A Price Worth Paying - By Trish Morey Page 0,53
should act one way or another and she had grown up believing she could do anything she wanted in the world. But, when push came to shove, she had learned that there were some places she could not go, some lines she could not cross.
What were the chances?
Luck had been with her that time, sending her a belated period that had been accompanied by a torrent of tears—grateful tears. As it was, she had held herself together these last few months by a tenuous thread. She could not have coped if she’d been pregnant with Damon’s child.
And now the nightmare was happening all over again. Again the fear. Again the hoping. Again the anxious, endless wait and the anguished sleepless nights until she knew, one way or the other.
She couldn’t be pregnant. She was leaving when this was over. She had to leave. She had to get away before he discovered the truth.
Because falling in love with Alesander had never been part of the deal.
‘It was wrong of me,’ he admitted suddenly, completely blindsiding her. ‘I should never have made love to you. Not here. Not like this.’
She channelled shock into rational thought and turned her panicked mind to calculating dates, needing to be able to hope. ‘It might be okay,’ she said, needing to believe it. ‘It’s early in my cycle. It would be unlucky.’ But then she’d been lucky last time. Did this kind of luck get balanced out? Was it her turn to be unlucky?
He had his back to her, refusing to look at her.
Two facts that didn’t escape her. ‘Luck does not come into it. It shouldn’t have happened!’
She swiped up her knickers from the ground with as much dignity as she could muster, balling them in her fist, not bothering to further humiliate herself by stopping to tug them on now. ‘You’re so right,’ she said. ‘Maybe you might try remembering that next time.’
Alesander swung around. There wouldn’t be a next time. Damn her, there shouldn’t have been a this time!
He was a man of needs, it was true. He always had been. But never since his first wild encounter with a woman, when he’d barely been a teenager and she was a wanton who’d let his night time fantasies play out in her hot hands and hot mouth and who’d given him a gold-plated initiation to the pleasures of the flesh, had he been so unprepared and made such a mistake. He’d used up all the luck he was planning on ever needing that time.
Because he wasn’t a teenager any more.
There were no excuses.
Except to blame her.
That was the one thing he could do.
Because she did this to him. She was the one who reduced him to his basest level and his basest needs. She was the one who drove him crazy and made him blind with lust when he needed to be thinking straight.
‘There can be no child!’
‘My God, do you actually think I want one?’
‘Why not? When you’re the one who stands to gain the most by prolonging this relationship.’
‘You think? Why the hell would I want to prolong spending time with you? No, I’m going home when this is over. A child of yours is hardly the kind of souvenir I want or need to take with me.’
‘And if it’s already happened? You can’t just wish it away.’
‘Damn you, Alesander. And whose fault would it be if there was? I told you I didn’t want to have sex with you. I told you it was the only way to guarantee there could be no complications. But did you listen to me? No. Because Mr Can’t-Live-Without-Sex couldn’t exercise a bit of self-control.’
‘And you haven’t enjoyed it? You didn’t cry out in pleasure every time you came? Every time I took you there?’
‘And that’s relevant, because? You know damned well that I didn’t want to have sex with you. You were the one who changed the terms.’
‘Terms you agreed to!’
‘Only because you threatened to tell Felipe our marriage was a sham if I didn’t!’
How else was he supposed to get her to agree? ‘You wanted it. You wanted me from that first time in my apartment. Do you think I couldn’t smell your need? Do you think I didn’t know then and there that you were gagging for it?’
The crack of her palm against his cheek punctuated the argument. For a long moment he said nothing, his nostrils flaring, his eyes like dark—angry—pits. ‘You never were very good at dealing with the truth.’
She