Billionaire, M.D.

Twelve

Three months and a half to the day that Cybele opened her eyes in Rodrigo’s world, she was trying not to run down the aisle to him.

She rushed down the path between their guests, his family and friends and colleagues, in one of the plateau gardens overlooking his vineyards on one side and the sea on the other, feeling like she was treading air, forging deeper into heaven.

He’d insisted on scheduling the wedding two weeks after he’d removed her cast, to give time for the physiotherapy to control any lingering discomforts. But he hadn’t insisted on holding the wedding in Barcelona’s biggest cathedral as he’d first planned, succumbing to her desire to hold it on his estate. The land that was now theirs. Their home. And their baby’s home.

That was what completed her happiness. That it wasn’t only she who was being blessed by the best gift the world had to offer, but her baby, too. Only Rodrigo would love as his own the baby of the man he’d loved like a brother.

He stood there looking godlike in his tuxedo, his smile growing more intimate and delighted as she neared him. She only noticed Ramón standing beside him when she stumbled the last steps to grab Rodrigo’s outstretched hand. She absently thought that they could be brothers. Not that Ramón, who was arguably as esthetically blessed as Rodrigo, was anywhere near as hard-hitting. Or perhaps it was she who had terminal one-man-one-woman syndrome.

Ramón winked at her as he kissed her and left them to the minister’s ministrations. He’d come to her quarters an hour ago, where Rodrigo had insisted she remain until their wedding night, and performed the Catalan best man’s duty of giving the bride her bouquet, which he’d picked for her, while reciting a poem he’d written. She’d almost had a heart attack laughing as he turned the poem that was supposed to extol her virtues and that of her groom into a hilariously wicked medical report.

Apart from that, and standing by Rodrigo’s side until she reached him, Ramón’s role had ended. In Catalonia there were no wedding rings for the best man to bear. Rodrigo would transfer the engagement ring from her right hand to her left one.

He was doing that now. She barely remembered the preceding ritual beyond repeating the vows, crying a river as Rodrigo made his own vows to her, lost in his eyes, singed by his love.

She watched their hands entwine as he slipped the ring onto her trembling finger, the ten-carat blue diamond part of the set she was wearing that totaled a breath-depleting fifty carats. He’d said he’d picked them for being a lighter version of her eyes.

Then he kissed her. As if they were now one. Forever.

From then on, everything blurred even more as their guests carried them away to another extensive session of Sardana dances and many other wedding customs and festivities.

At one point she thought she’d had a brief exchange with Mel’s parents. She had the impression that they were doing much better and seemed genuinely happy for her and Rodrigo. Her family was here, too, flown in by Rodrigo. His magic had encompassed them, as well, had infused them with a warmth they’d never exhibited before.

Then the dreamlike wedding was over and he carried her to his quarters. Theirs now. At last.

She’d almost lost her mind with craving these past weeks, as she hadn’t slept curved into his body, or taken him inside of hers.

She was in a serious state by now. She’d die if he took her slowly and gently like he’d done that first night.

She was about to beg him not to when he set her down, pressed her against the door and crashed his lips onto hers.

She cried out her welcome and relief at his fierceness, surrendered to his surging tongue. His hands were all over her as he plundered her mouth, removing the peineta and pins that held her cutwork lace veil in place, shaking her hair out of the imprisonment of her Spanish chignon, undoing the string lacing of her traditional wedding gown’s front.

He pushed it off her shoulders, spilling her breasts into his palms, weighing and kneading them until she felt they would burst if he didn’t devour them. He was looking down at them as if he really would. Then he crushed them beneath his chest, her lips beneath his, rubbing, thrusting, maddening.

“Do you have any idea how much I’ve hungered for you?” he groaned against her lips. “What these past weeks were like?”

“If it’s half as much as I hungered for you, and they were half as excruciating as mine, then…serves you right.”

He grunted a sound so carnal and predatory yet amused, sowed a chain of nips from her lips to her nipples in chastisement as he dragged her dress down. It snagged on her hips.

He reversed his efforts, tried to get it over her head, and she hissed, “Rip it.”

His eyes widened. Then with a growl, he ripped the white satin in two. She lurched and moaned, relishing his ferocity, fueling it.

He swept her underwear down her legs, then stood to fling away his jacket, cummerbund and tie then gave her a violent strip-show shredding of his shirt. Candlelight cast a hypnotic glow to accompany his performance. Passion rose from her depths at the savage poetry of his every straining muscle. To her disappointment, he kept his pants on.

Before she could beg him to complete his show, he came down before her, buried his face in her flesh, in her core, muttered love and lust. When she was begging for him, he rose with her wrapped around him, took her to bed, laid her on her back on its edge, kneeled between her thighs, probed her with deft fingers.

He growled his satisfaction as her slick flesh gripped them. “Do you know what it does to me-to feel you like this, to have this privilege, this freedom? Do you know what it means to me, that you let me, that you want me, that you’re mine?”

Sensation rocketed, more at the emotion and passion fueling his words than at his expert pleasuring. She keened, opened herself fully to him, now willing to accept pleasure any way he gave it, knowing he craved her surrender, her pleasure. She’d always give him all he wanted.

He came over her, thrust his tongue inside her mouth to the rhythm of his invading fingers, his thumb grinding her bud in escalating circles. He swallowed every whimper, every tremulous word, every tear, until she shuddered apart in his arms.

She collapsed, nerveless and sated. For about two minutes.

Then she was all over him, kissing, licking, nipping and kneading him through his pants. He rasped, “Release me.”

She lowered the zipper with shaking hands. Her mouth watered as he sprang heavy and hard into her palms. He groaned in a bass voice that spilled magma from her core, “Play with me, mi amor. Own me. I’m yours.”

“And do you know what hearing you say this means to me?” she groaned back.

He growled as her hands traveled up and down his shaft, pumping his potency in delight. She slithered down his body, tasted him down to his hot, smooth crown. His scent, taste and texture made her shudder with need for all of him. She spread her lips over him, took all she could of him inside. He grunted his ecstasy, thrust his mighty hips to her suckling rhythm.

His hand in her hair stopped her. “I need to be inside you.”

She clambered over him, kissing her way to his lips, “And I need you inside me. Don’t you dare go slow or gentle…please…”

With that last plea, she found herself on her back beneath him, impaled, filled beyond capacity, complete, the pleasure of his occupation insupportable. “Cybele, mi amor, mi vida,” he breathed into her mouth, as he gave her what she’d been disintegrating for, with the exact force and pace that had her thrashing in pleasure, driving deeper and deeper into her, until he nudged her womb.

Her world imploded into a pinpoint of shearing sensation, then exploded in one detonation after another of bone-rattling pleasure. He fed her convulsions, slamming into her, pumping her to the last abrading twitches of fulfillment.

Then he surrendered to his own climax, and the sight and sound of him reaching completion inside her, the feel of his body shuddering over hers with the force of the pleasure he’d found inside her, his seed jetting into her core, filling her to overflowing, had her in the throes of another orgasm until she was weeping, the world receding as pleasure overloaded her.

She came to, to Rodrigo kissing her, worry roughening his voice. “Cybele, mi alma, por favor, open your eyes.”

Her lids weighed tons, but she opened them to allay his anxiety. “I thought you knocked me senseless the first time because it was the first time. Seems it’s going to be the norm. Not that you’ll hear anything but cries for an encore from this end.”

She felt the tension drain from his body, pour into the erection still buried inside her. His gaze probed her tear-drenched face, proprietary satisfaction replacing the agitation in eyes that gleamed with that Catalan imperiousness. “In that case, prepare to spend half of our married life knocked senseless.”

She giggled as he wrapped her nerveless body around him and prowled to the bathroom. He took her into the tub, already filled, laid her between his thighs, her back to his front, supporting her as she half floated. He moved water over her satiated body, massaging her with it as he did with his legs and lips. She hummed with the bliss reverberating in her bones.

She would have taken once with him, would have lived on the memory forever. But this was forever. It was so unbelievable that sometimes she woke up feeling as if she were suffocating, believing that it had all been a delusion.

She had serious security issues. This perfection was making her more scared something would happen to shatter it all.

He sighed in contentment. “Mi amor milagrosa.”

She turned her face into his chest, was about to whisper back that it was he who was the miracle lover when a ring sounded from the bedroom. The center calling.

He exhaled a rough breath. “They’ve got to be kidding.”

She turned in his arms. “It has to be something major, if they’re calling you on your wedding night. You have to answer.”

He harrumphed as he rose, dried himself haphazardly and went to answer. He came back frowning. “Pile up, serious injuries. Son and wife of an old friend among them.” He drove his fingers in his hair. “¡Maldita sea! I only started making love to you.”

“Hey. Surgeon here, too, remember? Nature of the beast.” She left the tub, dried quickly, hugged him with both arms-an incredible sensation. “And you don’t have to leave me behind. Let me come. I hear from my previous employers that I was a damn good surgeon. I can be of use to you and the casualties.”

His frown dissolved, until his smile blinded her with his delight. “This isn’t how I visualized spending our wedding night, mi corazon. But having you across a table in my OR is second on my list only to having you wrapped all around me in my bed.”

After the emergency, during which their intervention was thankfully lifesaving, they had two weeks of total seclusion on his estate.

The three weeks after that, Cybele ticked off the two top items on Rodrigo’s list, over and over. Daily, in fact.

They worked together during the days, discovering yet another area in which they were attuned. It became a constant joy and stimulation, to keep realizing how fully they could share their lives and careers.

Then came the nights. And if their first time and their semi-aborted wedding night had been world-shaking, she’d had no idea how true intimacy would escalate the pleasure and creativity of their encounters. Even those momentous occasions paled by comparison.

It was their five-week anniversary today.

She was in her twenty-second week of pregnancy and she’d never felt healthier or happier. Not that that convinced Rodrigo to change her prenatal checkups from weekly to biweekly. “Ready, mi amor?”

She sprang to her feet, dissolved into his embrace. He kissed her until she was wrapped around him, begging him to postpone her checkup. She had an emergency only he could handle.

He bit her lip gently, put her away. “It’ll take all of fifteen minutes. Then I’m all yours. As always.”

She hooked her arm through his, inhaled his hormone-stimulating scent. “Do you want to find out the gender of the baby?”

He looked at her intently, as if wanting to make sure of her wish before he voiced his opinion. Seemed he didn’t want to risk volunteering one that opposed hers. “Do you?”

She decided to let the delicious man off the hook. “I do.”

His smile dawned. He did want to know, but considered it up to her to decide. Surely she couldn’t love him more, could she?

“Then we find out.”

“So what do you hope it is?”

He didn’t hesitate, nuzzled her neck, whispered, “A girl. A tiny replica of her unique mother.”

She surrendered to his cosseting, delight swirling inside her. “Would you be disappointed if it’s a boy?”

His smile answered unequivocally. “I’m just being greedy. And then, you know how seriously cool it is to be female around here.”

She made the goofy gesture and expression that had become their catchphrase. “Women rule.”

Four hours later, they were back in their bedroom.

They’d made love for two of those, only stopped because they had a dinner date with Ramón and other colleagues in Barcelona.

She was leaning into him, gazing in wonder at his reflection in the mirror as he towered behind her, kissing her neck, caressing her zipper up her humming body, taking extra care of her rounding belly. She sighed her bliss. “Think Steven and Agnes will be happy it’s a boy?”

His indulgent smile didn’t waver. But she was so attuned to his every nuance of expression now, she could tell the question disturbed him. Since it indirectly brought up Mel.

And the mention of Mel had been the only thing to make him tense since they’d gotten married, to make him even testy and irritated. He’d once even snapped at her. She’d been shocked that day. And for a moment, black thoughts had swamped her.

She’d wondered if this fierceness was different from his early moroseness concerning Mel, if now that he was her husband, Mel was no longer simply his dead foster brother, but her dead first husband and he hated her mentioning Mel, out of jealousy.

The implications of that were so insupportable, she’d nearly choked on them. But only for a moment. Then he’d apologized so incredibly and she’d remembered what he was, what Mel had been to him.

She’d come to the conclusion that the memory of Mel was still a gaping wound inside him. One that hurt more as time passed, as the loss solidified. With him busy being the tower of strength everyone clung to, he hadn’t dealt with his own grief. He hadn’t attained the closure he’d made possible for everyone else to have. She hoped their baby would heal the wound, provide that closure.

His hands resumed caressing her belly. “I think they’ll be happy as long as the baby is healthy.”

And she had to get something else out of the way. “I called Agnes this morning and she sounded happier than I’ve ever heard her. She said those who filed the lawsuits weren’t creditors but investors who gave Mel money to invest in the hospital, and that the money was found in an account they didn’t know about.”

His hands stopped their caresses. “That’s right.”

“But why didn’t they ask for their money instead of resorting to legal action, adding insult to injury to bereaved parents? A simple request would have sent Agnes and Steven looking through Mel’s documents and talking to his lawyer and accountant.”

“Maybe they feared Agnes and Steven wouldn’t give back the money without a strong incentive.”

“Apart from finding this an incredibly irrational fear since Mel and his parents are upstanding people, there must have been legal provisos in place to assure everyone’s rights.”

“I don’t know why they acted as they did. What’s important is that the situation’s over, and no harm’s done to anyone.”

And she saw it in his eyes. The lie.

She grabbed his hands. “You’re not telling me the truth.” He tried to pull his hand away. She clung. “Please, tell me.”

That bleak look, which she’d almost forgotten had ever marred his beauty, was back like a swirl of ink muddying clear water.

But it was worse. He pushed away from her, glared at her in the mirror like a tiger enraged at someone pulling on a half ripped-out claw.

“You want the truth? Or do you just want me to confirm that those people acted irrationally, that Mel was an upstanding man? If so, you should do like Agnes and Steven, grab at my explanation for this mess, turn a blind eye and cling to your illusions.”

She swung around to face him. “You made up this story to comfort them. The debts were real. And you must have done more than settle them to make Mel’s creditors change their story.”

“What do you care about the sordid details?”

Sordid? Oh, God. “Did…did I have something to do with this? Are you still protecting me, too?”

“No. You had nothing to do with any of it. It was just more lies Mel fed me, poisoned me with. I lived my life cleaning up after him, covering up for him. And now he’s reaching back from the grave and forcing me to keep on doing it. And you know what? I’m sick of it. I’ve been getting sicker by the day, of embellishing his image and memory to you, to Agnes and Steven, of gritting my teeth on the need to tell you what I figured out he’d done to me. To us.”

She staggered backward under the impact of his exasperated aggression. “What did he do? And what do you mean, to ‘us’?”

“How can I tell you? It would be my word against a man who can’t defend himself. It would make me a monster in your eyes.”

“No.” She threw herself in his path. “Nothing would make you anything but the man I love with every fiber of my being.”

He held her at arm’s length. “Just forget it, Cybele. I shouldn’t have said anything…Dios, I wish I could take it back.”

But the damage had been done. Rodrigo’s feelings about Mel seemed to be worse than she’d ever feared. And she had to know. The rest. Everything. Now. “Please, Rodrigo, I have to know.”

“How can I begin to explain, when you don’t even remember how we first met?”

She stared at him, the ferocity of his frustration pummeling her, bloodying her. She gasped, the wish to remember so violent, it smashed at the insides of her skull like giant hammers.

Suddenly, the last barricade shattered. Memories burst out of the last dark chasm in her mind, snowballing into an avalanche. She remembered.