Page 31 of A Billion-Dollar Heir For Christmas

And the wilder it was when she broke apart.

Until finally his whole body tightened, and he grew stiffer inside her. He reached up to put his hands on her face, so they were gazing at each other once more, both of them flushed. Both of them chiseled bare at the overwhelming magic of this thing between them.

Raw, she thought.Mine.

“Hold on,” Tiago ordered her darkly.

“I always do,” she whispered back.

Maybe what she meant was,I always will. Maybe that was what he heard.

Because he bared his teeth, those maddeningly steady thrusts inside her grew wild and erratic, and this time, it was the scalding heat of him inside her as he roared out his release that sent her over the edge, chasing after him, tumbling over and over and into the stars beside him.

And it seemed as if a great many years had passed by the time she woke up again to find herself curled up at his side. Though he had clearly gotten up in the meantime. The fire danced in the grate, warming the room. And he had pulled a throw over her, as she rested her head upon him like a pillow.

He was his own furnace. She remembered that, too. And she was a Scottish girl, always cold. A man who burned like Tiago did made her feel nothing but safe, warm, and cared for.

Even though she felt as if she was moving through a fog just now, she knew better than to say that. She smiled sleepily at him, finding his gaze in the firelight.

Tiago looked...brooding, if anything. But he did not speak. He reached over and dragged his thumb over her lips, then ran his palm over whatever shape her curls had made.

“Tiago,” she began.

“I sent for food,” he told her curtly. “As I expect you will be hungry.”

And she hadn’t been a moment ago, but the minute he said it, food was all she could think about. He rolled to the edge of the bed and she followed him, accepting the whisper-soft wrapper he handed her, like a caress against her bare skin.

Then she sat with him in front of the fire, only too happy to tuck into the platters of food that waited there. Cheeses and meats, warm breads and pots of sweet butter. She was thirsty too, and drank deep, and it was only when she sat back and sighed a little that Tiago made that low, growling noise again that made her shiver all over again.

And then she forgot all about the food, because he was moving over her. He shifted her into place beneath him on a soft leather couch, then shouldered her thighs apart, settling himself there between her legs so he could eat her up, like dessert.

After he got her screaming and falling apart all over again, he lifted her up and carried her with him into a bathroom suite even more impressive than hers. He took her into what seemed to be a large tiled room, but turned out to be as big a shower as she’d ever seen, with sprays of water coming from all sides.

Tiago had her again there, holding her up against the warm walls and letting the water pound down all around them until they both burned too bright to bear.

And it reminded her so much of Spain. It had been like this then, too.

Every touch seemed endless. Every spark a whole bonfire.

It had been an eternity, that night. Maybe only one night had passed outside her hotel room, but inside it, there had been this. A deep knowing she never could have explained to anyone. A recognition.

An eternity.

And now it was threaded through with so many more layers. The baby. Their wedding, however businesslike.

The lifetime she’d felt with him that night, stretching out in front of them.

And she slept so deeply beside him that she shouldn’t have been able to wake, but she did—to find his mouth wicked temptation, teasing her back into that wicked dance again and again all night, as if all of this was new.

As if none of it could last, just like before.

But this time, she told herself dreamily, she would not wake alone. This time, she knew his name. She would not spend months without him.

She could see the smudge of a new day’s light outside his windows when she woke for the last time that night. And this time it was slow.

An inexorable unraveling, not a bright lightning strike.

And maybe all the more unsettling because of it.