Returning to Claim His Heir

‘Why save me?’ he asked, watching her reaction closely. ‘Why risk being arrested yourself or punished for your actions?’

‘I may have done things I’m not proud of, Duarte, but I’m still human.’ She shook her head. ‘There was so much blood... But I couldn’t risk being seen. I had to leave you there. The next thing I heard was your death announced on the news. And then your poor friend was found alive. I didn’t even know he was still in there...’

‘He suffered greatly but he is okay now. Physically at least.’

Duarte was silent for a long time, his mind working double-time to process the new information. He’d known she was hiding something, but this was unbelievable.

‘Look, I’ll get my things packed first thing in the morning and I’ll be gone, okay?’ She moved towards the door. ‘I just want you to know that I am sorry for the part I played. I never meant for any of that to happen.’

‘You saved my life. You risked your own life to save me,’ he said softly. ‘Did you love me, Nora?’

She shook her head, anger in her eyes. ‘Don’t make me out to be something I’m not. I’m not the worst of them, but I was still one of them. I still conspired to hurt you. To hurt other people through you.’

‘Did you love me?’

He asked the question again, more harshly this time, and watched as her eyes drifted closed. She was consumed with guilt—that much was clear. And he should be furious at her deceit. So why did he have the urge to offer her comfort instead?

He closed the space between them, forcing her chin up so she met his eyes. Twin stormy grey pools of torment reached out to him and pierced him somewhere in the region of his heart.

‘Yes...’ she whispered, a choked sob escaping her lips. ‘Despite everything, I loved you...so much.’

Duarte claimed her lips, swallowing her sadness and her guilt and wishing he could take the burden from her. She had been in a purgatory of her own making for months, believing him dead and believing she had been responsible.

Her hands clutched at his shoulders, pushing slightly, and Duarte froze, fully prepared to stop. He was not the kind of man who needed to force a woman to get his way, no matter how strongly his body had reacted to her touch. But before he could pull back she seemed to make a decision of her own, moving up on her toes and pressing her soft, full lips against his.

CHAPTER SEVEN

SHE HAD KNOWN it would come to this from the moment she’d taken a seat across from him at dinner and looked into his warm, whisky-coloured eyes. It was too much—having him this way but not having him at all. If there had ever been a more perfect torture, she’d like to see it. This man who had stolen her heart and then broken it into a million pieces...he was everything she remembered and more.

His strong muscular arms locked her in place as their mouths moulded together like twin suns re-joined. He was a skilled kisser, and the heat of his mouth on hers was sending delicious shivers down her spine. Nora felt her body sing out the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ even as her mind screamed at her to stop. To think of the consequences of her actions.

She was sick of thinking.

She felt brazen and rebellious as she moved her body even closer into the cocoon of his arms, letting her tongue move against his in the sensuous rhythm he had once taught her on a darkened beach.

If she kept her eyes closed she could almost imagine that this moment was entwined with that one. That their lives had never been torn apart by the awful events in between. No. She couldn’t think of that. It was just him and her and this glorious fire they created between them when they touched.

‘I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t hoping for this, but I’m not apologising,’ he whispered, his head dipping to kiss a path along her neck.

She gasped as his teeth grazed along the sensitive skin below her ear. His hands slid down her back to cup her behind, holding her against him. She could feel the evidence of his arousal pressing against the fabric of her dress. It would be so easy to lift the fabric and feel him properly...

A long-ago memory of him lifting her legs around his hips and taking her in a public elevator rose to her mind unbidden, heightening her arousal. She had always been like this with him—like a moth to a flame. She’d never reacted at all to any of the men her father had allowed her to date...

The single errant thought of her father was enough for her to get a hold on her rapidly deteriorating rational mind and detangle herself from Duarte, moving a single step away.

‘Why do you want me, Duarte?’ she asked. ‘Even after the things I’ve revealed, you still kiss me like that and it ties me up in knots.’

He shoved a hand through the short crop of his hair, golden eyes seeming luminous against his dark skin. ‘I’ve tried to ignore my attraction to you, because you have made it more than clear that whatever we had before is over. But every time we’re together I’m more drawn to you. You’re intelligent, and beautiful, and I find myself thinking of you far more often than I should probably admit. I think you still want me too.’

Nora felt heat and desire prickle across her skin at his words. She didn’t know what to say to that.

One half of her was crying out to kiss him again and throw caution to the wind—to take one selfish night of pleasure and deal with the consequences of her lies of omission tomorrow. The other half told her she needed to tell him everything, not just a half-truth. She was stalling and drip-feeding him all the terrible things in the hope that she might somehow manage to keep him. That they might make it through all her painful revelations with this fragile new beginning still intact.

The idea of tipping him over the edge into the kind of hatred she’d seen on his face once before was more than she could bear.

She closed her eyes, hardly believing the selfishness of her own thoughts. This wasn’t just about her. Liam deserved to have his father in his life; he deserved the chance to know him. She had to tell him. She had to rip the sticking plaster off.

She opened her mouth to speak, but a small cry came from the monitor in her pocket. She looked at the screen, then up to Duarte.