‘Now,’ he drawled, sinking onto the bed, ‘remind me where we were…Oh, yes…How could I forget…?’ He parted her legs, positioned himself between them, hoisted them over his shoulders so that he was surrounded by her and, when he breathed, he breathed in the honeyed sweetness of her femininity. The way she gasped softly, as if she couldn’t help the little noises emanating from her, as if she had no control over them, was a massive turn-on for him. How could she try and push him away when they both knew that this was what they both craved?
He tasted her thoroughly and then, temporarily sated, he made his way up her body until she couldn’t stand it any longer and pushed his head to her breasts, which were heavy and aching.
She had to stuff her dainty little bed cushion over her mouth to stop herself from crying out as he drew one tender nipple into his mouth and began suckling on it, tugging it tenderly, then resuming his suckling. When she reached out to touch her other nipple, he pushed her hand away so that he could switch breasts. Gazing down with hot, drowsy eyes, she could see the glistening trail his mouth left across her breasts and she closed her eyes again, luxuriating wantonly as he devoted his undivided attention to her other swollen nipple while teasing the dampness between her legs with his fingers.
‘Feel good?’ He looked up and his smouldering eyes locked on hers. Bethany nodded like a puppet obeying its master’s controlling hand. Worse, she had no qualms of conscience about what she was doing.
She just wanted him on her, in her and with her.
He pulled her up to him when his body could no longer be restrained and then she was on top of him. Cristiano, relinquishing control, grunted as she began moving restlessly on his erection. Her breasts swayed as she moved faster and harder, driving down on him until he could bear it no longer and he groaned with a long shuddering release. He could feel her body stiffening and arching as the waves of her orgasm carried her away. Looking at her during her moment of release, the way the colour flooded her face and her eyes fluttered tightly, was enough to have him stir again in her and she sagged onto him, smiling.
‘Aren’t you
ever
satisfied?’ she asked, stroking his chest with one finger.
‘When it comes to you, it would appear not. Do you feel the same way?’ His voice was lazy but his eyes were sharp as he looked down at her face against his chest.
When she nodded his satisfaction was like a shot of adrenalin.
‘Good. I’m glad because this is the way it should be. Once you stop fighting me, you can start enjoying the fact that I’m going to be a permanent fixture in your life. If you don’t want to marry me, then I’ll respect that but know that we are still going to be together.’
‘Your pregnant mistress?’ There was a lump in her throat which she swallowed down.
‘I prefer not to use labels when it comes to relationships,’ Cristiano said, kissing her unruly hair. ‘Especially when the label is
friend.
That’s the one label I think you’ll agree is now totally irrelevant…’
C
RISTIANO
had never, personally, involved himself in the tedious pastime of buying presents for women. Firstly, he didn’t have time to waste dithering in shops, peering at items of jewellery and asking sales assistants for help. Secondly, he could think of nothing more soul-destroying than trying to rack his brains and come up with a suitable present for any woman. No, this was where his faithful PA had always come into her own. A woman buying for another woman. Made sense.
For the past six weeks, however, he had ditched the PA in favour of the personal touch and had found the exercise a lot less arduous than he had expected. In fact…he had discovered that there was a great deal of enjoyment to be had browsing in the shops for things that would put a smile on Bethany’s face. She had quirky tastes. Having made the initial mistake of buying her jewellery, which all women presumably loved, incredibly expensive jewellery with superwatt diamonds, only to find his present politely accepted and then equally politely returned, he had revised his ideas. She didn’t care for jewellery, she said, especially expensive jewellery.
‘I just bet this is the sort of stuff you’re accustomed to
giving your girlfriends,’ she had shrewdly remarked, and then had given a snort of disgust when he had defended himself on the grounds that he had never had anything returned to sender.
‘Why is it,’ she had asked, ‘that rich men never feel the need to be imaginative?’
Cristiano, who had never failed to rise to a challenge, had become imaginative.
He had taken her to weird plays in fringe theatres, had bought her a first edition book by an Italian author which was over five hundred pages long, although he had asserted himself sufficiently to tell her that there was no way he was going to be reading it, even if he
did
speak Italian fluently, because if he couldn’t get to sleep then he’d rather try his luck with a sleeping pill. But she had loved it and it had thrilled him to watch her face warm with pleasure.
He had given in to her ridiculous infatuation with a stuffed dog the size of a sofa which she had seen in Harrods and hadn’t been offended when she had laughed at his scepticism and told him that he was a grumpy old man.
It seemed that there was very little she could do that offended him except for one little thing. That one tiny bump in the satisfactory progress of their relationship, namely the fact that she refused point-blank to marry him. Indeed, she had refused to move in with him, even though he had enumerated all the reasons, yet again, why it made sense, throwing into the mix the fact that they were now sleeping together; at least there was no more talk of
just being friends
. Cristiano couldn’t understand it. If he was prepared to make the sacrifice, then why couldn’t she? The more he had argued, the more she had dug her dainty little heels in but he had not given up. He simply resolved to get what he wanted via a more circuitous route.
Having never had to woo a woman, his attempts had not always met with resounding success. A constant conveyor belt of expensive meals out had met with a brick wall. So staying in had become the preferred option. And the kitchen, she had informed him, was a shared domain. She had bought him a recipe book and he had clumsily found himself cooking the occasional meal while he had wondered what his mother would have made of the arrangement.
Details such as those he had tactfully omitted when he had broken the news to his family. He had glossed over the lack of marriage, vaguely hinting at it as something that would happen
down the line
. He may even have let slip that Bethany was keen to walk down the aisle
after
she had given birth, when she had regained her figure. His mother had bought it but he still hoped to avoid learning what Bethany would make of that little white lie. It made no difference that the size and volume of her own lies would have put his tiny insignificant one in the shade.
Cristiano put this level of concern about her down to the fact that she was carrying his child. Under normal circumstances there was no question that things would have turned out very differently. He would have confronted her, as befitting any man who didn’t like being duped. Had she not been pregnant, she would never have been able to gain the luxury of the moral high ground. The pregnancy had been the ace up her sleeve. Without it, she would doubtless have been duly repentant, would probably have thrown herself at his mercy and from that point, who knew what would have happened? It was highly likely that he would have exorcised her out of his system and returned to life as he had always known it.
As it stood, memories of his previous life seemed to belong in a very distant place.
He shopped. He was fascinated by her rapidly expanding stomach and the football games that seemed to take place inside it. He had read, cover to cover, a book on what to expect when you were expecting, which had a lot more allure, much to his bemusement, than his usual evening pastime of working. He thought about her when she wasn’t with him. It seemed unnatural but he had grown to accept it.
Despite the cataclysmic change to his lifestyle, Cristiano was proud of the way he had handled the situation.
He rang the doorbell of her apartment. It was more and more ludicrous with each passing day that this was the arrangement that existed between them. Although he had settled her into the closest apartment to his that he could lay his hands on, the fact that she not only refused to marry him, for reasons which defied logic and which he couldn’t begin to fathom, but insisted on separate living arrangements was a constant source of low-level dissatisfaction.
No one could tell him that she didn’t enjoy sleeping with him, in positions that were frankly ingenious, taking into account her advancing pregnancy, and with penetration not always on the cards. He knew women and she wasn’t faking it.
He had tactfully stopped trying to bludgeon her into an answer that made sense to him, but it still played on his mind constantly. Was this her way of keeping her options open? Was she deluded enough to think that she wasn’t tied to him now? Did she really think that she could temporarily appease him, have the baby and then resume her hunt for Mr Perfect?
He was so busy scowling at the train of his thoughts that it was a few seconds before he realised that she hadn’t answered the door and, at a little after seven, he couldn’t think of any reason why she should be out.
He had been away for the past two days but he had spoken to her several times on the phone and she knew that he was coming over. So where the hell was she? He buzzed the bell again, this time more insistently, and at the lack of response immediately dialled her mobile. It was the most up to the minute mobile and one he had bought for her when she had moved down to London with him because he had been worried that her ancient cellphone might cut out at any given time when he might need to get in touch with her or vice versa.
He let it ring a few times, killed the connection and tried again. Worry was beginning to kick in. He raked his fingers through his hair. His instinct to break down the door was swiftly replaced by the realisation that there wasn’t a hope in hell of him achieving that. The door was as solid as a slab of lead. In fact, he had had a new, exceptionally robust one put in to replace the flimsier original because, in London, you just never knew. He cursed his foresight, tried her phone again and was about to hit Plan B, which involved a locksmith, when she answered in a voice he barely recognised.
‘Where are you?’ was his opening demand.
‘I’m here!’ Bethany croaked. The doorbell had failed to wake her but the shrill ringing of her mobile had done the job. She glanced at her bedside clock and realised that she had been sleeping off and on for most of the day and into the evening.
‘Where’s
here
?’
‘Here! In the apartment!’
‘Then why the hell haven’t you answered the door? And what’s the matter with your voice?’ He was aware of the locks being turned as he finished asking his questions and the worry which had come from nowhere and which had been dispelled the minute she had picked up her mobile
slammed back into him as he took in her deathly white pallor, the shadows under her eyes and her tousled hair.
He stared down at her and panic, an emotion that was alien to him, hit him like a freight train at full speed.
‘I don’t feel very well.’ Bethany stated the obvious as she turned and began heading back to the bedroom.
Having come straight from the airport, Cristiano grabbed his overnight bag and followed her, dumping his stuff on the ground. His heart was beating fast—too fast.
‘I just need to sleep.’ Bethany flopped down onto the bed and curled up under the quilt, pulling it over her head so that only her bright copper hair was visible on the pillow.
‘Forget sleep. You need a doctor.’ Cristiano flipped open his phone while he gently pulled down the covers so that he could feel her face. ‘You’re burning up. Why the hell didn’t you get in touch with me?’ He paused briefly to say something rapidly down the phone in Italian before snapping shut his cellphone so that he could devote one hundred per cent of his attention to her.
‘You were fine when I spoke to you last night!’ he told her accusingly and Bethany shot him a baleful look.
‘I don’t need a doctor, Cristiano.’
‘Let
me
do the deciding on this one.’
‘It’s just a cold! A twenty-four hour bug.’ She groaned and tried to submerge herself back into her warm cocoon under the duvet but he was having none of it. ‘I just need to rest. And I was fine yesterday. I just got up this morning feeling a bit off-colour…’
‘I spoke to you this morning and you didn’t say anything.’
‘You were in New York, Cristiano. What could you have done? You might think that you’re capable of everything but you’re not Superman. You couldn’t have put on a red cape and flown across the Atlantic.’
‘That’s not the point.’
Bethany grunted indistinctly.
‘I deserve to be kept abreast of your health at all times.’ The thought of her alone in this apartment, too ill to drag herself out of bed, engendered a feeling of sick anxiety that bordered on the physical. ‘You’re pregnant,’ he finished, standing up so that he could pace the room while cursing his friend for not already having arrived. Hadn’t he told the man to get over to the apartment
immediately
?
The warm glow that had filled her at Cristiano’s obvious concern dissipated like mist on a summer day. Of course he was concerned! He was concerned because she was pregnant, because she was carrying his precious cargo. The past few weeks had lulled her into a false sense of security, had seduced her into thinking that his solicitousness had been about
her.
Now those two words were a timely reminder that Cristiano only ever acted with an agenda and the agenda was about coaxing her into his way of thinking, about getting her to the point where she agreed to every proposition he ventured. She had stuck it out with insisting on having her own place, thinking that the formality of the arrangement would ensure a certain amount of essential emotional distance between them. She hadn’t banked on the way he had managed to creep under all her defences.
He went shopping at the supermarket with her and he didn’t complain. He bought her little things and she knew that thought had gone into the purchases. Twice he had cooked with the aid of the recipe book she had bought for him and, although the end results had borne no resemblance to the colourful, glossy pictures on the pages, he had tried. Again, without complaint. Most noticeably, he had
just been around
. She had no point of comparison on that score, but she would have put money on him being the sort of guy who
always, but always, put his work ahead of everything and everyone. But he had been as regular as clockwork with her, there at the apartment by early evening, except on the occasions when he had been abroad for a couple of days and when he
had
been abroad he had called with unnerving regularity.
It had taken Herculean efforts to maintain her defences in the face of this aggressively silent onslaught but she had managed to convince herself that she had succeeded. What a fool she had been! Her crushing disappointment at the realisation that everything he had said and done had been because of their situation rather than because of
her
was ample proof that there was nothing reasonable or containable about her love.
She peeped at him from under her lashes. The sight of him literally took her breath away. It was shameful to admit, but he brought out the driven and the obsessed in her. In the middle of staring at him, he paused in his restless pacing to lock gleaming eyes on her.
‘I can see that my trips abroad are going to have to be put on hold until the baby’s born.’ Cristiano never thought he’d see the day when his working life would take a back seat to a woman, but it appeared that that day had come. He needed to know that she was all right at all times and he knew that if he set foot out of the country then it would play at the back of his mind, like a record stuck in a groove, that some catastrophe or other might have happened about which she was keeping silent to spare him the inconvenience.
She was so obstinate and independent, despite the fact that he had managed to coerce her into moving back to London and for a few disconcerting seconds it occurred to Cristiano that those traits in her were less than ideal.
He didn’t want her obstinacy, nor did he value her independence.
He had always abhorred clingy, needy women but right at that moment he couldn’t think of anything more rewarding than having her in a position where she would automatically turn to him for support in any crisis.
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
In less than two strides, Cristiano was by the side of the bed. He didn’t want to stress her out but it was suddenly imperative that he made her aware of his concerns, his
very reasonable
concerns.
‘I’m not being ridiculous, Bethany. I’m being sensible. One of us has to be.’
Bethany gave an elaborate sigh that turned into a yawn. ‘And naturally that role falls to you.’