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Her mouth taunted her victory at him. The oldest trick in the book. Damn her! Damn her! And his anger transmuted into something else—something which was about as earth-shattering as he could imagine. The realisation that something of him would now be carried on into the next generation. His own little piece of immortality. She was carrying his child! His!
‘Mine?’ he questioned, but now there was a wondering note to his voice. ‘Mine, cara?’
‘Yes.’
With a dazed look in his eyes, he lowered his mouth irresistibly down on hers and began to kiss her in a kiss which was very close to tender.
But the kiss went the way of all their kisses, and the tenderness—was it real or imagined? wondered Kate heatedly—swiftly became desire, pure and sharp and undiluted.
She told herself not to respond, to push him away as he deserved to be pushed after the hideous accusations he had made, but her body would not heed her. It was too finely tuned to his sensual mastery to be able to do anything other than to spring into instant and urgent life beneath his touch. This was the father of her child, she thought weakly—the man who had created this new life growing within her, who could create all life in her.
‘Giovanni!’ The word came out in an exultant little whisper as he kissed her with a fervour which surpassed his normal kisses. And it was easy to forget the cruel things he had said to her when he kissed her like that.
Her thready little moan excited him even more, and without warning it was suddenly about much more than kissing. He was beyond thought, beyond reason, pursuing some blessed communion with her.
‘Giovanni,’ Kate breathed in disbelief, because now his hands were rucking up her skirt, and his fingers were snapping at the delicate lace of her panties, so that they fell uselessly to the floor. And with his other hand he was unzipping himself. ‘Giovanni!’ she whimpered, but the word sounded more like a plea than a protest, and it was. God, help her—it was!
He found himself driven on by a life-force so primeval that he could barely think, barely hear—all he could do was feel…feel her. He looked down at her mockingly as his fingers flicked enticingly against her molten heat. ‘You want me to stop, cara? I don’t think you do, but tell me yes, and I will.’
‘Yes! Yes! Oh, no!’ she sobbed as he touched her again, oh, so intimately, and she squirmed with excitement. ‘No, don’t stop! Please, don’t stop! Do it! Do it! Do it to me! Now!’
Her words incited him almost as much as the frantic movements of her hips and he pushed her against the wall and levered her legs up around his waist, gasping aloud as he entered her, thrusting into her again and again, losing himself in pursuit of that sweet destination.
This might be the very last time that the man she had grown to love might take pleasure in her arms, she realised. Heartache ripped through her, but somehow he banished it with every insistent movement of his strong, virile body.
Briefly she opened her eyes to see what a decadent picture the pair of them made—his trousers at his ankles, her skirt pushed up to her waist. How could he ever respect a woman who let him do something like this? But then she began to dissolve in the familiar ecstasy, and her greedy body began to convulse about his. She heard his helpless moan as he spilled his seed into her, and then let his head fall against her shoulder, his lips against her neck.
Kate closed her eyes. What had she done? She had let him take her like that, after his sickening reaction to her momentous news. Had she no shame where this man was concerned? No pride?
She let her feet slide to the floor and pushed him away, tired now. And weary. Impossibly and hopelessly weary. She was aware of the irony of what had just happened. The first time that he had ever made love to her without using any protection. Though it was a little late in the day for protection now.
She stumbled from the dining room and collapsed on the sofa, praying that he would just go. Go away and leave her alone with her fate, and she need never see him again.
She didn’t hear him come back into the room, the first time she became aware of his presence was when she found him standing in the doorway, studying her, his face shadowed. And grave. As if he had just received some very bad news, which, in a way, she supposed he had.
‘Are you all right?’ he questioned, but he made no move towards her.
All right? How could he ask her a question like that at a time like this? ‘I’m fine,’ she said, still with that flat, tired note in her voice. ‘Under the circumstances.’
‘Kate, we shouldn’t have…’ His voice tailed away, and it was the first time Kate had ever seen him look remotely uncomfortable.
‘Shouldn’t have what, Giovanni?’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Made love like that, of course!’
‘That wasn’t called making love,’ she told him scornfully. ‘That was having wham-bam sex up against the wall!’
His mouth hardened. ‘Is that why you begged me to do it to you?’
Shuddering at the memory, Kate raked a hand to scoop the damp red hair which had fallen over her face. ‘It’s irrelevant now, anyway. It’s happened.’ It’s over, she thought, with a certainty which ached at her heart.
‘Yes.’ He found himself staring down at her flat belly. ‘How far gone are you?’
She stared up at him as she considered his reasons for asking this. ‘I’m going to keep the baby!’ she declared wildly. ‘You can’t stop me from having it!’
For a moment the import of her words remained unclear to him, and when he understood their true meaning he stared at her with a look of furious distaste. ‘Do you really think I would try?’ he asked.
Relief flooded through her, and she shook her head slowly. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, I don’t.’
