Page 25 of Bound Enemies
And it was like the world stopped for a moment. She felt as if they froze in place. He could have held her hand for an hour, a day, a lifetime. When, realistically, it couldn’t have been more than a few scant seconds.
He pulled away and closed the door, and for a moment she sat alone in the warm interior of the car with everything inside her a jumble of sensation, emotion, and something far more dangerous, like hope.
It stuck with her even though he barely spoke a word on the drive back to the vineyard.
That night, he sent word that he would not meet her for dinner in another new dining room, as was their usual custom.
Leontina took a tray in her rooms and felt rather more philosophical about it than she might have on another night. She understood. Everything now was shaped like a small baby boy they had yet to meet. To her it was so simple. Almost funny.
They’d had so much sex and yet it was a few quiet moments marinating in the realization that they were having a son together that had knocked everything sideways.
She supposed it made sense that he needed a moment to calibrate.
Maybe she should be grateful, she thought. Maybe this was nothing more than an excellent opportunity for her to catch up on her sleep.
She crawled into bed early and dreamed of him, and then, later, woke up when she felt the mattress bend beneath the weight of another body.
“Pau,” she murmured sleepily. “What are you—”
“You’re giving me a child,” he said fiercely. “My true legacy, Leontina.”
And the way he kissed her then set her soul on fire.
The way he touched her took her outside herself entirely.
He was slow, unhurried. He took his time, pulling off the nightclothes she wore and murmuring his appreciation at the roundness of her breasts, the swell of her belly. And as he settled between her legs, holding them open with his wide shoulders, the sound he made was one of simple, stark male approval.
And then he set his mouth to the core of her and licked her straight off the precipice, sending her streaking out into the night like a comet.
One orgasm wasn’t enough. She cried out, and shook all around him, and he simply began again. And then again, adding his fingers, turning his head to press kisses to her shaking thighs—and the odd nip that seemed to keep her trembling right there on the edge.
She was both outside herself and never more firmly in her own body when he shifted again. He rolled so he could strip off the lounging trousers he wore, then came back over her to pull her legs up high and set them upon his shoulders so he could slide in deep.
His cock seemed bigger than before, or maybe she was simply over-sensitized tonight, because with one stroke she was nearly there. Another, and she was flying
Pau only laughed, settled in, and kept going.
And the whole of the world narrowed down to the pace he set. The way his strong hands wrapped around her legs to keep her in place as he plunged deep inside her, sending her spinning out with no focus at all but the fire in his dark gaze.
Like they were one. Like there was nothing between them, nor ever could be, but this connection. This heat. This wildfire that had been theirs from the very start.
It was the opposite of loneliness. It was an intense searching, a communion, a new wholeness.
When she broke again, she screamed.
Pau heard her and it seemed to inflame him, because his thrusts became less measured, less sure. He pulled her legs apart and came down between them, holding himself up on his elbows so that he was not crushing her belly.
It was so deep, so perfect, sogoodthat she felt herself shoot back up to that precipice. And when he released himself deep inside her with a roar, she felt the scalding heat of it, and joined him.
Leontina woke again in the gloom of the predawn. For a moment, she didn’t know what woke her. She felt disoriented until she saw Pau sitting at the end of the bed, his head bent down.
She felt scraped hollow then, as she watched him. And she didn’t know why she didn’t reach out. Why she didn’t tell him she was awake.
He looked so lonely. He looked the way she sometimes felt, and the way she so deeply had not felt yesterday that it actually hurt her to think it was possible that he could feel that way right now.
Maybe she was frozen into staying still.
Whatever it was, Leontina didn’t move until he got up—eventually—and padded silently out of her room. She didn’t move until she heard his footsteps fade away, down the hallway, headed back across the old house again.
