“I’m sorry I never worked up the nerve to tell you, Ellie. I didn’t want to lose your respect.”
Heart pounding painfully, she squeezed his hand. “I’ll never love you any less, Daddy. Just tell me.”
A ragged exhalation. “After those losses hit me hard, I did some tax evasion to compensate, and everything got twisted out of all proportions. Now it’s gone from bad to worse and I might declare bankruptcy soon.” He dropped his head in his palms. “Oh, my little darling, I’m so sorry, but I have to confess something else. I was actually feeling desperate enough to ask Rafael for help. I know you don’t want to ever mix your marriage with business, but I was thinking it would be child’s play for Rafael to solve all my problems.”
While tax evasion was bad, it didn’t warrant Rafael’s cold-blooded plan of revenge. She didn’t believe her father could do anything to warrant it. But this was clearly a dead end.
Rising to her feet, she bent to kiss him. “Next time, promise you’ll tell me everything so I can help before things snowball into a huge mess, okay?”
After her father promised, and she reassured him that they’d see this through, he saw her to the door, totally oblivious to the danger he was in and the devastation in Ellie’s life.
Back at the hotel, she fell into bed, her mind churning as exhaustion dragged her under into tumultuous darkness.
She had to seek Rafael again. It was all in his hands. Everything was.
Her world, her being...her destruction.
Rafael. Always Rafael...
* * *
Warm power rejuvenated her drained body; delicious fire roamed her aching flesh. Sighing softly, she drove deeper into the solace, a moan of longing on her lips.
“Rafael...”
“Si, meu amor, si...I’m here, I’m yours.”
The pledge felt like a resurrection, after the death her spirit had suffered.
Her eyes fluttered open. The phantasm had Rafael’s face, his body, his hunger...and it—he...
He was really here!
Suddenly drowning, her body violently lurched against his, as if kicking up to a surface that didn’t exit.
“Don’t push me away, meu alma...”
And they overtook her, every agony and bitterness and desperation, burning from her depths and gushing from her lips on racking, uncontrollable heaves.
Lost in the tumult, she felt Rafael carrying her to the bathroom, securing her in his infinite strength as the misery overpowered her. He held her, kissing and soothing her. Finally collapsing against him, empty and depleted, he stretched her in his arms on the floor, kneading the muscles that had almost torn with the violence of her retching. Then ridding her of her soiled clothes, stripping himself, he took her into the shower.
He held her up beneath the warm cascade, caressing and coddling her with such gentleness and patience. At last, he took her down on the floor of the shower, and the potency that had planted the miraculous seed of life inside scorched a furrow in her buttocks. He made no sensual overtures, his touch bolstering, not arousing, his body pressed to hers only to transfer his vitality into her. Yet the unwilling bliss she felt at his ministrations caught fire. Her insides cramped, clamoring for his occupation.
As always, in tune with the slightest nuance of her needs, he adjusted her position over his lap, pressing the wide crown of his erection against her opening. Her body melted, inside and out, her thighs splayed wider in submission.
Holding her eyes, hunger and entreaty and determination mingled in his. Reading her capitulation, he flattened her breasts to his chest, flexed his hips and forged inside her. Her flesh fluttered around his hardness, delight searing from every inch he stretched beyond its limits. Once buried inside her, he stilled at the gate of her womb. Twisting his long-healed hand in her wet hair, he withdrew so agonizingly slowly.
He whispered as he thrust back, his voice the deepest, darkest spell it had ever been.
“You’re mine, Eliana. Mine to pleasure. Mine to protect. Mine to love.” He nudged her very heart. “Mine.”
That was all it took. Her core spasmed over his hardness in the exquisite scalding of release. Baring his teeth, a harsh hiss flayed her cheek as he unleashed his pleasure inside her, marking her, mastering her, intensifying her orgasm. She shook against him, eyes clinging to his as he finished her.
Long after she lay in his arms quivering, body replete, heart shattered, he gently withdrew from her depths, then finished cleaning her. Taking her out of the shower, he dried her off and carried her to bed.
Gathering her in his arms under the covers, he kissed her all over her face, his caressing hand moving down to her belly. “You’re carrying my child.”
She huffed weakly. “Whatever tipped you off?”
His gorgeous lips twitched. “The morning sickness fest just confirmed it...but I’ve been noticing changes in your body.” He tasted her nipples, sent pleasure forking through her to lodge in her womb. “Those delights are becoming thicker, darker, and they give you even more pleasure when I do this.” He suckled each hotly, had her arching helplessly, surrendering her flesh to his mastery. “You’re also more responsive, when I thought that impossible, igniting into a conflagration much more quickly.”
“That’s just your overachiever self. You taught my body to expect more pleasure each time, until you had it perpetually ready to go off at a touch.”
Her confession was rewarded by a look of supreme male satisfaction before he rose off the bed, knowing what the sight of his arousal would do to her.
Striding into the bathroom, she heard him rustling around. Then he rejoined her, took her hand and slipped his ring again on her finger.
Looking down at her, he pressed her hand to his heart. “You’ll never take my ring off, never leave my side again. I let you go only so you could calm down, but I won’t let you do this to yourself. Take your anguish out on me, never on yourself.” At her miserable silence, he gritted his teeth. “Weren’t you going to tell me about the baby?”
“Don’t you know me at all?” she countered.
His eyes softened with such...adoration. It still felt like the most genuine thing she’d ever known.
“I know all of you. It’s why you have all of me.” Pain entered his gaze. “You must have found out yesterday, must have been coming to tell me when you overheard us.”
As always, he just knew. It had been how he’d manipulated her so seamlessly. “Yeah, I arrived just in time to hear them congratulating you on the adjustment of your plan.”
“If you’d waited you would have heard me blasting them for refusing to believe you were never part of my plan and forbidding them to ever mention you again. Richard is the only one who knows what we have together, and he knew they’d stepped on forbidden territory.” She did remember Graves saying something to that effect. “But I don’t care what they think. I only care about you. I’m here to take you home, meu amor.”
“I can’t...I can’t be with you anymore.”
“You were just with me now. And you’ll always be with me.”
“You know what this was. I’m unable to resist you, but it will kill me to be with you now.”
“Don’t ever say things like that. I’ll give you time to come to terms with all this on the condition you never shut me out again.”
“I’m more valuable now that I’m a dual-purpose