He was through with squeezing her in that power struggle, though. He might not agree with her methods, but he understood the bleak fear that had driven her. He was intimately familiar with the gnawing, intractable need to know that his family was secure.
He was still unsettled by the fact her father had been abusive, double-dealing his own wife and putting his entire family in an untenable position.
Niko had taken advantage of Scarlett’s desperation, which was yet another reason Javiero would never forgive him, but he couldn’t continue punishing Scarlett for her association with his father. He couldn’t in good conscience become yet another hurdle she had to overcome in order to look after people she felt a duty toward.
She was still wriggling and rolling and pulling at the blankets.
While she had fed Locke, he had been lying there wondering who had come up with the brainless idea they should sleep together. Between taking turns brushing their teeth, he had put on pajama bottoms—something he’d started wearing so he could get up with the baby. She had put on a practical nightgown. With the way her figure was bouncing back from pregnancy, she could have worn a burlap sack and still looked like a fertility goddess. Her breasts were spectacular, and her hips and backside round and enticing beneath the soft drape of cotton. She’d always had amazing legs. All the pale skin he could see was smooth and—he recalled vividly—soft and warm and intoxicating.
Her shifting was further stimulating him, making him more aware of her weight pressing down that side of the mattress. She smelled like vanilla and pineapple, and her shaken sigh bore a resemblance to the hot breath she had released against his ear when they’d made love.
“What’s wrong?” he asked with the gruffness of increasing sexual frustration. “Why can’t you get comfortable?”
“I don’t know. Colic? I’ve never slept with anyone. It’s weird. I’m worried I’ll kick you in my sleep. Or that you’ll stretch out an arm and scare me in the night. Do you steal blankets? I don’t know the protocol.”
“You’ve never slept with anyone?”
“Just my sister when we were little.” She rolled onto her stomach and pushed her arms under her pillow. Sighed again.
“But you’ve had relationships. Lovers.” If she told him she’d been a virgin that day—
“I was a kid then, too,” she grumbled, flipping her pillow. “Not underage. I was at university, but I was messing around just to feel like someone loved me. Childish reasons. I learned quickly that going all the way wasn’t the beginning of a relationship. The boy in question invariably saw it as the end. Once I started working for your father...” Her pause seemed significant for a reason he couldn’t identify, and he wished he could see her face. “There wasn’t time for dating,” she finished quietly. “I didn’t miss it, so it was no real loss.”
Her hair drew silver tracks against the dark pillowcase. He wanted to touch it. Fold it around his finger and rub his lips against it.
Unhelpful. The muscle between his thighs twitched with a strong pulse of desire.
“How many women have slept here?” she asked hesitantly, turning her head to peer at him through the dark.
“In this bed? None. As far as I know, the only woman who ever slept in this room was my grandmother. She died before I was born.”
“Really?” She rolled onto her side, still facing him. “You and Regina didn’t—”
“No.”
“Why not?”
She wasn’t you. “We were still getting to know one another.”
“According to you, that happens here by sharing a bed.” In the glow of the night-light, her pale face grew stiff with concentration. He felt her gaze like an infrared scanner heating his brow and cheekbones. “You don’t wear your eye patch to bed.”
Damn. He’d taken it off out of habit, not even thinking. His hand twitched as he debated reaching toward the nightstand for it. “It’s more comfortable without.”
“Then don’t wear it. Listen, about surgery...” She came up on her elbow to hover over him. “Don’t put yourself through that unless it’s something you really want. Locke will never care how you look, not if we raise him right. And the only thing I feel about your injuries is upset that you were hurt.”
She looked like an angel, hair in a loose golden halo, voice laden with so much concern it disturbed him. His heart pounded an ancient drumbeat, calling to her. He wanted to pull her across him, feel whether she was telling the truth.
“I keep thinking how terrifying it must have been,” she said in a solemn undertone. “You could have been killed. It would have been a horrific loss for Locke.”
Only for Locke?
Where the hell had that thought come from?
“How did it even happen? Wasn’t it caged—? Oh!” She gasped as he rolled her beneath him in one agile twist of his body.
“Exactly like that,” he said, careful to hold himself off her while he trapped her, not squashing her flat the way the caveman in him wanted to. Desire had been soaking through him like gasoline when he’d been attacked. Desire for Scarlett, damn her, distracting him from the cat circling below. That hammer of need in his blood hadn’t abated one bit. “I loosened my tie and it was flicking in the breeze. The animal shouldn’t have been able to jump that high, but I guess it was my lucky day.”
“Oh, my G—Ooh!”
Unable to resist, he opened his mouth against her soft neck, scraping his teeth before stealing one small taste of her skin with a damp swipe of his tongue against the pulse racing in the hollow at the base of her throat.
She quivered, her body taut beneath his.
“Scared?” He yanked a firm leash around his basest urges.
“N-no?” she squeaked.
“You don’t sound sure.” His breath on her sensitive nape made
