Rodrigo read the note until he felt the words begin to burn a brand into his retinas, his brain.
After all the lies and manipulations she’d been victim to, she had every right to distrust his emotions and motives toward her. From her standpoint, he could be saying and doing whatever it took to get his son.
But he’d prove his sincerity if it was the last thing he did.
If he lost her, it just might be.
Twenty-four hours later, he stood outside her hotel room door, feeling he’d aged twenty-four years.
She opened the door, looking as miserable as he felt.
All he wanted was to take her in his arms, kiss her until she was incoherent with desire, but he knew that might only prove to her that he was manipulating her even worse than Mel had.
He never gambled. But he’d never known true desperation, either. Now a gamble, with potentially catastrophic results, was the last resort he had left.
Without a word, he handed her the divorce papers.
Cybele’s heart stopped, felt it would never beat again.
She’d made a desperate gamble. And lost. She’d owed him the choice, the freedom to have his baby without remaining her husband. She’d prayed he’d choose to be with her anyway.
He hadn’t. He was giving her proof, now that she’d assured him he’d always have his son, that he’d rather be free of her.
Then her eyes fell on the heading of one of the papers.
Before the dread fully formed inside her mind, it spilled from her lips. “You won’t take the baby away, will you? Any court in the world would give you custody, I know, but please don’t-”
He grimaced as if she’d stabbed him. “Cybele,
Mortification swallowed her whole. “No…no-oh, God. But I-I don’t
“Let me explain.” His hands descended on her shoulders.
“No.” She staggered around before his grip could tighten. She couldn’t hear that he cared, but not enough to remain married to her. She fumbled for a pen by the hotel’s writing pad. The papers slid from her hands, scattered across the desk. Fat tears splashed over the blurring lines that mimicked the chaos inside her. “After I sign these papers, I want a couple of days. I’ll call you when I’m thinking straight again and we can discuss how we handle things from now on.”
His hands clamped the top of her arms, hauled her back against the living rock of his body. She struggled to escape, couldn’t bear the agony his feel, his touch, had coursing in hers.
He pressed her harder to his length. She felt his hardness digging into her buttocks, couldn’t understand.
He still wanted her? But if he was divorcing her, then all the hunger she’d thought only she could arouse in him had just been the insatiable sexual appetite of the hot-blooded male that he was. And now…what? Her struggles were arousing him?
All thought evaporated as his lips latched onto her neck, drew on her flesh, wrenching her desire, her very life force with openmouthed kisses and suckles. She tried to twist away, but he lifted her off the ground, carried her to the wall, spread her against it and pinned her there with his bulk, his knee driven between her thighs, his erection grinding against her belly.
He caught her lower lip in a growling bite, sucked and pulled on it until she cried out, opened wide for him. Then he plunged, took, gave, tongue and teeth and voracity. Wave after wave of readiness flooded her core. She squirmed against him, everything disintegrating with her need to crawl under his skin, take him into hers. His fingers found her under her panties, probed her to a screeching climax. Then she begged for him.
In a few moments and moves, he gave her more than she could take, all of him, driving inside her drenched, clenching tightness. Pleasure detonated from every inch of flesh that yielded to the invasion of the red-hot satin of his thickness and length. He powered into her, poured driven words in an inextricable mix of English and Catalan, of love and lust and unbearable pleasure into her gasping mouth as his thrusting tongue ravaged her with possession and mindlessness.
Pleasure reverberated inside her with each thrust, each word, each melding kiss, like the rushing and receding of a tide gone mad. It all gathered, towered, held at its zenith like a tidal wave before the devastating crash. Then the blows of release hit like those of a giant hammer, striking her core again and again, expanding shock waves that razed her, wrung her around his girth in contractions so violent they fractured breath and heartbeats. She clung to him in the frenzy, inside and out as if she’d assimilate him, dissolve around him. Then she felt him roar his release as he jammed his erection to her womb, jetting his pleasure to fill it, causing another wave to crash over her, shattering her with the power of the sensations, of wishing that they’d make a baby this way in the future. When they didn’t have one…
She came back to awareness to find him beneath her on the bed, still hard and pulsating inside her, setting off mini quakes that kept her in a state of continuous orgasm.
A question wavered from her in a scratchy rasp. “So was that goodbye sex?”
He jerked beneath her. “You go out of your way to pick the exact words that will cut me deepest, don’t you?”
And she wailed, “What else could it be?”
“It was you-turn-me-into-a-raging-beast-in-perpetual-mating-frenzy sex. It was I-can’t-have-enough-of-your- pleasure-and-your-intimacy lovemaking.” Every word flowed over her like a balm on a wound, drowning the doubt demons who whispered he was just over-endowed and would enjoy any sexually voracious female. “Not that that excuses what I did. I didn’t come here intending to take you like that. I was resolved not to confuse issues. But I saw you about to sign those papers and almost burst an artery.”
Her lips twitched in spite of her confusion. “Glad the pressure found another outlet.” She relived the moments when it had, splashing against her inner walls, filling her with his scalding essence, mixing with her pleasure… But…wait a sec! “But you
He rose onto his elbow, looked at her with the last trace of heavy-lidded male possession vanishing, that bleakness taking over his eyes. “I want a bullet between the eyes more.” She gasped, the thought of anything happening to him paralyzing her with terror. “But since I can’t prove that to you by words or lovemaking, and you have every right not to accept either as proof, after all the lies that almost cost you your mind and your very life, I’m down to action. And the proof of time.”
He extricated himself from her, rose off the bed, walked to gather the papers and came back to lay them beside her.
Before she could say she didn’t want any proof, just wanted to be his, if he really wanted her, he turned and gathered his clothes.
She sat up shakily as he started dressing, his movements stiff, his face clenched with that intensity she now believed betrayed his turmoil. And finally, she understood. Just as she’d given him the freedom to divorce her, the divorce papers were his proof that she was equally free. Even if he’d rather end his life than lose her, he was letting her go, if it meant her peace of mind. Oh, God…
She’d caused him so much pain, even if inadvertently. Then, when he’d told her how long and how much he’d been hurting, she’d added indelible insult to injury when she’d imposed her distrust of those who’d blighted her life with letdowns, who'd made her doubt that she was deserving of love, as pretext to condemn his motivations.
But a man who wanted only his child wouldn’t have done one thousandth of the things he’d done for her. He would never have said he loved her, would rather die than lose her. And even if any other man might have lied to
