Claimed for the Leonelli Legacy

She padded back to the bed and climbed in, snuggling up to Max without hesitation, one arm wrapping round his broad chest. ‘So tell me why this Doug would have wanted to destroy your reputation,’ she murmured, curiosity flickering afresh. ‘I need to learn all the ins and outs of this family...and the secrets if there are any.’

Max tensed and released his breath in a hiss as he sat up and, in so doing, freed himself from her hold. ‘All families have secrets.’

‘But this relates to you and we’re married,’ Tia reminded him unnecessarily.

Max gritted his teeth, belatedly recalling why he never stayed the night with a woman, never risked getting cosy with one, never shared late-night chat sessions. Unfortunately, he acknowledged grimly, there was no escape from a wife occupying the same bed...

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘DOUG AND I attended the same boarding school as teenagers,’ Max divulged reluctantly. ‘I didn’t know him then the way I do now. I trusted him as a friend. It didn’t occur to me that he already saw me as competition and thought Andrew took too much interest in me. In my own eyes I was the housekeeper’s nephew and I didn’t ever expect to be anything more. I was staff, Doug was family.’

Tia rested her tousled head back on the pillows and reached for a bronzed masculine hand, lacing her fingers into his without any help from him. ‘Go on...’

Max retrieved his hand. ‘Doug’s family lived nearby and he was a frequent visitor. His mother was on her second marriage and he had a stepsister, a very pretty redhead called Alice. We were only seventeen. Doug brought Alice here repeatedly that summer and I fell in love with her. Only a few weeks after I began seeing her she announced that she was pregnant and that I was the father of her child,’ he revealed grittily. ‘I was surprised because I had only slept with her on one occasion and I had been...careful.’

Tia sat up to study him in consternation. ‘And?’ she pressed.

‘There was a huge family row. Doug’s stepfather stormed over here and tried to beat me up, and then in the midst of all that, with Alice’s mother and my aunt screaming in the background and Andrew calling for order, Alice took fright and finally told the truth. The baby was Doug’s. She and Doug had been having sex for months and when she realised she was pregnant she panicked because they had been expressly warned by their parents that they were expected to think of each other as brother and sister. Together, she and Doug decided that I should be set up to take the blame, which is why she slept with me in the first place...’

‘And you loved her,’ Tia muttered unevenly, her nails digging into the palms of her hands to enable her to listen to the tawdry tale without making tactless comments. Max had been the fall guy in a nasty set-up, his conviction betrayed by a boy he had believed to be his friend and a girl whom he had learned to care about.

‘Yes, but I got over it,’ Max completed with a brisk lack of sentiment that did not impress her in the slightest. ‘However, Doug’s mother and stepfather’s marriage broke down because of that pregnancy and, sadly, Alice miscarried a few weeks later, so everyone lost out.’

‘At least she told the truth in the end,’ Tia sighed.

‘Can we please drop the subject now?’ Max murmured, his stunning heavily lashed dark eyes welded to her troubled gaze. ‘I was a boy and now I’m a man but I still don’t like remembering that hellish affair.’

Inside her chest, Tia’s heart ached for him and she reached for his hand again.

Max snaked his fingers free a second time. ‘You asked me and I told you. I don’t need or want your sympathy. It hit me hard at the time because Alice loving me felt special but afterwards I realised it had all been a giant fake. And afterwards, in front of everyone when she was trying to save face and impress Doug, she asked me how I could ever have thought that she could have had feelings for someone like me...’

‘Someone like you,’ Tia repeated with a frown, rolling over and curving another arm round him, needing to retain some kind of physical contact with him. She was outraged that, not only had the wretched girl tried to set him up, but she had also struck out at his pride with a nasty comment. ‘What was that supposed to mean?’

‘You don’t want to know.’

‘No, you don’t want to tell me,’ Tia translated flatly.

‘Surely I’m allowed to retain a few secrets,’ Max said very drily as he slid free yet again and sprang out of bed. ‘If Andrew is still awake I have some business to discuss with him. It slipped my mind earlier.’

‘I’m not stupid, Max. If you come back to bed I won’t ask any more quest

ions and I won’t touch you either,’ Tia countered fierily. ‘There are only so many times I will allow you to push me away.’

Max set his teeth together, his lean, darkly handsome features clenched hard. ‘I know it’s a cliché but...it’s not you, it’s me. I’m not good with demonstrative people. I’m not accustomed to physical affection. The only kind of touching I have ever experienced was sexual and anything else...it feels uncomfortable.’

At least he got back into bed, Tia consoled herself, watching him below her lashes, the strong line of his darkly shadowed jaw line revealing his lingering tension. She stayed on her side of the bed, lying straight, all limbs in alignment like a tomb adornment sculpted out of stone. ‘You didn’t have affection even when you were a child?’ she could not help asking.

‘No, and my aunt wasn’t the touchy-feely type either.’

‘My grandfather?’

‘My relationship with Andrew has always been formal.’

And Tia lay there, feeling so sad for him because he had never known normal affection and was now so inhibited that that kind of touch made him uneasy. What must his parents have been like? And why did he never ever mention them? Why had he been left in need of his aunt’s care in the first place? That was the crux of the matter, she sensed, but not something she intended to pursue at that moment.

In the morning she woke in Max’s arms and she came sleepily awake, moaning involuntarily as expert fingers slid between her parted thighs and played there, sending little ripples of mounting delight filtering through her. Response came as naturally to her as breathing and she arched up as he shifted lithely over her and plunged into her, stretching her with his girth. An almost shocking tide of pleasure engulfed Tia in a blinding surge and she whimpered, eyes fluttering open on his lean dark face and the ravenous dark golden eyes locked to her. And she recognised that in that moment Max was hers, absolutely, unequivocally hers, wanting her, needing her, craving her and that knowledge satisfied the hollow feeling that had spread within her the night before over his disinclination to even hold her close.

He brought her knees up and rocked back into her hard and fast and a fevered gasp escaped her. She couldn’t lie still, she couldn’t get enough of him and when the voluptuous release of orgasm claimed her she cried out his name. Max rolled over, carrying Tia with him, and slumped back against the pillows. He couldn’t keep his hands off her and that bothered him. What about showing a little restraint? A little cool? When he had woken with Tia’s shapely little body next to his and the smell of her coconut shampoo surrounding him, he had had to have her. It was that simple, that basic, and no sooner did he reach climax than he was wondering how soon he could have her again. The strength of that lustful craving chilled him to the marrow because it was outside his parameters and like nothing he had ever experienced before.