He pulled away even further, lightly brushing off her touch while his gaze skimmed down her body, gleaming with ardent possessiveness. Flicking her dress down to cover her thighs, he levered from the bed.
“Where are you going?” She didn’t mean to sound so desperate, but she didn’t understand. Protection wasn’t an issue—
“To make the arrangements,” he answered, his smile tight. “Tempted as I am, I said I’d wait until we’re married. I will.”#p#分页标题#e#
He walked out.
CHAPTER NINE
LAUREN DIDN’T SLEEP. She didn’t cry, either, even though her eyes burned. She stayed on the bed fully clothed, curled around her aching stomach where fury burned in its pit. He was such a man.
Perhaps not a typical one. She wasn’t a complete idiot about biology and the battle of the sexes. She knew women were usually the ones left unfulfilled while their partners snored off their climaxes. Not that Ryan had ever left her frustrated sexually. He’d always taken the attitude that if she wasn’t finished, he wasn’t finished. At first she’d viewed his attention to detail as proof that he was enamored with her. Later she realized it was more to do with his drive to conquer women through seduction. It had made her sick to realize she was just one more scratch in his headboard.
She felt sick now.
For all his talk about chemistry, Paolo wasn’t nearly as affected by her as she was by him. That made her want to pull back in and disappear. She thought about checking train schedules, but running away was so cowardly. So virginal. And she’d promised to marry him. That wasn’t just a promise, but something she knew in her heart was best for their baby. All her reasons stood strong. Except that she’d let herself believe for ten minutes that Paolo cared for her and had found out she’d been right in the first place. She meant nothing to him.
Her ego withered as she remembered how quickly she’d become besotted. She had let herself read into his sudden show of emotion that, she realized now, had been for the baby growing inside her. I love the way you feel. His thumb and forefinger had been spanning from hipbone to hipbone across her navel when he’d said it, but she’d made it about her.
She tried telling herself that marrying knowing full well that his feelings were only physical was okay, but that was the crux of it. Not that she’d climbed the hill of hope and had a tumble. No, she had thought they were evenly matched in the lust department and they weren’t. She’d just made all the advances—again!—while he had been undeniably aroused but had walked away.
To make arrangements.
Oh, hell no.
* * *
Paolo frowned as he removed his nona’s ring from his safe, determined to give it to Lauren, but briefly wondering if she would accept it. Of course she would. She had agreed to marry him, but the ring had been in the family several generations. It was so old, the diamond’s shape was slightly imperfect because it had been cut by hand long before the precision of modern techniques. Would she see that as quaint or substandard? Perhaps rather than an engagement ring, it should be a wedding present.
Dio! His hand was shaking, his body was so wildly keyed-up with sexual tension.
He was proud of himself though. He’d sworn to marry Lauren before he made love to her again and he would, even though the way she had burst into flames at his touch had nearly taken him apart at the seams. Leaving her when she’d been pliant and aroused had nearly killed him. Only his determination to marry her first had kept him from taking her.
Not that anyone appreciated the level of control he was showing. Everyone he’d just spoken to, right down to his mother and her surprised pause when he’d informed her of the private ceremony he and Lauren would have in the archbishop’s office tomorrow, had suggested he was acting rashly.
They were all wrong. The baby was his. A prompt marriage was imperative.
It was also convenient that rushing the ceremony would allow him to keep his vow without suffering too long. His need for her was acute.
His laptop gave a muted blip signaling one of the emails he’d requested had arrived. He turned to find Lauren standing in the doorway of his office. Her chic dress had been replaced with a pair of baggy pajama pants and a waffle-weave shirt with sleeves chopped off at the elbows. Her face was clean of makeup, her expression strained and stiff.#p#分页标题#e#
Her gaze held his for the barest fraction of a second before averting to a safe place beyond his shoulder while her chin thrust out defensively. Her body language hardened into unreceptive lines.
He had a sudden and disturbing flashback to their Morning After in Charleston. She’d been exactly like this after waking up with blatant mortification beside him. He remembered very clearly the way their naked limbs had been tangled and lax. One or the other had shifted in sleep, stirring both of them. Paolo had unconsciously tightened his arms around her, involuntarily growing hard as awareness of who was next to him and memories of their night had rushed in. They had opened their eyes nose to nose with each other.