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“Who am I to argue with a doctor?” He groaned, pushing his shirt higher up her body so he could bury his head between her sweet breasts, breasts that already felt rounder and heavier than the first night they’d made love.
But she wasn’t listening; she was riding a wave of pleasure, cresting to the top, her head tilted back, dark hair spilling down her back.
“I’m addicted to this,” she said, her voice throbbing with passion as she dug her fingernails into his shoulders. Her skin was pink, her face flushed; she brought her head forward, and she kissed him urgently as she moved up and down his length, as though wild fires raged at their feet, as though a lion chased her across a desert, as though she would cease to exist if he wasn’t with her.
And he swore then, he swore out of pleasure, and he surrendered to this, to pleasure, to her, to everything; he surrendered to this madness even as he knew it was madness, even as he knew there were forces outside, beyond this passion and their marriage, forces that would threaten this, forces he wished didn’t exist.
But for now, there was only Bella and their chemistry; there was the island and their marriage, their baby. As she cried out, her pleasure loud and intense, he wondered if he could simply keep Bella here forever – his sexual prisoner, estranged from the world beyond, like a princess in a tower.
He wondered if she’d even mind.
Madness was upon him, and he’d never expected madness to feel so damned good.
CHAPTER SIX
“HOW DID YOU FIND out?” She lifted some yoghurt to her mouth, tasting its piquancy gratefully.
She’d woken ravenous, and jumping on Vitalo as soon as she’d seen him in his office hadn’t been part of the plan. At all. But he’d looked so devilish and dark, standing over his desk as though the world was about to come falling down around him, and she’d felt a visceral surge of need, a rush of desire that was as real as electric shock.
He reclined in his chair, the morning sun slicing across him, making his skin glow and her stomach flip-flopped anew, another surge of desire spiraling through her.
“About the baby,” she prompted, the words breathy to her own ears.
Was she imagining a guardedness in his expression? A wariness in his eyes?
The longer the silence stretched, the more anxiety surged inside of her. “Vitalo?”
“Your mother,” he said, immediately afterwards, bringing a frown to Bella’s face.
“My mom?”
He dipped his head in silent agreement. But that didn’t answer a question so much as birth a thousand more.
“My mom?” she repeated, still trying to put the pieces together.
He pierced her with his dark, mysterious eyes.
“I was friends with your father,” he said simply.
Her eyes flew wide. “I met you!” She settled back in her own seat, staring at a point past his shoulder, trying to grab all the threads together, trying to remember everything about the handsome man who’d come to their home. It had been a long time ago, but she’d been enough on the brink of adolescence to remember feeling in awe of how handsome he was. “It’s been driving me crazy, there’s something so familiar about you,” she said, her memory still evasive. “You came to the homestead one year?”
Another small nod, just a tight jerk of his head.
But Bella was running all these facts together, making sense of the picture that was forming. “You were friends with daddy?”
Now, his smile was wistful, touched with the same grief that was an ever-fixed mark of Bella’s spirit.
“He was… a mentor to me.” Which made sense, given Vitalo must have been fifteen years her father’s junior. “And friends, too. Yes. Your father was a great man. I admired him very much.”
Bella smiled then and tears pricked at her lashes. It was absurd, but somehow knowing that the father of her baby had known her father brought their marriage full circle. It made sense of all of this, even when it shouldn’t have made sense. Andrew Howard had died more than a decade earlier, but her husband had known him. They had a shared memory of Bella’s father, and that meant the world to her.
“He was a great man,” she whispered her agreement. “That’s how you came to be invited to the wedding?” She pushed, filling in the details. “You’re friends with mom, too? I mean, you must be, for her to have told you about the baby?”
A beat passed, a heavy silence, but Bella barely noticed. “Was she still furious when she spoke to you?”
“Furious?” He frowned, his eyes running over Bella’s face. “Not at all. Why?”
“She’s too young to be a grandmother,” Bella said wryly. “And she is young,” she hastened to add. “Nonetheless, I had other things on my mind when I told her – I wasn’t prepared to have to break it to her sensitively.”
