man, Sev put on a very good show of a man excited to death by the prospect of twins. Amy felt overwhelmed but quietly happy that her pregnancy was progressing well, even though she would also have to worry about a greater risk of complications.
Back in the limo, Sev closed a hand over hers. ‘We’ll have to get married now. We can’t have two of them running round without my name,’ he told her with unhidden amusement.
‘Sev...’ Amy murmured quietly, tugging her hand away. ‘These days nobody has to marry anyone.’
‘Sometimes, you’re so literal!’ Sev groaned impatiently. ‘OK, I agree that that wasn’t a romantic proposal but let me emphasise the obvious... I’m not a romantic guy.’
‘We’re perfectly happy as we are,’ Amy broke in tightly.
‘You may be... I’m not,’ Sev admitted bluntly, agitated by the lack of permanence to their living arrangements. ‘Two kids? I think we need to get married ASAP.’
Amy breathed in deep and slow. Tears were stinging behind her eyelids. Being pregnant was making her incredibly emotional. The silliest things could make her eyes well up. ‘I don’t think any woman wants to get married just because she’s pregnant,’ she told him unevenly. ‘I think that if you sit down and really think about that, you’ll agree.’
‘It’s not because you’re pregnant...it’s all the other stuff as well.’ Abruptly, Sev swallowed hard and fell silent, registering that he had presented the idea badly and possibly at the ultimate wrong moment.
‘What stuff?’ Amy prompted eagerly.
‘Us...we work really well together,’ Sev told her prosaically, because he literally did not have the vocabulary to describe what he couldn’t even interpret for his own benefit. Amy had been living with him for only days, but he already knew that his life was better with her in it and that was the baseline from which he worked. How was he supposed to present that to her in a prettier package? He could only suppose that she expected a ring and all that malarkey. As if he was trying to sell himself as a good catch? So, he would buy a ring, take her out for dinner, do it the old-fashioned way, he reasoned, when all he wanted to do was marry her yesterday...
Without hesitation, he tugged her gently up against him and splayed a large possessive hand across the slight mound of her stomach. It was such a turn-on knowing his babies were in there, he reflected with satisfaction. Lean brown hands swept up from her thighs and slid under her top to rise and cup her swelling breasts, his thumbs brushing across the sensitive tips.
And just that easily Amy’s body went into sensual overdrive, heart racing, an inner clenching between her thighs, and the shock of that immediate electrifying response made her shudder. She told herself to peel herself off him, but the iron bar of his arousal was obvious beneath her and the wanton part of her, the part of her he had awakened and controlled, just wanted to allow him to go ahead. Even as he bent down and crushed her upturned parted lips under his, sending her heart hammering even faster, she was pulling back in defiance of that weakness, that vulnerability that could make her shiver and shake around him. No power on earth could make her crave anything the way Sev did, but she knew she had to resist and protect herself from putting all her faith in Sev.
She had made that mistake too often in her life, first with her mother, then with Cordy’s death when everything had fallen apart for her and then with Harold, who had had no choice in what he had done but whose actions had still ripped away every piece of security she had. How could she now trust Sev? In the end, people always chose to put their own needs and happiness ahead of those of others, and sooner or later Sev would realise that playing house with the woman he had accidentally got pregnant was more of a temporary novelty than a permanent new blueprint for his future. And where would she be then, when he wanted to walk away?
Chilled by that thought, Amy yanked herself away with clumsy determination and took refuge in the opposite corner of the back seat, her face flushed, her breath heaving in her lungs at the effort that severance had demanded from her because, in truth, stepping away from Sev in any fashion hurt. She had accepted that, for the moment, loving