Page 25 of Cinderella's Christmas Secret 1
‘Gone?’ she echoed. ‘Gone where?’
‘I never found out. She had cleared out all her stuff the month before and left no word or forwarding address.’ It shouldn’t have come as a shock, but it did. Because deep down he had always believed that she loved him, because she was his mother. But she did not love him. She never had. He had fallen to his knees in the icy snow and wept and that was the last time he had ever wept. At least he’d had food in his rucksack—the only thing he had taken from his father’s house. And then he had begun to walk, though he didn’t know where. He had walked on through the night and on Christmas morning he had stumbled across the construction site and waited there for workers to return after the Christmas break. And he had vowed there and then that he would never let anyone close enough to hurt him again.
‘She wiped me from her life as if I had never existed,’ he continued, the words falling from his mouth like stones. ‘It was only much later, when I had started to make money, that she contacted me again.’
‘And were you ever...reconciled?’
‘We met,’ he said tersely, staring down at his fingernails. ‘But her main focus was on what I could buy for her, rather than making up for all those lost years. I provided for her throughout the rest of her life but I never saw her again until a couple of months ago.’
‘She...died?’
He looked up at her, feeling himself tense up. ‘How the hell did you know that?’ he demanded.
‘Something in your face as you said it. I could see your pain.’ Her voice was soft again. How did she make it so damned soft? ‘I’m sorry for your loss, Maximo. I know she was cruel to you, but she was still your mother.’
He wanted to deny that he felt anything but she was getting up from the table and walking round to where he sat, sliding onto his lap to face him, one bare leg on either side of his. She looked at him for a long moment before resting her head on his in an age-old gesture which had never come his way before. Maybe he’d never needed it before. It had nothing to do with sex—and everything to do with comfort. And it was powerful, he realised. Unbelievably...powerful.
He wanted to shrug her off, to tell her he didn’t need any clumsy attempts at sympathy—but the words remained unspoken, the gesture never made. He could smell her clean, soapy scent and right then she seemed to embody all the virtues he’d never really associated with the women in his life.
Innocence.
Decency.
Kindness.
Suddenly a tension which had been coiled so tightly inside him started unravelling, like a line spinning wildly from the fisherman’s rod. Something he hadn’t even realised had been stretched to breaking point now snapped and he held her tightly, losing himself in an embrace so close that you couldn’t have fitted a hair between them.
He told himself it was desire.
Because itwasdesire. What else could it be? The powerful beat of his heart and the low clench of heat were familiar enough, but his urgent need to possess her was off the scale. With one hand he hooked the back of her neck and brought her face down to his, revelling in that first sweet taste of her lips as her satiny hair spilled over his hands. He deepened the kiss and deepened it still more, until she was writhing around on his lap—her lack of panties instantly apparent from the syrupy wetness which was seeping into his jeans.
‘Unzip me,’ he urged throatily.
Instantly, she complied, although her fingers were trembling and it took some careful manoeuvring before he was free, and then at last he lowered her down onto his aching shaft, a ragged groan escaping from his lips as he filled her.
She rode him. She rode him as if she had been born to do just that. Was it instinct which made her so proficient at that age-old rhythm? Because it certainly wasn’t experience. Yet she seemed to read him so well. As if she knew exactly when he wanted her to pull the borrowed sweater over her head so that he could drink in every second of her partial striptease and the luscious bounce of her breasts. She shook her hair, so that it moved around her bare shoulders like a shiny ripple of wheat. And then he was coming and so was she. Coming and coming and coming...and it was like no orgasm he’d ever experienced.
His shout of exclamation—or was it exultation?—was harsh. Imprecise. His body bucked helplessly beneath her. And when it was over she didn’t say a word, and he was glad. He didn’t want her attempting to give meaning to what had just taken place. Because it had no meaning. It was just a manifestation of their extraordinary physical chemistry.
He stirred, wanting to put a little distance between them. Needing space to order his befuddled thoughts. ‘Don’t you think maybe it’s time for dessert?’
‘But there isn’t...’ Her breath was warm against his neck, her words soporific and slightly slurred. ‘I’m afraid there isn’t any dessert.’
He pulled back from her and frowned. ‘Really? I thought you brought cake with you?’
Unwillingly stirred from her sleepy state, Hollie stared back at him in confusion, suddenly remembering the wretched cake which Janette had insisted on commissioning. ‘You really want cake now?’
‘Why not?’
Whynot? She hadn’t wanted to present it to him at the time and she was even less inclined to do so now, because it seemed to symbolise some of the things which had been so out of kilter between them. It reminded her of the speed with which he’d left her bed and the way he’d distanced himself afterwards. Worst of all was the memory of his reaction to her pregnancy when he’d been so angry and cold. And she was slightly irritated that he’d asked for it now, because it was hardly the most romantic way to end what had just been the most erotic encounter of her life. But Maximo doesn’t do romance, she reminded herself fiercely. He does sex. And that’s all he does. Better think about that before you start fabricating any more foolish dreams about him.
‘Of course. How could I have forgotten? I’ll go and fetch it,’ she said, sliding from his lap and plucking his sweater from the floor, before wriggling it over her head. After a detour to the bathroom she hunted down the cake, and when she walked back into the library, she found Maximo still sitting at the table, seemingly lost in thought as he stared across the room at the crackling fire. He looked up as she put the cake on the table, but his expression was shadowed and indecipherable—their mood of lazy sensuality seemingly broken. She wanted to cut him a slice before he had seen it, but he had risen from his seat to look over her shoulder, at the Spanish word for congratulations, which she had laboriously piped onto the white icing.
‘“Felicidades,”’he read slowly, and then pointed to a fuzzy-looking shape beside the word. ‘And what’s this?’
Did he guess it was a teardrop, which had fallen straight onto the coloured icing at a critical moment? Yesterday she might have concocted some flimsy excuse and told him that she’d been trying to create a star, but not today. Because he had told her stuff. He’d confided in her. Hard, painful stuff. He’d let his guard down, presumably because he’d felt as if, on some level, he could trust her. So maybe she should trust him, too. And besides, it wasn’t as if they had any shared illusions about the future which could be tarnished by the truth, was it?
‘It was a tear,’ she admitted, meeting the seeking expression in his black eyes with a shrug. ‘I was feeling a bit sorry for myself.’
