A Baby to Bind His Bride

And then he wanted to keep doing it, again and again, until this edgy hunger for her was sated at last. If it could be.

He took his time, exulting in the fact there was no barbed wire here. No followers with an arsenal and no video cameras on the walls.

There was nothing but the two of them. At last.

Leonidas moved over her, touching and tasting and indulging himself, from her lush mouth all the way down to the delicate arch of her feet. Then back again. He stripped off the stunning ball gown he’d insisted she wear, in that bright green that was so unlike the Widow Bettencourt that he expected whole tabloids to speak of nothing else come morning.

But he couldn’t wait to take it off her.

He stripped her bare so that he could get to the glory beneath it, all those luscious curves he’d dreamed a thousand times since that day in Idaho. Did he imagine that they were richer than he recalled? He cupped her breasts in his palms, then tried them against his tongue. He worshipped that belly of hers that was still flat, though slightly thicker, perhaps, than it had been that last time.

He settled himself between her legs and bent to taste her fully. Sweet cream and that feminine kick, she went straight to his head. And he did absolutely nothing to stop the intoxication.

He brought her to a shuddering, rolling sort of shattering with his mouth, there where she was wet and needy. Then he did it again. And only when she called out his name, her voice cracking, did Leonidas finally crawl up the length of her and fit himself to her center.

At last.

Then he finally thrust himself into her, sinking to the hilt, and loved the hitch in the little sound she made as he possessed her completely.

He waited as she accommodated him, wriggling her hips and flushed bright everywhere, more beautiful beneath him than any woman had a right to be.

And when he moved, it was with the knowledge that she had given him the one thing he hadn’t known he wanted more than anything else in this world. Again.

His blood was all around him. His cousins, his mother, more Betancurs than anyone could possibly want. They were shoved down his throat whether he liked it or not. They schemed and plotted. They lived sparkling lives his hard work provided them and they still would have been the first to snap at him if they could. They were the part of his life he wished could have stayed forgotten, but it wasn’t as if he could escape them. They were everywhere.

It had been that way all his life. His mother the worst of them, demanding and deceitful and never, ever any kind of parent in any real sense. He’d stopped expecting any better of her and he’d stopped wondering why he always felt empty inside when others clearly did not.

He knew why. This was how they’d made him. This was who his family wanted him to be, this harsh creature who felt nothing.

But Susannah hated them all as much as he did. She wanted nothing to do with his blood or what proximity to the Betancurs could do for her. If she saw the emptiness in him, she didn’t shy away from it. On the contrary, she was the only person he’d ever met who treated him as if he was no better or different from anyone else.

And she had given him a family.

A family.

Leonidas would do everything in his power to make sure that he never lost what was his. Not to his own memory, and certainly not to those vultures who banked on the fact they shared his blood, assuming that would keep them safe.

He made himself a vow, there on the floor in his Paris townhome, on the night of the Betancur Ball where once again, Susannah had given him the world.

He would do no less for her—whether she liked it or not.

And then he lost himself in her, making her cry out again and again, until he finally lost his patience. He gathered her to him, then reached down between them to help her fly apart one last time.

And he followed, calling out her name as he fell.

Later, she stirred against him and he lifted her up, carrying her through the house to the room he had no intention of letting her stay in on her own the way she’d planned to do when they’d arrived. But there was no point arguing it now. He found a loose long-sleeved T-shirt and a pair of lounging pajama bottoms, and dressed her quickly. She made a face at him while he did it, but then curled herself into a ball on the bed in the last guest suite she would occupy.

And when she fell asleep, she fell hard.

With any luck, she’d stay that way until they made it to the island. Where he had every intention of keeping her until she couldn’t imagine any possible scenario that involved leaving him, because that was unacceptable.

She was his.

Leonidas had led a cult for years. Whether he’d been a figurehead or not, he knew exactly how to keep one woman where he wanted her, and he had no qualms about using each and every one of the dirty little tricks he knew to make her think it was the best idea anyone had ever had.