Love? For a moment I stared at Alejandro, then I realized he was speaking of Miguel.
Edward glared at him. Obviously not realizing he’d just narrowly escaped death, he sneered, “Go to hell.” At the door, he turned back and said, “I’ll be back for you, Lena.”
Then he was gone. And Alejandro and I were suddenly alone in the cloakroom. But my relief was short-lived.
“No wonder he loaned you his house,” he said. “No wonder he protected you. He sees you as his. Why does he believe that?”
I whirled to face him. The cold fury in his eyes was like a wave. But there was something else there, too. Hurt.
“He tried to kiss me last week,” I admitted in a low voice, then shook my head. “But I just gave a shocked laugh and he left. Whatever he might have hoped, all he ever was to me was a friend—”
“Friend,” he said scornfully. “You knew what he wanted.”
I shook my head fiercely. “Not until last week, I never—”
“Then you were willfully blind. He’s in love with you.”
“You’re wrong there.” Shivering, I crossed my bare arms over my pink strapless ball gown. “If he’d really loved me, he would have loved Miguel, too. But he was always getting annoyed about him. Suggesting things...like I should send him away, farm him out for adoption...”
Alejandro’s eyes darkened. “And you were willing to call him a friend? To let him near our son?”
I wanted to lash back at him. To tell him he was being unreasonable, or that I hadn’t had a choice. Instead, I said the only thing that mattered. The only thing that was true.
“I’m sorry,” I said in a low voice. “I was wrong.”
He’d been opening his mouth to say more, no doubt cutting, angry accusations. But my humble, simple words cut him off at the knees. For a long moment, he stared at me in the shadowy cloakroom. Down the hall, we could distantly hear music playing, people laughing. Then he turned away, clawing back his dark hair.
“Bien. I wasn’t exactly perfect, either,” he muttered. Lifting his head, he glared at me. “But you’re never to see him again. Or let him near Miguel.”
“Fine,” I said.
“Fine?”
“He stopped being my friend the moment he called my baby ‘it.’”
“So,” he said with a casual tone that belied the tension in his shoulders, “did you let him kiss you?”
I gaped at him. “Oh—for heaven’s sake!” I stomped my foot against the plush carpet. “I’m not going to say it again!”
“I found the two of you here, talking...”
“And I just saw you talking to an actress in the ballroom. I didn’t accuse you of making out! He made a pass at me last week. I refused. End of story.”
“Once we are married...”
My cheeks went hot. “Married!” I stared at him, shocked. “Who said anything about marriage?”
Now Alejandro was the one to look shocked.
“I just asked you to marry me!”
“Asked?” My voice was acid. “When you asked, I said no. Tonight, you just announced it! In front of everyone! You may have asked—I never said yes!”
“We are going to be wed. Accept it.”
“I will accept an engagement,” I retorted. “I will accept that we need to live in the same town, perhaps even the same house, for our son. A public front, a pretense for Miguel’s sake, to make it appear we are actually a couple—that he wasn’t just some mistake! But nothing more. There’s no way I’m actually going to marry you. Do you think I would ever give you my body again? Or my heart?”
“I told you,” he ground out. “I’m not asking for your heart.”
“Then you can forget anything else—I won’t give you my body, or take your name! I owe you respect as Miguel’s father, but that’s it,” I said through gritted teeth. “Whatever you might believe, you don’t own me, any more than Edward did!”
“I’m not Edward. I’m the father of your child.” He grabbed my wrist, looking down at me. “I’m the man you will wed. I don’t need your heart. But your body, at least, will be mine.”
“No!” But even as I gasped with fury, heat flashed from his possessive grip on my wrist. Electricity crackled up my arm, to my throat, to my lips, to my breasts, down, down, down to my core. Pushing me back roughly against the coats, he looked down at me in the shadows.
“Did you really think,” he said softly, “once I found you, I would ever let you go? I gave you up once for the sake of a promise. I gave you up to do the right thing. But fate has thrown you back into my arms. Now you will be entirely mine—”
Lowering his head, Alejandro kissed me fiercely, his lips hot and hard against mine, plundering, demanding. I tried to resist. I couldn’t let myself feel—I couldn’t—
Then I melted as the banked embers inside me, beneath the cold ash of the past lonely year, roared to a blazing fire. My body shuddered beneath his ruthless, almost violent embrace, and I wrapped my arms tightly around him, holding him to me, lost in the sweet forbidden ecstasy of surrender.
HIS LIPS SAVAGED MINE, his tongue hot and salty and sweet. I clutched his shoulders, desperate to sate my desire. I’d hungered for him every night, even when I hated him, against all reason, against my will.
Alejandro’s hands ran along my bare arms then moved to the tangle in my hair, tilting my chin so he could plunder my mouth more deeply. Long tendrils of hair had pulled free from my chignon. I felt them brush against my naked shoulders as his hard, muscular body strained against me, towering over mine, overpowering me. But it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough...
His hot kisses moved slowly down my neck, as he murmured husky endearments in Spanish against my skin. My head fell back against the wall of coats, and I closed my eyes, feeling tight and dizzy. He nuzzled my bare skin over the neckline of my gown. His hands cupped my breasts straining against the pink silk of the bodice.
So sweet. So hot. My breath came at a gasp, and as my eyelids flickered, the world seemed to spin in whirling patterns of shadows and light, echoes of past love and longing. For over a year I’d longed for him. For all my life, I’d longed for this. And it was even better than I remembered, a powerful drug beyond imagining. Wrapped in his embrace, I forgot myself, forgot my own name, and knew only that I had to have him or die....
A low deliberate cough came behind us. Startled, I turned my head, and Alejandro straightened. The Bulgarian ambassador stood at the cloakroom door, with his wife draped in pearls behind him.
“Excuse us,” he said gravely, and stepping forward, he took a black fur coat off the hanger behind us.
I heard his wife titter as they left, “See, Vasil? I told you it was a love match!”
“Poor devil deserves some pleasure, at least,” the man’s reply echoed back to us, “after the grasping creature tricked him into marriage with a pregnancy.”
Shamefaced, I looked up at Alejandro. The air in the cloakroom suddenly felt thin and cold.
“Let me go,” I said.
His hold on me only tightened. “Who cares what they say?”
“I care,” I whispered.