He wanted to shrug her off, to tell her he didn’t need any clumsy attempts at sympathy—but the words remained unspoken, the gesture never made. He could smell her clean, soapy scent and right then she seemed to embody all the virtues he’d never really associated with the women in his life.
Innocence.
Decency.
Kindness.
Suddenly a tension which had been coiled so tightly inside him started unravelling, like a line spinning wildly from the fisherman’s rod. Something he hadn’t even realised had been stretched to breaking point now snapped and he held her tightly, losing himself in an embrace so close that you couldn’t have fitted a hair between them.
He told himself it was desire.
Because it was desire. What else could it be? The powerful beat of his heart and the low clench of heat were familiar enough, but his urgent need to possess her was off the scale. With one hand he hooked the back of her neck and brought her face down to his, revelling in that first sweet taste of her lips as her satiny hair spilled over his hands. He deepened the kiss and deepened it still more, until she was writhing around on his lap—her lack of panties instantly apparent from the syrupy wetness which was seeping into his jeans.
‘Unzip me,’ he urged throatily.
Instantly, she complied, although her fingers were trembling and it took some careful manoeuvring before he was free, and then at last he lowered her down onto his aching shaft, a ragged groan escaping from his lips as he filled her.
She rode him. She rode him as if she had been born to do just that. Was it instinct which made her so proficient at that age-old rhythm? Because it certainly wasn’t experience. Yet she seemed to read him so well. As if she knew exactly when he wanted her to pull the borrowed sweater over her head so that he could drink in every second of her partial striptease and the luscious bounce of her breasts. She shook her hair, so that it moved around her bare shoulders like a shiny ripple of wheat. And then he was coming and so was she. Coming and coming and coming...and it was like no orgasm he’d ever experienced.
His shout of exclamation—or was it exultation?—was harsh. Imprecise. His body bucked helplessly beneath her. And when it was over she didn’t say a word, and he was glad. He didn’t want her attempting to give meaning to what had just taken place. Because it had no meaning. It was just a manifestation of their extraordinary physical chemistry.
He stirred, wanting to put a little distance between them. Needing space to order his befuddled thoughts. ‘Don’t you think maybe it’s time for dessert?’
‘But there isn’t...’ Her breath was warm against his neck, her words soporific and slightly slurred. ‘I’m afraid there isn’t any dessert.’
He pulled back from her and frowned. ‘Really? I thought you brought cake with you?’
Unwillingly stirred from her sleepy state, Hollie stared back at him in confusion, suddenly remembering the wretched cake which Janette had insisted on commissioning. ‘You really want cake now?’
‘Why not?’
Why not? She hadn’t wanted to present it to him at the time and she was even less inclined to do so now, because it seemed to symbolise some of the things which had been so out of kilter between them. It reminded her of the speed with which he’d left her bed and the way he’d distanced himself afterwards. Worst of all was the memory of his reaction to her pregnancy when he’d been so angry and cold. And she was slightly irritated that he’d asked for it now, because it was hardly the most romantic way to end what had just been the most erotic encounter of her life. But Maximo doesn’t do romance, she reminded herself fiercely. He does sex. And that’s all he does. Better think about that before you start fabricating any more foolish dreams about him.
‘Of course. How could I have forgotten? I’ll go and fetch it,’ she said, sliding from his lap and plucking his sweater from the floor, before wriggling it over her head. After a detour to the bathroom she hunted down the cake, and when she walked back into the library, she found Maximo still sitting at the table, seemingly lost in thought as he stared across the room at the crackling fire. He looked up as she put the cake on the table, but his expression was shadowed and indecipherable—their mood of lazy sensuality seemingly broken. She wanted to cut him a slice before he had seen it, but he had risen from his seat to look over her shoulder, at the Spanish word for congratulations, which she had laboriously piped onto the white icing.
‘“Felicidades,”’ he read slowly, and then pointed to a fuzzy-looking shape beside the word. ‘And what’s this?’
Did he guess it was a teardrop, which had fallen straight onto the coloured icing at a critical moment? Yesterday she might have concocted some flimsy excuse and told him that she’d been trying to create a star, but not today. Because he had told her stuff. He’d confided in her. Hard, painful stuff. He’d let his guard down, presumably because he’d felt as if, on some level, he could trust her. So maybe she should trust him, too. And besides, it wasn’t as if they had any shared illusions about the future which could be tarnished by the truth, was it?
‘It was a tear,’ she admitted, meeting the seeking expression in his black eyes with a shrug. ‘I was feeling a bit sorry for myself.’
‘But you’re not now?’
‘No, I’m not. There’s no point. If life gives you lemons, you just have to make lemonade.’
Maximo took the slice she offered him, breaking off a fragment and putting it in his mouth so that it melted in a sugary rush against his tongue. He thought about the days which had led up to this moment, and the days which would follow. His mind began to compose an agenda, just like when he took on a new business deal and had to deal with facts methodically. Whatever happened he would support his child financially—in a way in which his own father had never supported him.
Just financially?
He stared across the table at Hollie, who was studiously picking frosting off her own piece of cake, though not actually eating any. And suddenly he realised that, despite all her outward simplicity, the package she presented was way more complex than he’d first imagined.
He had been the first man to have had sex with her. The only man. That shouldn’t have meant anything but the truth was, it did. It made a primitive satisfaction pulse through his body. And although that realisation should have unsettled him, somehow it didn’t because it had shone a light onto something else he’d only just realised.
Going forward, he didn’t want her sleeping with other men. Just as he didn’t want his child calling another man Papi. Maybe his attitude could be described as possession but could also be described as pragmatism. Because if the lack of a father had cast dark clouds over his life, hadn’t she experienced something similar? And if that were the case, then wasn’t it comparatively easy for them to do something about it, to spare their own child a similar kind of heartache?