‘Pizza?’ A smile played on the edge of her lips.
‘Rung for by yours truly.’ Pulling a chair out, he sat her down before proceeding to cut her a rather too large slice. ‘You said you wanted to be normal, needed some junk food—well, here it is.’ After pouring some cola he helped himself to a slice. ‘So, like I said, I’ve given all the staff the night off,’ Rico explained further, ‘and tonight we do what couples the world over do on a Thursday night when the wife is too tired to cook and the baby is finally asleep!’
It was the perfect solution—the perfect meal, actually—and enough to put a smile on her pinched face.
‘I needed that.’ Catherine smiled as Rico took the last slice. ‘You’ve no idea how nice it is not to have to use a fork.’
‘You certainly spoke more,’ Rico commented. ‘You still don’t feel comfortable around the staff, do you?’
‘They’re nice and everything…’ Catherine shrugged. ‘I just find it hard to carry on a normal conversation with everyone hovering around me pretending not to listen.’
‘They’re not.’ Rico grinned. ‘I’m sure they’ve got better things to be thinking about than hanging on to our every word. They’re probably bored to tears.’
Put like that, he almost had her convinced—but not quite. Oh, she was sure the staff didn’t find her riveting, but Rico had this magnetism, this aura around him, and Catherine simply couldn’t imagine anyone being bored in his company. He filled her day, filled her nights—just the sound of his voice could change her mood, a smile from him could lift her spirits. But that was surely not what Rico wanted to hear right now.
‘I really am going to have that shower now.’ Standing deliberately, Catherine headed for the en suite bathroom, but Rico followed her.
‘I just want you to be happy, Catherine.’ Turning her to face him, he let his eyes meet and hold hers, and for some inexplicable reason she felt the sting of tears behind her eyelids. She wanted to be happy too—was sure she could be, if only Rico loved her. ‘I don’t want you to feel like a prisoner.’
‘Hardly a prison.’ Catherine gestured to the opulent room, but her smile wavered as Rico voiced what was clearly on his mind.
‘Am I your jailer?’
She pondered his question. At any time she could walk away—she knew that deep down. And perhaps she could fight for Lily from her own corner—maybe with the right advice she could even win—but it wasn’t Lily who kept her here, wasn’t the child growing within her, wasn’t the desire to give her niece a privileged lifestyle. It was Rico who held her within these walls—Rico her mind always drifted back to whenever it wandered—Rico who held her in the palm of his hand.
‘Am I your jailer, Catherine?’ he asked again, with an expression she couldn’t quite read in his eyes. Only this time when she opened her mouth to speak he didn’t wait to hear her answer. His lips came crushing down on hers, drowning out her answer, drowning out her own internal questions as she lost herself in his touch.
So much easier to feel his arms around her, to taste his cool tongue, to respond to his masterful touch to pretend for a while that maybe he did love her, than to deal with the impossible dilemmas that taunted her.
He undressed her in a moment, peeling away the suit easily, unclasping her bra, and she felt the groan of his approval as her breasts fell heavy and warm into his waiting hands. She wrestled with his clothes, and for that moment in time Catherine truly didn’t care about the rhymes and reasons that had brought them to this point, didn’t care she was his wife in name only. There was just a need, a simple primal need, to make love, to be made love to, to feel his naked skin on hers, to feel his arousal, to touch him as a lover, as a woman in a way she never had before.
She heard his gasp as her hands took the weight of his arousal. She marveled in the velvet steel of his manhood as she ran her fingers its length, closing her eyes in ecstasy as it snaked through her fingers—a jewel she had longed for, a jewel that tonight would finally be hers.
He took her softly at first, with kisses working over her neck as he slipped inside. Mindful of her condition, he kept his weight on his elbows, a delicious friction hovering on the outskirts, but then need took over, a natural desire so strong his soft strokes deepened. Like some heavenly feather, he massaged her most intimate depths, and her shivering climax dragged him in deeper until he exploded within her. Afterwards he held her in the matrimonial bed, as a husband should. His arms slid around her and there was nowhere to hide when his words cut the still dark air, the question that had hung over them repeated now, with infinite tenderness this time.
‘Am I your jailer, Catherine?’
She pondered her answer a moment, her voice when it came so low Rico had to bring his face closer to catch her response.
‘I’m here because I want to be, Rico—though I admit sometimes I wonder what it is I’m fighting for.’
‘You are fighting for your family, Catherine,’ Rico said softly. ‘How we got here is irrelevant. We have to make the best of things.’
He probably thought he was helping, probably thought he was saying the right thing—but staring into the darkness, wrapped in arms she never wanted to leave. Catherine tried to blot out the awful inference behind his words, keep it all together just a little longer. Only when his breathing evened and she was sure he was asleep, did she give in—allowing salty tears that belonged to the night to slip into her hair as she awaited the refreshing sensibility of dawn.
CHAPTER THIRTEE
N
‘YOU have a phone call.’
Sitting up in bed, Catherine rubbed her eyes and desperately tried to come to. Surveying the room, the open pizza box, the clothes strewn everywhere, she knew it looked as if some sort of wild teenage party had taken place, and with her thumping head and Rico standing over her like some over-possessive parent as she took the call, the analogy only deepened.
‘That was Marcus Regan—the principal,’ Catherine explained, replacing the receiver and not quite meeting his eyes. Rico still stood there.
‘I gathered that,’ he quipped, clearly not impressed by the early-morning call. ‘And I also gather you have agreed to go in to work this morning, despite the fact you swore this would be a part-time job.’
‘It will still only be three days this week, Rico,’ Catherine pointed out, pulling back the sheets and trying to feign a spring in her step as she crossed the bedroom, determined Rico wouldn’t get a glimpse of just how awful she really felt. Marcus’s phone call had caught her completely unawares, and had she had time to think, to register she wasn’t feeling the best, she’d probably have refused his plea to come in and cover for a sick staff member. Right now all she wanted to do was crawl back into bed, pull the rumpled sheet back over her head and recall Rico’s blissful lovemaking.