For the Babies' Sakes (Expecting) (Harlequin Presents, No. 2280) (6 page)

For a moment her body stretched up, lithe, shapely, and staggeringly erotic with her gorgeous breasts lifted high and her arms reaching above her head as she wriggled out of the top. He was shaking, marvelling at the huge plum centres, peaking for him, enticing his mouth…

And she was sweet to taste. Her nipples shaped to his lips as he suckled greedily and she grabbed his hair, moaning. Beneath his hands her skin felt beautifully smooth as if it was straining to contain her flesh. The sensations were so intense that he felt drunk with them, so drunk that he could hardly stand.

His nose burrowed into the firmness of her, inhaling the unique fragrance of her body as he worshipped every inch of her deeply sensual breasts.

But she was in a hurry. His scalp tingled where she'd tugged fistfuls of hair, his face burned from her scalding, desperate kisses and grazing teeth, which were now nipping his lower lip urgently. Every last corner of his head was filled with their laboured breathing, his mind just a
mass of cataclysmic connections that fired his pleasure centres and nothing else.

Her hand enclosed his and drew it from where it was enjoying the lengthening of one rosy nipple. About to protest, he let out a guttural groan instead as he felt the warmth of her thighs and then her wetness waiting for him.

His head spinning, he managed to put his hands on her waist and to lift her. With Helen's legs wrapped around him, he staggered more by luck than judgement to the adjoining sitting room, kissing her deeply and with mounting hunger as she writhed and squirmed against his body.

He laid her down on the carpet and tore at his own clothes with the impatience of a teenage boy. Her hair was falling about her face, the band holding it hastily ripped off. They stared at one another with naked need and as his nudity increased her eyes became more and more sultry, her lips more inviting and his heart came close to bursting.

She didn't want a long, slow seduction. And he too was enveloped in a sense of desperation, some part of his nonfunctioning brain retaining the knowledge that this would be the last time he ever made love to his wife.

Although he was tender with her as always, their love-making had a different dimension. He had never known her to be so uninhibited, so intensely passionate and fierce. She blew his mind away, every stroke of his body stoking up the furnaces that inflamed his nerves, every touch and caress affecting him like wildfire. They were both crying out and shouting, their bodies moving with exquisite perfection, drawing the very last ounce of sensation from their union.

Through the misty haze that covered his eyes he saw that she was more beautiful than he had ever remembered. Sweat-licked, carnally erotic, she lured him on with her
eyes, mouth, her hands and her entire body till every sense he possessed went into meltdown.

His body flamed like a furnace. Exquisite pain tore at his sensitised nerves. He couldn't bear it. No more, please, it was so good, too good…

Shellbursts of pleasure. And again. And yet again…

He couldn't breathe. He seemed to be balancing on a summit, every muscle in his body tightened so fiercely that he ached everywhere. And then gradually consciousness began to flood back, his jerking muscles relaxed and he floated back to earth again.

Back to a whole raft of guilt and regret for what he'd done.

Helen lay limply beneath him, her eyes closed, a blissful smile on her lips. Gently he pushed the hair from her flushed face.

‘Helen.'

She didn't stir. Moving carefully, so he didn't disturb her, he shifted his weight and just gave himself up to luxuriating in the extraordinary tremors chasing through the cells of his body.

He swallowed as a terrible emotion welled up inside him. It was pushing away the barriers he'd painstakingly erected and it threatened to flood his entire being with a destructive weakness.

‘Helen!' he whispered, checking.

Deep asleep. He was glad. He had to grab a shower, chuck some clothes on fast…

And then he must ring Celine.

 

Helen stretched languorously and reached out automatically for Dan. To her surprise her hands encountered nothing but the fibres of the carpet. Reluctantly her eyes peeled open.

For a moment she lay there, dismay seeping into her
very bones as she realised two things. They had made love—mind-blowing, unbelievable love that had shot her up into the stratosphere somewhere—and he had gone.

Another thought sneaked into her confused mind. Where had he learnt to touch a woman like that? It had always been good, but never so…

She blushed scarlet, feeling the heat rippling through her turgid body, arousing it again. With disgust, she crushed her lust. Blanked out as well as she could the memory of Dan's desire-filled eyes luring her on, the intensity of his passion and the terrible need he had satisfied in her.

How could she have been so stupid? He'd probably packed his clothes and scooted off, vastly amused that she'd been so pie-eyed from drinking on an empty stomach that she'd given him a good time as a parting gesture!

Furious with herself, she crawled dazedly to her feet, aching and tender from the most tenderly impassioned seduction she'd ever known. Or would ever know, she decided gloomily.

And she'd willingly encouraged him.

The starkness of her nudity was mortifying. She'd been…
outrageous
. All that yelling and urging… It was as if she'd been desperate to be loved by him one last time. Though love hadn't come into it. Dan had just reacted like any man with sex uppermost in his mind.

Feeling vulnerable in the middle of the sitting room, she wrapped her arms around herself and wondered what to do.

She couldn't face the stairs. Not so soon after Dan's highly physical goodbye and with the memory of Celine's pink briefs haunting every step.

There was a shower in the downstairs cloakroom. She'd use that, then find the T-shirt. Scarlet shame invaded her body from the feet up. She seemed to remember she'd
whirled her top over her head and lobbed it in the direction of the pasta jar.

Nervously she crept to the door, listened, and began to cross the hall. Halfway, with her arms wrapped around herself to protect her modesty, she suddenly froze.

Dan was still in the house—and talking to someone in the study.

‘Celine!' she muttered under her breath, hoping beyond hope that it wasn't.

Grimly determined to investigate, Helen tiptoed to the shower and grabbed a bath sheet. Her heart thumped so loudly she thought he must hear it. Stealthily she padded over to the study and put her ear to the door.

‘Thank God you're there!' she heard him exclaim with huge relief. And passionately he added, ‘I need to see you. I've
got
to talk to you, Celine!'

‘Oh-h-h!'

Unable to believe his nerve, she hurled the door open with such force that it smashed against the wall and rebounded. Dan dropped the phone in shock. Like a whirlwind she ran forwards and slammed it back in its cradle, exploding with a monumental fury.

‘You two-timing, selfish, deceitful, scum of the earth!' she yelled, barely two inches from him, her body quivering, almost bouncing, with incandescent rage. ‘You disgust me! You're…obscene!' she spluttered. ‘How dare you take advantage of me? You must have known I'd had too much to drink! And now you're ringing
her!'

She was beginning to sob out the words, distraught that their love-making had been nothing special to him at all. When it had touched the very depths of her soul.

‘I will never, ever, speak to you again!' she cried vehemently. ‘You'll contact me through my solicitor…' She found herself unable to construct a sentence. ‘Get divorce. Contemptible! Broken trust…amoral, vile…'

Now she was incoherent, words just emerging wildly, arms windmilling in all directions. But he did nothing, just stayed where he was, impassive, cold, utterly closed to her.

Her head buzzed strangely. Something black seemed to roll across her eyes and the last thing she knew was that she was falling into a deep and endless well of nothing.

 

The blackness became grey and then she was being dragged unwillingly into daylight. No—the glow of a lamp. Blinking, she discovered that she was in bed. Naked. Waves of sickness were coursing through her and she scrambled miserably for the bathroom where she retched emptily.

Dan came into the room as she was wearily climbing back between the sheets. In hip-hugging jeans and casual T-shirt he looked undeniably sexy. And also quite appalled.

‘Helen!'

Dan wet his dry lips with a deliberate thoroughness and she stiffened. There must be a reason why he was shaking, why the steaming mug in his hand was slopping hot liquid onto his hand—and yet he wasn't even wincing.

Warily she sat up, hugging the sheet to her body, her grey eyes huge with alarm.

‘What?' she breathed.

The mug was placed on the bedside table. Dan kept staring at her helplessly, his hands now thrust into his pockets, and he swallowed several times before he managed to speak again.

‘You…fainted.'

She glowered, bristling. ‘I certainly did. I hope you realise how much you've hurt me.'

‘There's a problem.' He seemed unsure how to go on.

‘All of your making,' she muttered.

‘No…you…keep feeling sick.'

She furled her brow. ‘So?'

Dan sucked in a huge breath and strode about the room erratically while Helen watched him in amazement. He was so rigid he looked as if he might snap. Each jerky step jarred his entire body, sending ripples of movement across the straining T-shirt and his grim, flinty face.

Suddenly he whipped around, his bulk silhouetted against the window so that she couldn't make out his expression.

‘Your body's changed. It
feels
different.'

Cut to the quick, she flushed and ensured that the sheet stayed up around her neck in concealment.

‘Do you mean I'm fat?' she demanded icily.

‘No…I don't know, but it
is
different—'

‘Oh. Texture? Firmness? Different to Celine's? Well,' she hurtled on before he had a chance to reply, ‘maybe it's because I rarely have time to eat a proper meal nowadays. I'm snatching things on the run. Doughnuts. French fries. Bars of chocolate. Anyway,' she went on, determined not to be crushed by him, ‘I like the way I am. And you didn't seem to mind too much just now!'

That hit home. She knew she'd wounded him when he took a step back and rocked on his heels. But she didn't like what she'd done.

‘I'm sorry,' she said, lowering her eyes in shame. ‘I don't know why I said that. I couldn't help it. But you must realise I've reason to be upset. And I feel so grungy with this wretched gastric thing—'

‘I don't think it's that, Helen,' he said carefully. ‘There could be another reason why you're being sick.'

‘What?'

He just stared. Gradually the weight of his words suddenly sank into her. She went very still, as if all life in
her body had been suspended, her eyes enormous in her pale face.

No. She couldn't be.

Not…
pregnant
!

‘I—I'
M JUST
…sick,' Helen protested in a small, frightened voice. ‘One of those tummy bugs. I'll get better in a day or so.'

A spasm pinched Dan's mouth in. He seemed to be struggling with the fear that they might have created a baby just when their marriage was falling apart. Help us all! she thought. That would be so hard to bear! What incredibly awful timing! The poor little baby…

Hoarsely he croaked, ‘You're saying it's not possible?'

‘No…I…'

Helen chewed her lip, aghast. She cast her mind around, trying to remember when she'd last had a period. Life had been so hectic that she'd lost track. It must have been ages.

‘I'm sure it's unlikely. After all, we haven't been near each other for weeks,' she dissembled sullenly.

‘But you could be,' Dan persisted, his brooding eyes and harsh tone unnerving her.

‘I don't
know
!'

Impatience swept across his features. ‘Surely you keep a record of dates?' he asked coldly.

Her throat tightened. Being pregnant right now would be an absolute disaster. This was the worst possible time that it could have happened. She could see that he was horrified by the idea. And the last thing she wanted was to be a single mother, struggling on her own…

‘In my bag. Diary,' she choked. The collapse of her dreams was complete.

Wordlessly he handed it to her, his hand shaking. She
glanced up and felt herself shrivel under his ferocious expression. He was incredibly angry. As if it was her fault!

‘There's no point in getting annoyed with me,' she snapped, her hands plucking aimlessly at the counterpane and betraying her inner turmoil.

‘Just look, will you?' he ordered, unnervingly close to erupting.

All fingers and thumbs, she rummaged in the roomy bag. How had it come to this? A few days ago they would have been anxious at the thought that she might be pregnant, a little shocked, but…eventually thrilled.

Instead, she wasn't sure how she felt. And Dan was holding back a monumental fury with great difficulty, presumably irritated that he might be saddled with maintenance for a child he didn't want, for a woman he didn't love.

She couldn't be pregnant. Mustn't be. Not with Dan so hostile to the idea.

‘I've found it.'

Opening the small leather book, she stared for several seconds at the calendar with its increasingly haphazard marks, trying to make sense of what it was telling her.

‘Well?' demanded Dan.

Her brain shut down for a moment as shock waves rocketed through it. Muttering an expletive under his breath, he came forward and snatched the book from her, scowling at the page as if it might as well have been in Sanskrit.

‘What's this mean?' He thrust the book back at her. ‘It doesn't have any pattern to it.'

‘I-I've been irregular for ages.' Panic raced through her brain, helping her to invent explanations. ‘That can happen, you know. Stressed lifestyle and a poor diet—'

‘All I need to know is, when was your last period?' he asked heavily, cutting short her frantic excuses.

Her eyes rounded with apprehension as she met his stony stare. ‘Uh…April twenty-third,' she squeaked.

Dan whisked in a sharp breath and sat down on the bed as if his legs had crumpled beneath him.

‘My birthday was on May seventh,' he said abruptly.

She knew what he was suggesting. They'd celebrated with a rare meal out in London and had come home feeling so happy to have been together that they'd made love the minute they'd got home. And several times more.

Oh, heck. Now what? Fretting, she knew she couldn't remain in bed a moment longer. She needed to do something. Catch up with the ironing. Dig the garden…

‘I need a shower,' she muttered, scrambling up and heading blindly for the bathroom, tears falling down her wan face.

‘A…
shower? Now?'
he gasped.

‘Not a crime!' she hurled back and ran in, wrenching the lever of the power shower to its limit before he could catch up with her.

She welcomed the battering, taking it as her punishment for being so stupid as to allow him to make love to her despite his infidelity, for not noticing her periods had stopped, for being trusting and naive when everyone knew that if you took your eyes off a man for a second he'd be chatting up someone else.

Muttering under her breath about her rank idiocy, she scrubbed all trace of Dan from her body. It hurt. Outside and within her heart. But now she was free of him. All traces erased.

Bereft, she gave a broken sob and penalised herself by massaging shampoo into her hair with hard and ruthless fingers, before sluicing off the soap.

The thundering water ceased as if by magic. Pink and tingling from every pore, Helen warily eyed a partly
drenched Dan, whose gaze was slowly raking over her, the T-shirt clinging wetly to his magnificent torso.

The tips of her breasts jerked into life. Heat curled seductively in a pool somewhere within her body and Dan's eyes flickered.

‘Get out,' he muttered, permafrost in his expression. ‘We have things to discuss. You can't just walk away—'

‘I badly needed a shower. I felt dirty,' she defended haughtily, collecting her thick, fluffy blue robe and slipping into it.

The sensuality of her reaction to him had shaken her. Must be some kind of latent memory, she thought crossly, drying her legs with ruthless vigour. It was about time her body came up to speed and recognised him as a danger to her health and sanity.

The permafrost deepened. ‘You pick your moments,' he commented.

Winding a towel around her dripping hair, she saw that water was dripping from him.

‘You're drenched,' she said unnecessarily.

‘And you're avoiding the issue.'

‘There is no issue. It's ridiculous,' she scorned, rubbing at her hair and wincing. Her scalp must be scarlet, she thought and struggled back to the argument. ‘I take the pill,' she declared firmly. ‘We agreed, we didn't want children for a while. We intended to work hard and provide a solid, stable b-background…'

Her voice tailed off in a little wobble. So much for that idea. Their plans had been hijacked by Dan's infidelity.

‘No method is infallible,' he pointed out with maddening truth. ‘And at the beginning of April you were on antibiotics for a sore throat, remember? Didn't I read somewhere that they affect the pill?'

But that couldn't happen to her. They'd been so careful, made sensible plans…

‘Dan, I can't be pregnant!' she insisted in mounting alarm. ‘I'd be…' She ran back into the bedroom and picked up her diary. With a shaking finger she totted up the weeks. No. It wasn't possible. Her pulses steadied. ‘Over two
months
!' she cried, when he followed her in. ‘How could I not know about that? Women have an intuition about these things—'

‘Have you had any
time
for intuition?' he asked quietly.

She went white in the middle of rough-drying her hair. ‘Not so's you'd notice,' she admitted.

Feeling jittery, she abandoned her hair and stalked into the bedroom to grab some clothes, nervous at being watched so intently by the menacing Dan. He had stripped off his top and was slowly rubbing his chest dry, his eyes unsmiling and unnervingly bleak.

‘It's been as much as I could do to keep on top of work and the sheer day-to-day survival,' she mumbled, hopping her way into a pair of white briefs.

‘Well, think about it now,' he muttered shortly, finding himself a clean shirt and dragging it on with angry, hasty hands. ‘
Intuit.
How do you feel?'

After shooting him a glare, she let her hand rest on her stomach. Was it her imagination, or had it rounded significantly? The skin did seem taut…kind of shiny… Her huge eyes met his.

‘Gungy. Funny—'

‘What sort of funny?' he pounced.

‘I don't know, do I? I don't feel…myself. As if…as if…'

‘As if you're pregnant,' he supplied, snapping out the words in contempt of her stupidity at monitoring her own body.

Hastily she covered herself up with a shirt and heaved on her jeans. ‘There!' she declared. ‘I can do them up. I can't be pregnant.'

‘You've been sick,' he pointed out. ‘You've hardly eaten anything. The two could have cancelled each other out.'

‘So you're an instant expert on pregnancy now?' she snapped. ‘I admit, I'm probably run down and anaemic—'

‘With all the signs of early pregnancy,' Dan said remorselessly, his arms folded in a belligerent attitude.

Helen flushed with resentment, puzzled by his fierce interrogation. ‘Don't go on at me!' she cried, feeling suddenly emotional.

‘You cry more than you used to,' he observed coldly as a tear trailed a shiny path down the side of her nose.

‘I've more reason to!' she yelled.

‘Keep calm!' he barked. ‘If you
are
pregnant, you need to change your way of life.'

‘Typical!' she snorted. ‘I have to start wearing pink gingham and drinking lemonade and smile sweetly all day long, while you swan about swashbuckling your way through life as usual!'

‘I don't swashbuckle. I work darn hard. And whatever you say, you can't continue with your current job,' he said obstinately. ‘Your schedule is so hectic that you'd put my child's life at risk, and I won't have that!'

‘It's my child, too!' she pointed out heatedly. ‘And I'm certainly not mooning around waiting to give birth. I need to earn a living if I'm to provide for
my
child—'

‘You don't know you
have
a child yet,' he reminded her grimly.

‘Oh. No.'

Deflated by that possibility, she felt confused and uncertain whether she welcomed the idea or not, now. Practically speaking, it would be a nightmare. But…something undeniably maternal was tugging at her heartstrings, whispering seductively that a baby would be wonderful.

It was just the wrong time. When she was ready, she
wanted a
proper
family: husband, child or children—the whole package. The whole point of having a baby was to share it with someone you loved. To coo over it together, watch it learn to toddle and speak, to play daft games and make sandcastles…

Her body drooped with the realisation that it could be years before she met someone as special as Dan. And she'd be old and grey by then and they'd have to try IVF—

‘Your shirt's done up all wrong,' Dan said huskily.

Hormones, or something deep and needy, made her heart leap. With smoky eyes she gazed at him in puzzled confusion. He was moving towards her. Reaching out a hand. Undoing the buttons.

The nerves in her body screamed at her. It had been a mistake to meet his black molasses eyes. She was beginning to drown in their hauntingly unfathomable depths and now the soft sultriness of his achingly sensual mouth was weakening her will and melting all her defences.

Slowly she raised her hand. And miraculously stopped him.

‘I can do it,' she breathed, shocked to find how ragged she sounded, how rapidly her chest was rising and falling. She had to rebuff him. She knew that look of his. It was stark-naked carnality.

And she ached to be in his arms again, to know that new and exhilarating sensation of their recent love-making, which had teetered precariously on the edge of desperation. But for her own sanity she must get a grip.

Something in her eyes must have alerted him of her decision to stay aloof.

‘Go on, then, do it,' he challenged, remaining whisper-close, mind-numbingly desirable.

Of course she fumbled. Made a hash of it. Got hot and
bothered while he stood there, exuding male pheromones that were sending her crazy, her entire body liquid for him.

‘There,' she said shakily, standing her ground. ‘Dan, you've got to stop making passes at me. It's over.'

‘Is it?' he asked hoarsely.

Her eyes virtually crackled with anger. ‘Yes! You know it is!'

‘Then how do you explain what keeps happening between us?' he growled.

‘I can't answer for you. But my mind is clear, it's just my body that's still working in the past. It'll soon get the message. I don't like responding to you. It's a knee-jerk reaction, nothing else—and I find your groping absolutely
intolerable
! Now. Where were we?'

Dark eyes regarded her with a suddenly harsh contemplation.

‘Trying to discover whether you are pregnant,' he clipped. ‘How much did you drink this evening?'

Too much, she thought gloomily. And then her eyes widened in alarm.

‘One small glass, a few sips of another… Dan! If I am pregnant, could that—?' Her voice dried up.

‘I'm sure that's all right. It's nothing,' he said gruffly.

‘And…' Her hands twisted anxiously, a terrible fear making her heart rate quicken. ‘We…' She checked herself. It would be a travesty to say they'd made love. ‘We had sex! If—if we've endangered the baby and I have a miscarriage I'll never, ever forgive you!' she wailed.

There was a deathly silence following her outburst, broken only by their harsh breathing. Then uncertainly he said, ‘I didn't fling you around. I was gentle, wasn't I? I'm sure sex is all right—'

‘You would say that!' she jerked. ‘If I am pregnant, I don't want it to die inside me because you couldn't keep your hands to yourself!'

‘That's
cruel
, Helen!' he objected savagely, his face pinched and white with shock.

‘It's how I feel!' she sobbed. And was instantly distressed by what she'd said. ‘Oh, I'm sorry, I'm
sorry
.'

‘Hell. So am I. We were both responsible for what happened,' he growled.