Page 17 of A Billion-Dollar Heir For Christmas

But even as he thought that, he was moving again. Closer. Much closer.

This time to do the very thing he shouldn’t, but he seemed to have no ability whatever to stop.

His hand slipped under the hem of her T-shirt, then smoothed its way over that high, round ball of her belly, finding her skin satiny and hot. And then, as he kept his hands there, he felt her shiver, too.

“You are carrying my child,” he said, his voice a mere scrape across the space between them.

Her eyes were wide, her lips slightly parted, and for once she did not laugh. “I am.”

“I want to be furious,” he told her, or perhaps he was confessing to the bump he held between his palms. “I want to rage, throw things, break whatever I get my hands upon.”

“I know,” she whispered. “I wanted to be angry. Ashamed. But instead... Tiago...”

Something inside him felt as if it was cracking. Falling apart, crumbling—

And he knew he didn’t want her to finish that sentence.

He didn’t know why he’d started it.

So instead of continuing down this dangerous road that could not lead them anywhere good, he dropped his head and fit his mouth to hers.

And that, too, would have knocked him back if he hadn’t been holding on to her.

Because it turned out that he hadn’t been telling himself fairy stories about what it was like to kiss this woman.

She tasted like every dream he’d had about her since, and better yet.

Because she kissed him as if she’d been waiting her whole life to do nothing else. She kissed him as if they’d been crafted for this, hewn from flesh and blood precisely to drive each other mad.

And so, for those sweet, breathless moments, that was what they did.

She licked into his mouth. He angled his jaw, one hand going to slide along the side of her face, to hold her where he wanted her. To keep it hot like this. Wild and perfect and wholly theirs.

It was as if no time had passed. As if this was that morning after that they had been denied in Spain.

As if nothing had ever or could ever keep them apart.

He made a low noise in the back of his throat and moved closer, so that his body was pressed to hers again.At last.And Tiago exulted in the parts of her that would change even more, the parts that were already pressed up flush against him.

The changes thathehad made in her.

Both of his hands moved to cup her face, his fingers spearing into her hair, exulting in those curls that clung to him as every strand wanted him as badly as he wanted her. And as he took the kiss deeper, more carnal, he found nothing but magic in her taste.

Just as he remembered it. As he rememberedher.

She kissed him back the same way, her hands sneaking up to lace around his neck, and this was how it had started last summer. This was how it had ended up here, with the proud jut of the baby they’d made between them even now.

One kiss, and then everything had bloomed into brilliant golds and fiery reds, and he hadn’t had another coherent thought since.

Not where she was concerned.

And yet that, ironically enough, was what got through to him.

He tore his lips from hers, though everything in him resisted such violence. And for a moment, because he could not make himself step back the way he should have, he rested his head against hers.

Sharing her air. Exulting in the way she breathed. Taking pleasure in the way her breasts shuddered against his chest.

It took him far longer than it should have to disengage entirely and move back.