Page 22 of Bound Enemies
Then again, she hadn’t spent that night in the castle alone.
Maybe Pau was as human as everyone else. Maybeshewas his weakness.
Leontina couldn’t help but like that notion, tangled though it was with her enduring guilt over making all of this happen in the first place.
She blew out a breath and turned away from the window, wrapping herself in the dress he’d taken such pleasure in unraveling from her body last night. It was a wrap dress, it accentuated every curve on her body, and Pau had been deeply—ravenously—appreciative. His appreciation had begun during the intimate dinner they’d shared and had moved quickly here, to his bed.
Where they had stayed awake far later than they should have.
Yet she couldn’t regret it.
She thought that perhaps she ought to talk to him about different sorts of practical things. Like, given the fact they slept together every night, actually moving herself into his bedroom instead of trekking back and forth from the opposite end of the sprawling old house.
But she could admit to herself, as she took the long walk back to her wing of the house, that she wasn’t comfortable doing that. It wasn’t going to happen. How could she install herself in the man’s bedroom—and no matter that he’d married her—when she knew that no matter what, she was essentially here under false pretenses?
Pau persisted in believing he had seduced an innocent. And yes, she’d been a virgin. But that didn’t mean that there had been any seducing. Not on his part.
To think I have turned an innocent into such a wanton, he had whispered into the heat of her skin one night as she sat astride him, taking him in deep and rocking herself toward that wildfire bliss that was becoming something of an addiction.Who could have believed it of a girl who used to pride herself on disappearing in crowded rooms?
It was a theme he returned to again and again, now that he’d surrendered to the passion between them. Now that he’d decided that their nights—all of their nights—were to be spent together.
Now that he’d made it clear that the fire between them had been no fluke at her brother’s wedding.
Look at you burn, he had growled on another night.It’s like you were made for me, Leontina. What would have become of all this heat if I had not led you so far astray?
Some nights she almost convinced herself that he was taunting her, poking at her, possibly eventryingto get a reaction, almost as if he knew the truth—
But she dismissed that. Every morning she woke up, feeling deliciously burned through all over and desperate for more, and she told herself that was only her guilty conscience talking. Because if he knew, she wouldn’t have to confess. If he knew and was still happy to lose himself in this fire together, then maybe it was all right—
And Leontina knew full well that it was not.
She merely wished it was.
As she walked through the monastery, she murmured reassuring words to the baby with every step, because that part, at least, was real. And maybe once the baby was born, she would worry less about how she’d come to be here in the first place. Because surely all that would matter then was the child.
Leontina was sure of it.
She was thinking of that a few days later when Pau drove her down into Tarragona again, this time to pay a visit to a doctor he knew who was an OB-GYN in the city and who he’d called to give Leontina a full examination.
A doctor who he apparently knew well, she discovered.
“Assumpció could have gone anywhere,” Pau told her as he drove. “She studied at some of the finest institutions in the world. But, like me, she was born in this region and was determined to return here, to get back to it. To put her talents to use here, where they will matter more because she was made here.”
“She sounds like quite the paragon,” Leontina said, and only realized once the words were out that she sounded…perhaps a bit sharper than planned.
Pau’s dark eyes gleamed as he cast a look at her, then returned his attention to the road.
“Perhaps I have not yet mentioned the most salient point about Assumpció,” he said. “She is not only one of my oldest friends. She is also my cousin.” And she could hear theexcessivemildness in his voice as he continued. “In case there were any misunderstandings on that score.”
Leontina felt…embarrassed, maybe. Her cheeks were hot and there was a dark, throbbing sort of thread of emotion curling tight inside her—but she couldn’t identify it.
Or she didn’t want to, more like.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she managed to say.
“Of course you don’t,” Pau replied, but she was sure that she could hear the very faintest hint of laughter in that tone of his.
Somehow, that made it worth it. It made that darkness in her settle.
