Contract Baby

Polly was momentarily silenced by that sweeping statement.

‘You’re my wife, and the mother of my son. I suggest you get used to those facts of life,’ Raul completed, studying her in angry, intimidating challenge.

A bemused look now sat on Polly’s face. Her lashes fluttered. The tip of her tongue crept out to nervously moisten the taut fullness of her lower lip. ‘I don’t understand...’

Hooded eyes of gleaming gold dropped to linger on the ripe pink contours of her mouth. ‘Sometimes you talk too much, gatita...’

‘What does that mean...that word you keep on using?’ Polly whispered, because the very atmosphere seemed to sizzle, warning her of the rise in tension. Suddenly she was finding it very difficult to breathe.

‘Gatita?’ Raul laughed as he closed the distance between them in one easy stride. ‘It means “kitten”. The shape of your face, those big blue eyes... you remind me of a little fluffy cat, cute and soft with unexpected claws.’

Having spent a lifetime fighting the downside of being smaller than most ot

her people, Polly was not best pleased to be linked with any image described by words like ‘little’, ‘fluffy’ or ‘cute’.

‘What do you think I am? Some kind of novelty?’ she demanded, fighting not to be intimidated by his proximity and towering height.

‘If I knew what it was that attracts me to you, the attraction probably would have died by now,’ Raul said cynically.

Polly stilled, feathery brows drawing together. ‘But you’re not attracted to me...’

Raul dealt her a rampantly amused appraisal. ‘I may have controlled my baser urges, but I’ve lost count of the times I almost succumbed to the temptation of hauling you into my arms in Vermont,’ he admitted frankly. “Then I believed your appeal was related to the simple fact that I knew you were carrying my child...’

‘Yes?’ Polly conceded breathlessly, with the aspect of a woman struggling to take a serious academic interest in a confession that had flung her brain into wild confusion. Her heart was now thumping like a manic hammer below her breastbone.

‘But now I’ve finally worked out what got us into this in the first place,’ Raul confided, and, without giving her a hint of his intentions, he lifted his hands and slowly tipped the wrap from her taut shoulders. ‘Subconsciously I picked you to be Luis’s mother because you appealed to my hormones... Once I’d reached that conclusion, suddenly everything that’s gone wrong between us started making sense!’

In her complete bemusement at that declaration, Polly was standing so still the garment simply slid down her arms and pooled on the carpet. ‘What...what?’ she began with a nervous start.

Bending, Raul closed his strong arms round her and almost casually swept her up off her feet.

‘What are you doing?’ Polly shrieked in sheer shock. Raul dealt her a slashing smile of unashamed satisfaction. ‘Husbands don’t need to control their baser urges.’

‘Put me down—’

But Raul silenced that angry command by bringing his hungry mouth crashing down on hers without further ado.

Polly saw stars. Stars inside her head, stars exploding like hot sunbursts in all sorts of embarrassing places inside her. It wasn’t like the only other kiss they had shared—a slow burner, cut off before it reached its height. Raul’s devouring demand had an instant urgency this time, intensifying her own shaken response. He probed her mouth with tiny little darting stabs of his tongue. The raw sexuality of that intimate assault was shockingly effective. It set up a chain reaction right through her whole body, filling her with a wild, wanton need for more.

Polly uttered a strangled moan low in her throat, hands sweeping up to dig possessively into his luxuriant black hair and hold him to her. Without warning, Raul broke free to raise his head, dark golden eyes intent on her hectically flushed face as he strode out into the hall and started down the corridor. ‘Dios...I could make love to you all night, but I know you’re not ready for that yet,’ he groaned in frank frustration.

Surfacing in turmoil from that predatory kiss, Polly gasped, ‘Where on earth do you think you’re taking me?’

Unerringly finding the master bedroom, opposite the guest room in which Luis slept, Raul shouldered wide the door, strode across the carpet and deposited her with almost exaggerated gentleness on the vast divan bed. He hit the light switch by the bed, dimly illuminating the room. Then he straightened with an indolent smile.

Polly reared up, bracing herself on her hands, her hair tumbling round her pink cheeks, her eyes very blue as she studied him in shaken disbelief. ‘Do you honestly think I’m about to go to bed with you?’

It didn’t take Raul two seconds to respond to that question. Surveying her steadily, he jerked loose his silk tie. ‘Sí...you’re my wife.’

‘This is not a normal marriage!’ Polly argued, still gazing at him with very wide and incredulous eyes.

‘That’s been our biggest problem. The sooner this marriage becomes “normal” the better,’ Raul delivered, discarding his tie and sliding fluidly out of his jacket to pitch it on a nearby chair. ‘It’s time to forget how we started out—’

‘But we didn’t start anything!’ Polly slung back, watching him unbutton his tailored silk shirt with the transfixed aspect of a woman unable to credit that he was actually undressing in front of her. ‘I was pregnant before we even met!’

‘Stop complicating things. You were pregnant with my baby. That created a special intimacy from the outset. Naturally that made a difference to how I reacted to you—’

‘In Vermont?’ Polly threw in helplessly. ‘When you dropped in out of the blue whenever it suited you?’