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For that she was grateful. Becoming a single mother in a world she understood was one thing, but here?
‘You should be smiling, Magenta.’ Quinn said, sensing her doubt. ‘This is a happy day, isn’t it?’
‘Of course.’ And now she felt guilty. She didn’t deserve this man, and she certainly didn’t deserve the gift of a child. ‘Quinn…’ She didn’t know where to start, but she had to tell him. She had never imagined Quinn would be so deeply loyal or so complex. She had underestimated him in so many ways, but he was right to say today was precious. She wanted nothing more than what she had here and now. Surely it was a small thing in the scale of the cosmos to be with the man she loved so they could bring up their baby together? To make a home for it surrounded by love? Knowing that it was an impossible dream was killing her.
‘Why so serious?’ Quinn demanded.
The last thing she wanted was to add to his suspicions by allowing a moment to pass, and then another, when she could have told him—when she should have told him. It was getting to the stage where she wished for his sake that she could just close her eyes and wake up in a world she could make sense of.
Misreading the signs, Quinn embraced her, and the moment when she might have told him passed. This was what she wanted more than anything—to be with Quinn—and it was the one thing she couldn’t have.
She clung to him in desperation and when he released her she saw a different expression in his eyes. It was an expression she knew, an expression her body responded to immediately.
Quinn’s lips curved. He was an unrepentant hunter; he was hungry and so he ate. ‘You’re the mother of my child.’ He stared her in the eyes. ‘And you just reminded me why…’
‘Quinn…’ She was already responding.
Quinn was aroused, hugely aroused. This was a private joke between them—that she barely had to look at him to provoke this response. She had to be careful about looking at him in public, Quinn had warned her with amusement when they’d been dancing in a club. ‘Have you no shame?’ she asked him now, already working on his clothes.
‘None at all.’
‘Just as I thought.’ The ache inside her had spread like a delicious heat to encompass all her body, but Quinn shushed her and steadied her hands.
‘Gently,’ he said. ‘I’m going to be gentle with you.’
‘Because I’m pregnant?’ Magenta demanded. ‘Pregnant women love sex.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind.’
Now they were both yanking clothes off and tossing them aside. But even now there was a shadow. Carpe diem: seize the moment. Who knew how many they had left?
Quinn steered her back against the wall, lifting her and tugging off her underwear at the same time. She was as bad, breaking her nails on his belt in her hurry to undress him.
Locking her legs around his waist, she angled her body to make it easy for him. There was no foreplay this time, no finesse or teasing, no wasting a single precious moment.
Quinn’s first thrust was enough to make her lose control, but he had taught her well, and she knew the power of delay. She held on as long as she could as he pounded her against the wall, but even as she hovered on the exquisite plateau of sensation she knew she couldn’t stay there for ever. She must fall. It wasn’t just the strength of the approaching climax she feared, but the feeling—the sense, the premonition—that when she fell this time it would be for good. The thought of being thrown back into a world without Quinn, without their baby, was a prospect she dreaded beyond all things. ‘No, Quinn, stop,’ she begged him, pressing her clenched fists against his chest.
‘Am I hurting you?’
‘No.’
‘What, then?’
He was already moving, steadily, deeply and slowly as he stretched her, massaging her in a way she couldn’t resist. ‘Quinn, I can’t. It’s too big, too wild—too dangerous.’ But as she punctuated each of these declarations with a groan of pleasure, Quinn took no notice. ‘I’m locked in a dream and I don’t want to lose you,’ she managed to gasp out in one fleeting moment of lucidity.
‘If you’re locked in a dream,’ Quinn said fiercely, ‘then I am too.’
‘No,’ she begged shaking her head from side to side. ‘We can’t do this together.’
‘Haven’t I always promised to keep you safe?’ Instead of slowing, Quinn adjusted his grip on her buttocks so he could take her more deeply.
The last thing she heard before she screamed out his name was Quinn’s husky laugh against her neck, and then there was a fire-burst of light behind her eyes and her world was all sensation.
