Reaching around her, he undid the clasp, and her bra dropped to the floor as her breasts sprang free. With a flick of his fingers, he ripped the edges of the panties, and that white scrap of lace, too, fell to the floor.
“You don’t have to destroy them—” she protested, then her mouth went dry when she saw the heat in his dark gaze.
Antonio cupped her face with his hands. “This is just as I always pictured you,” he whispered. “Naked, filled with my child.” His fingertips lightly stroked the diamond and sapphire necklace above her bare collarbone. “Covered only with jewels.”
She could not make herself say the words. I love you. But perhaps she could show him...
Hana pushed him back gently against the bed. Surprised, he looked up at her with smoldering eyes.
Leaning over, she kissed him. His sensual lips were warm and intoxicating. She wondered if he, too, was trying to tell her he loved her, because that was how he kissed her. Oh, if only it could be true...
Looking down at him, she pulled off the sparkling diamond tiara and set it on the nightstand. As if it were a striptease, she slowly pulled off all the hairpins from her ballerina bun, one at a time, tossing them to the floor.
Lying on the bed beneath her, he watched her, his eyes wide, his lips parted.
Looking down at him through her sweep of black eyelashes, she deliberately pulled the last hairpin from the bun. Shaking her head, she let her long dark hair tumble down her naked shoulders in the silvery moonlight.
Lowering her head, she kissed him, as the dark curtain of hair fell around her, brushing against his chest. Reaching up, he gripped her shoulders and kissed her, long and hard, his tongue plundering hers.
“Careful.” Pulling back, she gave a low laugh, running the tip of one fingernail down his hard-muscled chest. “Remember I’m pregnant.” She let the nail dig a little deeper. “You have to be very, very gentle with me...”
“I’m always gentle,” he growled, his deep voice booming against the high ceiling of the nineteenth-century Spanish bedroom. Taking a deep breath, he repeated in a calmer voice, “I can be gentle.” But even as his grip on her shoulders loosened, she saw the barely restrained wildness in his eyes.
As she kissed him, as she pulled off his tuxedo trousers and silk boxers beneath, she controlled the pace. If he tried to hold her, she stopped. If he tried to kiss her too passionately, she pulled away. She was tender. Gentle.
Finally, when she’d tortured him enough, she climbed over his naked hips and spread her bare legs wide over his thighs. She lowered herself on him, inch by inch, until beads of sweat appeared on his forehead from the effort of restraining his desire. She began to ride him. Slowly. Deliberately. Until he was gasping and gripping the comforter beneath him and nearly weeping as he held himself back. Tension coiled inside her, delicious and sweet, until she soared with a loud cry. A split second later, with a shout, he exploded inside her.
She’d been trying to show him that she loved him with her touch, since she was too terrified to tell him with words. But as they held each other afterward in bed, naked, sweaty and spent, as he kissed her tenderly on the forehead and said huskily, “You’re incredible, querida, there’s no other woman like you on earth,” suddenly, Hana was no longer afraid.
“I need to tell you something,” she whispered in the darkness. Wrapping his arms more securely around her, he pulled her back against his naked chest.
“What is it, querida?” he said drowsily, nuzzling her neck. His muscular body felt so warm against her own, making her feel safe. She took a deep breath.
“I love you, Antonio.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ANTONIO’S EYES FLEW open in the dark bedroom.
I love you.
He’d been exhausted and content, holding his naked wife in his arms in the moonlight. But when he heard her whisper those three words with a mix of shyness and pride, he felt a rush of emotion.
I love you. Those soft, warm words poured like honey into all of his broken places.
I love you. Strange. Women had said those words to him before, but he’d always been cynical about it, assuming they were an obvious ploy meant to lure him into marriage.
This was different.
Hearing Hana say she loved him was like the first time he’d made love to her, when her innocence had almost made him feel as if he, too, were a virgin. Now, as he looked down at her in his arms, naked in their bed, he felt his heart swell all the way to his throat as he realized that he—
His shoulders stiffened as a cold sweat broke out along his spine.
No. Coldness rushed into his soul like wolves howling in a winter forest, biting the edges of his heart, making it shrink, making it bleed.
Antonio couldn’t love her. He couldn’t love anyone. If he ever really opened up, if he ever showed her all his flaws and darkness, her so-called love would evaporate like mist in the brutal Spanish sun.
Even his own parents hadn’t wanted him. Neither had any of the foster parents who’d tried, or that waitress he’d naively tried to love at eighteen. They’d all seen some monstrous flaw in him. Why should he think that Hana, so intelligent and wise, wouldn’t as well?