Billionaire, M.D.

Eleven

Rodrigo froze on top of Cybele, half-buried in her depths, paralyzed. A virgin? How?

He raised himself on shaking arms. Her face contorted and a hot cry burst from her lips. He froze in midmotion, his gaze pinned on hers as he watched her eyes flood with the same confusion, the same shock along with tears.

“It shouldn’t hurt that much, should it?” she quavered. “I couldn’t have forgotten that.” Dios. He’d wanted to give her nothing but pleasure and more pleasure. And all he’d done was hurt her.

“No” was all he could choke out.

She digested that, reaching the same seemingly impossible explanation he had. “Then you have to be…my first.”

Her first. The way she said that, with such shy wonder, made him want to thrust inside her and growl, And your only.

Something far outside his wrecked restraint-probably the debilitating cocktail of shock and shame at causing her pain-held him back from that mindless display of caveman possessiveness.

“I remember I wanted to wait until, y’know, I met…the one. I assumed that when I met Mel…But it-it seems I wanted to wait until we were married. But…”

He’d been trying to get himself to deflate, enough to slip out of her without causing her further pain. He expanded beyond anything he’d ever known instead. His mind’s eye crowded with images of him devouring those lips that quivered out her earnest words, those breasts that swelled with her erratic breathing.

“But since there are ways for paraplegics to have sex, I still assumed we did one way or…” She choked with embarrassment. It was painfully endearing, when their bodies were joined in ultimate intimacy. “But it’s clear we didn’t, at least nothing invasive, and artificial insemination is essentially noninvasive…”

He shouldn’t find her efforts at a logical, medically sound analysis that arousing as she lay beneath him, shaking, her impossible tightness throbbing around his shaft, her torn flesh singeing his own. But-curse him-it was arousing him to madness. He wanted to give her invasive.

He couldn’t. He had to give her time, for the pain that gripped her body to subside. He started to withdraw. Her sob tore through him.

He froze, his own moan mingling with hers until she subsided. Then he tried to move again. But she clamped quaking legs around his hips, stopping him from exiting her body, pumping her own hips, impaling herself further on his erection.

“I’m hurting you.” He barely recognized the butchered protest that cracked the panting-filled silence as his. “Yes, oh, yes…” He heaved up in horror. She clung harder, her core clamping him like a fist of molten metal. “It’s…exquisite. You are. I dreamed-but could have never dreamed how you’d feel inside me. You’re burning me, filling me, making me feel-feel so-so-oh, Rodrigo, take me, do everything to me.”

He roared with the spike of arousal her words lashed through him. Then, helpless to do anything but her bidding, he thrust back into her, shaking with the effort to be gentle, go slow. She thrashed her head against the sheets, splashing her satin tresses, bucking her hips beneath his, engulfing more of his near-bursting erection into her heat. “Don’t. Give me…all of you, do it…hard.”

He growled his capitulation as he rose, cupped her hips in his palms, tilted her and thrust himself to the hilt inside her.

At her feverish cry, he withdrew all the way, looked down at the awesome sight of his shaft sinking slowly inside her again.

He raised his eyes to hers, found her propped up on her elbows, watching too, lips crimson, swollen, open on frantic pants, eyes stunned, wet, stormy. He drew out, plunged again, and she collapsed back, crying out a gust of passion, opening wider for each thrust, a fusion of pain and pleasure slashing across her face, rippling through her body.

He kept his pace gentle, massaging her all over with his hands, his body, his mouth, bending to suckle her breasts, drain her lips, rain wonder all over her.

“Do you know what you are? Usted es divina, mi belleza, divina. Do you see what you do to me? What I’m doing to you?”

She writhed beneath him with every word, her hair rippling waves of copper-streaked gloss over the crisp white sheet, her breathing fevered, her whole body straining at him, around him, forcing him to pick up speed-though he managed not to give in to his body’s uproar for more force.

“I love what you’re doing to me-your flesh in mine-give it to me-give it all to me…”

He again obeyed, strengthened his thrusts until her depths started to ripple around him and she keened, bucked up, froze, then convulsion after convulsion squeezed soft shrieks out of her, squeezed her around his erection in wrenching spasms.

The force, the sight and sound and knowledge of her release smashed the last of his restraint. He roared, let go, his body all but detonating in ecstasy. His hips convulsed into hers and he felt his essence flow into her as he fed her pleasure to the last tremor, until her arm and legs fell off him in satiation.

He collapsed beside her, shaking with the aftershocks of his life’s most violent and first profound orgasm, moved her over him with extreme care, careful to remain inside her.

She spread over him, limp, trembling and cooling. He’d never known physical intimacy could be like this, channeling into his spirit, his reason. It had been merciful he hadn’t imagined how sublime making love to her would be. He would have long ago gone mad.

He encompassed her velvet firmness in caresses, letting the sensations replay in his mind and body, letting awe overtake him.

He was her first. And she’d needed him so much that even through her pain, she’d felt so much pleasure at their joining.

Not that it had mattered to him in any way when he’d thought she’d belonged to Mel, had probably been experienced before him.

But now he knew she’d been with no one else, he almost burst with pride and elation. She was meant to be his alone.

And he had to tell her that he was hers, too. He had to offer her. Everything. Now. “Cybele, mi corazón,” he murmured into her hair as he pressed her into his body, satiation, gratitude and love swamping him. “Cásate conmigo, querida.”

Cybele lay draped over Rodrigo, shell-shocked by the transfiguring experience.

Every nerve crackled with Rodrigo-induced soreness and satiation and a profundity of bliss, amazement and disbelief.

She’d been a virgin. Wow.

And what he’d done to her. A few million wows.

The wows in fact rivaled the number of his billions since he’d given her all that pleasure when she’d simultaneously been writhing with the pain of his possession. But the very concept of having him inside her body, of being joined to him in such intimacy, at last, had swamped the pain, turned it into pleasure so excruciating she thought she had died in his arms for moments there.

Love welled inside her as she recalled him looking down at her in such adorable contrition and stupefaction. The latter must have been because she’d babbled justifications for her virginal state with him buried inside her. Another breaker of heat crashed over her as she relived her mortification. Then the heat changed texture when she recalled every second of his domination.

What would he do to her when pain was no longer part of the equation? When he no longer feared hurting her? When he lost the last shred of inhibition and just plundered her?

She wondered if she’d survive such pleasure. And she couldn’t wait to risk her life at the altar of his unbridled possession.

She was about to attempt to beg for more, needing to cram all she could into her one time in his arms. But she lost coherence as he caressed and crooned to her. Then his words registered.

Cásate conmigo, querida.

Marry me, darling.

Instinctive responses and emotions mushroomed, paralyzed her, muted her. Heart and mind ceased, time and existence froze.

Then everything rushed, streaked. Elation, disbelief, joy, shock, delight, doubt. The madly spinning roulette of emotions slowed down, and one flopped into the pocket. Distress.

She pushed away from the meld of their bodies, moaning at the burn of separation, rediscovering coordination from scratch. “I meant it when I said no tomorrows, Rodrigo. I don’t expect anything.”

He rose slowly to a sitting position, his masculinity taking on a harsher, more overwhelming edge among the dreamy softness of a background drenched in red roses. He looked like that wrathful god she’d seen in the beginning, decadent in beauty, uncaring of the effect his nakedness and the sight of his intact arousal had on flimsy mortals like her. “And you don’t want it, either?”

“What I want isn’t important.”

He stopped her as she turned away, his grip on her arm gentleness itself, belying his intensity as he gritted, “It’s all-important. And we’ve just established how much you want me.”

“It still makes no difference. I-I can’t marry you.”

He went still. “Because of Mel? You feel guilty over him?”

She huffed a bitter laugh. “And you don’t?”

“No, I don’t,” he shot back, adamant, final. “Mel is no longer here and this has nothing to do with him.”

“Says the man whose every action for the last ten weeks had everything to do with Mel.”

He rose to his knees, blocked her unsteady attempt to get off the bed. “Care to explain that?”

Air disappeared as his size dwarfed her, his heat bore down on her, as his erection burned into her waist. She wanted to throw herself down, beg him to forget about his honor-bound offer and just ride her to oblivion again.

She swallowed fire past her hoarse-with-shrieks-of-pleasure vocal cords. “I’m Mel’s widow, and I’m carrying his unborn child. Need more clues?”

“You think all I did for you was out of duty for him?”

She shrugged dejectedly. “Duty, responsibility, dependability, heroism, nobility, honor. You’re full of ’em.”

And he did the last thing she’d expected in this tension.

He belted out one of those laughs that turned her to boiling goo. “You make it sound like I’m full of…it.”

Words squeezed past the heart bobbing in her throat. “I wish. You make it impossible to think the least negative thing of you.”

He encroached on her as he again exposed her to that last thing she’d thought she’d ever see from him. Pure seduction, lazy and indulgent and annihilating. “And that’s bad…why?” Oh, no. She’d been in deep…it, when he’d been only lovely and friendly. Now, after he’d kick-started her sexuality software with such an explosive demonstration, had imprinted his code and password all over her cells, to all of a sudden see fit to turn on his sex appeal intentionally was cruel and unusual overkill.

She tried to put a breath between them. He wouldn’t let her, backed her across the bed, a panther crowding his prey into a corner. She came up against the brass bars, grabbed them, tried to pull up from her swooning position.

“It’s bad because it makes it impossible to say no to you.”

His lips twitched as he prowled over her, imprisoning her in a cage of muscle and maleness. But instead of his previous solemn and tender intensity, that mind-messing predatory sexiness spiked to a whole new level. “That has always been my nefarious plan.”

“Okay, Rodrigo, I’m confused here,” she panted. “What’s brought all…this about?”

His eyebrows shot up in mock-surprise and affront. “You mean you don’t remember? Seems I have to try much…harder-and longer-to make a more lasting impression.”

She coughed in disbelief. “You’re telling me you suddenly want to marry me because of the mind-blowing pleasure?”

He tightened his knees around her thighs, winding the pounding between them into a tighter rhythm, licking his lips as his gaze melted over her captive nakedness, making her feel as if he’d licked her all over again. “So it was mind-blowing for you?”

“Are you kidding? I’m surprised my head is still screwed on. But I can’t believe it was for you. I’m not by any stretch hot stuff, not to mention I must have cramped your style, being your first pregnant virgin and all.”

“I admit, I was and am still agonizingly cramped, as you can see. And feel.” He pressed his erection into her belly. Feeling the marble smooth and hard column of hot flesh against hers, the awe that she’d accommodated all that inside her, the carnality of the sharply recalled sensations as he’d occupied her, stretched her into mindlessness made her gasp, arch up involuntarily into his hardness. He ground harder into her as he drove a knee between her thighs, coaxing their rigidity to melt apart for him. “And in case you want to know my style…” His other knee joined in splaying her thighs apart as he leaned over her, teasing her aching nipples with the silk-sprinkled power of his chest. “…it’s a woman who has no idea she’s inferno-level stuff who happens to be a pregnant virgin. Or who was one, until I put an end to that condition.”

She couldn’t wrap her head around this. “So if it isn’t out of duty to Mel, it isn’t something more moronically honorable as doing the ‘right thing’ since you took my ‘innocence,’ is it?”

He chuckled. “Dios, you say the funniest things. First, I don’t equate virginity with innocence. Second, your innocence seems to be almost intact. But don’t worry. I didn’t even scratch the surface of all the ways I plan to rectify that.” He nipped her nipple, had her coming off the bed with a sharp slam of pleasure. He withdrew on a sigh of satisfaction. “Any more far-fetched reasons you can come up with to explain why I’m proposing to you?”

“Why don’t you tell me your not-so-far-fetched ones?” she gasped. “And don’t say because I’m your one and only aphrodisiac. That wasn’t the case up until a few hours ago.”

“Up until a few hours ago, I didn’t know you wanted me.”

“That’s as straight-faced a lie as I’ve ever heard,” she scoffed. “I’m as transparent as the windows Consuelo keeps spotless. I showed you I wanted you weeks ago. Hell, I showed you I wanted you two minutes after I regained consciousness.”

He tasted her nipples in soft pulls as if compelled. “That you did so soon, coupled with your loss of memory, made me wonder if your mind wasn’t scrambled and you didn’t know what you wanted, or why. I thought I might be what you clung to, to reaffirm your life after surviving such a catastrophe, or because I was the one closest to you, or the one you seemed to perceive as your savior.”

She pushed his head away before her breasts-her whole body-exploded. “You are my savior, but that has nothing to do with my wanting you.” She devoured his beauty as he loomed over her, felt her core clench with the memory, the knowledge of what he could do to it. “I remember you had hordes of women you didn’t save panting for you. I think not wanting you is a feminine impossibility.”

The intimacy and seduction on his face turned off like a light, plunging her world into darkness. “So it’s only sexual for you? That’s why you wanted it to be only once?”

“Which part of me lauding your responsibility, dependability, heroism, nobility and honor didn’t you get?”

The mesmerizing heat flared back on like floodlights, making her squirm. “So you like me for my character not just my body?”

“I love you for your character.” That made that smug, male assurance falter, crack. He stared at her, stunned, almost vulnerable. She groaned. “I didn’t intend to say that, so don’t go all noble pain-in-the-derriere on me and find it more reason to-”

He crashed his lips onto hers, silencing her, wrenching keens from her depths on scorching, devouring kisses. He came fully over her body, grinding into her belly, lifting her off the bed, one hand supporting her head for his ravaging, the other at her back holding her for his chest to torment her breasts into a frenzy.

She tore her lips away before she combusted and it was too late to vent her reservations. “Please, Rodrigo, don’t feel you owe me anything. And I can’t owe you any more than I already do.”

He plastered her back to the bed, seemingly by the force of his conviction alone. “You owe me nothing, do you hear? It’s been my privilege to see to your health, my joy to have you in my home, and yes, my mind-blowing pleasure to have you in my bed.”

She started shaking again. It was too much. Loving him, needing to grab at him, to take him at his every magnificent word, blocking her mind to the fear that she’d be taking advantage of him, end up causing them both misery and heartache.

She trembled caresses over his beloved face. “I know you’re always right, but you’re totally wrong here. I owe you far more than medical care and shelter. And mind-blowing pleasure. I owe you for restoring my faith in humanity, for showing me what a family could be like, and letting me be a part of yours for a while, for stabilizing my outlook so much that I feel I will at last have a relationship with my own family, not just cynical and bitter avoidance. I owe you memories and experiences that have made me a stronger, healthier person, that will be a part of me forever. And that was before what you offered me today.”

He grabbed her hand, singed it in kisses, all lightness burned away as he, too, vibrated with emotion. “Mel’s debts…”

She rushed to make one thing clear. “I don’t know what hand I had in them, but if I had any, I’ll pay my part, I swear.”

“No, you won’t. I said I’d take care of them.”

“You’d do anything to protect your foster parents, and me, too, won’t you? And this is what I’m indebted to you for. The-the…carte blanche support. And you’re offering it forever now. And I can’t accept. I can’t burden you anymore with my problems. Any more support from you would burden me. Whatever your reasons are for offering to marry me, I have nothing to offer you in return.”

His hands convulsed in her hair, pinned her for the full impact of his vehemence. “You have everything to offer me, querida. You’ve already offered me everything and I want it all for the rest of my life. I want your passion, your friendship, and now that I know I have it, I want your love. I need your love. And I want your baby as mine. I want us to be lovers, to be a family. And the only reason I want all this is because I love you.”

She lurched so hard she nearly threw him off her. He pressed down harder, holding her head tighter to imprint her with every nuance of his confession. “I love you, mi amor, for your character and your body, for being such a responsible, dependable, heroic, noble and honorable pregnant has-been-virgin who had no idea you started a fire in me that can never be put out.”

She broke into sobs. “How can you say that? I was going to leave, and if I hadn’t almost attacked you, you would have never-”

“I would have never let you leave. Don’t you get that yet? I was going to keep shooting down your reasons and demands to leave for months to come, and when I was out of arguments, I was going to make you offers you can’t refuse so you’d have to stay. I would have confessed my feelings to you when I felt secure you could make such a life-changing decision and lifelong commitment, could handle my feelings and my passion. You only freed me from the agonizing wait. Thankfully. I was suffering serious damage holding back.”

Her tears slowed down with each incredible word out of that mouth that sent her to heaven no matter what it did or said. Scary joy and certainty started to banish the agony of grief and doubt.

“You hid that perfectly,” she hiccupped, her face trembling, with a smile of burgeoning belief in his reciprocated emotions.

His sincerity and intensity switched to bedevilment in a flash as his hands and lips started to roam her again. “I’m a neurosurgeon. Covert turmoil is one of my middle names.”

“Another one?” She spluttered on mirth and emotion, finally felt she had the right to reciprocate his caresses, delighting in the silk of his polished, muscled back and swimmer’s shoulders.

But she had to voice her concerns one last time. “This is a major step. Are you sure you considered all the ramifications?”

“The only thing that stopped me from snatching you up the first time you offered yourself was that I thought you were nowhere near aware of the ramifications, had no idea what you’d be letting yourself in for, weren’t ready for a relationship so soon after such a loss and trauma. I, on the other hand, am positive of what I want. What I have to have. You, the baby. Us.”

She cried out and dragged him down to her, surging up to meet his lips, devouring with her own. She was begging when he suddenly rose, swept her up in his arms and strode into her bathroom.

He put her down on the massage table and ran a bubble bath, came back to slide her off it, locking her thighs around his hips, gliding his erection along her core’s molten lips before he leaned forward, pressed it to her belly, undulated against her, filled her gasping mouth with his tongue.

She arched, tried to bring him inside her. He held her down, wouldn’t let her have what she felt she was imploding for.

“You haven’t said yes.”

“I’ve been saying ‘yes…but’ for a while now,” she moaned.

“Didn’t sound like that to me.”

“Is that why you’re punishing me now?”

“I would be punishing you if I gave you what you think you want again tonight. But don’t worry, there are so many other ways I’ll go about erasing that innocence of yours.”

“No, please…I want you again.”

“Let me hear that yes without the but and you can have me. For the rest of our lives.” “Yes.”

And for the rest of the night, she lost count of how many yeses she said.