Chapter Five #3
She was aware that this was not the most prudent course of action. She was fully cognizant of the fact that this, right here, could be the end of everything she’d worked for. Worse than that, this would almost certainly have implications for Dominic.
But she couldn’t seem to stop herself.
Not when he was bearing down on her like he held the flaming sword of righteousness in one hand.
“Were you a virgin?” she asked him.
Another hard, brittle laugh. “Hardly.”
“I was.” She couldn’t imagine how he could have forgotten that. Either way, she threw it at him like a weapon. “I told you so. And yet I ended up pregnant. Who do you think was to blame for that?”
“I know who I blame for it,” he seethed back at her. “That would be the woman who has somehow wormed her way into every part of my life. Do you think that this will go unchallenged? Do you think that I will simply…succumb to this?”
“To parenthood?” she threw back at him. “No worries on that account, Antonluca. You don’t have to do anything.
I’ve been taking care of Dominic since the day he was born.
Since before that, in fact. I’ve done it all on my own.
Your name isn’t on his birth certificate, because I didn’t know it.
You have no responsibility here at all. If you like, you can turn around and walk back out that door and we can both pretend that this moment of reckoning never happened.
” She shrugged, a bit theatrically, but it was all she had.
She lifted her chin higher. “That’s fine with me. ”
“Unfortunately for you, diavolessa,” he growled at her, “it is not at all fine with me.”
And it was only then she realized that they were in the danger zone. That they were much too close. That he had somehow backed her against the wall and she’d been too busy trying to fight him to notice.
But she certainly noticed now.
Because he muttered something in Italian that she didn’t quite catch, though she could feel the words all over her, and then he slammed his mouth to hers.
And it was as if they simply ignited.
It was a bolt of lightning, and then they tore into each other.
This was nothing like that night in New York.
This was a fury.
This was hurt and temper, all wrapped up in the way his mouth moved on hers and the way his hands gripped her hair.
It was a terrible, exhilarating fury.
Hannah tore at his shirt and he tore at hers, and then, somehow, she was in his arms. Then her legs were wrapped tight around his waist, and he was working one of his hands between them as he slammed her back into the wall.
Then, with a thrust that she could feel from her toes to the tips of her ears, he slammed himself fully inside of her.
And the wildest part of all was that she was ready for him.
She was more than ready, though he was even bigger than she remembered.
And he filled her completely, sinking so deep that she was shaking immediately.
Then she was falling apart, his name in her mouth as he pounded her straight through one wild orgasm into another.
Then another still.
And only then was he was coming, too, following her lead, muttering what sounded like curses against her neck.
Then there was nothing but the loud panting of their breath.
An aftermath that hurt almost as much as all that had…not hurt. At all.
His dark eyes glittered as he pulled himself free, setting her feet back down on the floor. He stepped away, pulling his clothing to rights, and she didn’t like how disheveled he looked. How wild-eyed he was.
Because she imagined she was worse.
“Antonluca—” she began.
“Basta,” he said harshly. “You are finished making decisions where my son is concerned, Hannah. This is all finished.”
She didn’t know what he meant by that.
Or rather, she could speculate, though she didn’t want to.
“I don’t know what that means,” she said quietly. While her entire body thrummed with leftover passion, and rather too much shame and guilt besides. “But I am his mother. There will be no decisions made about his life that do not involve me.”
“Sleep on that,” Antonluca suggested, as he shrugged back into a coat she hadn’t seen him take off, hiding the shirt she’d ripped. “Tell yourself whatever you wish. But know this.”
And he moved so fast then that she didn’t see him coming.
One moment they were staring at each other, and the next, his hands were on either side of her head and his face was in hers.
She heard herself gulp. Maybe it was more of a squeak.
“You betrayed me,” he told her, while his gray eyes seemed to blaze deep inside of her, setting new fires.
“You will not have the opportunity to do it again. And if you try, you won’t like what happens.
Maybe you should have a stint without your child to see how it feels, since you are so sanguine about such things. ”
And with that threat between them, he stared at her for another long moment, so long that she was sure she saw something almost give way—
But instead, he pushed himself away from the wall—from her—and then stormed back out into the night.
Leaving Hannah there against the wall with nothing to do but sink down to the floor, bury her head into her hands, and let all that emotion inside of her pour out as it would.
Quietly, though, so as not to wake the baby that Antonluca was welcome to love—but would be taking away from her only if he first climbed over her dead body to do it.