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“And that gave you the right to do this?”
She swallowed, an involuntary contraction of the muscles in her neck. “I’m his mother,” she stammered, wishing she didn’t feel so completely tremulous. Where the hell was her courage and strength?
At her feet, that’s where – his hard, cynical look has stripped it from her, piece by piece.
“I have to make the right decisions for him.”
“And I am his father,” he said, the word quietly spoken but loaded with disgust. “You think I want to hurt him?”
She shook her head to the side. Hadn’t she just admitted to herself that she knew Xavier would be a good father – whatever his many failings as a man, husband and human might have been?
“I was shell-shocked,” she said instead, rallying her defenses.
“I asked if we knew one another and you told me ‘no’.”
“I’m sorry,” she said jerkily. “But the last time I saw you, your doting fiancé was by your bedside, crying her eyes out. You’ll forgive me if I didn’t rush to ruin her life because of your mistakes,” she said, the accusation satisfying to fling at him. “You were the one who cheated. Not her. Not me. I had to wear the consequences of your decisions but if I could spare her the pain I’d felt then you’d better believe I was going to,” she said, her chin tilted angrily and her eyes spitting fire.
But he spat it right back, fury bouncing off his frame in waves.
“I will not forgive you,” he said slowly, menacingly, with a dark threat in the words that chilled Ellie to the core. “No concern for Bella overrides what was due to my son and to me. Do not hide behind a noble consideration when the truth is so much darker.”
“And what’s the truth?” She demanded, wishing that she couldn’t feel the painful scrape of erect nipples against the soft cotton of her clothes, wishing that she couldn’t feel the throb of anticipation and the curdling of her blood.
“By your own admission, I hurt you,” he said. “And you wanted to hurt me back. Isn’t that why you hid my child?”
“I didn’t –,”
“Didn’t you relish knowing this to be sweet revenge?”
“No!” She shook her head from side to side, so that her dark hair glistened around her beautiful face. But he didn’t see beauty in her face, he didn’t see truth in her eyes. He saw the face of a manipulative, lying woman who had kept the most valuable thing away from Xavier. He saw a figure of hatred.
“You thought to have your revenge and now you will have a lifetime living with mine,” and he dropped his mouth to hers to punctuate the threat, sucking her gasp of surprise into his throat and drowning it in the sensual, angry heat of his kiss.
Her body sagged against the wall, so that it was only the strength of his kiss that held her in place, the taste of his desire washing over her body as his last words swam around and around her brain.
Now you will have a lifetime living with mine.
Revenge? Whatever did he mean?
His kiss was too intense, too much, for her to think clearly. She was done thinking. Her body, so long starved of a man’s touch, reacted to his as it had the night before.
Spontaneous combustion.
Her fingers pushed at his shirt, lifting it to expose the tanned, taut flesh of his stomach to her touch. She ran her fingers over it and moaned when his hands did the same, separating her shirt from her jeans and lifting it, breaking their kiss only to rip it from her head.
Sanity threatened to burst through the fog of desire – she needed to put an end to this! She hated him! – but then his mouth was dropping to her breasts, teasing her nipples through the fine lace of her bra. He fingered one, plucking it until it was erect and hard and she was moaning over and over with the heat of need and his lips engulfed the other, his tongue flicking it so that her nerve endings were screaming out for release. He reached behind her and unclipped the bra with an ease born of experience, and then his stubbled jaw was dragging across her flesh. He took the other breast into his mouth, each draw of his lips making her arch her back and cry out his name.
She was no longer Elizabeth Jones. She was simply a quivering mess of nerve endings and sensations; she was lost to reality – simply a piece of flotsam. He lifted her easily, carrying her to the bed, where he deposited her without ceremony, dropping her into the middle and staring down at her, pinning her with his gaze as he stripped his clothes from his body with a sensual economy of movements and efficiency. Then, he returned to her, and all Ellie could do was whimper as he stripped her jeans and silk underpants from her legs, leaving her naked in the middle of the bed.
It was too much; it was wrong.
Now you will have to live with mine.
Revenge.
There was no revenge here. Only white-hot passion and it was burning them both. He brought his powerful body with that broadly muscles chest and tapered waist over hers, hair-roughened thighs pushing her own silky smooth legs apart. She whimpered when he kissed her again, his tongue pushing into her mouth and the weight of his head pinning her own head to the softness of the mattress.
He dominated her in every way. Somewhere along the way he’d taken the precaution of sliding a condom over his large arousal, and he nudged the tip of himself at the entrance to her womanhood, just enough to make her reach for him, to cry out for more.
