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‘Screw dinner.’ Then he was moving forward, kissing her all over again, undressing her as he moved them backwards, towards the chaise of the sofa, tumbling them backwards, his hands removing the dress she’d so daringly chosen, his groan cutting through time and space when he realised she wasn’t wearing a bra beneath it. His hands fondled her breasts, his body pressed down on hers, as she undressed him with the same desperate hunger as he displayed with her, until they were both naked, writhing, tangled together, a war of passion and possession breaking around them, splintering the world apart, so Sienna was conscious of nothing but Alejandro, and him she was aware of on a cellular level. His breath across her skin, the weight of his body, the warmth of his flesh, the vapour on his skin, the smell of his cologne, the taste of his mouth.
‘You are—’ but he didn’t finish the sentence; he couldn’t. Instead, he drove himself into her, pinning her arms above her head, staring right into her eyes as he moved, thrusting deep and fast at first, then slowly, and the look in his eyes, for the briefest moment, drove passion from Sienna’s mind, because he was lost, and looking at her as though salvation might be found within her.
She pushed up onto her elbows, dislodging his grip, and she kissed him, soft, slow, somehow sensing he needed that, but a moment later he was Alejandro again, all fire and spirit, and strength and power, in control as ever. And she fell apart, holding on to him with the tips of her fingers, as though that might save her from what she knew was coming—what she’d now accepted as an inevitability of their relationship. She was falling all the way into love with him, and there was no use denying it, to herself at least.
‘Cristo.’He pulled to stand, staring at her with a look in his eyes she couldn’t comprehend—until gradually reality shifted and she understood what he was evidently dealing with.
‘We forgot protection.’ She winced. ‘I didn’t think—’
‘I didn’t give you a chance to think,’ he dismissed. ‘That was all my fault.’
She sat up, wrestling with a lingering sense of self-consciousness, her huge green eyes finding his. ‘You know I’m on the pill.’
He dipped his head. ‘It’s not—’
‘It is. In most cases, it’s foolproof. And if anything happens, well, we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.’
He was going to argue with her, so she stood, pressing a hand gently to his chest. ‘We can’t undo it, so why worry? There’s no point.’
He didn’t argue with her, but she knew she hadn’t completely dispelled his uneasiness. ‘Dinner,’ he murmured instead, looking around at their clothes—tossed destructively throughout the apartment.
‘Right.’ Her laugh was a soft sound. ‘We were going out.’
‘Is that what you want?’
What she wanted was more time with him. More than twelve hours, or whatever they had left. She felt the walls closing in on her and lifted her shoulders. ‘Sure.’ She couldn’t meet his eyes. Emotion clogged in her chest.
Tell him.
‘Alejandro—’ But when he looked at her, he was so much like the first night they’d met—charming and untouchable—that her confidence faltered. Suddenly, she was like the night they’d met as well, nervous and unsure of herself, so she stood jerkily, wishing she weren’t fighting a war within herself.
She couldn’t love him. She never wanted to fall in love. She never wanted to get in a relationship—not like her parents’. Growing up with them had given her a crash course in how wrong things could go if you put all your trust in someone else’s hands, and she never intended to be that stupid. Even if that someone was Alejandro Corderó? She tried to imagine him hurting her, tried to imagine him ever acting as her father had towards her mother, and she couldn’t. The truth was, he was nothing like her father, so the boogieman fear she’d let dominate her all her life suddenly seemed a little ridiculous. Which meant what, exactly? That she was willing to take a risk?
But for what?
Even if she told him she wanted to see him again, to date him out in the open, in a real way, he’d never agree. He’d been clear about that from the outset. It wasn’t what he wanted.
And if that had changed? She squeezed her eyes shut as the dominoes kept falling, because it wasn’t possible that he would have changed his mind enough. She needed to get married before she turned twenty-five and Alejandro was never going to be the marrying type. He might agree to more of this—no-strings sex—but that would be the extent of it. Which left her where, exactly? Falling more and more in love with a dedicated commitment-phobe while she really should have been looking for a man who would make a suitable husband?
It was all terribly, heart-stoppingly useless.
‘I’m starving,’ she lied, her voice over-bright.
His eyes narrowed thoughtfully, his eyes sweeping her face, but he didn’t respond to the slightly brittle tone in her voice. ‘Then I guess we’d better get you dressed once more.’
‘Would you really have wanted to marry me, if I’d got pregnant after the wedding?’
After a long dinner in a buzzy restaurant in the fashionable Poblenou district, the question blurted from Sienna’s lips before she could stop it.
To his credit, he didn’t flinch. ‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
Her heart rabbited in her chest and she dug her nails into her thigh beneath the table, desperately willing her blood to stop rushing. ‘Because I would want to be a part of my child’s life.’
‘That doesn’t require marriage.’
‘For me, it does.’
