Her hair fell around them like a curtain. He had a feeling of wholeness then, rushing through him and making him feel more grounded. Morehere. And more, he hadn’t realized until now how very isolated he had always felt. Giaco had changed that, sure.
But now there was Leontina, and she’d blown it all up.
He couldn’t imagine how he could ever do without her.
And when the crisis came, it was a wash of light. Golden, beautiful, sweeping them both up and washing them away, changing them forever.
Pau was certain that his heart had burst free of his own chest, and was hers now. Lost to him forever.
Something he might have found alarming if she wasn’t so beautiful, smiling at him as if she was the only sun that mattered, lighting up the whole world.
And then she settled down against him with her mouth in his ear, panting and limp, and whispered three impossible words.
“I love you,” Leontina said.
And ruined everything.
Chapter Nine
Leontina knew itwas a mistake the moment she said it. A terrible mistake. It was as if he turned into a glacier beneath her.
He said nothing, but then, he didn’t need to speak. She could feel the change in the room. In him. It was like someone had thrown open a window in the dead of winter to let the cold rush in.
She opened her mouth to take it back. To laugh, and claim it was the orgasm going to her head, making her speak nonsense like it was truth, making her silly and foolish and whatever else she had to say to make the glacial expression he wore thaw—
But she didn’t.
She couldn’t.
Leontina felt as if she’d been waiting the whole of her life to say these things to him. As if the point of her life was not only to say what she’d said, but tofeelit.
And she did feel it. She felt it everywhere, from the tiniest bones in her feet to the heart that was beating too hard in her chest. It didn’t matter that she knew he wouldn’t receive her love well. Giaco hadn’t needed to warn her—she’d already understood the situation she was in.
She didn’t have to have experience with half the world to read Pau. She had experience with him. Their relationship might not have been long, but it had been intense. On both sides of those three months.
Yet Leontina could not have kept those words inside if her life depended on it.
The girl who’d hidden all her life to avoid her father’s various schemes and rages, tantrums and vile friends, could not hide here. Not in his man’s arms. Not when they were too many things to each other already. Not when they would only become more entwined as this went on, this nine-month shift from a wild night to parenthood.
She tried her best to force the words out anyway, any words that might fix this, but she couldn’t.
Pau set her aside as he shifted, then rolled to the edge of the bed. She thought for a moment that he might sit there the way he had the other night. She remembered how lonely he’d looked, and wondered if things would have been different now if she’d reached out then. If she might have built some kind of bridge there that would help her now.
He didn’t stay at the edge of the bed tonight. Pau barely paused. Instead, he stood immediately and stalked off to the bathroom.
She wanted to follow him. She was afraid to follow him.
But Leontina also couldn’t allow fear to dictate to her, not in this new iteration of her life. Not when she would shortly have to teach a child a better way to grow up than what she’d suffered through. Not when she had gone to the trouble to escape the life her father wanted for her.
So she forced herself to get up. To follow him into the bathroom on bare feet, and watch him as he splashed water on his face, then patted himself dry with a towel, all while going out of his way to keep from looking at her.
As if the very sight of her mightwoundhim, somehow.
“You don’t have to say it back,” she said quietly. “I didn’t ask anything of you. I only told you how I felt. You could as easily have ignored it.”
Though she could not imagine that would have felt much better.
“I will not discuss this, Leontina,” he said, coldly. Still avoiding her gaze. He stalked to the lustrously tiled shower and turned on the hot water, so hot and immediately steamy that she considered warning him that he risked melting off his ice-cold exterior that way.
