Page 39 of The Baby His Secretary Carries

“Gio, I’m so sorry.” She took another step toward him, but stopped herself when he tensed up.

“He pulled me from school and brought me to his villa, hired specialists and nutritionists. Spent all day with me, bringing me to the office so we were together constantly. My father tried to take me back, but Nonno bought him off. My parents continued to use me as a pressure point for years, threatening public custody battles until I was old enough to tell them to go to hell.”

“I can’t understand how anyone could be so heartless.” Her heart was aching. Her throat was hot, her eyes pressured by a force of tears she was fighting to hold back.

“Because they never cared aboutme. I was conceived to be a pawn,” he said bitterly. “My father thought a son would secure his place as Nonno’s heir, even though he’d proven himself inadequate time and again. Nonno didn’t imagine how bad it was. It took a long time before we enjoyed the relationship we have today, but eventually I learned that he would always be there for me.”

Not forever, though. Time, that inexorable thief, wanted him.

“Gio.” She couldn’t stand it any longer. She rushed across to him and hugged her arms tightly around his waist. “I’m so sorry that happened to you. So glad that you had Nonno to turn to.”

“That’s why I can’t bear to hurt him, Molly.” He cupped the back of her head, all of him stiff, as though trying to withstand great pain. “If I had been left at boarding school, I would be as profligate as my father. Worse, likely. I had a daredevil streak in my childhood that bordered on a death wish.”

She hated to hear that. Hated to think of him alone and hungry and scared, or so angry he endangered himself.

“I would stay with you for Otto’s sake if I could, Gio. But Ican’t.” She clenched her eyes shut, feeling the tears press through her lashes. What would he think of her if he learned this baby wasn’t hers? That she didn’t plan to raise it herself?

Her heart juddered in her chest.

“Would you?” He closed his fist over the low ponytail she was wearing, gently pulling so she was forced to turn her tearstained face up to his.

She tried to nod, but his hand was too heavy on her hair. Her lips trembled as she tried to find the words to explain why she couldn’t, but those words were on a document in her safe-deposit box. He would never see them.

Something seemed to break in him. He covered her mouth with his own, once, hard, as though physically trying to stamp himself onto her, then softened into a tender plea that dragged an ache from her chest and a moan from her throat.

I can’t, though. I can’t.

This needed to stop. She couldn’t continue the charade of their engagement or the affair that had no future. She knew that, but when he would have drawn back, she pressed her hand to the back of his head, urging him to keep kissing her. To singe away all the angst and terror of the future. All the anguish that would come soon enough. Just not today. Not yet.

The moment her hand started to slide his jacket off his shoulder, the mood between them altered, becoming frenzied. They hurriedly raked at each other’s clothes. He tore open his shirt, then hers just as ruthlessly.

It was one of her favorites, but she didn’t care. She threw it off her shoulders with her bra and grasped at his waistband, yanking his belt free.

They didn’t even go to the bedroom. As he dropped to his knees and dragged her pants down her legs, he elbowed the coffee table aside. She stepped out of them and sank to her knees, too, naked, and kissed him as she jerked at his fly and freed his erection.

His breath hissed in, then he was cupping her mound. Giving her equal pleasure, sweeping his tongue against hers before dragging his mouth across her skin, pressing her onto her back.

The carpet was rough and cool, the weight of him scorching. He was so intent, she should have been alarmed, but his control was not completely gone.

“Tell me,” he demanded in a rasp as he clasped her breast and ran his tongue against the pulsing artery in her throat. “Say you want this.”

“Always,” she moaned, writhing at the way his mouth was straying down, down, down. A flagrant suck of her nipple, a scrape of teeth against the underside of the swell. Hot breath against her ribs and a lascivious lick into her navel.

He spread her legs and she arched in agonized ecstasy as he claimed her.

They knew how to do these things to each other now. She knew he liked the feel of her hands in his hair and her thighs twitching in pleasure. He knew when she was approaching her crisis and that she was flexible enough to let him keep her legs over his arms as he rose over her. She knew it only took the tiniest bit of guiding for him to arrow into her with one slow, implacable thrust and that they both loved that moment almost more than the finale.

Almost. Because then there was this. The act.

“Say you want this forever,” he demanded, pinning her there on the floor with her legs splayed over his arms while he withdrew and returned in thrusts of careful power.

It wasn’t a lie. “I do,” she admitted, then closed her eyes, knowing they were words that shouldn’t have been uttered. They felt too much like a vow.

Her statement was the button on a detonation, one that was as physical as emotional. After a few more heated thrusts, they were both exploding, clinging and shuddering and crying out with both exaltation and defeat.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“ISHOULDHAVEtaken you to the bed,” Gio said with less remorse than he should have been suffering.

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