Chapter Seven
Beatrix
My stomach istying itself in knots as we come in to land in Paris, the setting sun giving the City of Lights a beautiful, warm pink and gold glow. The trip from Spain, which included a short stop for refuelling, has been silent.
Santiago is sitting next to me, working on his laptop with furious concentration.
I’ve been trying my best to ignore him, staring out of the window at the country below us instead and pretending he’s someone else. Anyone else. But, of course, it’s impossible to pretend he’s anyone other than who he is, and I hate it.
I hate how he takes up all the room in the helicopter, not to mention all the air, simply by existing. His intense, kinetic presence makes me feel as if I’m sharing space with a live wire that sparks and crackles, electrocuting everything it comes into contact with.
He’s electrocuting me by sitting so close, the seats positioned side by side with no space between them. The trip has taken a couple of hours, which has made me hyper-aware of him. Of the way his powerful body fills the seat, his long legs outstretched. Of his long, blunt fingers and how they move on the laptop keys, fast and light. Of his scent and how it makes my mouth water, and me wonder how a scent so warm can match a man so apparently cold, hard and arrogant.
Except, while he might be hard and arrogant, he’s certainly not cold and I know that all too well. He proved exactly how hot he was four months ago in the church, and now that knowledge has imprinted itself on my brain. He was a volcano, a fever, a desert sun, burning and burning, and setting me alight with him. I hate him for that.
I hate that I couldn’t pretend I didn’t want him.
I hate that I made that promise to him.
When he offered his ‘services’ in my bed, at first I couldn’t believe his audacity. I don’t have any issue with sex workers, but I’m not one and his casual assumption that I was at first shocked me, then enraged me. Andthento assume that I’d as easily sleep with him as his father…
Not that I have any right to be enraged about that, when of course Ididsleep with him—or, rather, I had sex with him, which is the whole reason I’m in this mess to start with.
The worst part of that scene back at the hacienda, though, was that I still wanted him and couldn’t hide it from him. When he touched me I should have pulled away, but I didn’t. It was as if his hand gripping my jaw kept me pinned, even though there was no strength in it. That and the look in his obsidian eyes…so much heat and hunger.
My skin went tight the moment he touched me, every part of my body aching. It wanted him and couldn’t see anything wrong with his offer, but there was no wayIcould accept it, no matter what my body thought.
Sleeping with him again would be yet another mistake and I’ve made so many already. I don’t want to get the paternity test he demanded, either, for fear of him taking the child away from me once he knows the results. And I certainly didn’t want to go to Paris with him.
Sadly for me, he’s been inexplicably adamant about the test, and then he countered my demand for his word that he’d let me keep the baby with a demand of his own: if I wanted to stay with my child, I would have to be in his bed.
A shiver works its way through me at the thought, and I have a horrible feeling that it’s not fear but anticipation.
He wants me, he’s made no secret of it, and the needy part of me loves that he does, even if he quite clearly hates that he does. That part of mewantsto be in his bed, wants his touch, wants him inside me, because it’s desperate for the pleasure he can give me. It’s been starved of it for too long, and that moment in the church alcove wasn’t enough, not nearly enough.
I shouldn’t have agreed to promise him my body, but I couldn’t see a way out of the trap he’d laid.
Sure, tell yourself he forced you into a corner. If you truly hadn’t wanted him, you wouldn’t have said yes.
I stare sightlessly out of the helicopter as we fly over the city, the truth settling down inside me. I might have lied to him, but I can’t lie to myself. Idowant him. When he made me the same offer eighteen months ago, even though I refused, I couldn’t stop thinking about what it would have been like if I’d said yes. If I’d been with him instead of his father.
You know what it would have been like.
I do. It would have been incredible and that’s what I was afraid of. Even now, the thought of being in his bed, of getting another chance with him, thrills me down to the bone. And I hate that too.
He shifts in the seat beside me, settling back, his elbow on the armrest close to mine. His attention is on his laptop screen, focused and intent, his black brows drawn together.
I don’t know why he wants this baby so badly. I don’t know much about him at all, in fact, and that was deliberate on my part. After that night at the fundraiser, when I saw him at the bar, I knew he would be my ruin, and ever since then I’ve avoided the temptation of finding out more about him.
Antonio had nothing but venom to spit when he talked about him, calling his son ‘difficult’ and ‘cold’ and a ‘traitor’. He’d tell me that Santiago had his mother’s ‘emotional weaknesses’, though he didn’t go into details and I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to know and I still don’t.
But…maybe I should know. Maybe I should find out more about him, especially since he’s the father of my baby, and will be in my future one way or another. I do know one thing though: if he’s as full of hate with our child as he is with me, I won’t stand for it. I just won’t. I want our child to be loved and wanted, because I know what it means to be unloved and unwanted. I know it all too well.
After years of being bounced from one foster family to another, I was placed with that wonderful family, along with another girl. I was thirteen and she was ten. Our foster parents were amazing, were everything we both wanted, warm and loving and patient. They made me feel, for the first time in my life, as if I had value, as if I had finally found a home.
At least they did until they adopted the ten-year-old, Lisa, and not me. I was placed with another family, while Lisa got to stay with them. There were no explanations given for why they didn’t want me. I was left to work out what went wrong on my own, but I was never able to figure out a reason. Was I too angry? Too disobedient? Too stubborn? Or was it that I was too needy? Too clingy? Too old?
No one ever said, and I never got another chance at adoption again. After I’d aged out of the system, I was left on my own. I’ve been on my own ever since, but I’ve come to terms with that. Being alone is safer anyway, because when it comes down to it, the only person you can ever rely on is yourself. Other people will let you down if given half a chance, so I make sure to never give them a chance.
