Page 85 of 2 Books in One Bundle

‘I know. Of course you wouldn’t have wanted to take him away from his family. Butyou’rehis family too. You know that, don’t you?’

Something shifted inside him, the ache a grief that never went away. He ignored it. ‘I’m not his father, Isla,’ he said. ‘I didn’t bring him up. I haven’t been in his life. I’m nothing but a stranger to him.’

‘Youarehis father. His biological father.’ Her eyes glinted deep sapphire in the night. ‘He’ll want to know where he came from and what happened to you and I know that, because I never knew my biological father myself. He wasn’t on my birth certificate. I’ve got nothing and I wish I could have had something.’

She was warm and slippery and silky in his lap and there were many other things they could be doing right now other than talking about a past that was dead and gone.

‘Let it go.’ He put his hands on her hips, holding her carefully. ‘I have.’

‘No, you haven’t.’ She was still staring fiercely at him. ‘You’re angry, Orion. I can see it in your eyes. And it hurts you, doesn’t it?’

He could feel the heat of it in his chest, the sharp edges of a fire that had never burned itself out. She saw too much, his snow maiden.

‘I made my choice,’ he said flatly. ‘I let him go. And it’s easier if he stays gone.’

‘Easier for who? For him or for you?’

Anger gathered in his gut and he couldn’t help responding to it. ‘This is none of your business, Isla, and I didn’t ask for your input.’

Yet her jaw was tense and she didn’t look away. ‘He’ll be twenty now. He’ll be an adult. He’ll be able to make decisions for himself about whether he finds out who is father is.’

‘Yes, well, and he hasn’t.’ The words came out of him with such bitterness he could hardly believe he’d said them.

Isla’s gaze flared, a deep sympathy in it that caught at the edges of his emotions as if they were still raw and new, making them hurt. ‘Oh, Orion,’ she said softly.

Abruptly he couldn’t bear to be there with her any longer. He didn’t want her looking at him like that, he didn’t want her digging at the wound in his heart he’d thought long healed. He’d come to terms with the fact that he didn’t have his son in his life and he’d chosen that himself. The fact that Luke hadn’t contacted him was neither here nor there, and he wasn’t upset about it. At all.

He tightened his grip on her hips, wanting to put her off his lap, but her arms were around his neck all of a sudden, and her cheek was against his shoulder, and he could feel the soft heat between her thighs pressing against him.

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t mean to push you. I don’t want to make it worse. It’s just...not fair. You’re a good man and you didn’t deserve for him to be taken away from you.’

His throat was tight for a second and he couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. ‘I was angry,’ he heard himself say. ‘I smashed up that car. No child deserves a violent, angry father.’

‘You were a sixteen-year-old boy.’ Isla turned her head and kissed his chest, her lips warm against his skin. ‘A boy who’d been through the foster system. It’s not as if you had the emotional maturity to know what you were doing. And they didn’t give you a chance. That’s on them, not you.’

Orion shut his eyes. He didn’t know why he was still sitting there, listening to her, when he’d been about to get up and leave. He wanted distance, didn’t he? He didn’t want to keep talking, not about Luke. He’d made the right decision all those years ago, he had.

‘I couldn’t go back,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I knew I wouldn’t be welcome and besides, I couldn’t do anything. Cleo’s father had money and contacts and I was...nothing. But I swore that one day, when I had money and power, I’d come back for him. Except I couldn’t take him then either.’

Isla pressed another kiss to his chest. ‘You put your child first. That’s what a good father does.’

He wasn’t gripping her now, his hands still on her thighs, the ache in his heart sharp and jagged. ‘If I was a good father, I’d have fought for him more.’ He shouldn’t be telling her this and yet he couldn’t seem to stop. ‘If I was a good father, I wouldn’t have let him go.’

‘Youdidn’tlet him go.’ Isla lifted her head, her blue gaze burning. ‘You couldn’t stop them, because you were too young. And by the time you were old enough to get him, youcouldn’t. Not without destroying his life.’

He knew that was only the truth and yet... Why did it feel as if he could have done things differently? As if he’d let his son slip through his fingers. As if he hadn’t fought for him at all.

And you’re doing the same thing now.

The thought slid through him, sharp and insidious, and abruptly he was sick of talking.

He shifted one hand to her hip and gripped it, before sliding his fingers up her inner thigh. ‘I’m tired of talking about this,’ he said roughly. ‘I’d prefer to do something else.’

But Isla ignored him. ‘Why haven’t you looked for him?’

The question felt like the edge of a knife against his skin. ‘Didn’t you hear me?’ he snapped. ‘This subject is closed.’ It was a warning and he’d intended it to be.

Yet again, she just ignored him, her gaze searching. ‘What are you afraid of?’

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