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She’d been telling herself he wouldn’t feel the same way, that sex wasn’t as important or sacred for him, but in that moment as his fingers touched her face and his body arced into hers she believed it was. He couldn’t touch her like this, give of himself like this, without it meaning something. She felt it in his kiss, in his gentle hands, in the love he lavished on her body, finding and plundering all of her secret places.
And then—yes, finally—he was inside her, so big and right she gasped out loud and he lifted his head, his gaze blazing down into hers. ‘Are you all right? I didn’t hurt you?’
She clasped her legs around him, pulling him deeper into herself, accepting him fully, feeling complete. ‘I’m all right,’ she said. ‘I’m...’ But she had no words, because the feelings were coming faster and stronger now, wave after wave as Rafael began to move and Allegra matched his rhythm, reaching, reaching...
And finding. Finally, gloriously finding, her body shuddering with the force of her climax, Rafael’s face buried in her neck as he murmured words of endearment and promise, their bodies intertwined in every way possible. How could you be this close to another human being, Allegra wondered, and not fall in love?
She tensed, though, as their heart rates slowed and Rafael, who had been bracing himself above her so as not to press against her bump, rolled onto his back. The sudden whoosh of cool air on her heated skin felt like an unwelcome wake-up call.
What now?
She waited, barely daring to breathe, afraid of this moment and what had it had meant before. Would he dismiss her from his bed? Leave her here alone? Then Rafael reached out one arm and hooked it around her shoulders, drawing her against him so her bump was pressed against his side, her knees snugging into the backs of his thighs. Allegra expelled a silent sigh of relief. It was going to be okay. More than okay.
Gently Rafael caressed her bump, his palm curving around the taut roundness of her belly. He laughed softly as their baby kicked.
‘I guess something woke him up.’ A smile in his voice, in her heart.
‘I guess something did,’ she answered, and wrapped her arm around his chest.
CHAPTER TWELVE
HE COULD SMELL THE BLOOD. Sharp, metallic. He didn’t recognise it, though, didn’t understand as he pushed the now broken splintered door open with his fingertips and took a step inside the room.
‘Papa?’
His voice was soft, scared, the voice of a child even though he was sixteen years old.
‘Papa...’
He saw his father’s hands first, slack, hanging down, fingers dangling. Then the drops of blood on the desk, a delicate spray, making him think ink had spilled. As if anyone used ink any more, let alone a bottle of bright red. And then his gaze moved upwards and he saw his father’s shattered face. Heard a scream rip from his throat—except it wasn’t his scream, it was his mother’s; she stood behind him, hands raised to her blood-drained face, and the awful unholy sound went on and on.
‘Rafael... Rafael!’
The hand shaking his shoulder woke him up; he came out of the dream like a bullet from a gun, the screaming still echoing in his ears. Next to him Allegra’s face was as pale as his mother’s had been, pale and frightened.
‘Rafael...’ she whispered, and he shook off her hand, roughly, and saw her flinch. Hated himself, but he couldn’t keep from doing it, from turning away. He swung his legs out of his bed and strode to the bathroom, slamming the door behind him.
In the mirror his face was pale, his forehead beaded with icy sweat. Bile churned in his stomach and he thought he might be sick. Thankfully he swallowed it down, bracing his hands on the pedestal sink as he lowered his head and took several steadying breaths.
He hadn’t had that dream in years. A decade, even. He hadn’t let himself, had closed that part of his mind right off. Don’t think of it, because if you did you’d be lost, lost for ever, no coming back. He knew that. Knew if he remembered how he’d begged, begged his father... You couldn’t go back from that. You couldn’t recover, and so he refused to think of it.
Except, he acknowledged as he looked at his pale reflection in the mirror, he thought of it all the time. Not consciously, but it remained, a canker inside him, destroying everything good. Allegra had asked how her father could leave her, if he’d loved her. Rafael knew the answer to that in his own case times a thousand.
