The Spanish Billionaire’s Pregnant Wife

kiln must be arduous-however, if you were prepared to have one of the estate workers helping you with the more demanding tasks, I would have no objection.’

‘Okay,’ Molly conceded to that arrangement with reluctance as he laid her down on the bed and took off her shoes for her. ‘But I need my own corner to work in. Will your family mind me being a potter?’

Leandro paused at the door. ‘It’s none of their business.’

Some of Molly’s tension ebbed at that reassuringly independent response. ‘Your mother and eldest sister don’t like me.’

‘Give them the time to get to know you,’ Leandro advised. ‘You don’t have much experience of how families operate, do you?’

Molly stiffened defensively. ‘I lived in a family for the first nine years of my life-before my mother died and my grandmother gave me up for adoption,’ she explained when he frowned in surprise. ‘There was me, my mother and my older sister…except my sister was more like my mother because she’s the only person I can remember looking after me when I was very young-’

‘I forgot that you had a sister. Where is she now?’

‘I don’t know. I sort of closed the door on that bit of my life and I’m not sure I would want to open it again,’ she confided, thinking of the hurt she still felt at that rejection and the wrenching sense of loss she had suffered for years afterwards.

‘I’ll call your maid to help you get ready for bed,’ Leandro murmured.

‘You’re sleeping here tonight,’ Molly reminded him and then flushed to the roots of her hair at her nerve in making that reminder.

Leandro had come to a sudden halt. He looked back at her with brilliant dark heavily lashed eyes that made her heart thump and a slow, sensual smile curved his handsome mouth. Her desire for him never failed to excite him. He would be responsible, though, he told himself equally forcefully; he would check that angle out with the doctor first. He needed to take better care of her. It galled him that she should have gone to Fernando Santos for help sooner than ask her husband for it.

Molly dozed off soon after she got into bed and wakened only when Leandro came into the room. ‘It’s all right- I’m awake,’ she announced when she registered that he was trying to move around quietly.

Leandro studied her in the lamplight. Her black curls fell in a dense cloud round her narrow shoulders, framing her piquant face and vivid green eyes. His desire was instantaneous and just an upgrade of the simmering need that had purred in the background of his awareness all day. No matter where he was or what he was doing, he stayed hot and hungry for her.

Molly watched him undress. Indeed she luxuriated in that intimacy and hoped that the separate-bedroom concept of living would now die a natural death, for it would not be easy for them to enjoy private moments as a couple in a household so filled with other people. Yet more than anything else they needed that time and privacy. The love of his life; oh, how those words were set to haunt her and disrupt her peace! But when she saw Leandro in all his naked bronzed magnificence, her thoughts became far more primitive. He had a professional athlete’s hard, sculpted contours of power and rippling muscle. The bold jut of his erect sex induced a melting liquid sensation low in her pelvis.

‘You want me, querida,’ Leandro husked, settling hot golden eyes of appreciation on her and coming down on the bed beside her.

‘Yes…’ Her soft pink lips parted on a whisper of sound because her heart was thumping like an express train at full tilt and she could hardly breathe for anticipation.

He took her hand and encouraged her to touch him and the hammer of her heartbeat only got louder when she stroked his rigid shaft. Moist heat blossomed in answer between her thighs. He drove her lips apart with hungry urgency and she fell back against the pillows while he extracted her from her nightdress. The plunge of his tongue made her shiver convulsively. He explored the soft, firm swell of her breasts and tugged on the tender pink crests until she was moaning and shifting her hips up to him.

Molly could feel herself going out of control very fast. It was as if all the nervous constraints of the day were suddenly being torn from her and every craving were being channelled into one piercing need. She wanted him, she really, really wanted him with an intensity she couldn’t hide. His exploration of the slick pink cleft at the heart of her drove her insane with delight.

‘You feel like hot silk, gatita,’ Leandro growled, tipping her leg back to rise over her, impatient to ease the painful ache of his arousal.

He sank into her willing body and she loosed a wanton moan of pleasure. Her excitement climbed with every powerful thrust. The raw pulse of hunger throbbing through her responsive flesh, she arched up to take him deeper. A wild cry of satisfaction escaped her as orgasm took her to the dizzy heights of intolerable pleasure and dropped her back down to mortal earth again.

‘Did I live up to your expectations, querida?’ Leandro asked teasingly, skimming long brown fingers through her mane of hair where it lay across the pillows, his attention welded to her hectically flushed smiling face. ‘You surpassed them,’ Molly whispered truthfully, her arms wrapping round his lean. strong frame.

Dimly she grasped that at such moments Leandro felt very much as if he was hers and she felt infinitely more close to him. Sex as a substitute for love, well, why not? she asked herself irritably. It was surely a lot safer than signing up for the kind of love slavery that had wrecked her natural mother, Cathy’s ability to be content. She could be happy. She would be happy. A man who had married her for the sake of their child took marriage seriously and would make every effort to help her adjust to her new life.

But when Molly wakened the next day in an empty bed and fled at speed across the bedroom to check the room next door, she was no longer quite so confident. Leandro had already left. Yet it was the weekend. Couldn’t he have taken time off to be with her for even one day? Or was she expecting too much? What was he telling her about his priorities? And her level of importance in his life…?

CHAPTER EIGHT

MOLLY glanced out the open doors of her studio when she heard a car enter the courtyard. It was Julieta, who came home from Seville on Fridays to see Fernando, who lived on the estate. She always parked her car in the courtyard well away from his house in the hope of defeating the gossips. Molly looked away again, minding her own business, but wishing she didn’t know as much as she did about the relationship. Common sense told her that Leandro would be outraged that his sister was involved in so blatant an affair with his employee.

Preferring not to dwell on a situation that was outside her control, Molly studied the shelves of gleaming pottery against the opposite wall with a warm sense of accomplishment. She had been experimenting with a new glaze and a wood-fired kiln and was delighted with the results. In the months that had elapsed since her marriage, she had worked hard. Fernando Santos had given her very useful assistance when she had decided to set up a small pottery in the old farmyard. Her kiln was housed next door in a fire-proofed shed and organising a proper studio had been the natural next step. She gazed out the glass doors at the orchards and the blue, blue sky above. She had a wonderful working environment and plenty of free time to devote to her potter’s art. So why wasn’t she happy?

She could see her reflection in the glass doors and even the large heavy-duty apron she wore could not conceal her new fecund shape. Her boyish slenderness had vanished as her pregnancy advanced. She was six months along now and her pregnant tummy was a firm and protuberant little mound and even her breasts had expanded enough to make her feel top-heavy. She had worried that as her waist ebbed Leandro would find her less attractive. But that had proved a needless concern. Leandro had embraced every change in her body with masculine enthusiasm.

Yes, indeed, Molly reflected wryly. In fact in the sex department her every want was more than satisfied. No complaints there. Leandro slept with her every night and he was a very lusty guy. But somewhere along the line, maybe when she woke up alone or spent yet another solitary evening while he worked late or travelled abroad, the sizzling passion that she shared with her husband had begun to remind her more of what they didn’t have than what they did. She had wardrobes full of designer clothes and a fantastic