Page 40 of Legacy of His Revenge
She arched up and stiffened as his powerful body shuddered against her and she panted and rocked beneath him until at last...she was spent.
Matias levered himself off her. It was a downright miracle of circumstance that he now found himself here, with her. The number ofwhat ifsbetween them could have stocked a library.
What if...she hadn’t crashed into his car?
What if...he hadn’t lived a life hell-bent on revenge?
What if...he hadn’t seen fit to weave her into his revenge agenda?
What if...she hadn’t spent time under his roof at his place in the Lake District?
What if, what if, what if...?
But here they were, having made the most satisfying love imaginable. In no way, shape or form was he tiring of her. On the contrary, he desired her with an urgency that none of his other relationships had ever had. He felt a possessiveness towards her that defied belief.
He had accepted the shock to his system that impending and unforeseen fatherhood would confer.
He had risen above the challenge of playing a blame game that would get neither of them anywhere.
But had he really believed that this unforeseeable passion and downrightinsatiable cravingwould form a part of the picture? Was it the evidence of his own virility and the fact that she was carrying his baby that made his feelings towards her so...ferociously powerful?
She had stuck to her guns about not marrying him, frustrating his natural urge to get what he wanted. His powerful need toneverback down until he had what should be his within his grasp had hit a roadblock with her. He refused to contemplate any situation that involved him losing control over his child, and by extension, he told himself,her.
Seeing his mother as she recuperated in hospital, as he had now done several times, had only reinforced his determination to take her as his wife.
Thus far, the inevitable meeting between his mother and Sophie had been avoided, but sooner or later his mother would want to meet the woman who was carrying her grandchild and when that time arrived Matias was determined that marriage would be on the cards. There would be no difficult conversation in which his mother would be forced to concede that the grandchild she had always longed for would be a fleeting presence in her life.
‘Was that as good for you as it was for me,querida?’ He shifted onto his side and manoeuvred her so that they were facing one another. He brushed a strand of hair away from her face and then kissed her very gently on her mouth, tracing the outline of her lips with his tongue.
Sophie struggled to think straight. She had done what she had spent weeks resolving not to do. She had climbed back into bed with him and where did that leave thefriendshipangle she had been working so hard at since she had turned down his marriage proposal?
What disturbed and alarmed her was the fact that it had feltright.
Because...because...
Because she loved him. Because he’d swept into her life, inappropriate and infuriatingly arrogant, and stolen her heart, and even though he had used her and couldn’t be trusted, because who knew whether he would use her again, she still couldn’t help but love him. She’d made love to him and it had been as wonderful and as satisfying as walking through the front door of the house you adored and finding safety within its four walls. Which was a joke, of course, but then so were all the stupid assumptions she had made about love being something she would have been able to control. She could no more have controlled what she felt for Matias than she could have controlled the direction of a hurricane.
‘Well?’ Matias prompted, curving a hand possessively around her waist, challenging her to deny what was glaringly obvious.
‘It was nice,’ Sophie said faintly, still wrapped in the revelation that had been lurking there, just below the surface, for longer than she cared to think.
‘Nice?Nice?’ Matias was tempted to explode with outrage but ended up bursting out laughing. ‘You certainly know how to shoot a man down in flames.’
‘Okay.’ She blushed. ‘It was pretty good.’
‘Getting better,’ he mused, ‘but I still preferamazing.’
‘It was amazing.’
‘When you showed up at my office,’ Matias said softly, ‘it was a shock, but I really want this baby,querida. You tell me you don’t want to marry me. You tell me the ingredients for a successful marriage aren’t in place, but we talk. Yes, we fight as well, butwe talk. And we still have this thing between us. We still want one another passionately. Isn’t that glue enough? You say you’re not prepared to make sacrifices yetIam, because I truly feel that any sacrifice I make for the sake of our child will, in the end, be worth it. Don’t we both want what, ultimately, will be best for our baby? Can you deny that? We can’t change the past but we can move on from it. We can stop it from altering the course of the future.’
Sophie could feel the pulse in her neck beating, matching the steady beat of her heart, the heart that belonged to him, to a man who would never,couldnever return the favour.
He talked about sacrifices, though, and surely,surelyhe would never use her again? Not when they shared a child? Could she trust him or had the past damaged that irreparably?
‘Maybe you’re right,’ she said, meeting his eyes steadily. ‘Of course I want what’s best for our baby. Of course I know that two parents are always going to be better than one.’ And maybe, she dared to hope, in time she would trust him enough to confide in him about her brother, despite what had happened between them. Alan had turned away from what he had perceived as a challenge too far in Eric and she had locked herself away after that. Of course, she had never consciously decided that remaining on her own was the preferred option, but how could any relationship ever have blossomed in the bitterness that had grown over the hope and trust she had invested in her ex-boyfriend? Alan had not deserved the faith she had put in him. Compared to Matias, what she’d felt for Alan was a pale shadow of the real thing. But however strong her love, she still couldn’t guarantee that Matias, a guy who had been motivated by revenge when he had decided tocultivate her, would live up to her expectations.
But they were having a baby together and shewanted and needed him.
