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She felt helpless beneath him—and for a moment the feeling was so intense that she felt a sudden jolt of fear. She tried to wriggle away but he wouldn’t let her. He was imprisoning her hips with the grasp of his hands while he worked some kind of sweet torture with his tongue. And surely if she wanted him to stop, she shouldn’t be urging him on by uttering his name. Nor clutching at his shoulders with greedy and frantic hands.
She could feel her orgasm building and then suddenly it happened violently, almost without warning. Her fingers dug into his hair as she began to buck beneath him and just when it should have been over, it wasn’t over at all.
Because Gabe was climbing on top of her and straddling her—entering her with one hard, slick stroke which seemed to impale her. Gabe was moving inside her, and she was crying out his name again and tears were trickling down her cheeks—and what on earth was that all about? She wiped them away before he could see them.
Automatically, she clung to him as he shuddered inside her, his golden-dark head coming to rest on her shoulder and his ragged breath warm against her skin. She found herself thinking that one of life’s paradoxes was that intense pleasure always made you aware of your own capacity for intense pain. And wasn’t that what had scared her? The certainty that pain was lurking just around the corner and she wasn’t sure why.
She closed her eyes and it seemed a long while before he spoke, and when he did his words were muffled against her neck.
‘I suppose you’re now going to demand some sort of apology.’
She turned her head to face him. She saw his thick lashes flutter open and caught a glimpse of the darkness which still lingered in his eyes. ‘I’m not sure that making a woman moan with pleasure warrants an apology,’ she said.
His face tightened as he withdrew from her and rolled onto his back, staring up at the ceiling and the dancing light which was reflected back from the river outside. He gave a heavy sigh. ‘Maybe it does if that pleasure comes from anger. Or if sex becomes a demonstration of power, rather than desire.’
She didn’t need to ask what had made him angry because she knew. Her questions had irritated a man who liked to keep his past hidden. A man who recoiled from real intimacy in the same way that people snatched their hands away from the lick of a flame and she still didn’t know why.
Maybe she should just accept that she was wasting her time. Leila’s hand crept to her still-flat stomach. Shouldn’t she be thinking about her baby’s needs and the practicalities of her current life, rather than trying to get close to a man who was determined not to let her?
But something made her reach out her hand and to lay it softly over the thud of his heart. ‘Well, whatever your motivation was, we both enjoyed it—unless I’m very much mistaken.’
At this he turned his head, and his grey eyes were thoughtful as he studied her. ‘Sometimes you surprise me, Leila.’
‘Do I?’
‘More frequently than I would ever have anticipated.’ He stroked his hand over the curve of her hips. ‘You know, we ought to think what you’re going to do next week.’
‘Next week?’ She drew her head back and looked at him. ‘Why—what’s happening next week?’
‘I’m going back to work. Remember?’ He kissed the curve of her jaw. ‘Honeymoons don’t last for ever and I do have to work to pay the bills, you know.’
Suddenly she felt unsettled. Displaced. ‘And in the meantime, I’m going to be here on my own all day,’ she said slowly.
His grey eyes were suddenly watchful. ‘Not necessarily. I can speak to some of my directors, if you like. Introduce you to their wives so you can get to know them. Some of them work outside the home, but plenty of them are around during the day—some with young children.’
Her heart suddenly heavy, Leila nodded. She didn’t want to seem ungrateful and, yes, it would be good to meet women whose company she might soon welcome once her own baby arrived.
But Gabe’s words made her feel like an irrelevance. As if she had no real identity of her own. Someone’s daughter. Someone’s sister and, now, someone’s wife.
Well, she did exist as a relevant person in her own right and maybe she needed to show Gabe that—as well as to prove it to herself. Back in Qurhah, she had yearned for both personal and professional freedom and surely this was her golden opportunity to grab them.
‘I don’t want to just kill time while I wait for the baby to be born,’ she said. ‘I want a job.’
