Antonio took a breath. Wasn’t this what he’d wanted? So why did he feel as if he were the one being dumped?

Was it just because he’d never had a woman reject him before? Or did it go deeper than that?

“Goodbye, Antonio,” Hana said quietly. This time, she didn’t reach out to shake his hand. She just turned away, and he suddenly knew he might never see her again. She intended to disappear from his life, and take their baby with her. To take her sweetness and loyalty and warmth to some other, more deserving man.

The strange tension lifted from his belly to his throat, making it suddenly hard to breathe. “Wait.”

Hana looked at him. “For what?”

She was close, so close. Just inches away. He could imagine her body against his. It would be so easy to take her in his arms and kiss her.

No. He couldn’t. If he did, he would want more. He cursed silently to himself. He already wanted more. He’d never stopped wanting more. From the moment he’d possessed her. No. From the moment he’d first hired her. Hana was his weakness, the one and only desire he hadn’t been able to push aside in obedience to the coldly ruthless dictates of his brain.

But he wouldn’t kiss her.

Couldn’t.

It was absolutely forbidden.

As Antonio looked down into her brown eyes, so deep with sadness, shining beneath all the lush colors around them, he suddenly felt like all the world was bursting into spring around them. Only he was still frozen. And if she left, the cold gray winter he lived in would last forever.

His gaze fell to her full pink lips. He saw the way her even white teeth worried against the tender lower lip.

“You can’t go,” he said, searching her gaze. “Not until I kiss you goodbye...”

Without letting himself stop, without letting himself think, he reached for her. In the middle of the beautiful park, as cherry blossoms blew in the soft spring breeze, he cupped her face with both his hands.

He had the brief image of her wide, startled eyes in her heartbreakingly lovely face. And then he lowered his mouth to hers, kissing her with all the emotion he could not let himself think, feel or say.

He felt the tremble of her lips beneath his own, before, like a miracle, she surrendered to him with a small shivery sigh.

But almost at once, his self-control started to fray.

He wrapped his larger body around hers, holding her tight against him as he deepened the kiss, plundering her mouth until the whole world felt like it was whirling around them, as if they were the eye of the storm.

He was pulled into a vortex of desire. Suddenly he felt lost, drowning in the intensity of his need. Nothing mattered—but this—

She roughly pulled away. She looked up, her face stricken. “Don’t!”

“Hana—”

“Stay away from me!”

And she turned and walked away. Antonio watched her wan figure disappear, her shoulders slumped, crossing back through the park. A cool wind blew against his face, as white petals danced in the breeze, brushing against his black cashmere coat. Burning, he was frozen, watching her.

Could he really, truly let her go?

CHAPTER FOUR

HANA FELT A lump in her throat as she walked past the bowing doorman into the

Tanaka hotel. She wasn’t going to let herself cry. She wasn’t! Antonio wasn’t worth it!

She blinked fast as her eyes burned.

She’d known all along he wouldn’t want to be part of their baby’s life. She’d known it even before he’d made love to her, when he’d told her outright that their affair had to be brief, forgettable and consequence-free.

So why, after telling her he couldn’t be part of their baby’s life, had he suddenly asked her to be his mistress—and worse, kissed her?

Tags: Jennie Lucas Billionaire Romance
Source: readsnovelonline.net