by Amy Andrews
‘Leo was one, Sophia was two and a half, Marisha was four and Anna was five.’ They’d all been so young. So dependent on her and she had let Sophia down.
Ben shut his eyes and dropped his forehead gently against hers. ‘Sophia’s accident wasn’t your fault, Katya. It was your mother’s fault.’
Not according to Olgah. Katya still remembered her mother’s rage when the hospital had finally tracked her down.
‘I can’t do it, Ben,’ she said, shifting back from him slightly, his soft words very persuasive. ‘I can’t risk being careless and having this baby get hurt. Sometimes as I’m drifting off to sleep I hear Sophia’s screams, I can smell her burnt flesh.’
Ben stroked his hand down her spine and Katya shivered. She wanted to step closer into the circle of his arms, where he was warm and male and tempting, but she had to make her point.
‘I don’t know how to be a good mother, Ben. I had a lousy role model and my sister nearly died because I failed in my duty of care to her. And I’m petrified something terrible will happen if I’m left in charge again. I just can’t do it.’
Ben nodded. Her conviction was obvious. What had happened with Sophia had obviously had deep, long-lasting effects. She truly believed she couldn’t be trusted with her own baby. Another tear trekked down her face and before he could stop himself he leaned forward and gently kissed it away.
Katya sighed and gave in to the desire to lean against him. His chest was broad and he smelled like man, like the scent that pervaded her pillow and her sheets. Suddenly the atmosphere turned sexual. The moonlight glowed on the Med to her left, stars winked down at them from above, and in front of her was a gorgeous, sexy man, holding her close.
Suddenly it all seemed terribly inevitable. Fated, even.
Katya lifted her head and got a brief impression of square jaw and dark stubble and hooded eyes and then Ben’s mouth was shutting it all out. His body surrounded her, pushing her back against the railings. Nearer, closer, harder. Her head spun as her senses filled with his heat and his smell and his touch.
His mouth left hers and tracked kisses down her neck and she gasped for air, her heart beating frantically. He moved with her, walking her backwards away from the terrace. Her fingers grasped his shirt for stability until a wall pressed firmly against her back. She had a vague notion he had her up against the doorjamb where the French doors separated the villa from the terrace but they could have been floating high above the Med for all she knew.
Then he was helping her out of his jacket and she was stripping off his loosened tie and unbuttoning his shirt and finally, finally laying her hands on his naked chest. His skin was hot and he moaned against her neck. The mat of hair covering his bulky pectorals trailed down his flat abdomen and felt springy and tickly against the palms of her hands. His muscles twitched and reacted to the path of her hands and it emboldened her to undo his belt buckle.
‘Katya,’ Ben gasped, and reclaimed her mouth as his hand trailed down from her face to claim one firm breast.
She moaned and his erection surged but it wasn’t enough for Ben. He was half-naked and she was still fully dressed. Her clothes looked fantastic, tight in all the right places, but he knew they’d look better crumpled in a heap on the floor. ‘I want to look at you,’ he groaned against her mouth.
Katya laughed. It felt good to be finally letting go, her head spinning from the pleasure rocking her body.
Ben cut off her laughter with a deep searing kiss, stripping off her top in one swift movement. Her jeans zip followed and she wriggled her hips as he pushed them down, stepping out of the denim with relative ease.
He pulled away and got his first look at her near naked body. The light from the lounge room and kitchen illuminated her body enough for him to know it was just as he remembered. Petite and feminine. Her stomach still flat despite her twenty-week pregnancy. Her skin milky.
Her hips looked slightly rounder, though. And her breasts were considerably fuller. He stared at their lushness spilling out of her bra.
‘Ben,’ Katya begged, the look in his eyes, the roving of his gaze pure erotic torture.
‘Shh,’ he teased, ‘I’m looking.’
Much to her amazement, Katya blushed. She had no idea why. He had seen her with fewer clothes than this. But she was conscious of her body’s changes due to the pregnancy. Her hips were a little fuller and her breasts had practically exploded.
She’d always been an A cup. Her breasts had been small but pert, the nipples rosy-tipped and perfectly central. But the baby had expanded them considerably and darkened the nipples to a deep dusky hue.
‘You’re beautiful,’ he said, stroking the skin from the hollow of her throat down into her cleavage. He zeroed in on the front bra clasp and popped it, watching fascinated as her breasts sprung free. Full and lush and perky.
He noticed the prominent bluey-green veins standing out like a road map against her creamy skin. He traced the biggest one with his finger from the centre of her chest down over the swollen flesh of her left breast, to the edge of her areola. Her nipple puckered.
Katya tried to cover herself. She hated the big veins that had sprung up as her breasts had grown. ‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘They’re horrible, I know.’
Ben shook his head in awe. ‘No, cara. They are the most beautiful breasts I have ever seen. They are ready for our baby, they are all woman.’
Katya was about to protest again but he lowered his head to a nipple and sucked it into his mouth, and she swayed against him, her knees nearly buckling at such pure sweet erotic agony. His hand covered the other breast and she closed her eyes and let her lead loll back against the doorjamb.
When he lifted his head several long drugging moments later Katya opened her eyes and gazed into his. They looked glazed, drunk with passion, and she felt heady with power. She smiled at him and he smiled back before lifting her quickly away from the doorway, hauling her up into his arms and striding through the villa with her.
She revelled in the smell of his neck and the scratch of his whiskers against her nose and the way he moaned and stumbled when she licked at the pulse beating madly in his neck.
‘Hurry,’ she growled as she pulled his earlobe into her mouth.
Ben eased her down on the bed and stood back to admire how good she looked against his sheets. He saw the glitter in her blue eyes and noticed the uneven rise and fall of her naked breasts. He smiled and ran a finger down the centre of her chest, directly down the middle of her stomach to the edge of her panties.
He continued the trek and pulled the white lacy fabric down as he went. Her teeth bit into her soft full lip and Ben didn’t have to ask, she just lifted her hips and he pulled the scrap of fabric all the way down.
Now she was totally naked before him and she was so beautiful and sexy he didn’t know where to look, where to touch first.
‘Ben!’ She squirmed.
He chuckled. ‘I’m just looking,’ he said. ‘I like to look at you.’
‘What about me? Maybe I like to look at you, too.’
Ben grinned. ‘Your wish is my command.’ And he quickly stripped off his half-undone trousers and followed them with his designer jocks. His erection sprang free and it felt good to have no constraints.
Katya had thought she’d had him fairly represented in her dreams, that her imagination had conjured him up perfectly. But looking at him now, the fantasy paled in comparison. Ben was all male.
Every hard, strong, Italian inch of him.
She reached her arms up and almost fainted from pleasure when he covered her body with his solid male frame. ‘Yes,’ she whispered just before he kissed her.
Their passion ignited. His kisses grew hotter, longer deeper. His mouth left hers and found a nipple and she bucked against him like a bolt of electricity had coursed through her. She whimpered as he created pleasure and pain in equal parts.
‘Please, Ben,’ she begged, grinding her hips against his.
He chuckled and looke
d up at her from her wet nipple. ‘No, Katya. I want this to be slower this time. Like I should have done it last time. Like I would have if I’d known you were a virgin.’
Katya gave a frustrated growl. ‘My virginity is gone. Too bad. So sad.’
Ben laughed at the appearance of blunt Katya but his eyes widened as he saw a fierce light burn in her eyes.
‘If I don’t feel you inside me now, I’m going to scream.’
‘Katya, cara,’ he said soothingly,’ I want to make sure you are ready.’
Katya laughed. ‘Oh, God. I am, trust me. Can’t you tell?’
He could. His senses swam with a heady mix of cinnamon and aroused woman. Ben saw the desperation, the sexual frustration glittering in her eyes. She was lifting her hips and his erection was rubbing against her hot moist core. He held her gaze as he trailed two fingers down her stomach continuing on through the downy hair to tease her slick entrance.
A wave of heat surged through his body at her readiness, almost blinding him with intensity. ‘Katya,’ he groaned.
‘Ben, please,’ she whispered, her voice hoarse with need. ‘I promise after this you can impress me with your tricks but, please, I need you in me now!’
Katya lifted her hips, trying to catch his erection and guide him inside. ‘Please, Ben,’ she begged.
‘Katya.’ He lowered his head to kiss her as he gave in to his base urge and hers and entered her tight, hot core.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘More.’
‘Katya,’ he gasped as he moved inside her beyond any semblance of control.
Katya had been hot and ready for this for weeks. Nights fuelled by erotic dreams had primed her for this moment and it took only a few strokes of his rock-hard erection to tease the sensitive flesh into blast-off.
‘Ben. Oh, God, I can’t hold this back...it’s too...much,’ she panted, enjoying the buildup as it undulated through her internal muscles.
Ben knew the feeling. Katya’s readiness, her eagerness and erotic dreams of his own were powerful catalysts. He could feel her trembling under him. He could feel her tighten around him further and he knew that as she let go and her muscles milked him that in a few more strokes he would join her.
She was raking her nails down his back as his orgasm erupted. His muscles tensed, his breathing stopped, his heart skipped a beat for a few seconds and then it came and he pounded into her again and again, urged on by her cries and his powerful, all-encompassing release.
And somewhere, up there, while she was out of her body, shattering into a thousand pieces, Katya realised the awful truth. That she had fallen in love with Ben. That she was no better than her mother. She’d thought she was above such emotions, immune after years of her mother’s dramas but ultimately the old adage, like mother like daughter, had proven true.
She had fallen for someone who couldn’t love her back.
Katya woke a little later to find Ben staring down at her. He was tracing the veins on her breast again and she realised her nipples had been responding even in her sleep. He gave her a lazy smile and a surge of love welled up in her chest.
‘I love these,’ he said quietly, following a green pathway. ‘I love them because I know they’re making you ready to nurture our child. Are you sure you won’t reconsider?’ His hand moved lower, to her stomach, and he cradled it.
Katya looked at him and knew it was more important than ever now to leave. She had done the dumbest thing on earth, fallen for a man who didn’t believe in love. So that was two reasons she couldn’t stay. The baby and being with someone who couldn’t — wouldn’t — ever love her back.
Her life stretched before her, a long lonely corridor of time. A tear escaped and Katya closed her eyes as Ben dipped his head to kiss it away as he had done earlier. He was gentle and reverent and she thought her heart would burst it ached with so much love for him. His hand was heavy and warm on her stomach and utterly possessive.
Surprisingly the thought didn’t fill her with dread or revulsion. My how things had changed! She had been resisting a man’s ownership for years but now she was here and she knew her life would never be the same.
Was this how her mother had felt with each of her men? For the first time in a long time Katya felt a strange link with the woman who had given her life.
Ben pulled her in close, spoon-fashion, one hand cupping her stomach as one tear became two, became three until she was crying a river in the bed. Ben hushed her and kissed her hair and she cried even more. It felt like heaven to be safe in his arms and he held her till she fell asleep.
CHAPTER EIGHT
BEN and Katya spent the weekend in bed. In fact, they spent a lot of their weekends in bed over the following months. Either in their villa or on The Mermaid. By some kind of unspoken agreement, they both knew denying themselves was stupid. They didn’t question it, they didn’t even speak about it, they just let it happen.
Katya was surprised at how easy it was. How easy Ben made it. Loving him and knowing that he wouldn’t love her back hurt. But walking away now wouldn’t help her love him any less. She still had a goal — the baby. And she had to finish what she had set out to do.
So, was there something wrong with having a few brief months where the eight-year-old Katya’s romantic fairytale played out? Was it wrong to make the most of her time with Ben and just enjoy it? Life without him, without her son would go on. It would be hard, her heart would be well and truly broken, but she knew she was strong enough to do it.
Was it wrong to want this for a little while?
Still, living in the lap of luxury was hard to get used to. Years of being poor and living frugally were harder than she’d imagined to overcome. She was enjoying the perks but the wealthy mindset that was inherent in Ben was still a foreign concept to her. She kept thinking she’d do or say something to embarrass him, show her lack of breeding. And despite his inclusion of her in every part of his life, she felt like an interloper, like Cinderella waiting for the clock to strike twelve.
Ben was great. He took her out and showed her all around the Amalfi coast. To Priano, Minori and Sorrento. He took her over to Capri on his boat, to the Blue Grotto and the Emerald Grotto. And one memorable afternoon he drove her to see the ruins at Pompeii. They dined with his mother and Katya loved going to Positano for their visits. Of all the places he’d taken her, she loved Positano best.
He took her to fabulous restaurants, way off the beaten track, where the tourists didn’t go. She ate amazing dishes, like Parmigiana Melanzane and mussels caught fresh from the Med cooked in wine, lemon juice and pepper. And bruschetta. Katya developed a real craving for bruschetta.
But it had to be Taddeo’s. Taddeo owned a restaurant not far from Ben’s villa and they often ended up there for Katya’s favourite food. Taddeo had told her the first time he’d served it up to her, ‘When you go home tonight, bella, you will dream of my bruschetta.’
She had laughed but he had been dead right. It was divine with just the right blend of basil and onion and the final touch — a drizzle of olive oil. And she had asked for seconds and had made Taddeo’s day.
The weeks flew by. Christmas and New Year passed. Her belly grew into a decent-sized bump. Ben loved watching her grow with his child — her stomach expand, her breasts flower. He rejoiced in every kick, every somersault. Every day that passed he fell further in love with his son. And Katya fell further in love with him.
Work was great as well. They worked well together, probably better now sexual frustration wasn’t making them edgy and tense. And Katya was surprised every day by how much she loved the work. It was so different to the madness of the frantic get-them-in, get-them-out world of MedSurg. At the Lucia Clinic there was time to follow a patient through, to get involved.
And that surprised her, too. The MedSurg environment had suited her emotional state for many years. The insanity of war and senseless violence became blunted in the frantic atmosphere, but as her pregnancy advanced and her hormones bloomed and she fell dee
per in love with Ben, the emotional involvement the clinic afforded her gave her job satisfaction she’d never dreamed of.
The old Katya would have scoffed at such human sentiment, shied away from it even, but she was softer these days.
Was it love or the baby? She suspected a bit of both. One thing was for sure, she had a lot to thank Ben for. If she’d never fallen pregnant and never come to Italy, she would never have known this other side of herself existed. Never known she could be this...female.
Sure, she’d always looked like a woman, but perhaps now she was thinking and feeling more like one. She was even developing an understanding of her mother. Maybe they’d never be close but Katya was starting to appreciate that sometimes things weren’t so black and white.
She could see her mother’s choices through the eyes of a woman now, instead of those of a child. How love and duty for your child could war with the love you could feel for a man. Did that excuse her mother’s neglect? No.
Did it make it a little more comprehensible? Yes.
She was thirty weeks before she knew it. Her bump was soccer-ball-sized now. And she was tired. A lot. And her feet had started to swell at the end of each day from standing for hours and hours at an operating table. Ben would massage her feet each night and tried to persuade her to finish work early. But Katya refused.
Working with Ben was the one thing that helped keep their relationship in perspective. It gave it a professional aspect that she needed to keep from surrendering her heart completely. It gave her a different view of Ben for eight hours a day. Ben the surgeon. Not Ben the father of her baby. Or Ben her lover.
It was a daily dose of reality and she didn’t want to lose that sitting at home all day waiting for Ben, the man that she loved, to come home from work. That definitely smacked too much of happy families and she was determined to keep working until the day she went into labour.
But in her thirty-first week, the baby pulled rank. Followed closely by Ben. ‘Are you OK?’ he asked her quietly at the end of a particularly long day.