The slant of her shoulders, so heavily weighted, made his own ache. He carried a lot of pain himself, but in that moment, he took in the scope of hers and he was humbled.
"I'm really tired. Can I go to bed now?" She set aside her spoon.
He gave her barely dented soup a dismayed glance. "I'll take you up."
He put her in his own bed, watching her move like a robot on autopilot as she stripped her pants, then pulled her bra straps down her arms before digging under her shirt and throwing her bra to the floor. She was asleep before her head hit the pillow.
He watched her for a long time, wondering what would happen to her if she lost the one person she counted on to love her.
It had all been a bad dream. They were still in Rio and she had dreamed that he had ended things so ruthlessly. He hadn't dumped her in Paris like soiled laundry. She hadn't received a call that had shaken her to her very foundation.
Part of her knew that she was kidding herself, that she was in his bed in Madrid, but as her hands skimmed over the warm satin that was Ramon's hard body next to hers, she let herself travel back in time a mere few days, to when she had believed their future was bright and endless.
He responded by gathering her into his heat, murmuring something about her needing sleep.
"I am sleeping," she whispered against his neck, nuzzling the stubble under his chin with her nose. Her hand found his length, slowly worked up and down as he grew under her touch. "I'm dreaming. Don't wake me."
He said something she didn't catch, an imprecation, and dug his hand into her hair, pulling her closer as he searched for her mouth with his own. His heavy body rolled, tucking her beneath him.
Time slowed. He drew out each kiss, each caress, peeling open one button at a time down her shirt, then parting it to spread kisses across her chest. When he finally found her nipple, she was practically weeping, all of her skin sensitized, all of her being expanding with love for him.
"Touch me," she begged, pushing his hand between her thighs, where she was wet and aching.
He growled with appreciation, then stroked his hand on her inner thigh, spreading her legs wider to accommodate him as he settled between them. When he climbed his fingertips back to where she yearned, she gasped into his mouth.
He slid away, down and down, mouth following a leisurely path through the valley of her breasts while his hands cruised in tender caresses across her skin. His lips grazed the ridges of her ribs, played into the trembling plane of her belly, and finally his hot breath fogged the humid grove between her thighs.
He pleasured her, driving her up and up the rise of tension.
She stroked her fingers through his hair, blatant in how she offered herself to him, joyous in her abandonment. No man would ever give her this again. She had to take it now. Now.
She cried out as a climax rocked through her, anguished that it was over so quickly, but he rose over her, moving away briefly for a condom, then settled on her again. As he slid into her, she sighed with repletion. All of her folded around him, drawing him in deeper.
He made love to her like that for a long time, slow and easy, as if he, too, wanted to prolong this connection. As if he knew, as she did, that this was their last time.
But it couldn't last forever and their bodies were too responsive to each other's. The friction of his movement was building to a screaming pitch inside her. She was so mindless in her arousal, her hands moved in uneven patterns across his shoulders and back. They slid of their own accord to his flexing buttocks and urged him to thrust harder. Deeper.
He pushed his hands beneath her buttocks and took her with him, driving ruthlessly. She closed her legs across his back and lifted herself into him, glorying in the animalistic act, thrilling to the roughness of it. The implacable imprinting of his body into hers.
On and on she clung to him, everything obliterated from her mind except him. This. Them. Timeless. Forever.
Then, suddenly, the world exploded. They both released jagged noises as a powerful climax overcame them both in a rush of culmination and abject loss.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ISIDORA FELT LIKE an exposed nerve as they arrived at the hospital. She and Ramon hadn't spoken much, just exchanged the mundane things. Breakfast was ready. What time should he order the car, that kind of thing. She had showered alone, which had made her feel bereft.
Neither acknowledged their lovemaking, which had made her feel like it was something shameful that needed to be hidden, at least from herself.
She felt like her father, going back to her mother again and again, hoping for a better result. She had judged Bernardo at times, thinking him foolishly optimistic and a glutton for punishment. Now she judged herself the same way.
At least they would have a clean break.
Her father was awake when they arrived, still very weak, but the doctor was there and pleased with how things were progressing. He was recommending a move out of intensive care and discussed the plan for his recovery at home when he was discharged in a week or two.
"I'll stay with him," Isidora said, smiling through her relieved tears at her father, not looking at Ramon as she said it. He couldn't argue. It was a perfectly legitimate reason to end their pretend engagement.
"Oh, no, querida," her mother protested. "You have a wedding to plan. So do I." She smiled, glowing as she gazed at Bernardo. "Of course I'll be your father's nurse. In sickness and health, correcto, mi amor?"
"But you said-?" From the way her mother had spoken yesterday, she had thought Francisca didn't want to marry again.
"I told you, that's why I went away. I needed to think. To be sure, but yes. Almost losing my one true love has convinced me." She leaned to kiss Bernardo's waxen forehead. "Of course I will marry you, mi amor."
Her father's breathing tube was gone and his white lips managed a small, cherishing smile.
"Papa-" She stopped herself, unable to protest their trying again. Her mother would take it as a lack of support.
She didn't know where to look as she fought letting all her bitter, angry, confused, angst-ridden thoughts fly out of her tight throat.
Ramon moved in close behind her and rubbed his hands on her upper arms.
"Congratulations," he murmured over her shoulder to Bernardo. "We're both very happy for you. Francisca, did you spend the night here? You must be exhausted. Let me order a car, so you can go home for some rest. We're in no hurry to get back to Paris. Isidora will want to sit here awhile and assure herself Bernardo is on his way back to fighting form." He walked her mother out.
Once they were alone, Isidora met her father's eyes. Her brimming eyes overflowed in a pair of tracks down her cheeks.
"Papa... She left." Her hands locked around the bed rail, blurred eyes taking in the equipment that had kept him alive when his heart had given out. Did he not see that this time her mother had, in actual fact, broken his heart?
"I love her," he whispered. "I have to give us another chance."
No, he didn't.
But he would.
"What are you going to do?" he asked, gaze sliding to the door where Ramon had disappeared with her mother.
She shook her head. She couldn't move back here and watch her parents struggle and implode again, but she couldn't continue with her farce of an engagement, not when she saw what a physical toll misguided love could take.
She refused to keep giving chances to someone who would never love her back.
Isidora was introspective all the way back to Paris. Ramon couldn't blame her. He was a private man himself, especially when a family crisis occupied his thoughts, but he found himself wanting to draw her out. Reassure her.
"Are you upset about your parents reuniting?" he asked as he poured them glasses of wine.
"Hmm?" She seemed to come back from a long way away. "Oh. Worried, I guess. I learned a long time ago that their relationship is not something I can control, though."
She took the glass he brought her with a murmur of surprise. "Gracias." She returned to her pensive study of the closed drapes. She wasn't being cold, just quiet, which seemed worse.
"Do you want to watch a movie or something?"
"No," she murmured, that absent voice entirely too lethal. "I'm going to pack."
He heard the words, knew what they meant, had even expected them on a subconscious level, but he wasn't prepared for them. He wasn't prepared for the way the handful of short words set him into a barren arctic wasteland, where snow blew in a fuzz of white, making him feel blind and deaf. Abandoned.
"I don't expect to sleep together," he said, then realized how stupid it sounded.
Her head came around and her lashes came up, revealing the gray of her eyes to be a bleak mist. Her mouth curled into a mockery of a smile, but the least amused kind. He half expected her to say she hadn't invited him to.