Maybe she would feel guilty about that forever. Maybe that was a price she would have to pay.
But that didn’t mean she’d forgotten some of the key details of the night in question.
“If that was the case,” she said now, tipping her chin up, “then perhaps you should have paid more attention to birth control while having acrobatic sex with a stranger.”
And then, for the first time in as long as she’d known him—which seemed a good deal longer than it actually had been—Antonluca laughed.
It was not a nice laugh.
It seemed to cascade over her, a rush of heat. It kicked up brush fires and deeper shivers, and any number of other reactions she really could have done without.
“Do you really dare?” he demanded, his voice so dark it seemed to bring the cold in again. “Do youdareto say such a thing to me after what you have done?”
“I’m just suggesting that while we’re taking responsibility for our actions here tonight, perhaps you could join in,” Hannah retorted.
She was aware that this was not the most prudent course of action. She was fully cognizant of the fact that this, right here, could be the end of everything she’d worked for. Worse than that, this would almost certainly have implications for Dominic.
But she couldn’t seem to stop herself.
Not when he was bearing down on her like he held the flaming sword of righteousness in one hand.
“Were you a virgin?” she asked him.
Another hard, brittle laugh. “Hardly.”
“I was.” She couldn’t imagine how he could have forgotten that. Either way, she threw it at him like a weapon. “I told you so. And yet I ended up pregnant. Who do you think was to blame for that?”
“I know who I blame for it,” he seethed back at her. “That would be the woman who has somehow wormed her way into every part of my life. Do you think that this will go unchallenged? Do you think that I will simply…succumb to this?”
“To parenthood?” she threw back at him. “No worries on that account, Antonluca.Youdon’t have to do anything. I’ve been taking care of Dominic since the day he was born. Since before that, in fact. I’ve done it all on my own. Your name isn’t on his birth certificate, because I didn’t know it. You have no responsibility here at all. If you like, you can turn around and walk back out that door and we can both pretend that this moment of reckoning never happened.” She shrugged, a bit theatrically, but it was all she had. She lifted her chin higher. “That’s fine with me.”
“Unfortunately for you,diavolessa,” he growled at her, “it is not at all fine with me.”
And it was only then she realized that they were in the danger zone. That they were much too close. That he had somehow backed her against the wall and she’d been too busy trying to fight him to notice.
But she certainly noticed now.
Because he muttered something in Italian that she didn’t quite catch, though she could feel the words all over her, and then he slammed his mouth to hers.
And it was as if they simplyignited.
It was a bolt of lightning, and then they tore into each other.
This was nothing like that night in New York.
This was a fury.
This was hurt and temper, all wrapped up in the way his mouth moved on hers and the way his hands gripped her hair.
It was a terrible, exhilarating fury.
Hannah tore at his shirt and he tore at hers, and then, somehow, she was in his arms. Then her legs were wrapped tight around his waist, and he was working one of his hands between them as he slammed her back into the wall.
Then, with a thrust that she could feel from her toes to the tips of her ears, he slammed himself fully inside of her.
And the wildest part of all was that she was ready for him.
She was more than ready, though he was even bigger than she remembered.
