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For once he didn’t care, cutting off the explanation as he scooped her up and she yelped, grasping his shoulders.
‘Zane!’
‘I hope you’re not wearing panties,’ he demanded, trying to sound playful and amused when all he felt was wild—as the grinding need he hadn’t been able to control pounded back into every pulse point.
She gripped his shoulders, her surprised chuckle like a whip to his senses as he marched into the pool with her in his arms.
Within minutes he had wrestled her out of her wet clothes and discarded his. He pressed her back against the mosaic tiles, ripped the offending panties off and then lifted her into his arms to impale her on the thick erection.
She sobbed, her breasts bobbing in the water, her face glowing with sweat and steam as he drove inside her to the hilt.
But as he thrust out and back, forcing her towards orgasm, letting the madness, the need overtake him, spurred on by her jagged sobs, frantic to reach that final peak, the terrifying thought kept pushing at the back of his mind that no matter how many times he did this—no matter how many times he watched her shatter around him, felt her massage his length in the throes of her release—it would never be enough.
And no matter how many times he told himself he didn’t need her, he might never, ever be ready to let her go.
* * *
‘Zane, is everything all right?’ Cat asked as she clutched his shoulders, the water beginning to cool around them.
‘It was a long boring trip,’ he murmured against her hair before lifting her out of the water and placing her on her feet.
Her heart shrank in her chest, as it did every time he avoided talking about his feelings. She thought they’d made progress in the last few months. Had forced herself to be optimistic about their marriage. And when his manservant had come rushing into the women’s quarters to tell her, not only that he had returned early from his three-day trip, but that he wanted to see her immediately, and in private, her spirits had soared.
This had to mean something.
He’d taken her with passion and as always she’d revelled in it. But for the first time afterwards, the optimism she’d tried to feel each night he’d left her bed refused to come.
He handed her a towel and bent to pick one up himself. She knew she was about to be dismissed. And for the first time ever, instead of trying to fill her head with positive thoughts, with patience and compassion at the sight of his scars, she felt the first stirrings of anger.
She’d waited for him to meet her halfway, to finally admit that there was more in this marriage than duty and sex, but it had been three months now. And he still refused to meet her even a quarter of the way.
Just as she was about to say something though, she felt a strange tickling sensation in her abdomen. She gasped and pressed her hand to her belly.
Zane shot round, his eyes concerned. ‘What’s the matter? Are you okay?’
‘Yes, I...’ She gasped again as the tickling sensation rippled across her palm.
‘What is it, Catherine? Is something wrong?’ He gripped her arms, his face a mask of shock and pain and guilt.
But she didn’t have time to ask herself where that look was coming from before the smile split her face in two.
‘What...?’ He stepped back, letting her go.
‘It’s okay.’ Lifting his palm on impulse, she flattened it over her belly. ‘It’s Junior. I think we woke him up.’
She laughed, the sound echoing around the steamy chamber, her joy uncontrollable. They had a child. A baby. Which would make everything right. She’d been telling herself as much for months. Convincing herself that Zane would come around. But instead of the interest, the fascination, the matching joy she’d convinced herself she would see when he finally agreed to talk about the future, all she saw was the stricken look that crossed his face as the tickle came again.
He jerked his hand away, as if her stomach were radioactive.
‘Zane? What’s wrong?’
‘I shouldn’t have taken you like that. It was wrong of me,’ he said, his voice so flat and dull and devoid of emotion her whole body chilled in the warm room.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she murmured, but she could feel the emotion closing her throat. ‘Dr Ahmed told me conjugal relations are perfectly okay. We can make love right up to the third trimester, as long as we both want to—no harm will come to the baby.’
His eyes met hers, his expression so bleak, her throat closed completely. ‘But that’s just it,’ he said. ‘We’re not making love, are we?’
Shock came first, quickly followed by pain and the brutal realisation that he meant it. And before she could think better of it, she said what she’d been wanting to say for months now, since before their wedding.
