Reckless Night in Rio Page 12

  He gave a rough gasp and nearly lost it right then. Grabbing her shoulders, he pulled her up with force and lifted her hips over his body. He was blind with need, ready to thrust inside her, to impale her. He only knew he had to take her or die.

  “Wait,” she panted. Wrenching away from his grasp, she opened a drawer beside the bed. He saw a condom in her hand and realized he’d forgotten all about it.

  He’d forgotten about it. If Laura hadn’t stopped him, he would have made love to a woman without a condom for the first time in his life. He exhaled as he broke out into a sweat.

  “There,” Laura whispered. Finally, she lowered her body over his, allowing him to impale her, inch by inch.

  His eyes rolled back and he closed his eyes. Yes. Yes. He was losing his mind. The more time he spent with her, the more he lost. And it was worth it. So worth it.

  Slowly, she moved against him, pulling him deeper inside her. Her thighs were clamped around his hips as she increased her rhythm and speed, riding him. Opening his eyes, he looked up at her, watching the sway of her enormous breasts as she moved over him. Her face was luminous. Her eyes were closed in ecstasy as she bit her full, bruised lower lip. He heard the intake of her breath, and he never wanted to let her go.

  Ever.

  His heart clenched in his chest. He couldn’t let himself feel that way. He couldn’t let himself feel anything but lust. Pure, raw sex.

  He had to teach Laura her place. Show them both the true nature of the passion between them.

  With a violent movement, he rolled her over on her back, so he was on top of her. Her eyes widened as he roughly gripped her shoulders. Then with a grunt he thrust inside her, hard and deep.

  He gasped as he felt her body around him, hot and tight and silken and deep. She cried out from the force of his possession, but he didn’t stop. He only rode faster, filling her with each thrust, deeper and faster, ramming himself inside her. He heard her shocked intake of breath and then she, too, began to grip his shoulders, her fingernails sharp in her answering frenzy of desire.

  But it wasn’t enough. He wanted to take off his condom, to feel her from the inside with his naked skin—

  No.

  The answer was like a blow. It was the one thing he could not allow himself to do. Ever. He could not be that close. He could not risk her conceiving a child.

  Furiously, he rode her harder—faster—desperate to feel her tight sheath completely around him, to lose himself utterly inside her. As he slammed into her, he felt her fingernails cutting into the skin of his back. The pain only increased his pleasure as he rode her harder and harder until beads of sweat covered his forehead. He wanted to leave her raw, until he was utterly spent, until they both collapsed into oblivion.

  He heard her cry out, her voice rising in a slow crescendo of joy. Tension sizzled down his body, leaving every muscle taut, crying for release. With a violent thrust, he filled her deeply, then held her tight as she screamed his name. He felt her convulse around him and could hold back no longer. With a savage, violent thrust, he filled her. He felt her hot and wet all around him and poured himself inside her with a shout, as his vision went black.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  LAURA woke up with a start to see the soft curl of a pink sunrise through the windows. She sat up in bed abruptly, the blanket falling from her naked chest. Had she heard her baby next door?

  She listened, and heard nothing except Gabriel’s even, steady breathing beside her in the shadowy bedroom. Then she heard Robby’s voice again.

  “Ma…ma…ma!”

  Quietly Laura rose from the bed and pulled a robe off the bathroom door hook. Leaving Gabriel’s room, she went down the hall to her own, where she found her baby son sitting up in his crib. Whispering soft words of love, Laura took him in her arms. Holding him tenderly, she fed him, rocking him in the rocking chair. The baby, now yawning with a full belly, swiftly fell back to sleep.

  But Laura knew she would not.

  Putting him back in his crib, she went to the en-suite bathroom, closing the door silently behind her. She turned on the shower and dropped the robe to the floor. As the steam enveloped her body, she climbed into the marble shower. She washed her hair and stared bleakly at the wall.

  She’d been so happy last night.

  She’d been so stupid.

  Of course Gabriel had thought she was lying when she’d claimed he was Robby’s father. It had seemed a useful fabrication. Just like his marriage proposal.

  She glanced down at the enormous diamond ring still on her finger. Her other hand closed around it with a sob. It had all felt so real. She closed her eyes, leaning her head back in the hot water. When she’d realized he still didn’t believe he was Robby’s father, her heart had split in two. She’d fallen into the pool, sinking into the water, hoping to forget her pain the way she did at the pond back at her farm.

  But it had been Gabriel’s touch that had made her forget, the searing heat of his dark eyes as he’d carried her to bed. For a few hours, she’d managed to forget her heartbreak, forget that she was in love with a man who didn’t want her or their child. She’d managed to forget she’d be leaving him in the morning, with a lie forever between them.

  He’d taken her in his arms and kissed her, his lips so gentle and tender and true, and she’d forgotten everything but that she loved him.

  His hands had stroked her naked skin as he’d kissed her, his body hard and hot against hers on the bed. She’d lost her mind. Then she’d taken things into her own hands. Literally. A half-hysterical laugh escaped her. She remembered the hard, silky smooth feel of him in her grasp. The taste of the single gleaming bead on the tip of his throbbing shaft. She remembered the rough way he’d reacted, pushing her down against the bed and savagely thrusting deep inside her until she exploded with pleasure, blinding sweetness tinged with bitter salt like tears.

  She blinked back tears as she stared across the steamed-up shower. It was morning now. Her left hand closed over the ten-carat diamond sparkling beneath the running water. Their night in Rio was over. Time to give back the ring. Time to take back her heart.

  As if she could.

  She’d go back home to her family’s farm. Back to her lonely bed. Only now it would be worse than before. Because now she knew she’d always love him. Now, she’d never be free.

  Who is the father of your baby, Laura? Will you ever tell?

  She turned off the water and dried her hair with a thick white towel. She put on the plush white robe and left her bedroom, closing the door softly behind her.

  Going to the kitchen, she turned on a light and made coffee. As it brewed, she poured milk and sugar into a big mug, then filled it to the rim with the hot, bitter brew. Blowing on the steaming liquid, she stood for a moment, alone in the house of sleeping males.

  This could have been her home. They could have been her family. If only she’d fallen in love with a man who actually loved them back, a man who wanted a wife and child.

  Carrying her mug, she went outside to watch the sun rise over the Atlantic. It was the last morning she would ever spend with both Robby and his father under the same roof. The last day she’d ever see the man she would always love.

  She felt the soft wind, the breeze off the sea, and looked down at the beach below. She looked down. The party had ended, leaving only litter rattling along the empty street.

  “There you are.”

  She turned to find Gabriel behind her in drawstring pajama bottoms. Her eyes unwillingly lingered on his bare chest before she met his gaze. His dark eyes twinkled at her as he held up a steaming cup of coffee. “You made coffee. Thank you.”

  She took a sip from her mug, relishing the burn against her tongue. “Sure.” She drew a deep breath and turned back to the view of the ocean. “It was the least I could do before I go.”

  “Go?” There was something odd in his voice.

  She turned back to face him, startled. “In a few hours, you’ll sign the papers to buy
your father’s company. And Robby and I will go home.”

  Gabriel’s handsome face looked suddenly grim. Setting down his coffee, he put his hands on her shoulders and gazed down at her. “I don’t want you to leave.”

  “We had our night. It’s over.” She swallowed back her own pain, tried to smile. “We both knew it wouldn’t last.”

  “No.”

  Laura gave him a trembling smile. “It was always meant to be this way.”

  “No,” he repeated roughly. “Stay.”

  “As what?”

  “As…as my mistress.”

  She licked her lips, yearning to agree, yearning to say anything that would give her relief from this heartbreak. But she knew that staying here as Gabriel’s mistress wouldn’t end her pain. It would only prolong it.

  “I can’t,” she whispered. “I would always be waiting for the day you’d tire of me, and move on to another.”

  He searched her gaze. “Can’t you live in the moment? Just live for today?”

  Blinking back tears, she shook her head.

  “Why?” he demanded.

  For an instant, she almost laughed. He looked like a spoiled child deprived of his favorite toy. Then she sobered. “I don’t want to raise Robby that way. And because…”

  “Because?”

  She took a deep breath. Taking her heart in her hands, she looked up at him.

  “Because I love you,” she whispered.

  His dark eyes widened. “You—love me,” he repeated.

  She nodded, a lump in her throat. “I left you last year because I knew you could never love me back. You’ve told me so many times you will never love anyone. Not a wife.” She trembled, lifting her eyes to his. “Not a child.”

  He stared at her, and Laura waited, breathless with the hope that he might deny it, that he’d say his time with Robby had changed his mind.

  “There’s more to life than love, Laura,” he said, pulling her into his arms. “There’s friendship, and partnership, and passion. And I can’t do without you, not anymore. I need you. Your truth. Your goodness. Your warmth.” He gave her a humorless smile. “It warms even my cold heart.”

  She caught her breath, then rubbed her stinging eyes. “I’m sorry, but I can’t do it, Gabriel. I can’t,” she choked out. “I can’t just stay here, loving you, while you give me nothing in return but the knowledge that you’ll someday leave—”

  He gripped her shoulders. “Marry me.”

  Her eyes and mouth went wide. “What?”

  “Marry me.” He picked up her left hand, looking down at the diamond on her finger. His lips curved upward. “You already have the ring.”

  “But I thought your proposal was a lie!”

  “It was.”

  She shook her head tearfully. “So why are you saying this? We’re alone. You’ve already convinced Oliveira. You don’t need to pretend, not anymore!”

  “I’m not pretending.” Bending his head, he kissed her hand, making her tremble with the sensation of his warm lips against her skin. He looked up. “I need you, Laura,” he said huskily. “I don’t want to lose you. Marry me. Now. Today.”

  She licked her lips, feeling like she were in a dream. “What about Robby?”

  Setting his jaw, Gabriel straightened.

  “Perhaps I can’t love him. But I can give him my name. I can give you both the life you deserve. And I can be faithful to you, Laura. I swear it.”

  It was so close to everything she’d ever wanted. Gabriel would be her husband. He would be a father, at least in name, to their child. And if some part of her warned that this was a fool’s bargain, to marry a man who could not love her, she still couldn’t resist. Her heart overrode her reason and she succumbed to the temptation of her heart’s deepest desire.

  With a tearful sob, she flung her arms around him in her bulky white cotton robe, kissing him as the sun finally broke, vivid and golden, over the fresh blue Atlantic.

  “Yes!” she cried with a sob. “Oh, yes!”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  TWO weeks later, Laura stared at herself blankly in the mirror.

  An elegantly dressed bride in a long, white lace veil and satin sheath gown stared back at her. It still didn’t feel right. She picked up her neatly bundled bouquet of white roses and looked back in the mirror.

  It was the morning of her wedding. In less than an hour she would have everything she’d barely dared to dream of—she’d be Mrs. Gabriel Santos. Robby would have his father.

  So where was the joy? She should have been ecstatic with bliss and hope. So why, looking at herself in this beautiful dress, standing in a suite of this beautiful rented mansion outside her village, did she feel so…empty?

  Gabriel had wanted to marry her immediately, in Rio, but he’d quickly given in to Laura’s begging when she’d asked to have their wedding in New Hampshire, so her family could attend.

  “We can get married in New Hampshire, of course we can, if that’s your wish,” he’d told her. “But after the ceremony, we must live in Rio. Do you agree?”

  She’d agreed. She’d been lost in romantic bliss, and all she’d thought about was getting married to the man she loved, in a beautiful wedding surrounded by friends and family.

  She hadn’t bothered to think about what would hap pen afterward. Gabriel had already signed the preliminary contracts to acquire Açoazul SA, and he now planned to merge the company with Santos Enterprises and permanently move the headquarters from New York City to Rio de Janeiro.

  Starting tomorrow, she and Robby would live far away from her family, far from the people who actually loved them. Laura would be the wife of a man who didn’t love her, a man who would offer only financial support to the child he didn’t know was his son. A child he could never love.

  Now, Laura was dressed in an exquisite 1920s-style designer gown and her great-grandmother’s old lace veil. In ten minutes, she would go downstairs to get married in this beautiful place. The Olmstead mansion was a lavish house of forty rooms built by a now-bankrupt hedge fund manager, currently rented out for weddings. It sat among acres of rolling hills with its own private lake, a winter wonderland. And after the elegant ceremony in the gray stone library filled with flowers, a reception would follow in the ballroom, a lavish sit-down dinner of steak, lobster and champagne.

  Laura had fretted about having such a luxurious wedding, worrying she’d steal her little sister’s thunder from two weeks ago. Gabriel had smiled and picked up the phone. Within minutes, he’d arranged to send Becky and her new husband to Tahiti on honeymoon, via his private jet. He’d created college funds for young Margaret and Hattie, to allow them to go to university. For their mother, he’d completely paid off the mortgage on the farm, and even helped out Ruth’s dearest friend, a neighboring woman with a sick child, by paying for medical care.

  All of this, and he’d still deposited the agreed-upon million dollars into Laura’s bank account.

  “A deal’s a deal,” he’d told Laura when she’d thrown her arms around him with a sob of delight. “I will always take care of you. That means taking care of your family.”

  Laura bit her lip, furrowing her brow as she stared at herself in the mirror. She had everything she’d ever wanted. And yet…

  “Your family,” Gabriel had said. Not our family.

  He didn’t love her. He didn’t love Robby. And he still didn’t know the truth.

  What difference does it make? she argued with herself. Her love for Gabriel could be enough for both of them. He would still provide for Robby financially, living in the same house, acting exactly like a father in so many ways. What difference did the truth make?

  Except it made a huge difference. In fact, truth was everything. Because without truth, how could there be love?

  Her troubled eyes looked back at her in the mirror.

  But if she told Gabriel now that he really was Robby’s father, if he knew she’d lied to him all this time, she might lose everything she had. He would never
forgive her for the lie. He might—almost certainly would—call off the wedding. Why would he take her as his wife if he couldn’t trust her? Then he might sue for custody of Robby, and take her baby away from her out of duty—or even a desire to punish her.

  But her conscience stung her. Didn’t Gabriel deserve to know the truth before he pledged himself to her for the rest of his life?

  She heard a knock, and her mother’s smiling face peeked around the door. “All ready, sweetling? Your sisters are waiting and eager to be bridesmaids.”

  Laura took a deep breath, clutching her bouquet in her cold, shaking hands. “Is it already time?”

  “Just a few more minutes. The last guests are arriving now…” Then, as Laura turned to face her in her 1920s-style gown and her great-grandmother’s long veil, Ruth gasped, and her eyes filled with tears. “Oh, Laura,” she whispered. “You’re beautiful.”

  Laura’s lips trembled as she smiled. “You look amazing, too, Mom.”

  Her mother shook her head dismissively at the compliment, then came forward to embrace her, looking chic in pearls and a mother-of-the-bride suit of light cream silk. “I’m going to miss you and Robby so much when you’re in Rio,” she choked out. “You’ll be living so far away.”

  Laura fought back tears. Though she adored the energy of Rio, the warmth of the people and the beauty of Brazil, the thought of moving permanently to the other side of the Equator, far from her family and home, caused wrenching pain in her heart. If her husband loved her, it might be endurable. But as it was… Choking back a sob, she squeezed her mother tight and tried to reassure her. “We’ll be just a quick plane ride away.”

  “I know.” Her mother pulled away with a smile, even as her eyes glistened with tears. “My consolation is that I know you’re going to be happy. Really, truly happy.” She paused. “Gabriel is Robby’s father, isn’t he?”