s what it was all about? Frustration?’
‘I don’t know, do I? I’m trying to be practical.’ Trying not to read too much into this situation and having to fight very hard with herself not to. ‘What was it about, if not frustration?’
He turned onto his back, noticing for the first time the old-fashioned embossed wallpaper which covered the ceiling. Would she have ripped that down, the next time he came home—and would it really matter if she did? ‘You just happened to touch a raw nerve.’
‘Because I went ahead and decorated without asking you? Because I took control away from you?’
Would it sound crazy to tell her? Was it crazier still to have her think that he was the kind of intolerant tyrant who insisted on being privy to every decision made inside the home?
He shook his head, wondering if she had become a journalist because she was perceptive, or whether perception had come as a by-product of her career. Or was this just what happened naturally when a man and a woman started living together—started to know one another inside and out? Surely it weakened your defences to let someone get inside your head? Strengthened the relationship, yes, but at what cost?
‘What, Finn?’ she persisted softly.
‘More a case of burying my head in the sand, I guess. Arrested development—call it what you like. A crazy urge to hang on to the past—I’m not sure, Catherine.’
She rested her head on his shoulder. ‘You’re talking in riddles.’
He smoothed her hair absently. ‘I never changed this house at all, you see. I wanted to have it exactly the way it was.’
She thought about this for a moment. ‘Like Miss Havisham in Great Expectations, you mean?’
‘Well, I haven’t got a wedding dress covered in cobwebs, if that’s what you’re implying!’ He wound a strand of hair around his finger. ‘I suppose this place always represented where I came from. I felt it would be a kind of betrayal if I decorated the interior so that it looked like something you’d find in a magazine.’
‘If you applied that theory to everything then we’d still be travelling by horse and cart,’ she said reasonably.
He laughed. ‘Perhaps.’
She looked at his pensive profile. Was it only in bed that a man like this let his guard down? ‘You don’t need material things to remind you of your roots, Finn,’ she told him softly. ‘The values you learned are what matters, and you keep those deep in your heart.’