The sound was low, halting. It vibrated around his chest and echoed off the walls, affording him some sense of victory. Clearly she could no longer pretend that she didn’t ache for him, just as he wanted her with such intensity that he almost couldn’t think straight.
His mind raced ahead before he could rein it in. Perhaps if they indulged this one last time it might sate the hunger which had been eating away inside him ever since this incomparable woman had left his bed three months ago.
Perhaps.
‘I didn’t quite catch that, Saskia. Was that another failed attempt at denial?’
He lifted his hand and brushed her cheek—the faintest of contacts and yet it ripped through him.
Saskia sucked in a sharp breath as if to echo it. ‘Malachi...’
‘Repeat it, if you will,’ he enjoined, all too aware that his leaden voice betrayed him but not even caring any more.
And then her eyes flashed. They locked with his in unmistakable defiance, just as they had for a moment back on that promenade. A kick of that spirited, feisty Saskia he recognised only too well. It was like a shot of pure lust straight through to his sex.
‘Fine,’ she gritted out. ‘I still want you. I know I shouldn’t, but I do. Is that what you wanted to hear?’
‘It’s a start.’ He lowered his head slowly towards her, pulled by some invisible thread which seemed to be as delicate and as strong as spider’s silk.
‘We can’t...’ She shook her head weakly. ‘This isn’t about another roll in the hay. There’s a baby now—our baby. The fact of whether we still have chemistry or not is irrelevant.’
‘I beg to differ,’ Malachi growled.
And he was unable to stop himself from closing the gap and finally covering her mouth with his, revelling in the way Saskia surrendered to him in an instant. Her lithe body moulded to his, and her arms snaked around his neck as if they knew her mind better than her brain did.
And Malachi indulged. Deepening the kiss and giving in to the savage, raw ache that roared inside him. The inconceivable need he felt to be with her—inside her—over and over again.
She was his.
It thundered through his veins even as he struggled to comprehend what it meant. She was carrying his baby. Never again would another man touch her the way that he did. Be with her the way he was.
She was his.
Even if he didn’t fully grasp what that meant.
Even if a part of him knew—knew—that he was about to complicate things in a way that he had been avoiding his entire adult life.
CHAPTER FIVE
IT WAS ELECTRIC. He was electric. Just as it had been three months ago.
Better.
Saskia melted into him in an instant, all her tentative resolve gone, and the painful memory of her parents’ death was dissipated the moment Malachi’s lips touched hers.
She wanted him with an intensity that should have terrified her. On some level, it did. And yet she couldn’t stop—couldn’t drag her mouth from the thrilling slide of his; couldn’t unwind her arms from around his neck, where they’d slid almost of their own volition.
She didn’t want to stop.
He gathered her to him, lifting her up and pulling her legs around his waist, running one big, callused hand along the length of her exposed thigh as the long side slit of her dress fell away. And when she locked her heels together, drawing herself that bit tighter to him, he made a low rumble of approval deep in his throat, and it rolled through her like the most delicious storm.
Supporting her with one hand, the other hand brushing the hair gently from her cheek as his mouth still plundered hers, Malachi carried her through his loft-style apartment. Everything in her jolted in anticipation of the intimate reunion she’d imagined over and over in her head, but had never believed would actually happen.
‘Last chance, Saskia,’ he muttered, his voice hard and dark as he shouldered his way into the plush master suite and carried her to the bed.
She wondered what it had cost him to drag his mouth from hers and stand there now, so still and unmoving.
Could she have stopped like that?