burnished gold by the night-light. She was braless under a sleeveless tank and a pair of loose shorts that looked like men’s boxers, her nipples sharply peaked against light cotton.
Damn. This was the wrong kind of night sharing, but he couldn’t stop the bombardment of erotic signals that plowed into his sexual receptors. Her hair was loose and wavy. She was lightly scented from the bubble bath she’d taken earlier. Her breath hitched behind invitingly parted lips while her hungry gaze swept across his pecs, stinging him like licks from a velvet whip.
He wore loose pajama pants that drew a relaxed line across his flat abdomen, but they began to tent—
She yanked her gaze to his, embarrassed and deeply apprehensive.
And, if he wasn’t mistaken, as dazed with repressed sexual need as he was.
“It didn’t sound like she was settling,” he managed gruffly, recalling why he was here. “I was coming to take over so you could go back to bed.” Bed. It was all he could think about. They’d used a sofa that other time and for less than an hour. He wanted more. Hours. Days.
Raoul’s voice made the hairs stand up all over her body. His scent was charged and aggressive, as though he hadn’t quite made it to bed yet, while she was sleepy and befuddled. She became screamingly aware that her hair was everywhere and her thin tank and loose shorts weren’t exactly sexy lingerie. That was probably a good thing, but she secretly wished she looked attractive.
Idiot.
“She’s sleeping now,” she mumbled and sidestepped at the same time he did, almost coming up against him as he loomed before her.
It was the foyer in Oxshott again. Her startled gaze came up in time to see his focus drop to her mouth. Her heart soared and her mind blanked, just like last time.
Not again, she thought, but couldn’t move, paralyzed by attraction and wonder.
His hand came up and hesitated. The bare skin of her shoulder waited, nerve endings reaching out in anticipation. Raoul started to bend his head.
Don’t let it happen, she warned herself with anxious intensity, but her self-preservation instincts were flash-firing so rapidly she couldn’t figure out if she should retreat the wrong way down the hall, barrel through him or exit into Lucy’s room.
His big hand cradled the side of her face, tilting her mouth up to his as his mouth crashed down on hers on an aggrieved groan.
Don’t— Oh, do...
Everything about him was strong and the way his mouth covered hers, so confident and hungry, overcame her willpower. The shape of his lips fit hers perfectly. When the tip of his tongue parted her lips, she shuddered in renewal. Oh, please. She melted into him. She couldn’t help it. She knew how good it could be between them. Her body remembered the virile feel of his muscles gathering, the fullness of him inside her...
His forearm angled across her back with proprietary strength, tugging her into a soft collision that made her release a throaty cry that he swallowed. Their nightclothes were no shield. She felt everything. The hot roughness of his chest, the flat muscles of his waist under confused hands that didn’t know where to land and the fierce shape of his supremely eager erection.
Her hands splayed on his smooth waist while her thoughts receded behind a kiss that began to consume her. Sweet, deep arousal, a sensation she hadn’t felt in months, twined through her, coiling deliciously. It felt so good to be held. The way his breath hissed and he plundered her mouth as though he was slaking a lifetime of need caught her as nothing else could, making her strain to match his voracious desire.
As his hands slid over her shape, she wriggled and pressed into his touch, reveling in the way he shifted her into the hard plane of the door so he could sandwich her with his weight. When his hot hand rode up her bare thigh under the leg of her shorts and found no underpants, he groaned and nipped a line down her neck while his flat hand shaped the globe of her bottom, squeezed gently, massaged and claimed.
She arched her breasts into his chest and her hands went to where his rampant stiffness was nearly piercing a hole through the light silk of his pants.
“Yes, touch me,” he said raggedly and bared himself, wrapping his hand over hers with a crushing grip. His mouth came back to catch her cry of surprise while his own hand went up the front of her thigh, fingertips unerringly finding her plump, aching center and drawing a line into the wet slickness. The circling touch of his fingertip against the tight knot of nerves struck bolts of need into her core, driving her to push against his touch, squeeze him tight, kiss him with complete abandon.
He bared her breast and bent his head. She thought, I’m nursing.
The reality of what they were doing crashed into her. She shoved him back a step, dislodging his touch, making him stagger and lift his head.
There were so many reasons to be aghast. Her appalled fear must have shown on her face. His glazed eyes met hers and he drew in a breath of shock.
Maybe he was equally horrified to see whom he’d accidentally fallen into kissing.
Just the nearest woman. The one who was handy.
Hurt knifed into her abdomen, twisting painfully. Freshly humiliated, Sirena elbowed past him and fled to her room.
* * *
She slept late. That beastly man had sneaked into her room after she fell asleep and stolen the baby monitor. He was at the breakfast table when he should have been in his office. Why he wasn’t going into the city to work escaped her. It had been nearly a month since he’d had a full day there.
“Lucy?” she prompted, looking past him.
“I gave her a bottle, but she didn’t take much. She’s down, but probably not for long.”
At least that gave her an excuse to avoid him while she disappeared to pump the ache out of her swollen breasts. He was still at the table when she returned. He wore his I’ve-got-all-day-so-don’t-bother-stalling face.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said flatly, veering her gaze from the way his muscled shoulders filled his ice-blue shirt. If only she wasn’t so hungry. She folded a leg under her as she took a seat and reached for a piece of cold, buttered toast, biting into it mutinously.
He set aside his tablet and leaned his forearms where his place setting had been cleared.
“I know you can’t make love yet. I wouldn’t have taken it that far. I didn’t have protection either and I sure as hell don’t want to get you pregnant again.”
The bite of toast in her mouth turned coarse and bitter. All the hurt she’d been bottling and ignoring rose in the back of her throat to make swallowing difficult. She rose up from her chair with what she hoped was enough indignation to cover her wounded core.
“Do you think I don’t wish every day that Lucy’s father was anyone but you?” She heard the cut of his breath and knew she’d scored a direct hit, but there was no satisfaction in it. She had zero desire to stick around and gloat.
She was almost to the door when he said with sharp force, “Because I don’t want to risk your life again. Given how dangerous I’ve learned childbirth can be, I don’t intend to put any woman through that ever again.”
The statement was shocking enough to make her hesitate. She glanced back, certain he couldn’t be as serious as he sounded. His still posture and set jaw told her he was incontrovertibly sincere.
“Millions of women sail through pregnancy and deliver without any trouble,” she pointed out. “You don’t know how you’ll feel in future, with a different woman.”
He only gave her that shuttered look that told her any sort of discussion on the matter was firmly closed. She was wasting her breath if she thought she could reason with him. His rigid expression was so familiar, his certainty that he was right so ingrained and obvious, she felt her lips twitch in amusement.
It