Billionaire, M.D.

that extent to achieve what he considered a highest cause, the stability of his child’s family life, Rodrigo wouldn’t. He was too honorable.

Even when he’d kept the truth about their baby’s paternity from her, he’d done it only to protect her, had been willing to never proclaim his baby as his own flesh and blood, to preserve the illusion he’d thought essential to her well-being.

She made a grab for the papers, sprang off the bed and ran to him, grabbed one of his hands as he started buttoning up his shirt, tears of humility and contrition and heart-piercing adoration pouring from her very soul to scorch down her cheeks. “Those papers are your I’m-free-to-come-back-to-you-of-my-own-free-will gesture, right?”

He seemed to struggle to stop himself. He lost the fight, reached out with his other hand, wiped away her tears, cupped her cheek, his face the embodiment of tenderness. “They’re not a gesture. You are free. And you must not consider me in your decision. You’re not responsible for how I feel.” Exactly the opposite of what Mel and her family had done to her. They’d made her feel responsible for their feelings toward her, guilty of inciting Mel’s pathological possessiveness or their equally unnatural negligence. “In time, if you become satisfied that I am what you need, what will make you happy, come back to me. If you don’t, then sign those papers and send them back to me instead. The other documents should prove you are in no way pressured to make the best of it for anybody else’s sake but yours.”

And she revealed her last and biggest fear. “W-what if in time you decide I’m not what you need?”

He huffed a harsh laugh, as if she were asking if he might one day fly under his own power. Certainty solidified in her every cell as she grinned up at him with sudden unbridled ecstasy. Then the rest of his words registered. “The other documents…”

She looked through the papers, found those with the heading that had triggered her crazy doubt that he’d take the baby.

Custody papers. Giving away his parental rights. To her. Unconditionally. She’d choose if he was part of his baby’s life.

She stared at the words, their meaning too huge to take in.

Her eyes flew dazedly up to his solemn ones. “Why?”

“Because without you, nothing is worth having, not even my child. Because I trust you not to deprive him of my love even if you decide to end our marriage. Because I want you to be totally free to make that decision if you need to, without fearing you’ll lose your baby, or become embroiled in a custody case. Because I need to know that if you come back to me, you do it not out of need or gratitude or for our baby’s best interests, but because it’s in your best interests. Because you want me.”

Then he turned away, looking like a man who had nothing to look forward to but waiting for an uncertain verdict.

She flew after him, joy and distress tearing at her. She wrenched him around, jumped on him, climbed him, wrapped herself around him and squeezed him as if she’d merge them. His shuddering groan quaked through her as he hugged her back, crushed her to him, his arms trembling his relief.

She covered his face and neck and anything she could reach of him in tear-drenched kisses and wept. “I don’t just want you! I worship you, I crave and adore and love you far more than life. And it’s not out of need or gratitude. Not the way you fear. I don’t need you to survive, but I need you to be alive. I’m grateful you exist, and a few light years beyond that that you love me, too. I don’t deserve you or that you should feel the same for me. I-I hurt you and mistrusted you and it doesn’t matter that I was reeling from the shock of the regained memories and the revelations-”

His lips crushed the rest of her outburst in savage kisses. Then she was on the bed again, on her back, filled with him as he drove into her, growled to her again and again that he believed her and in her, and she screamed and sobbed her relief and gratitude and love and pleasure.

It was hours before that storm abated and she lay over him, free of doubt or worry, of gravity and physical limitations.

She told him, “You make me feel-limitless, just like what I feel for you. But you are too much, give too much. It would have been criminal to have all this without paying in advance with some serious misery and heartache. I love the fates that tossed me around only to land me in your lap, and by some miracle make you love me, too. I just adore every bit of misfortune and unhappiness I had that now make me savor every second of what we share all the more.”

Rodrigo swept Cybele with caresses, agreed to every word she said. They were the exact ones that filled his being. He did believe they wouldn’t have come to share this purity and intensity without surviving so many tests and…

He shot up, his nerves going haywire.

Under his palm. He’d felt it.

“The baby…” he choked. “He moved.” And for the first time since he’d shed tears over his mother’s death, his tears flowed. With too much love, pride and gratitude.

She pushed him onto his back, rained frantic kisses all over his face. “No, please-I can’t bear seeing your tears, even ones of joy.” That only made the tears flow thicker. After moments of panting consternation, wickedness replaced the stricken look on her face and she attacked him with tickling.

He guffawed and flopped her onto her back, imprisoning what he swore were electricity-and magic-wielding hands over her head with one of his, his other returning the sensual torment.

She squirmed under his hand, nuzzled his chest. “I can’t wait to have our baby. And I can’t wait to have another one. One we’ll make as we lose ourselves in love and pleasure, flesh in flesh.”

“This one was made of our love…well, my love, at least.”

She nipped him. “Yeah, I have to make up for my initial lack of participation in the love department. But from now on, I’m sharing everything with you. And not only about our baby. I want to be involved in everything you do, your research, your surgeries…” The radiant animation on her face faltered. “Uh-that came out as if I’ll hound your every step…”

He squeezed her, cutting short her mortification, laughter booming out of his depths. “Oh, please, do. Gives me an excuse to hound yours.” Then he grew serious. “But I know exactly how you meant it. I want you involved in everything I do, too. I’ve never felt more stimulated, more empowered, more satisfied with my work than when you were there with me. And then there’s every other instance when I see or feel or think anything, and it isn’t right, isn’t complete until I share it with you, knowing you’re the only one who’ll understand, appreciate.”

She attacked him with another giggling, weeping kiss that almost extracted his soul. Then she raised a radiant face, gestured for him to stay where he was.

He watched her bounce out of bed to rummage in her suitcase. He hardened to steel again, licking at the lingering taste of her on his lips as she walked back, ripe and tousled and a little awkward, all the effects of his love and loving, short-and long-term ones. She was holding something behind her back, impishness turning her beauty from breathtaking to heartbreaking.

“Close your eyes.” He chuckled, obeyed at once. He couldn’t wait to “see” what she had in store for him.

Her weight dipped the mattress. Then he almost came off it.

She was licking him. All over his chest and abdomen.

He growled, tried to hold her head closer, thrusting at her, offering all of him for her delicate devouring.

“Keep those lethal weapons of yours closed.”

He did, his heart almost rattling the whole bed in anticipation. Then he felt a sting on his chest.

The tail end of the sensation was a lance of pleasure that corkscrewed to his erection. It slammed against his abdomen. Air left his lungs on a bellow of stimulation.

Another sting followed. Then another and another, on a path of fiery pain and pleasure down his body. He’d never felt anything like this sourceless manipulation of his sensations. He could swear she wasn’t touching him, was pricking each individual nerve cluster mentally.

He thrust at her, incoherent with arousal, his growls becoming those of a beast in a frenzy. He at last thrust his hands into her hair, tugged until she moaned with enjoyment.

“Tell me to open my eyes,” he panted the order, the plea.