CHAPTER EIGHT
ISANDRO stood under the punishingly hot spray of the shower. His whole body was tense, his belly knotted with extreme self-reproach, self-recrimination, self-disgust. He had just given in to the weakest of urges—although it hadn’t felt weak at the time. It had felt like a force field sweeping him in one direction only: to possess Rowan.
Savage hands spiked through his wet hair as he stood under the intense needles of spray.
Sandro. She’d called him Sandro. The only one who had ever shortened his name. She’d let it slip one day early in their marriage. He could still remember the colour that had turned her cheeks rosy at his expression. And then he had drawled laconically, ‘It’s fine. I like it.’ And the thing was, he had liked it. Had thought it had meant something.
But to hear it again now was a shock. It had felt so right. A lot like how it had felt to kiss her and take her to bed. And he was sure she knew. Had expected to use it as some kind of trigger.
And how could he have slept with her? Not once, he had to remind himself, but twice. In quick succession. She was the worst of the worst. She had walked out on her baby. On him. Had spent the latter months of her pregnancy freezing him out. Isandro turned the shower to cold for a second, and welcomed the icy clarity the brief pain brought.
She owed him. He’d had no intention of prolonging her stay—he’d already planned on suggesting that she move either into Osuna or Seville—but now. Now … he might keep her a while. Let this irritating passion for her burn its course. Then he’d let her go and say good riddance. Once the divorce was through, custody agreed in his favour, he would make sure he had as little to do with her as possible. Intermediaries could deal with the moments when she would take Zac, or he would be taken to her.
But with that thought came an image of Zac being shuttled from one place to the next. Isandro dismissed its poignancy immediately. It was no less than what millions of children across the globe had to deal with, and they survived. But his child shouldn’t have to just survive …
Isandro stepped out of the shower. He told himself that his thoughts were clear. As icy as the water that had just hit his skin. But his belly was still tight, still full of something. It was indefinable and uncomfortable. He looked through his bathroom door at the rumpled sheets on his bed. As if to mock him, the tantalising smell of their sex, their bodies, seemed to curl around his senses, and to his dismay the recent cold punishment was forgotten and his body started to react again.
Holding onto the clarity of thought, crushing down the hard feeling in his chest and belly, Isandro strode to the adjoining door and stepped back into Rowan’s room. This was all the clarity he needed—the physical kind. After all, she was just his mistress now …
‘Gracias, Ana-Lucía.’
Rowan took Zac from his new nanny to bring him outside. She snuggled close and buried her face in his neck, making loud kissing noises, listening to his giggles and feeling pure joy at the sound. When they got outside he started squirming, struggling to be down and running. She welcomed the distraction. Any distraction was welcome from what had happened the other night—and every night since then. Her body was tender all over, aching in secret places.
Her mind still couldn’t fully cope with what was happening, what had happened. At the way she’d been so forward, so wanton that night. She’d literally begged Isandro to make love to her, when evidently he’d wanted her to leave.
And yet now he wanted her as his mistress.
And why didn’t that thought fill her with the indignant horror it should? Why did it fill her with molten heat? Each night since then, when they went to bed, Isandro would either carry her from her bed to his, or come to her bed. But either way he would leave her alone afterwards. After taking her to paradise and back. Over and over again. It enflamed her, and yet made her very scared of what the fallout might be.
She put Zac down and watched him toddle off at great speed. He’d discovered the art of gardening. The art of pulling up great handfuls of earth and replanting them somewhere else—usually his clothes. She smiled and followed dutifully, but for once her son couldn’t make her block everything out. Much as she tried to let him. Erotic images, wanton images, flashed through her mind with disconcerting ease and frequency.
Absently she accepted the wriggling worm that Zac proudly held out. Clearly Isandro meant to take her as he would a mistress as a form of punishment, for whatever time was left of their marriage …
She grimaced. Isandro’s frequent absences during their marriage had left enough time for her to be alone and doubt everything she thought … and felt. Yet when they had spent time together those doubts had fled easily, and she’d found herself falling more and more into an abyss of vulnerable feelings. It had been so seductive. To come from the emotional wasteland her parents had offered her to being with a man as dynamic as Isandro, who’d seemed to truly care for her. Desire her. Especially as her pregnancy had progressed. But she’d been wrong. Perhaps not about the passion, evidently that was still there, but about everything else …