Yvonne Lindsay - Ultimatum - Marriage / For the Sake of the Secret Child

He took a deep, worried breath.

“What?” she demanded.

“Sorry I have to ask this. Are you absolutely sure that … if you’re right … about you being pregnant … that I’m … that I’m the father?”

Vertigo made his granite countertops whirl round and round. His darkly handsome face blurred sickeningly.

“You moralistic jerk!” Fury consuming her, she sprang out of the chair and lunged at him. “Am I sure? Damn right I’m sure!”

He caught her wrist in midair and used it to swing her against the long length of his muscular body. Her full breasts slid against his ripped torso. In an effort to catch herself, she grabbed his lean waist. Then she fought to launch herself free of him. He used the leverage to pull her closer.

“Calm down. I just had to be sure.”

“I’m totally positive,” she yelled, kicking at him even as she pushed at his chest. “I told you that you’re the only man I’ve …. I’ve slept with … in months.”

His eyes had taken on the polar chill of blue ice chips. “What about my brother?”

Fury suffused her.

“Your father said you were going to marry him,” Jake persisted.

“My father made that up. Logan and I dated, but our relationship didn’t work on any level other than friendship. Not that my lack of a sex life is any of your business!”

“Maybe I disagree. After all, you claim I’m the father of your child.”

“If I’m pregnant, so are you! Not that I would choose you!”

“Nor I you!”

“Believe me, I … I wish it was somebody else’s! Somebody I met in a bar would be nicer! So let me go!”

“Are you going to try to hit me again if I do?”

“After what you just said, you deserve a bullet … you know where. But no, since I’m a lady.”

“You could have fooled me.” Releasing her, he watched her warily.

She backed a few steps away from him and rubbed her wrist.

“Okay,” he said. “I’m sorry to upset you, but I had to know. I used condoms, if you’ll remember. Lots of them. I took precautions.”

“Oh, yeah, well, you didn’t take enough!”

He stared at her for a long moment. “I’m sorry,” he repeated. “If what you say is true, and you’re pregnant, and it’s mine, I’ll accept full responsibility for the child … and for you … despite who you are … which means our next step should be to see a doctor.”

“If what I say is true? If? You still don’t believe me?” Her eyes narrowed and her pulse sped up. “Well, it’s true! Despite who you are! I hate this ….”

“So the hell do I, but it looks like we’re stuck with each other, at least until we get some sound medical advice.”

“I’m afraid a doctor will only confirm the worst!”

“Obviously, you believe that,” he said. “But I won’t believe it until I hear him say it.”

“Dr. Preston’s a she. When she does, then what?”

“We’ll handle it,” he muttered.

“Well, if you think you can make me stop this pregnancy …”

His black brows slashed together. It was his turn to hiss in a breath and gape at her. “You don’t know me at all if you think I’d destroy my child.”

His outrage was so intense, she knotted her hands and stood up taller.

“How could I know what you feel on the subject or on any subject, when for all practical purposes we’re strangers?” she whispered.

“Strangers, cher? You wish. I wish. Unfortunately, that’s the last thing we are. I’d say we’re intimately connected.”

“I shouldn’t have come. Look, I’ll figure out how to do this on my own. I have a friend in London who’s offered … Never mind! Forget I ever came here.”

“As if I could.”

She turned away from him and stared at his backyard, which looked overgrown and badly in need of pruning. She did so love working with plants. Oh, how could she think of gardening at a time like this?

Jake was silent and still for a long moment, but she imagined his eyes boring into her back. Then his breath sped up, and he spanned the distance that separated them.

“I don’t want you to go,” he said, planting his hands on her shoulders. “You were right to come here. We’ll figure this out … together.”

Before she knew what he was about, he’d pulled her tightly against him. Some part of her wanted to twist out of his grasp, but another wanted to relax into his hard warmth and strength, so she let him pull her closer. The times when someone had held her and comforted her in life had been so rare since her mother’s death, and that night with him had been wonderful.

Then the next day her father’s empire had crashed very publicly, and her father had told her that Jake had been one of the main whistle-blowers who’d brought him down.

“I am to blame for what happened that night,” Jake muttered against her throat, his voice deepening with needs that at first she did not understand. “I wanted you and you wanted me, too. I didn’t realize what your father had done until the next day.”

“No.”

She shut her eyes, but it was impossible to ignore how wonderful she felt in his arms. Only gradually did she grow aware that he had become aroused.

“Stop this!” she whispered, trying to pull away.

“God help me, I still want you,” he whispered, snugging her even closer. “You feel the same. Kiss me.”

His husky tone and his hot, male body molded so tightly against her with such ardent need triggered … something.

She knew she should fight him, but instead she twisted around, ever so slightly, just enough so that she could tilt her mouth up to his.

He claimed her lips, hesitantly at first, but soon took all she was willing to give as greedily as he had the night he’d made love to her. He kissed her long and hard, his tongue plunging between her lips. She gasped as an answering desire began to course through her blood.

The sash of his robe came loose, and he yanked the edges of the robe aside, cupping her breasts, tracing his thumbs across her nipples, which were tight and hard. Ripping his shirt out of his slacks, he pulled it up, so that when he dragged her even closer, her breasts were mashed against his bare chest.

Contact with the coarse hair of his torso made her nipples peak and her blood burn.

“Oh, no.” She felt crazy with unwanted needs. Against her will, she arched her body so that her legs and thighs fitted his. His skin grew so hot she felt as if she was being consumed in a roaring furnace.

He was right about her wanting him. Limp with desire, she felt meltingly alive caught in his hard, strong arms. His mouth was on hers again and it was as if their bodies spoke a language all their own. Everything about him was sensually delicious and made her feel starved for more.

Despite his part in bringing her father down, she’d remembered his kisses and lovemaking longingly, and every night she’d dreamed of him and had awakened in the dead of the night, her body aching for his mouth and hands to caress her like this again, even though she denied it.

“I want you,” he said softly. “Despite everything, I want you on my kitchen table. On my foyer floor. In my bed. On my couch. In my shower. I want to repeat everything we did before. I want to do it again and again and more … until I’m too weak to stand and you have to feed me by hand in bed to revive me. And when I do revive, I’ll want you all over again.”

“God help me, I want all that, too,” she admitted shakily.

In that moment she actually believed she would never want to die anywhere else but in his arms.

Then he kissed her again, nibbling her lower lip at first. Gradually his kiss lengthened and grew hard. He fused his mouth to hers endlessly, his tongue mating with hers until she felt she was burning up like a star. She could hardly breathe when he pulled away at last.