A Baby to Bind His Bride

She was already so ripe. Her breasts had grown heavier in these weeks, round and sweet. Her belly was beginning to curve outward, reminding him of the baby she carried even now. And the fact that she was his.

No matter who he was, no matter what he’d done, she was still his.

“You can refuse me if you like,” she said, all womanly challenge. “Or you can take me. I know what I would choose.”

And Leonidas might not be much of a man, but he still was one. And when it came to this woman he had no defenses left.

He hauled her to him, crashing his mouth to hers, and taking her with all the wild ferocity that stampeded through him.

Raw. Hot.

Perfect.

She was fire, she was need, and he was nothing but greedy where Susannah was concerned.

He couldn’t get close enough. He couldn’t taste her enough, touch her enough.

Leonidas took her down onto the lounger where she’d been sitting, and let himself go. It was a frenzy, it was a dance. It was madness and it was beautiful.

And she was his.

Right here, right now, she was his.

And as he thrust into her, for what he understood even then was the last time, he let himself pretend that he deserved her.

Just this once. Just for this moment. Just to see what that felt like.

He made her fall apart. He made her scream his name. He made her beg, and he knew he’d never hear anything so beautiful again as the sound of her voice when she pleaded with him for more. And then more still.

When he finally let himself go, Leonidas toppled over the side of the world, and he carried Susannah with him one final time.

And later that afternoon, while the bright Greek sun was still shining and the air was still cold, he put her on that helicopter and he sent her away.

CHAPTER TWELVE

IT WAS NOT a good week.

Leonidas spent most of it in his office, because he couldn’t bear to be in that damned penthouse, filled as it was with the ghost of the wife he’d sent away.

For her own good, he snarled at himself every time he thought about it—but he never seemed to ease his own agitation. He was beginning to imagine it couldn’t be done.

It had amazed him at first that a space he’d lived in with her for only seven short weeks should feel haunted by her, particularly when she’d gone to such lengths to avoid him. But Susannah was everywhere, filling up the soaring levels of the penthouse as if she was some kind of aria he couldn’t bring himself to shut off or even turn down. He didn’t understand how she could manage to inhabit a place when she wasn’t even in it, especially when he hadn’t spent the kind of time with her in the penthouse as he had on the island.

They had never shared his bed in Rome. He’d never touched her the way he wanted to here.

And still he lay awake as if, were he only to concentrate enough, he might catch her scent on pillows she’d never touched.

He’d spent his first night back from the island in the penthouse, restless and sleepless, and he’d avoided it ever since. It was easy enough to spend twenty-four hours a day in the office, because there was always a Betancur property somewhere in the world that required attention. Leonidas had poured himself into his work the way he’d done so single-mindedly before his wedding. And he had his staff pack up all the things Susannah had left in the guest room she’d stayed in while she was his widow, and he’d forwarded them on to her new home across the world from him.

Just as he’d wanted, he reminded himself daily.

He had not asked his staff in the Betancur Corporation’s Sydney office to report in on how she was settling into life in Australia. She wasn’t to be tailed and watched, or have any security above and beyond what was necessary for a woman in her position. He had vowed to himself that this would be a clean break.

“You wondered why you couldn’t have me,” she’d said back on the island when he’d informed her that they needed to separate. That this was over, this thing between them. That their marriage worked, clearly, only when they were apart. Her voice had been thick with emotions he didn’t want to recognize or even acknowledge, and she’d swayed slightly as she stood, as if he’d dealt her a body blow. “This is why. There was never any question that you would leave. It was only a question of how and when.” Her gaze had nearly unmanned him. “I expected tawdry affairs I’d be forced to read about in the papers, if I’m honest. That’s usually how the people we know send these messages, isn’t it?”

He’d wanted to answer her in a way she could not possibly mistake for the usual vicious games of the kinds of people who glittered in Europe’s most prestigious ballrooms and viewed the tabloids as their own version of social media. But he’d kept himself under control. Barely.