Martinez's Pregnant Wife

by Rachael Thomas

  She couldn’t speak. Every breath she took was slow and deep with expectation. She closed her eyes and he slid down the zip on the other boot, pulling it from her and then sliding his hands upward once more. This time he went higher, teasingly higher, and before she knew what he’d done he’d pulled down the thick tights she’d opted for that morning and discarded them with a mock look of disapproval.

  ‘These have to go.’

  The crackle of the fire was the only noise in the room as she looked at him, then as the tension mounted she laughed, shocked at the sexy giggle that sounded so unlike her. ‘Not to your taste?’

  ‘Absolutely not.’ His hands caressed her thighs, teased around her lace panties, and she tried hard not to close her eyes, not to allow her knees to buckle with pleasure. ‘This, however, is.’

  ‘You are a wicked man, Maximiliano Martinez.’ The unintended soft purr of her voice had an instant reaction on him and his grasp on her leg tightened.

  ‘Very wicked.’ He slid her dress a little higher and kissed a trail up one thigh and then down the other.

  ‘Max,’ she whispered, consumed by the rising tide of desire.

  He paused and looked up at her. ‘Come here.’ There was unmistakable command in his voice but it was so sexy, so erotic.

  She knelt down on the soft rug as his arms wrapped around her, forcing her to sit astride his legs as he knelt down. Her dress ruched high up her thighs as she followed her instinct and moved as close to him as possible. His hands slid up her thighs, pushing the dress up higher until his hands cupped her buttocks, pressing her intimately against his erection. It was reckless, it was amazing and it was what she wanted most—to be like this with him, showing him how much she loved him.

  ‘Max,’ she gasped and let her head fall back as pleasure rushed over her.

  ‘Whatever else happens between us, we always have this, don’t we, Lisa?’ The words were heavily accented and husky and she didn’t care what he meant, didn’t want to think about that now.

  She looked down at him, so close to him she could feel his breath on her face, feel that it was as ragged as hers. Words evaded her as his dark eyes, laden with desire, met hers. Words weren’t needed now. She would show him what they had, that it could be more than passion, if he let it. Slowly and teasingly she kissed his face, anywhere but his lips, until he took hold of her face between his hands and kissed her so hard, so passionately she groaned with pleasure, the sound muffled by the pressure of his lips.

  He stopped kissing her, looking deep into her eyes. Was he seeing her love? Could he feel it, taste it? Without taking his eyes from her, he lifted the hem of her dress and pulled it up as she put her arms up, allowing him to pull the soft knitted fabric over her head and off, leaving her wearing only her bra and panties.

  He kissed her neck, her throat and the swell of her breasts. She clung to him as shivers of passion rocked her body. ‘Your clothes,’ she gasped as his tongue licked her nipple through the lace of her bra.

  ‘You want me naked?’ The teasing laughter in his voice was mischievous and very sexy.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said, taking on the role of seductress, raising her brows at him. ‘Very naked.’

  ‘As you wish.’ The playful tone matched the look on his face as he allowed her to slide from his lap. She sat on the rug and watched as he began to take off his clothes, loving the firelight on his body, highlighting the muscles of his chest as he removed his shirt. Lust and a greedy need for him spiked through her as he finally stood naked and proudly erect in the firelight.

  ‘That’s better. Now come back here,’ she demanded, loving this moment of control, even though she knew it was only because he was allowing it to happen. Just as he had that night two months ago. The night they’d conceived their child.

  Within seconds he was over her, his strong arms holding his body off hers as his mouth claimed hers in a kiss so intoxicating her head spun as if she’d drunk champagne. As he kissed her he pushed her backward until she was lying on the rug, his body over hers, his erection pressing intimately against her. She moved against him, wanting him to possess her, wanting him to make her his again.

  With expert ease he freed her first from her bra and then from her panties. ‘This is what makes us good, Lisa,’ he said as he looked down at her, raw, hungry desire in his eyes. ‘This passion.’

  She wanted to ask, what about love? But his lips claimed hers in a demanding kiss, quashing any ill-fated questions, and instead she gave herself up to the desire that raged within her brighter than the fire of the cottage.

  Was it passion? Not for her, but all that slipped away as he entered her, making her his. She moved with him, wanting to be his in every way. As stars exploded around her, her body full of the pleasure of his, Max groaned out in Spanish as he too found his release.

  Now lying together, naked bodies entwined, his touch made her tremble and his kiss made her head light. The warmth of the fire was dwindling, the logs becoming covered in a white ash, but she didn’t move, didn’t want to spoil any of this. What had happened in this cottage, the love she’d shown him, the passion he’d showered on her, would have to last her for evermore. But right now, none of that mattered.

  He kissed her softly on her neck, nuzzling at her skin, sending a fiery trail of desire throughout her. She turned her face to him and he brushed his lips over her so lightly, so lovingly it was almost too much. Then he deepened the kiss, proving he still had plenty of desire raging in him. As she pulled away, taking in a deep breath of air, he smiled at her in that sexy way only he could.

  ‘You are very beautiful, Lisa.’ He trailed his fingers down her naked body, over her hip and down her thigh before creating the same torturous sensation back up her body. ‘I love seeing the firelight cast a glow over you.

  ‘This is all so perfect.’ She closed her eyes as he kissed her softly again, but she couldn’t keep it to herself any longer, couldn’t hide her feelings behind the shield of lust for a second longer. ‘I love you, Max.’

  Her whispered words sucked the air from the room. Even the flames of the fire seemed to stop moving as Max stopped kissing her and looked down at her.

  ‘No,’ he ground out as he moved away from her. ‘This is not love and it never will be.’

  ‘But I love you, Max, why can’t you let me in? Let me love you? Maybe then you can love me too.’

  ‘Never,’ he thundered as he got up, grabbed his clothes and left the room, his last word hammering at her heart, breaking it into thousands of pieces.

  CHAPTER NINE

  MAX HAD BARELY said a word to her the next morning, other than to insist they return to London. He had work to do and plans to finalise for Angelina’s party, but she knew it was what she’d said. Why had she spoilt what could have been a perfect few days with those three words that Max couldn’t say, much less be told?

  She’d spent the day resting while Max worked, and as the afternoon had darkened into evening a light dusting of snow had fallen over London. She’d stood by the expanse of floor-to-ceiling windows and looked out over the city as the flakes had twisted downward in a crazy dance, feeling ever more confined, ever more trapped. Finally she couldn’t tolerate it any longer, desperate to slip away for just a short time from the confines of Max’s apartment, from the brooding silence that emanated from him louder than any thunderstorm.

  She crossed the polished wooden floor of the living space toward Max’s study. The desk lamp shone a bright circle of white light over the desk and onto Max. He hadn’t noticed her and she used her brief advantage, taking in the dark hair, now reverted to its natural dark unruly curls. He sighed, dropped his pen onto the papers he’d been poring over and pushed his fingers roughly through those dark curls and her own tingled as she remembered doing the same at the cottage.

  A dart of pain shot through her heart at the memory of the last time she’d looked into this room, of the papers he’d refused to sign to acknowledge the divorce she’d filed for the day of t
heir first anniversary, unknowingly carrying his child. They seemed to be back at the beginning again, but she loved this man and after their special night together she knew she could never love anyone else. But her love wasn’t enough and when she walked out of his life at the end of the year she knew that no other man could ever replace him, that she would be bringing up their child alone. That thought saddened her, not just for their son or daughter, but because something haunted Max, stopped him from caring, from loving. It hurt like hell to know that she hadn’t been able to change that, to reach him.

  ‘I’m going out for a walk.’ That got his attention. He looked up from his desk as she stood in the doorway, not trusting herself to get closer as the need to stand behind him and wrap herself around his shoulders in a loving embrace surged forward.

  ‘It’s snowing.’ The sharpness of his retort only fired the anger within her, but he hadn’t taken his gaze from her. She could feel it burning into her.

  ‘I’m not asking you to come, just telling you I’m going.’ Instantly she became defensive. It was her default protection mode and right now she needed it more than ever. She needed to protect her heart.

  Without another word she turned and left him to his brooding, grabbing her coat as her defensive barrier folded around her, around her heart. He might have a penthouse apartment with views of the Thames, but she needed fresh air and freedom. Was he this controlling with Angelina? As that thought settled in her mind like the tiny flakes of snow drifting in the air, trying hard to be something more than the light dusting of sparkly white on the ground, she burst out of the tall and commanding apartment block he called home and took in a big lungful of cold air.

  ‘Damn you, Lisa, I haven’t got time for this.’ Max’s curse sounded behind her and she turned to see him, buttoning up his coat as he walked toward her, looking anything other than happy to be out in the cold winter evening.

  ‘Then don’t,’ she retorted hotly, adamant this was one thing she was going to get her way with. ‘I grew up in London. I’ll be fine.’

  ‘I am not about to allow my pregnant wife to walk around alone in this weather. In the dark. What kind of husband do you think I am?’

  ‘One who doesn’t love his wife.’ She threw the accusation back at him so quickly she didn’t even have time to think it through first.

  She didn’t wait for a reply and began to walk along the embankment pathway, the trees twinkling with lights and the glow of lights from the city reflected in the water. Beneath her boots the snow was slippery and in her haste she briefly lost her footing and slid but quickly regained her balance.

  Max was beside her in an instant, taking hold of her arm. ‘I suggest you slow down if you must continue with this madness.’

  She walked a few more steps and stopped, looking from the white pathway as it sparkled under the lamplight to Max. ‘And what would that madness be? Taking a walk in my condition?’

  He spoke over her before she had a chance to finish. ‘Of course it would.’

  ‘Or is that madness loving you?’ The words came hurtling out, dragging out all her pain on a cold breath, which seemed to linger in the air between them, waiting for an answer.

  ‘I have told you, Lisa, I can’t love. It’s not you, it’s me.’

  ‘Oh, isn’t that the perfect excuse? One every man who doesn’t want to be with a woman uses.’ Anger sizzled in every word.

  ‘It’s not an excuse,’ he said wearily. ‘It’s the truth.’

  ‘The truth?’ she fumed. Did he even know what that was?

  He moved closer to her, his height towering over her, dominating everything. ‘I don’t want to be the man my father was. I don’t want to risk hurting you—hurting our child.’

  Lisa’s heart thumped in her chest, so loud she was sure it was echoing around London, sure everyone would hear it. She’d found a chink in Max’s tough armour and he’d let her slip through, opened up and was finally on the brink of admitting what his demons were. Demons that made loving impossible for him.

  She moved closer to him. ‘Just because your father did that to you, to your mother, it doesn’t mean you will be like him.’

  * * *

  The softness of Lisa’s voice nearly killed Max as he stood looking at her, vaguely aware of other people walking in the early evening darkness passing with a cursory glance at them but he couldn’t take his eyes from Lisa’s.

  ‘This hasn’t got anything to do with my father.’ Even now when she was making it all so easy for him, he couldn’t truly own his failings, couldn’t admit that unlike Raul, who had found love and happiness, he never would. He was cast from the same mould as his father.

  ‘You have to let the past go, Max. You can’t live within its shadow for ever and I more than most know that. There are plenty of shadows in my past, plenty I’d like to ignore or run from, but I can’t, because I love you.’

  He moved away from her, needing the space to think, to gather the turmoil of emotions that had somehow escaped. He crossed the footpath to lean on the stone wall, looking out over the darkness of the moving water. ‘You can say it as many times as you like, but it won’t change anything, Lisa. I am who I am because of my past and I can’t change that.’

  She joined him by the wall, looking at him, trying to force him to look at her. He didn’t want to, didn’t want to look into her gorgeous green eyes and see the love in them. Keeping himself at an emotional distance had worked while he was bringing up Angelina. He’d never admitted to himself or his sister that he loved her. That was what had kept her safe, kept her in his life.

  But Lisa wasn’t Angelina. She wasn’t the baby sister he so wanted to hate for being his mother’s choice in a decision that she later paid for with her life. Lisa was his wife, the woman he’d thought he could enjoy passion and desire with, be a husband to, all without giving his heart. That fatal commitment that always made a person leave him, his life. He’d long since been secure in the notion that if he didn’t engage his emotions he couldn’t be hurt—couldn’t hurt anyone.

  ‘It doesn’t have to define you, Max,’ she said softly, too softly. He looked down at her, noticing she wore less make-up than usual. She’d stepped out from behind the façade of bright, bubbly and in-control Lisa to tell him how she really felt and he’d thrown it back at her—again.

  ‘We never talked of our past before we married, did we?’ He turned his attention back to the water and somewhere in the distance the eerie sound of sirens pierced the night, as if the truth of all she’d said was piercing his armour, cracking it open and exposing the young child who still lingered within, hurt and afraid.

  ‘Maybe neither of us were ready to share those secrets.’ She spoke so softly that he almost didn’t hear her. He sensed her moving closer, felt her arm against his and he clenched his jaw hard as need for her began to bubble to the surface once more. ‘But it’s not too late.’

  Was she right? Could he do that, tell her why he’d been a hard and dominating brother to Angelina and why he could no longer look his stepfather in the eye, knowing he’d been the one to stand back and allow his mother to make such a momentous decision? Could he tell Lisa that he wanted to love her, wanted to love his child, but that he didn’t trust himself not to hurt her? That he couldn’t stand it if she left him once he’d opened his heart to her.

  ‘It won’t change anything, Lisa.’

  ‘But I’m willing to take the chance, Max—for our baby, not for me.’

  He turned to face her once more. ‘Why would you do that? Why stay with a man who can’t love you and maybe can’t even love his child?’

  ‘You know my past now, Max. You know why I want a father for my child, one who will always be there, not one who turns up and uses his child to get at me. I would rather be a single mother, completely on my own, than put my child through that.’

  She was doing what his mother had done. Sacrificing herself, her needs for those of her child, albeit for very different reasons. ‘Why? You saw where I g
rew up when my mother and I moved to Madrid after my father walked out.’

  ‘It has nothing to do with where I’d live.’ She looked at him, imploring him to understand. ‘It’s because I want to be a better mother than mine was. I want to care and love my child, to give it all it needs and that includes a permanent father. But only you know if I can manage that last part.’

  He looked at Lisa, at the way her lovely red hair moved in the light wind, at the rosy glow the cold was bringing to her pale cheeks. He knew so little of her past. Was that where everything had started to go wrong? They’d allowed passion to rule, never words.

  ‘You’ve never really mentioned your mother.’

  ‘Because she never wanted me, never cared for me in any way. I was completely left to my own devices and if one good thing has come out of seeing my older stepbrother constantly being sought out by the police, it’s that I decided to lift myself out of that rut. Not to be the girl from the wrong side of town. I studied hard at school and later got my degree with honours in physiotherapy. My mother hates that I did well in life. She is constantly looking for ways of bringing me back down.’

  His heart ached for Lisa, who like Angelina hadn’t known a mother’s love, but it still didn’t make it any easier for him to let go of his emotions, to feel love, much less show it. If anything the expectations she’d just heaped on made it harder.

  ‘She would really do that?’ He thought of the hard and unyielding woman he’d met just one week before he’d married Lisa and knew without a doubt that she was capable of that. Life had made her tough, taught her to inflict hurt, but how far would she go to teach her daughter a lesson for bettering herself? How could any mother want to do that?