Chapter Four
It was like a great dam broke inside Pau, and once it did, there was no reclaiming higher ground. It was swept away in an instant and he knew immediately that there was no hope of getting it back.
He might as well surrender to the flood. It was that or be lost in it himself.
And he had done his best at the wedding ceremony. He had kissed her as the ceremony required, but he’d made sure that it was barely a kiss at all. A dry peck, nothing more, even though every part of him had been seized with the urge to get his hands on her for real. And taste her again, at last.
The way he’d dreamed all these months.
Now she’d undone all his good work. His sacrifice. His self-control.
Because now that her mouth was on his, he was done for—no matter what he tried to tell himself.
He hadn’t expected that the tool of his revenge would taste like this, was the thing.
All that heat and glory. That punch deep in his gut.
Nothing in his life had readied himself for something like Leontina.
He hadn’t thought to prepare himself for such an onslaught of passion that it had nearly knocked him over in Italy.
It was the same here, in his family’s ancestral home.
It was—and he could no longer pretend otherwise—simply Leontina. This was what she did to him. This was who she made him.
Pau had never been much like Giaco, with his big appetite for all forms of intimacies—made even more voracious in service to their plans for Umberto, to build the perfect picture they’d known the old man would use to dismiss his son entirely.
Pau had applauded Giaco’s efforts—and energy—but Pau himself had always preferred intensity to volume.
Leontina’s kiss proved, yet again, that he’d never really experienced intensity at all.
Not before her.
But it also proved that he hadn’t been making things up to suit his narrative three months ago. This woman simply set him on fire, and the part of that he found the most maddening was that he didn’t think she was trying.
It was simply her. It was Leontina herself. It was this impossible chemistry that raged between them no matter what he told himself.
And Pau had never been the kind of man who interrupted an afternoon’s work for the pleasures of the flesh, or any pleasures whatever—
But he couldn’t seem to keep his arms from wrapping themselves around her body. He couldn’t seem to prevent himself from lifting her up off the floor and holding her high against his chest as he devoured her in turn.
And then, somehow, he was sliding his hands down the soft curve of her spine so that he could grip her fine, surprisingly lush bottom.
He held her tight, pressed there against his cock, so hard and ready for her it bordered on pain.
Pau kissed her and kissed her, unable to tell where he ended and she began because it was all the same impossible sensation. And he remembered it too well from before.
It had blown up just like this. He’d been similarly knocked flat by the sheer heat of it. Of her mouth on his. Of the slightest touch of her hand.
They had talked at the reception, and she had been the one to touch him first. She had been the one to angle herself closer to him.
When he had suggested they take a stroll, she had smiled with too much light in her eyes and he had wondered—for the first time in his life—if he had what it took to keep his hands off her until they were alone.
The answer to that was no, he didn’t have anything remotely resembling his usual fierce sense of honor and comportment, because she’d looked up at him with a ferocity that had made him shiver and his cock rock hard, and had kissed him like her life depended on it.
Pau had found himself wondering if, in fact, his did.
He’d kissed her back wildly, heedlessly. Recklessly.
And it had all gotten worse from there.
The truth was that he could have had sex with her once, that night. It would likely have been sufficient. But once had been nothing like enough.
Pau had told himself that he was hedging his bets, but today it was all a lot more clear, whether he liked it or not.
He hadn’t been able to let her go.
Not until the sun rose and she snuck away before the light grew too bright, murmuring something about not wanting anyone to know what had happened between them.
That had left him to lie there in that ostentatious suite Umberto had given him with fawning fake obsequiousness, knowing that he should be plotting out his next move when instead all he could do was attempt to recover.
He hadn’t been prepared for the explosion that was Leontina Tavian.
Here, now, it all made sense. Or anyway, he could use it. He could work with it. She was already his wife. She was pregnant with his child, and showing.
His revenge was already in hand.
And Pau could see no good reason why he shouldn’t indulge himself the way he’d wanted to do all along.
Since the moment she’d turned up at his door—and long before that, though he’d waited out the first three months of what he hoped was a potential pregnancy to give the situation time to develop.
Only a few weeks ago he’d been studying the calendar, thinking of ways he would find her again.
Thinking of how he would renew their connection without the convenience of her brother’s wedding, and if she wasn’t already pregnant, rectify that at once.
He’d assured himself that he was thinking only of revenge, but he was pleased she’d come to him instead.
And not only—he could admit in this moment—because it made his revenge easier.
Pau set her down on her feet to peel her dress up and over her head, then he tossed it aside. Soon after, he found himself down on his knees before her because it was a physical need. He had to trace the changes in her beautiful body.
Her breasts were rounder now, heavier, and filled his palms. Her waist still nipped in, but there was a noticeable swell in her lower abdomen and he felt his breath shudder out before he pressed his mouth there, too.
A different sort of kiss, perhaps. But it shook through him like a new fire all its own.
His child was right there, beneath his hands. No longer an abstract idea he could wield against Umberto, but soon enough to be a person. A complicated human all its own.
Somehow he had never stopped to wonder about this part. About how knowing this woman was pregnant, and knowing exactly how she’d become pregnant, would settle in him and simmer.
That she’d married him today only made it better.
He smoothed his hands over her soft skin, her round belly, only aware in the abstract that he was murmuring things. He couldn’t even have said what. Spanish. Italian. Bits of French and English. All the languages he knew tangled together as if he couldn’t choose just one to honor this moment.
His wife. The mother of his child.
His heart beat on that for some time.
Until he had to remind himself that revenge was the point of this. It had always been the point of this.
But it was hard to care about that when she was standing there looking down at him, her dark hair twisted back on her head and her dark jade eyes bright
He pulled her down with him, controlling her descent, and then they were tangled on the floor and she was as he remembered her. Leontina was alight. She seemed wilder this time. More demanding. Pau wondered if she, too, had dreamed too many vivid dreams these past few months.
They rolled and she straddled him. Then her hands were on the casual shirt he wore, pulling it up and over his head and making a low noise of approval that he felt resonate inside him. Everywhere.
Leontina leaned down and he could feel the heat of her mouth, the sharp sweetness of her tongue, as she traced a shimmering trail of sensation over his bare skin.
They rolled again and he found himself cradled between her thighs. It made him sigh with the pleasure of it. He reached down between them, sliding his hand beneath the panties she wore and stroking his way until he could feel all of her glowing, beautiful heat.
But it wasn’t enough to simply hold all that glory in his palm. Pau found himself tracing circles around the center of her need, then plunging one finger deep inside her. Then another. Then, as she hummed and moaned, setting up a slick rhythm because she was molten hot and ready for him.
And he kept going until she convulsed in his arms and came all over him, gasping out his name.
Pau didn’t bother undressing, he only reached down and shoved his pants out of the way. And then he simply pulled her panties to the side so he could slam his way deep inside her.
Leontina shattered again, at once, but he didn’t give her the space to ride it out.
He began to thrust, carrying her as she fell and then building her up again.
And as she sobbed and clung to him, as he plunged deep inside her as if they’d been together like this every night since they’d met, he thought of absolutely nothing but the feel of this.
Of her.
Her velvet, his steel. The way she clenched tight around him and drew him into her so that together, they could chase that fire that had burned from the start into a wild incandescence.
When she clutched him tight and sobbed out his name once more, her body beginning to clutch around him, he went with her.
And this was how Pau Calixto, who had made his reputation on the correctness of his behavior and his abiding moral rectitude—a deep contrast with many of the other individuals in his tax bracket—came back to himself on the floor of his office, still lodged deep inside Leontina Tavian.
An office that was made almost entirely of windows, into which any member of his staff could have looked at any point. If it had been any time in the last half hour, he wouldn’t have cared if they all gathered round and pulled up chairs.
Pau really couldn’t tell if he was horrified or something more like…proud.