Power Play (The Billionaire's Club: New Orleans) (8 page)

Keeping her gaze locked to his, she watched the passion play across his beautiful features, watched him bite his lip as he slowly withdrew and then just as slowly reentered her. He repeated the exquisite movement, stealing her breath each time. She wrapped her arms and
legs tighter about him, moving against him, with him, cradling him with her body, giving him permission to let go. Let go he did, sinking down onto his elbows, molding his body to hers. He drove into her with sensual precision, speeding them both toward the peak of pleasure. Her orgasm ambushed her a heartbeat later. She came with a keening cry, caught up in a white-hot ecstasy that rocketed her up and out into a sea of transcendental delight. A heartbeat later Raphael shouted, slamming into her once, twice, three times before he came inside her still-spasming sheath.

* * *

Raphael had never come so hard or so long in his life. For a long moment he remained locked in place, hands tightly gripping the mattress as he pulsed deep inside Macy’s welcoming heat. The blissful expression she wore called to everything male in him, making him want to roar with satisfaction.

Shaken, he got up to get rid of the condom and clean himself up in the en suite bathroom. Wetting a washcloth, he returned to the bed to find Macy where he’d left her languidly sprawled in the center of the bed, eyes closed with a small smile curving her kiss-swollen lips.

Awed by her and her response, he tended to her. “Come back to me, angel,” he murmured, cradling her close. “Come on back now.”

She blinked at him, awareness returning slowly as she stretched like a kitten in his embrace. “Raphael,” she breathed, “that was … that was—”

“Mind-blowing. Incredible.” Unable to help himself, he kissed her softly, tasting her fully. “Beautiful.”

“Yeah. All of that.” She gave a soft laugh as she gazed up at him. “I think you killed me with orgasms. Pretty sure I heard angels singing at one point.”

“That was all you,” he said, turning them so she straddled his lap. “Music to my ears.”

She pressed a light kiss to his shoulder. “When can we do it again?”

His cock jerked at the thought of a repeat performance. “It’s still early yet. Do you think you’ll be up for more after dinner?”

“I don’t know. What about tomorrow?” she asked, then bit her bottom lip. “Will we have a tomorrow?”

Her uncertainty cut at him. He drew her closer, pressing his lips to the curve of her neck. “We’ll have tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that.”

He knew he shouldn’t promise something he wasn’t sure he was capable of delivering. But if his surging dick was any indication, he hadn’t had his fill of Macy Lovelace yet. If he was honest with himself, he knew he never would. He and Macy had belonged to each other since they were twelve. She was his, and he’d be damned if he’d let her share this with any other man ever again.

“Okay,” she said, and for a moment he wondered if he’d claimed her aloud. But she dropped her gaze, her hands knotted together between them. “Before we go any further, there’s something that I need to tell you.”

“That sounds serious.”

She pulled away to look at him, the brilliant green of her eyes dull with worry. “It is.”

“Maybe we should go see what we can do about dinner. You can tell me while we’re eating.”

She slid off him, then padded over to the bathroom. After a moment, she returned,
wearing a pale green robe that clung to her curves and had him hungry for other things besides food. Instead, he found his boxers, put them on, then followed her to the kitchen.

She directed him to her wine fridge, and he removed and uncorked a bottle of red while she busied herself with preparing the chicken marsala. Unease still slithered through him. What did she need to tell him that would cause her to be so nervous, and to make her avoid his gaze?

“Is there someone else?”

“What?”

“You said you hadn’t been with anyone since last year. That wasn’t true?” Not that it mattered. Anyone in her life right now besides him was on his way out of her life. He’d make sure of that.

“No. I mean yes.” She jumped when the microwave timer beeped. “I mean, there’s no one else. Not since last year, like I said.”

“Good.” He pressed a glass of wine into her hand. “Are you worried about being with me? I’ve always practiced safe sex. If you want me to give you a copy of my medical records, I will. I should have thought of that already.”

“Thank you for telling me, but no, I’m not thinking about that right now.” She took a gulp of her wine, then another before turning back to the cooktop. “Will you grab a couple of plates from that cabinet for me?”

“Sure.” He did as she directed, then watched her plate the chicken cutlets and vegetables. He carried the plates to the small dining set on the other side of the island while she grabbed the bottle of wine and their glasses before joining him.

As delicious as the food was, he was unable to find his appetite. Macy seemed to have the same problem, pushing bites of food around her plate instead of eating. Finally, he pushed his
plate away. “Talk to me, Macy.”

She reached up a hand to close the lapels of her robe more securely. That she sought to shield herself from him told him clearly that he wouldn’t like whatever it was that she needed to tell him.

“Don’t back away from me now, Mace,” he demanded, reaching out to snag her hand. “Not after what we just shared. Okay?”

She stared at their hands, at his thumb brushing over the pulse point on her wrist. “O-okay.”

For a long moment, she remained silent. Then she drew in a lungful of air as if fortifying herself before looking up at him, her gaze sad and uncertain. “Do you know why I got on that plane to Paris?”

“Yes.” He brushed a fiery curl back from her forehead. “You wanted to study at the only Le Cordon Bleu that mattered. It was what you’d dreamed of doing since we were kids. You had to go.”

“That was the reason at the beginning,” she said in agreement. “That wasn’t the reason at the end.”

The gravity of the inflection in her tone and the heaviness of her gaze gave him pause. He had to ask the question, but a part of him already dreaded the answer. “Then why?”

She gave up all pretense of eating and ran her free hand down one pale thigh. Despite the pleasure they’d shared, or maybe because of it, his body hardened with need and want. He was in the process of reaching for her with the intent of hauling her into his lap when her soft words stopped him cold. “Because you didn’t want me.”

He opened his mouth to protest but she pinned him with that soul-deep gaze, the one that
always saw through his bullshit. He knew then that nothing he’d done in the last week to woo her would be as important as what happened in the next few minutes.

“Macy,” he said, surprised when his voice cracked like it had when he was thirteen. “I wanted you. The problem was that I wanted you too much.”

“I know.” She nodded in understanding. “You may not remember, but I do.”

“Remember what?”

“How you swore that you’d never be like your father. That you’d never give your heart so completely to a woman that you’d lose yourself and your will to live without her.”

Ice slashed through his veins. He remembered shouting that late one night about three weeks after his father’s funeral. He hadn’t wanted to feel pain or grief, hadn’t wanted to feel anything other than Macy’s body wrapped around his. However, that night it had hit him. Though he’d been emotionally orphaned a decade earlier, the reality of losing his last family member had crashed down on him like an avalanche. Any hope he’d harbored that his father would shake off his lethargy and wake up and see him, see how much he’d needed him, had died along with the man.

“That was the night I realized it was over,” he told her in a tight voice. “Any dream I’d had of reconciling with my father, every deeply buried hope that he’d acknowledge me and show me some tiny scrap of fucking affection, died a brutal death that night.”

He tightened his grip on her hand. “My parents abandoned me because they loved each other so much there was nothing left over for their own son. I hated them both for that, but I hated him more because he had to know that I was hurting just as much as he was after Mom died. I hated that I could feel that much hate for someone who treated me with so much indifference.”

He reached out then, covering her hand on her knee with his own. “So you’re right when you say that I vowed to never be like my father. But you’re wrong—wholly and completely wrong—if you think I didn’t want you.”

Her gaze dropped to their hands. “Maybe you did,” she admitted, her voice a breath above a whisper. “I just don’t believe it was the same way I wanted you, especially when you didn’t ask me to stay. When we parted ways at the airport, it felt like … it felt like good-bye.”

He caught her chin with his free hand, tilting her head up so he could see her beautiful summer-green eyes. How had he ever thought he could stay away from her? “It wasn’t good-bye.”

“I know that. Now.”

“How did you feel about me, Macy?”

She shook her head, her flaming waves cascading down her back. “I-I’d rather not say,” she stammered out. “It was a long time ago.”

Unable to help himself, Raphael leaned forward, nuzzling the slender column of her neck, nibbling along her collarbone. “If it’s all in the past, then why not say? And if it’s something you think you could feel here and now, I want to hear it.”

Her chest rose and fell on a deep breath that captured all of his attention. “We’ve always been able to trust each other, Macy,” he whispered against the pulse beating wildly at the base of her throat. “We’ve always been safe with each other. You’ve trusted me with your hopes and dreams. You’ve trusted me with your body. Don’t you think you can trust me with your secrets too?”

Another deep breath, but this one sounded perilously close to a sob. He raised his head so that he could see her better. “Mace?”

To his absolute horror, she burst into tears.

He immediately hauled her onto his lap, caging her in his arms. “Don’t cry, sweetheart,” he crooned as he rocked her and ran a hand along her spine. “I didn’t mean to push you. You don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to.”

“I-I want to tell you,” she cried against his shoulder. “I need to tell you. I’ve been trying to all week, but I just couldn’t get the words out.”

“Tell me what, sweetheart?”

“What happened in Paris. Why I disappeared.”

Tension coiled in the pit of his stomach. Finally. The answer to the question he hadn’t dared asked though the need to know burned through him like bad whiskey. Recognizing that she was close to losing it again but needing to know, he pitched his voice as soft as he could. “What happened, Macy? Did someone hurt you?”

That someone would die, no matter how long it took for Raphael to hunt him down. He was sure he could get Gabriel to help.

“No,” she whispered. “No one hurt me in Paris.”

“Then why did you disappear?”

“I was pregnant!”

His mind and body froze with shock as her words hit him. “Pregnant?”

“Y-yes.”

Christ. He loosened his hold on her, staring blankly as she slid off his lap and to her feet. His heart thudded sluggishly in his chest as he struggled to make sense of her words. Macy, pregnant in Paris. That meant there was a chance that he’d been the one who’d gotten her pregnant, despite how careful they’d been. But she would have told him, wouldn’t she? She
wouldn’t have kept something so world-changing from him.

His gut clenched. “Was I— Am I—”

“Yes,” she confessed, her voice thick with tears. “I found out about two months after I got there. I-I tried to reach you, but I couldn’t.”

Raphael stumbled to his feet with a groan, shoving his hands into his hair as pain and grief and guilt assaulted him. Macy had been alone and pregnant in Paris while he’d been running, shedding his responsibilities so he could get lost in Muay Thai. She’d been alone and hurting and trying to reach him, and he hadn’t been there for her.

“Wait. You couldn’t reach me? What do you mean, you couldn’t— God. Two months after you left, I turned the company back over to the interim CEO, sold the house, and disappeared into Thailand. But I went to Paris first. I couldn’t find you. I called your father, thinking you’d been abducted or something. He said you were fine, but you didn’t want to see me.”

Old anger stirred, anger he’d tried to bury for years. He’d needed her, needed to see someone who’d believed in him, who’d supported him unconditionally. But she hadn’t. She’d turned her back on him, and she’d been pregnant. With his child.

“You were carrying my baby, and you didn’t want to see me?” he roared. “You know how things were with my dad. How could you keep something like this from me?”

She flinched in the face of his anger, huddling in her robe. “I thought you didn’t want me. I tried to reach you when I found out. I tried your mobile phone but it was disconnected. I tried your old apartment and your father’s house.” She swallowed audibly. “I called JerTech, but no one there would give me any information on you, nor would they put me through to you. Finally I gave up. I thought … I thought you’d ordered them not to.”

His chest tightened. Was he a father? Had he been a father for the last eight years and hadn’t known? Had she given up their child for adoption and never intended to let him know?

Pain and anger seared his vision. It didn’t matter. He had money, he had resources. If his child were out there, he would move heaven and earth to find him. There was no way in hell he’d let a child of his think his birth parents had abandoned him.

He straightened, clamping his hands onto her biceps. For several heartbeats he had to focus only on breathing until he quelled the bitterness. “Where is he? What happened to our child?”

Another sob tore from her. “I lost the baby. I was in the hospital when you came to Paris.”

I lost the baby
.

Pain blasted through his chest, followed swiftly by a dull roar that numbed his brain and dulled his senses. Dimly he was aware of jerking away from her, walking past her and heading for the bedroom, stumbling a bit as heat and cold and grief and rage all battled for domination inside him, desperate for an outlet. All he knew was that he had to get out before he exploded.