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 her flutter in his hold like a caught bird.
After a moment, she nervously settled as though she had decided to submit to her captor. “I’m sure.” She still sounded tentative. “You won’t hurt me. You wouldn’t do that to Locke.”
“I won’t do that to you,” he contradicted, shifting so they were nose to nose. “No matter how contentious things ever become between us, our conflicts will play out in words. Understand? You’re always safe with me.”
Another quake went through her, something so elemental and electric he could feel the individual hairs on his scalp standing up in response.
“Do you believe me?”
“Yes.” It was barely above a whisper, but delivered without hesitation. Her hands against his chest weren’t pushing him away. They shifted to offer the smallest of caresses.
“Good.” Was it? Thoughts of her had stayed with him for months, nearly getting him killed. He needed as many walls as possible between them, but the idea of her fearing him made him sick.
He rolled her so she was spooned into his front, her warm butt snuggled firmly against his aching erection, her breasts a soft press beneath his forearm.
“Feel that?” he asked with a subtle thrust of his hips.
“Yes.” A different type of tremble went through her, one that left her soft and pliant, and incited in him an urge to howl.
“I’m not going to do anything about it. Go to sleep. I’ll get up with Locke next time and we’ll hope he doesn’t need the milkmaid.”
“Is that what I am?” Her gurgled laugh was filled with discomfiture and a note of yearning that provoked as much satisfaction in him as it did sexual frustration.
“You’re my future wife.” Pure arrogance fueled his words.
“Fast asleep and dreaming already?”
He wasn’t surprised by her swift reply. Or disappointed. He rather liked her quick wit. She had always been a worthy adversary, but he nipped her earlobe in punishment, liking the sob of pleasure-pain that sounded in her throat.
“Go to sleep,” he repeated.
She gave one retaliatory wiggle of her behind in his lap and exhaled, relaxing into slumber.
While he lay awake, aching.
CHAPTER SEVEN
SCARLETT STRUGGLED TO find a routine over the next while. Locke developed full-blown colic, which had her feeling incompetent as a mother. Paloma seemed to agree, making judgmental asides every chance she got. Scarlett rode that out, too tired to fight back and having enough trouble concentrating on work. When she did lie down for a nap, her mind raced with everything she ought to be doing and she couldn’t sleep.
Her doctor thought she had a case of baby blues and recommended she let the nanny do more, but she couldn’t bring herself to leave her son with anyone, not even Javiero. Locke sounded too distressed for her to do anything other than hold him, even though she felt helpless when she did.
She would have talked it out with Kiara, but her friend was in the throes of her Paris show. All Scarlett could do was send a hideously expensive gift, express her regret that she couldn’t celebrate with her and wistfully read about Kiara’s explosive success in the days afterward.
Scarlett was so proud of her she wound up crying over it, which flummoxed Javiero.
“You’re still upset you couldn’t attend?”
“I’m just really happy for her.” She laughed off her overreaction, but melancholy had taken hold of her lately, swamping her at different times. She didn’t understand how she could feel as though a rain cloud hung over her when things with Javiero had improved. She ought to feel happier, but she was so afraid that this tentative truce between them could end at the least wrong word, she was filtering everything she said.
Her tension was off the scale and when a package turned up a week after Kiara’s show, she had no choice but to talk about her friend.
She clasped her hot cheeks when Javiero called her to his study, and she recognized the shape. “I completely forgot about that.”
“What is it?” Javiero asked.
“A painting. Of me.”
“By Kiara?” The light went out of his eye and even though he didn’t move, he retreated.
“Yes.” She shrugged self-consciously and would have opened it in private, but he used his pocketknife to release the bands of tape, starting the process.
She carefully worked the rest of the packaging off the framed oil, revealing herself in a summer dress, pregnant, reading a book.
“It’s one of the last ones she finished before Niko passed. She promised
