Page 65 of A Diamond Deal
She should not want himnow.
‘Poppy!’ It was a cry of agony. It bellowed from his chest. ‘Stop!’ His hands gripped her shoulders, dragged her mouth from his.
Both breathing hard, they stared at each other.
Regret tortured his insides. He felt haggard.Old. His bones ached with a fatigue he’d never known. It was rooted in his very skin. His muscles.
How could he have ever thought his plan was an option? His plan, so flawed, it slapped his cheeks now. Slapped the controlled lines from his features he’d presented to Léon—to her.
Was he truly cruel? Ruthless? Like his father? Was he really going to let himself forget the people behind his needs? His father had forgotten his mother. Abandoned her. He’d forgottenhim.
He couldn’t continue.
Not with his plan.
Not withthis.
He removed his hands from her shoulders, let them fall to his sides, and he demanded his fingers didn’t curl into fists. ‘We must stop.’
‘Do you want to stop?’ she asked. ‘Or are you stopping because you think I’ll regret it if we sleep together?’
‘Youwouldregret it.’
‘At Versailles I would have,’ she agreed. ‘It would have happened with so much still misunderstood between us. But we’ve told each other things that will give us some emotional closure, but not physical closure.’ She tilted her head—considered him for a beat too long. ‘We should sleep together.’
‘We should not,’ he rejected, but he was torn.Conflicted.He didn’t know how to put himself back together. Not with her eyes watching him so intently. Not with her sat on his lap—wanting him—when he’d told her of the ugliness inside him. The darkness of a sick mother and a power-crazed bastard of a father.
He was his parents’ child.
He was damaged. He knew this. Had recognised it and so he’d made himself a man who rejected his very DNA.
He had never wanted children. Never wanted to risk passing on his genes to an innocent child. But they had made Isaak. And somehow, he’d manifested his son’s death.
His chest tightened. He’d made himself a fair man. A man so opposite to his father. But beneath all the layers—beneath both the two personas he’d tried to be, he couldn’t be either right now. He could not reconcile himself with them. They felt imaginary.Fake.
‘I understand why you stopped at the ball,’ she said when he didn’t speak.Couldn’t.‘But if we use a condom, there will be no risk.’
‘There’salwaysa risk, Poppy,’ he countered, because it was the truth.
There were no one hundred per cent safeguards.
He couldn’t promise that.
The only way to guard themselves completely against an accident was not to have sex.
His core spasmed.
But he wanted to.
He wanted her.
‘We’ll be careful,’ she said, and he knew that was all they could be.Careful.But it didn’t feel like enough.
The rules had changed when she’d become pregnant. Everything had changed.Emotions, hers, had leeched into their relationship. He wasn’t stupid, he knew they’d leeched from him, too.
Poppy had carried his child. She’d swelled with their son. He’d have done anything to keep them safe. His need to dothat…
It was a violent desperation. A desperation that had coordinated his every action. And when she’d disappeared… His desperation to find her, it had blinded him to all else, to the detriment of his business. His reputation.
