Duarte's Child

Part of her cringed for herself even as she said it and then she noticed how rigid he was under her and how silent. Not that in the aftermath, Duarte had ever been exactly chatty. But she also became agonisingly aware that he did not have his arms round her and that she was the one making all the effort to be cosy and close and warmly intimate. About then, she just started wanting to die.

‘And you’re so affectionate, querida,’ Duarte breathed a little stiltedly and then he finally curved an arm round her slim, still length and smoothed warm fingers down her taut spinal cord.

‘Stop it…’ she whispered.

‘Stop what?’

‘I can feel you thinking,’ she mumbled, sensing his mental distance from her with every atom of ESP she possessed.

‘I am thinking that I need a shower,’ Duarte said drily.

And why was he thinking that? A shower would get him back out of bed again, away from her, she reflected miserably, a mass of insecurities unleashed inside her again. But he couldn’t stay in the shower forever, could he? Slowly she edged away from him again, hoping to be snatched back; it didn’t happen. He rolled lithely over and sprang out of bed. All potent male, hair-roughened skin and rippling muscles. Absolutely gorgeous but never hers, never really hers even at the beginning and even less likely to be now after what had happened eleven months ago.

Emily pulled herself up against the tumbled pillows, reading the raw tension in his wide shoulders but unable to silence her own desperate need to be heard. ‘Duarte?’

‘What?’ he growled like a grizzly bear.

He was so volatile, she registered in amazement. How had she never seen that in him before? Had she been so wrapped up in her own self-pity that she’d never appreciated that she was married to a male who literally seemed to boil beneath the surface of that cool front with dark, deep, dangerous emotion?

‘I’ve got to say it…I’m sorry,’ she muttered feverishly, plucking nervously at the corner of the sheet beneath her hand. ‘No matter how bad it looked, I never felt anything for Toby and I never had an affair with him either—’

Duarte swung back to her with the speed of a lion ready to spring. Angry golden eyes struck sparks off hers in a look as physical as a slap on the face. ‘Don’t you know when to keep quiet?’

Shrinking back into the pillows and pale as death, Emily whispered, ‘I need you to listen—’

Duarte threw up both hands in a violent gesture of lost patience and strode on into the bathroom.

She listened to the shower coming on full gush and a sense of defeat engulfed her. It was swiftly followed by the conviction that she was the most stupid woman in existence. Why was she always so naive with him? Sex, he had said before she succumbed to her dream of how she wanted it to be. And so lost had she got in that delusion that, in the aftermath of passion, she had swarmed all over him as if nothing had ever been wrong between them, but it had been only sex as far as he was concerned, not making love, not a meeting of minds. Incredibly exciting sex, in her opinion, but then what did she really know about what it was like for him?

Just the slaking of a physical hunger on the nearest most available female body? Well, she’d certainly made herself available. Exactly as he had expected. I can turn you on just by looking at you. She stuffed her hot face into the cooling linen. Her own personal punishment plan, he had said—and what had he meant by that? And why hadn’t she asked? Her sated body told her where her mind had been. Lost. Wanting him, wanting him much more than common sense. She’d had no restraint. She had so desperately wanted to believe that physical intimacy could fill the terrible emptiness that losing him had filled her with, could provide the first bridge between them, could give her back hope. Her nails raked down the smooth sheet beneath the pillows, self-hatred burning her like poison.

Suddenly, she pulled herself up and back on her knees, thrusting her wildly tangled hair back over her shoulders. Her strained face taut, she leapt off the bed, looked around for something to pull on to hide her nakedness and snatched up his discarded shirt. She came to a halt on the threshold of the bathroom where Duarte was already towelling himself dry.

‘I suppose you think everything you ever thought about me has been proven now…I suppose you think I am a whore!’ she fired at him jaggedly.

Duarte raked a driven hand through his damp tousled hair and rested dark deepset brooding eyes on her in the tension-filled silence. ‘Leave it,’ he warned and tossing the towel aside, he strode past her.

Her legs felt horribly wobbly. She leant back against the bedroom wall to steady herself. A tight hard knot of pain was building inside her, threatening to take control of her entirely, no matter how hard she tried to get a grip on herself. ‘Sleeping with me was like a power play, was it?’ she mumbled sickly. ‘A case of finding out how high you could make me jump? And just how desperate I would be to please you?’