"Penance? You think that's what I'm doing?"
"Sure. What else would you call it? It's as if you're punishing yourself for something you had no control over. You didn't kill Bree. You weren't responsible for what happened to her."
He spun away from her, determined to make sure she wouldn't see the way that the anguish her words had wrought reflected on his face. She was wrong. So very wrong.
"Raoul?" she asked, putting a hand on his shoulder.
He shrugged her off. He didn't want her touch, her comfort.
"I was responsible," he said in a dark low voice. "My expectations killed Bree. I failed her."
"That's not true."
"If I hadn't been so determined to have a family, to fill the rooms of that house up the hill with our kids, she'd still be here today."
"You can't know that. Besides, that was her dream, too. In her letter she told me she was prepared to do anything, risk anything, to have a family with you. The aneurysm-"
"She died, Alexis, and it's all my fault!" he shouted, his words echoing around them.
* * *
Alexis looked at him in shock. He really truly blamed himself for Bree's death.
"It happened, Raoul. It wasn't something you or she could control or quantify. Not even the doctors could say if or when the aneurysm could bleed out."
"I know, it was a time bomb. But you know what the kicker is? I didn't even know it was there until it ruptured. She never told me about her condition or the risks to it from her pregnancy. She kept it a secret, hiding it away from me. If I'd have known, if I'd have had the slightest inkling that her health would be compromised by her pregnancy, I would have taken steps to make sure it never happened."
"But that would have been taking her choice to have a family away from her," Alexis protested. "She wanted your child."
"I wanted her."
His voice was bleak, so sad and empty and filled with loss. Alexis didn't know what to do. What he'd just told her explained so much-his withdrawal from society, his reluctance to have anything to do with Ruby. Which brought her full circle to why she'd come to talk to him today.
"You can't blame Ruby. She doesn't deserve that."
"I don't," he answered simply.
"How on earth can you expect me to believe you when you can't even stay in a room with her for more than five minutes, let alone spend any time alone with her?"
Raoul rubbed a hand across his eyes and shook his head. "It's not what you think. I don't blame her. I just can't let myself love her."
His words struck her like an arrow through her heart. "How can you say that?" she gasped, shocked to her core.
"Because it's true. I can't love her, I won't love her. What if I lose her, too?"
"What if she lives to be a hundred years old?" Alexis countered.
"You don't understand, she was born prematurely, she was seriously ill for the first month of her life-"
"And she's overcome all that, she's a fighter. She's a strong, healthy growing girl and she needs her father-not some coward who's prepared to pay everyone to take over his obligations!"
Raoul stood up straighter at her accusation-anger flaring in his hazel eyes, making them seem more green than brown, standing out even more as his complexion paled. "You're calling me a coward?"
Alexis stood her ground. "If the cap fits." She shrugged with feigned nonchalance. Right now she was worried she may have stepped over the mark. But it was too late to back down. Besides, she wasn't about to break the momentum now that they were finally getting to the heart of his issues. "Let's face it, you can't even bring yourself to talk about what we shared last week, about our night together. Instead you've been snapping and snarling at me for days, when you haven't been avoiding me altogether. What's wrong, Raoul? Can't you admit that what we did, what we had together, was good? Do you not believe you even deserve even that?"
"No, I don't!" he shouted. "It's a betrayal."
"Of Bree? As hard as it is, as cruel as it is, she's dead, Raoul. You're living-although not as if you're alive. She wouldn't have wanted you to do this, to cut yourself away from everyone and everything that mattered to you both, especially the daughter you both wanted so badly."
"So what are you saying, that I should jump into bed with you at every opportunity, pretend I'm alive?"
"If that's what it takes," she said quietly.
He moved up to her, grabbing her upper arms in his strong hands. Even though he vibrated with anger, his hold was still gentle. She knew this was the real Raoul Benoit. This man with such passion in his eyes that even now, after her goading, she knew he wouldn't hurt her.
"And if I said to you that I want you now, what would you do?"
Alexis calmly looked at her watch and then back at him. "I'd say you have about forty minutes. Is that enough?"
"For now, maybe," he growled.
In the next breath he was kissing her and she thrilled to his touch. Their night together had only made her want more. His last words about taking her birth control had made her believe that he'd come to her again, but instead he'd been so aloof this week, so filled with latent anger. If releasing that anger was what it took to prize him out of his ice cave than that's what she'd do. She'd make him so mad he made love to her every single day. Anything to bring him, the real him, back again.
She shoved her hands under his sweater and scraped her nails across his belly. His skin reacted instantly, peppering with goose bumps. He backed her up until she felt the hard edge of his desk behind her thighs, and bent her backward onto its hard surface. Immediately, his hands were at the waistband of her jeans, tugging at the button and releasing the zipper. He yanked the denim down her legs and cupped her through her lace panties.
The instant he touched her she was on fire. Wet with longing and burning up for what would come next. His palm bore down on her clitoris, the firm pressure bringing her nerve endings to life. She tried to open her legs wider but was restricted by her jeans pooled at her ankles. Somehow, she toed off her shoes and kicked the offending garment away, spreading herself now for his invasion.
As he moved between her legs, she wasted no time unsnapping his jeans and pushing them down, her touch now hungry for the feel of him. She slid one hand under the waistband of his boxers, pushing the fabric away and freeing him, her fingers closing around the velvet coated steel of his erection. Already his tip was moist and he groaned against her as she firmed her grip on him, stroking him up and down, increasing and releasing her pressure as she did so.
Raoul slid a finger inside the leg of her panties and groaned again as he encountered her skin.
"So wet, so ready," he murmured before pulling her underwear down her legs and dropping them on the floor.
Then, his hands were back. He cupped her again, this time inserting a finger, then slowly withdrawing it, his thumb working the swollen nub of nerve endings at her core, stoking the intensity of the fire that burned so bright inside her.
With his other hand he pushed her sweatshirt up higher, exposing the plain cotton bra she'd worn today. For a second she wished she'd chosen something more beautiful, more enticing, but when he unsnapped the front clasp and lowered his mouth to her breast she went beyond caring.
His teeth grazed first one nipple, then the other. Her skin was so sensitive to his ministrations she screamed softly, lost in the spirals of pleasure that radiated through her body.
More, she wanted more. She guided the blunt head of his penis to her opening and let go when he took over control, sliding his length within her so slowly she thought she might lose her mind. His thumb never stopped circling her clitoris and she knew she didn't have long before she'd come apart, but she wanted this to be about him, as well. About what they could share together.
She clenched her inner muscles and felt him shudder against her. Her hands coasted up his abdomen, stroking his chest and skimming his nipples before tracing back down again to his hips.
Raoul kissed a hot wet trail from her breasts to her throat, then along her jaw to her mouth, capturing her lips again with his caress. Subtly, he increased the pressure of his thumb and Alexis couldn't hold back another second. She gave herself over to the ever-increasing waves of pleasure that consumed her, that thrilled her to heights she'd never felt before with another man.
She clamped around him, again and again as her orgasm built in intensity until she lost awareness, was oblivious to the thrust of his hips and the ragged groan of completion that rent from his body as he climaxed inside her.