Chapter 4
The soup felt like stones inside her throat and her muscles were stiff as board. He had mentioned that word to her once during their brief relationship and she had ignored it. Thankfully, he never brought it up again, but it had been there, just hanging between them.
Now he was saying it again and from the determination stamped on his face, she knew this time he was not going to be content with silence, or her playing deaf.
"Don't expect me to say it back," she said sullenly, feeling very foolish and very childish.
Tamping down the despair along with the anger, he smiled and nodded to her bowl.
"Not yet. Finish your meal."
She bristled at his patient tone and felt like the most ungrateful bitch.
"Just because I'm pregnant, with hormones racing, don't expect me to blurt out something I'm not feeling. It doesn't work that way, not with me. Love or whatever it is, does not come into play here. So, let's not get things twisted."
His eyes steady on her face made her want to squirm.
"Your soup is getting cold."
"Damn you."
"Yeah," he acknowledged dryly. Scooping out the last of the vegetables from his bowl, he rose to put it in the sink, before putting the kettle on.
"What are you doing?"
"Making you some tea." He nodded to the bowl she had pushed aside and was grateful that she had eaten more than three quarters. "Finished?"
"You don't have to wait on me hand and foot."
"I'm aware." Leaning over, he took up her bowl. "Why don't you go upstairs while I clean up? I'll bring up the tea."
She sat there staring at his back, her expression mutinous. She wanted to fight and he wasn't accommodating her. He had told her he loved her and she had bitched and still he was there patiently tending to her needs.
The tears were perilously close, and she had no idea what she wanted to cry about. It was her life, the way she had been brought up and the memories that had come tumbling back just this morning.
"I won't be a good mother," she blurted out.
Standing at the sink, Christos struggled with the flood of emotions at her pitiful remark. Straightening his shoulders, he turned to look at her. His heart took a deep dive at the despair coating her expression and evidence of tears in her magnificent eyes.
"Perhaps not." He almost smiled as her eyes widened. "With your background you're more likely to mess things up. After all, the odds are stacked against you, aren't they? A very cold and traumatic upbringing will certainly guarantee that you will be the worst mother of the century."
He grinned then as her eyes flashed fire.
"Good thing I happen to be the father and will balance things off." He walked towards her, ignoring her effort to evade him as he spun her stool around. "Was that what you wanted to hear?"
"Go to hell."
"I have a feeling that's where I'm headed," he murmured.
"What are you doing?"
"Taking you to bed." He scooped her into his arms as effortlessly as he would a child. Reaching behind him, he turned the stove off.
"If you think I'm going to be having sex with you, you'd better think again," she huffed, pushing against a chest that felt like a mountain.
"We never have sex. It has always been a mind altering experience between us. All fire and incredible heat." Bending his head, he started to take her lips, settling for her throat when she turned her head away. And considered that this was a fine substitute.
She smelled like a garden of flowers. Her skin was like satin and tasted like honey. The desire was already raging inside him.
"Stop that." She hated that she sounded weak and ineffectual. But in truth, she felt her bones melting and her heart racing.
"In a minute." With unerring skill and accuracy, he bounded the stairs, all the while, ravaging her throat.
Pushing the bedroom door open, he strode towards the bed and dropped her from his lofty height, causing her to bounce once.
"Look..."
"Enough," he ordered quietly. "I've been listening to you insult me for the last few minutes, throwing my love back in my face. It's time to be quiet."
"How dare you talk to me like that."
"I will be daring a hell of a lot of things." He had removed his sweater and undershirt and watched as her gaze became transfixed on the play of muscles on his wide chest.
"Like what you see?" he asked silkily, toeing off his boots.
"Don't flatter yourself."
"I intend to flatter myself even more." He unzipped his jeans, drawing it down slowly. "You see, no matter what your lips are saying, you have a very expressive face that says different. You want me darling, that has always been the case."
He rolled the pants over his thighs and kicked it aside.
Her eyes drifted helplessly from his wide chest with the dustings of dark hairs to his narrow waist. A moan escaped her when she went further down.
"And I want you," his voice had thickened as she continued to stare at him, "more than my next breath."
She couldn't breathe. The breath was backing up in her lungs. It felt as if she was being hypnotized.
It had always been the case with him. No other man had come close to making her feel this way and it had frightened her enough to have her ending things between them.
As if reading her mind, he met her gaze. "I'm not going anywhere." The bed dipped as he climbed in. Reaching for her sweater, he tugged it off, murmuring deep inside his throat as her unfettered breasts came into view.
"I've always admired them." He cupped the flesh, weighing them in his palms and watched with heart pounding the way the nipples rose proudly.
"The texture, the taste." He was losing control rapidly.
"Even after you pushed me out of your life, I could not get the taste of you out of my mouth.
The feel..." Her head drifted back when he passed his thumbs over the rigid flesh.
"Your reaction to my touch. I was a fool to leave." Sliding down, he flicked his tongue first over one and then the other. Then he settled. His teeth worried the flesh, sending shooting darts of flames straight to the core of her.
She couldn't deny it. He was right. She had never been able to control her reaction to even his lightest touch.
When he started suckling, she lost her mind. Intense heat seared her body and set her aflame.
The fingers that had been clutching the quilt to stop her from reaching for him, loosened to grip the thick denseness of his hair and clung tight. Desire raged through her body like a storm that had been let loose.
He felt her slender body quivering and reacted instantly.
Lifting his head, his wild green eyes studied her stormy face. The parted lips, begging to be kissed, the fire in her eyes. She was his, whether she wanted to acknowledge it or not, she belonged to him, completely his.
Biting off a groan, he finished undressing her. The need to feel her body against his was eclipsing everything else.
She was vibrating. He had fleetingly wondered if it was too soon to be with her this way after what she was going through, but to hell with that. It had to be now. He had been without her for too long now.
His body was starved and the yearning was too intense.
"Tell me you want me," he demanded harshly, fingers trailing down her quivering stomach. He could feel the slight bulge indicating that she was in fact carrying his children inside her. The thought of it was driving him mad.
"Tell me."
"I..." She clamped her teeth over her bottom lip, her body feverish. She had no idea if it was hormones, but the desire was heightened. She felt as if she was about to burst into flames any minute now.
"Say it." He was ruthless in his effort to get her to say the words. He wanted to hear them. Sliding his fingers through the silky hairs covering her sex, he kept his eyes on her face.
"Say it." His long fingers slid over the swollen and utterly sensitive flesh, sending her body heaving desperately towards him. "Now."
"Please." Her fingers gripped his wrist as if she were forcing him to give her more. But he held back, just enough to have her going mad.
"Say you want me."
"Damn you," sweat beaded her forehead, "damn you. Please. I want you."
As soon as she said the words, he acted. As soon as his fingers slid into the moist warmth, she erupted, the climax slamming into her like a lightning bolt. Her entire world shook and collapsed, leaving her wrung out and weak.
Christos felt his own body shuddering at the heat and passion on her lovely face. He couldn't hold out any longer.
With a feral growl, he covered her body with his, sliding into her. She sheathed him perfectly, so much so that it took him a few seconds to even move. Sensations poured through him with volcanic fury.
Framing her face between his palms, he could only gaze at her, his heart thudding heavily. Everything he felt was revealed and he didn't care. He was vulnerable around her.
She had the ability to take his heart and turn it into many broken pieces. But still, he could not leave.
Bending his head, he brushed his lips against hers, back and forth, until she was vibrating against him again. Her arms locked around his neck, fingers digging into the corded muscles of his shoulders, his back.
He had barely started to move when she came again.
"I can't," she whispered against his mouth.
"Take more," he whispered back, his muscles bunching as he tried to hold back his own release. "There's more." Plunging his tongue into her mouth, he devoured her mouth as he moved deep inside her.
When the climax hit her again, she stiffened, eyes flying wide open, fingers digging into his flesh.
With a broken laugh, he followed her, his own body shuddering as he poured himself into her.
He wanted to stay this way. Deep inside her, the warmth of her flesh, the feel of her breath on his cheek. He would die happy like this, he thought hazily. Just like this.
With the woman he loved more than life itself tangled against him. But he was crushing her and he had to move sometime.
Which he did, with great reluctance.