Chapter Ten
Agustin had never known such agony.
If he threw himself into work, into enjoying time spent with Julia, he almost felt like his old self. He almost convinced himself nothing had to change.
And then Mara would enter his orbit, and everything would fall apart.
He had dealt with grief and shock and high expectations. He had dealt with frustration and anger, mostly with Felipe but also with business associates at times. But he had always been able to work his way out of any personal failure.
Except this.
Perhaps because there was no way to isolate himself. He could not create any real distance while sharing the obligation of taking care of a baby.
Time passed, and the aching, desperate need for her did not. If anything, it intensified. He felt like someone else. A teenager, perhaps, or his brother’s restless ghost pushing him to forget his responsibilities, his control, his legacy all for a bit of physical pleasure.
But he would not relent, or so he told himself.
He was currently watching her pace the length of the sitting room with a fussy Julia on her hip.
“Your travel itinerary is in your inbox,” Mara said, all business except for the baby.
“I’ve given you a week, so you and the countess have time to hash out any details.
Legal has sent you everything for the NDA.
If you’d like to extend the trip, we can accommodate that as long as you’re willing to take some video meetings. ”
“And if I wish to shorten my trip?”
She hesitated just a moment with her next step but then kept on. “I can’t imagine why you’d want to do that, but of course I’ll accommodate whatever you need.”
That was certainly not the way to phrase that. Not in the moment when the thought of leaving this place, leaving Julia and her, felt like physical pain. Not when the thought of having to inhabit a skin that now felt old and ill-fitting was unfathomable.
And yet he had to fathom it. He had to do as he’d always done. Buckle down and take more care of Sosten and the Delgado name than his own wants and needs.
Which only and all centered on her. I’ll accommodate whatever you need. If only that were true. If only that could be true.
Julia’s eyes were beginning to droop, and Mara slowed down her pacing until she was standing still, just twisting her upper body gently back and forth.
Agustin knew he should stay seated, safely behind his desk, but all the knowing he’d so religiously followed his whole life seemed to desert him.
He stood and crossed the room to where Mara stood. He held onto the slightest moral victory by looking at the sleeping Julia rather than Mara.
“I will miss her. It is strange how a baby can simply…become a part of your very life. I didn’t see her coming, but I cannot regret her being here. I cannot regret having a piece of Felipe to raise.”
“She will miss you too, but it is good practice. Once everything is settled, you will still need to travel sometimes and leave her with the countess or a nanny, once you’re able to hire one.”
She brought up the countess on purpose. A reminder. She was right to do it, and yet it landed like needles along his skin. Tiny pinpricks of pain and frustration.
He didn’t wish to take her reminders. “And if I were to miss you?”
He felt her reaction. The way she tried to stiffen against it but couldn’t. The way her breath shuddered out, a need he felt echo inside of him.
He would miss her. This. And he knew this was not real life—this castle, having Julia and the world to themselves—it could not be tenable when he needed to save his mother’s sanity and somehow ease the fervor around his brother’s death.
When he needed to build a life that would keep Julia safe from a world that would want to tear her apart if they knew her true parentage.
But knowing and wanting were two very different things.
“You cannot miss me.” Mara met his gaze, eyes fierce. A crackling kind of fury he understood because it wasn’t at him, it was at…everything that made this so confusing and painful. “Because you are going to stay with your fiancée.”
He shook his head. He could not think of the countess as his fiancée, even when he tried.
First of all, he hadn’t asked yet, so she hadn’t agreed yet.
They had only met to be seen, not because they cared anything for one another.
He could not think of her as anything but a means to an end.
A business partner—and he was quite certain she saw him in the same way.
Nothing they’d ever encountered or discussed was built on this—this heat, this need, this…
The countess was nothing to him, and more important, he was nothing to her. They had an agreement. One he was going to propose to make more permanent.
But not yet. “I have no relationship with the countess as it stands right now.”
“But you will,” Mara insisted. “You will marry her. Whether it is based on love or anything else. You will be married and raising a child together. I do not factor into this equation, and I do not plan to.”
She was not wrong, and he hated it. But he was not engaged yet. He was not anything yet. He’d made no promises to the countess, and she had not made any to him. They’d both agreed to a mutually advantageous situation.
“Then give me this.” He reached out, skimmed a hand down her bare neck. “A farewell at least.”
She shuddered, but when she spoke it was not with weakness or softness. “What you are asking me is wrong.” She said it firmly. Plainly.
But she did not say no.
He studied her profile, because she would not meet his gaze. Would not look directly at him. Because no matter what she said, he could feel an echoing response in her.
Neither one of them had to like it to give into it. Neither one of them had to think it was right to act on it.
“Is it? Is it wrong, or is it just terrifying to you that you want it as much as I do?”
She said nothing.
“Come to my room tonight. Give me your body, one more time. A goodbye.”
She shook her head, but he saw his own want reflected in her eyes. And she didn’t speak.
“It is your choice to make.” And he left her there, holding a sleeping baby, certain she would come to him.
Because he wasn’t certain he would survive if she did not.
She would not do it. Mara would not give into everything rioting inside her body. She would not debase herself in such a way.
A goodbye? The problem was this was not goodbye. She was his assistant. When Agustin came back with the countess on his arm, whether that was any real relationship or not, Mara still had to be here.
Pretending that one night had never happened.
And what would change if you had to pretend two nights never happened?
It was an insidious thought. She tried to push it away, but her whole body rioted to life with the idea that they could experience it again. Just once. Just goodbye. Like he said.
And how will you ever look the countess in the eye?
Maybe she wouldn’t. Maybe she would leave. Maybe… maybe… Maybe it had all gone to hell already, and there was no saving any of this.
The thought absolutely depressed her. She had cultivated her role in this job. Made herself indispensable to Sosten and Mr. Delgado. There was no one better at her job.
And because of a little chemistry, she had blown it all up.
She stood next to Julia’s crib, watching the baby sleep, contending with something even more complex.
Perhaps she’d thrown her life into this job for years, but it was still just a job, a role.
Julia was something real. A breathing, beautiful life.
And if Mara had blown it all to hell, where did it leave this?
Would she really be able to leave Julia, walk away and never watch her grow?
Would she be able to stay and watch her be raised by someone else? As long as she got to be close enough to witness it?
It all hurt. It all ached. And in that there was only one clear answer.
That there were no answers. No right steps. She’d already made her mistakes. She’d already put herself in the middle of an impossible situation where every decision was awful and would hurt.
So she was left with a decision. She could start fixing those mistakes, or she could compound them.
She had never made mistakes. There had never been the wiggle room to fail. To take a misstep. She’d had her family depending on her, and she’d been determined to save them in a way her father hadn’t.
He had abandoned them to a life of struggle. She had saved all but her oldest brother. She had proven her worth, again and again, always expecting the man who’d left to come back and admit he was wrong. Admit he was proud.
It was an awful kind of realization she’d never fully accepted before. That she’d been waiting for something, hoping for something from the man who’d disappeared from her life when she was twelve years old.
She could not stand here with the weight of that. The warped pain of that. She needed to get away from it.
She needed to feel something that only Agustin had been able to give her. At first, through her work. And now…
It was the wrong choice. It was compounding a mistake.
And still she moved. Through the bathroom, into his adjoining room. He stood at the window in his room that looked out over the night, but he turned to face her when she paused in the doorway.
He said nothing. There was no triumph on his face. Nothing to make her feel like she’d made a mistake. Just heat. Just need. Just everything she felt echoing inside her.
Perhaps they’d opened a door that could never be shut, but at least they’d both ruined everything together. Once something was ruined, it could hardly be ruined more. And if that was reaching, so be it.
He was across the room in a blink. He jerked her to him, hard and unyielding, and then his mouth was on hers.
He kissed her like a man starving. Like she was elemental. Like he needed her so desperately nothing else mattered, and no one had ever made her feel so certain that she did.
And that was her Achilles heel. Being needed. Feeling as though she wouldn’t be abandoned.
You will. You will. You will. But the echoed thought didn’t penetrate. Her brain was too busy absorbing the fevered words he spoke against her mouth.
“I cannot think of anything but you, but this. Every moment of every day I want you.”
His hands were reverent. The feeling that she could absorb someone so fully was everything she had always wanted and never allowed for herself. So she wrapped her arms around him and threw her own reckless desire into the mix.
The first time had been a banquet of sensation—new and unwieldy and out of control, but this was something else entirely. Desperate and unhinged. She heard fabric rip as they pawed at each other, desperate for skin to skin and nothing between them.
They tumbled onto the bed like wild animals. No thought. Just sensation and the driving need to find more.
She crawled on top of him, and he rose to meet her, entering her in a quick, hard thrust that had her crying out in blinded pleasure.
She slid against him in fevered, desperate movement.
Her nails dug into his shoulders. His teeth sank into her bottom lip.
Like there was something deeper to be found in this reckless, painful expression of desire.
“Look at me,” he demanded.
It hurt to look at him. It was everything to look at him.
She shuddered apart knowing that she would choose this ruin again and again.