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A muscle throbbed low in his jaw. “I know I should be gentle with you, and then you say things like that and I have to fight the urge to lift you over my shoulder and smack that delightful rear of yours.”
She drew in a gasp of surprise and stepped backwards, so that her hips jammed against the kitchen counter.
“You’d regret it,” she drawled, but the words were husky, the desire his words had sparked obvious in every syllable.
“Perhaps.” He closed the gap once more and she refused to be cowered, meeting his look without fear. “Did you marry me and believe we wouldn’t need to have an heir?”
“No. I always knew that one day we’d have to…” she couldn’t finish the sentence.
“I don’t want you to fear this, nor do I want you to feel forced.” A muscle jerked in his jaw. “You have choices here, Chloe.”
Her eyes met his, and a spark travelled from her to him, flaming the air. “I know that.”
His expression flashed with something like relief, for her words were the permission he sought.
“I will be gentle with you,” he promised, placing his hands on either side of her body, bracing his palms against the counter top and imprisoning her easily.
Chloe’s mouth was dry, her throat hoarse. She parted her lips to say something, but slammed them shut again when she realized she had been about to beg him, “Don’t be gentle.”
Chapter Two
HIS LIPS CAME CRUSHING down on hers, as though with his mouth he could brand her and possess her, as though fearing that she might escape. That she might push him away and demand he never touch her again. That she might demand her freedom in the form of divorce.
Chloe could have done any of those things. She had married Raffa by choice, because she’d wanted to please her father, but she’d gone into it with her eyes wide open. And now, with eyes shut, she was still staring down the barrel of her choices, knowing that it went beyond duty to their families.
She wanted this. She wanted him.
A low, keening groan tipped from her mouth to his and he returned it, a thick curse charging the air as he lifted a hand to her hair and tangled his fingers in its length, drawing her head backwards to give him better access to her lips. His tongue warred with hers and his body pressed hard against her, so she felt the strength of his attraction, she felt the powerful firmness of his body and her own went weak in response.
Temptation was dragging her under, pulling her into a tide of responsiveness and need. But it was madness, and a madness of his making. With a super-human effort, she broke apart from him, shoving at his chest and spinning herself around, so she had some space. Only space was an illusion – he was everywhere! In the air she breathed deep into her lungs, in the black recesses of her eyes, in her mouth, right down to her toes.
“Don’t kiss me,” she said warningly, lifting a hand to her mouth and touching her lips as though she could wipe away what they’d just shared.
“We can do it without kissing,” he said with a lift of his shoulders, his tone mocking. “But it’s a lot less personal.”
She glared at him. “We aren’t doing it at all,” she denied hotly. “I’m not going to simply sleep with you because you’ve decided it’s time! That’s not how things work. We’re husband and wife. How and when we have children is our decision, not yours alone. I appreciate you’re used to ruling with supreme autonomy but I’m not your subject to command.”
“Actually, that’s exactly what you are,” he said with a hint of steel in his voice.
“So you’re going to order me into your bed even when it’s the last place on earth I want to be?”
He laughed softly. “I don’t think I’ll need to order you there.” He
raked his gaze down her body, his attention lingering on the way her breasts were straining at her dress, two firm peaks of desire, echoed by her parted lips, flushed cheeks and huge pupils.
The room was filled with the sound of her breathing, hoarse and rushed. “Having children is not something I can just rush into.”
“You must see the importance of acting now.”
She turned away from him, so he wouldn’t recognize the acquiescence in her eyes. The truth was, she did want children. Desperately. She’d had a lonely upbringing – her only sibling was ten years her senior and they weren’t close. Her father and she had been basically estranged and her mother had been miserable and cold. Chloe yearned for someone to love, someone to fill the void in her heart. But a baby? Would she know what to do? How to love one? How to care for one?
“My father is dying.” The words were torn from Raffa and they sledged right into Chloe’s solar plexus. “And I want to give him this. I am begging you, Chloe, to help me. You are the only person; this is the only way. Will you help me?”
Her stomach twisted as the grief and desperation in his words ran through her. “You’re not just asking me to lend you my car for the weekend,” she said through gritted teeth. “This is a big deal.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“You’ve done this before. Had children, I mean,” she said, her skin heating at the unintentional double entendre, when she hadn’t been referring to his sexual experience at all.
