Billionaire, M.D.

Fourteen

“I am the baby’s father.”

Cybele stared at Rodrigo, comprehension suspended.

“If you don’t believe me, a DNA test will prove it.”

And it ripped through her like a knife in her gut.

One thing was left in her mind, in the world. A question.

She croaked it. “How?”

He looked as if he’d rather she asked him to step in front of a raging bull. Then he exhaled. “A few years back, Mel had a paternity suit. During the tests to prove that he didn’t father the child, he found out that he was infertile. Then he told me that you were demanding proof of his commitment to your marriage, the emotional security of a baby. He said he couldn’t bear to reveal another shortcoming to you, that he couldn’t lose you, that you were what kept him alive. He asked me to donate the sperm. Just imagining you blossoming with my baby, nurturing it, while I could never claim it or you, almost killed me.

“But I believed him when he said he’d die if you left him. And even suspecting how he’d stolen you from me, I would have done anything to save him. And I knew if I said no, he would have gotten any sperm donor sample and passed it as his. I couldn’t have you bear some stranger’s baby. So I agreed.

“But believing you were suffering from psychogenic amnesia so that your mind wouldn’t buckle under the trauma of losing him, I couldn’t let you know you’d lost what you thought remained of him. I wouldn’t cause you further psychological damage. I would have settled for being my baby’s father by adoption when he was mine for real.”

So that was why. His change toward her after the accident, treating her like she was the most precious thing in the world, binding himself to her forever. This explained everything much more convincingly than his claim that he’d loved her all along.

It had all been for his baby.

“Te quiero tanto, Cybele, más que la vida. Usted es mi corazón, mi alma.”

Hearing him say he loved her, more than life, that she was his heart, his soul now that she knew the truth was…unbearable.

Feeling her life had come to an end, she pushed out of his arms and ran.

Rodrigo restrained himself from charging after her and hauling her back and never letting her go ever again with an exertion of will that left him panting.

He had to let her go. She had to have time alone to come to terms with the shocks, to realize that although they’d taken a rough course to reach this point, both Mel and fate had ended up giving them their future and perfect happiness together.

He lasted an hour. Then he went after her. He found her gone.

Consuelo told him Cybele had asked Gustavo to drive her to the city, where he’d dropped her off at a hotel near the center.

He felt as if the world had vanished from around him.

She’d left him. But…why? She’d said she loved him, too.

When his head was almost bursting with confusion and dread, he found a note on their bed.

The lines swam as if under a lens of trembling liquid.

Rodrigo,

You should have told me that my baby was yours from the start. I would have accepted your care for its real reason-a man safeguarding the woman who is carrying his baby. Knowing you and your devotion to family, your need to have your flesh and blood surrounding you, I know you want this baby fiercely, want to give him the most stable family you can, the one neither of us had. Had you told me, I would have done anything to cooperate with you so the baby would have parents who dote on him and who treat each other with utmost affection and respect. I don’t have to be your wife to do that. You can divorce me if you wish, and I’ll still remain your friend and colleague, will live in Spain as long as you do, so you’ll have constant access to your son.

Cybele.

Rodrigo read the note until he felt the words begin to burn a brand into his retinas, his brain.

After all the lies and manipulations she’d been victim to, she had every right to distrust his emotions and motives toward her. From her standpoint, he could be saying and doing whatever it took to get his son.

But he’d prove his sincerity if it was the last thing he did.

If he lost her, it just might be.

Twenty-four hours later, he stood outside her hotel room door, feeling he’d aged twenty-four years.

She opened the door, looking as miserable as he felt.

All he wanted was to take her in his arms, kiss her until she was incoherent with desire, but he knew that might only prove to her that he was manipulating her even worse than Mel had.

He never gambled. But he’d never known true desperation, either. Now a gamble, with potentially catastrophic results, was the last resort he had left.

Without a word, he handed her the divorce papers.

Cybele’s heart stopped, felt it would never beat again.

She’d made a desperate gamble. And lost. She’d owed him the choice, the freedom to have his baby without remaining her husband. She’d prayed he’d choose to be with her anyway.

He hadn’t. He was giving her proof, now that she’d assured him he’d always have his son, that he’d rather be free of her.

Then her eyes fell on the heading of one of the papers.

Before the dread fully formed inside her mind, it spilled from her lips. “You won’t take the baby away, will you? Any court in the world would give you custody, I know, but please don’t-”

He grimaced as if she’d stabbed him. “Cybele, querida, por favor, le pido. I beg you…stop. Do you distrust me that much?”

Mortification swallowed her whole. “No…no-oh, God. But I-I don’t know. Anything. It’s like you’re three people in my mind. The one who seemed to hate me, the one who saved me, took such infinite care of me, who seemed to want me as much as I want you, and the one who always had an agenda, who’s handing me divorce papers. I don’t know who you are, or what to believe anymore.”

“Let me explain.” His hands descended on her shoulders.

“No.” She staggered around before his grip could tighten. She couldn’t hear that he cared, but not enough to remain married to her. She fumbled for a pen by the hotel’s writing pad. The papers slid from her hands, scattered across the desk. Fat tears splashed over the blurring lines that mimicked the chaos inside her. “After I sign these papers, I want a couple of days. I’ll call you when I’m thinking straight again and we can discuss how we handle things from now on.”

His hands clamped the top of her arms, hauled her back against the living rock of his body. She struggled to escape, couldn’t bear the agony his feel, his touch, had coursing in hers.

He pressed her harder to his length. She felt his hardness digging into her buttocks, couldn’t understand.

He still wanted her? But if he was divorcing her, then all the hunger she’d thought only she could arouse in him had just been the insatiable sexual appetite of the hot-blooded male that he was. And now…what? Her struggles were arousing him?

All thought evaporated as his lips latched onto her neck, drew on her flesh, wrenching her desire, her very life force with openmouthed kisses and suckles. She tried to twist away, but he lifted her off the ground, carried her to the wall, spread her against it and pinned her there with his bulk, his knee driven between her thighs, his erection grinding against her belly.

He caught her lower lip in a growling bite, sucked and pulled on it until she cried out, opened wide for him. Then he plunged, took, gave, tongue and teeth and voracity. Wave after wave of readiness flooded her core. She squirmed against him, everything disintegrating with her need to crawl under his skin, take him into hers. His fingers found her under her panties, probed her to a screeching climax. Then she begged for him.

In a few moments and moves, he gave her more than she could take, all of him, driving inside her drenched, clenching tightness. Pleasure detonated from every inch of flesh that yielded to the invasion of the red-hot satin of his thickness and length. He powered into her, poured driven words in an inextricable mix of English and Catalan, of love and lust and unbearable pleasure into her gasping mouth as his thrusting tongue ravaged her with possession and mindlessness.

Pleasure reverberated inside her with each thrust, each word, each melding kiss, like the rushing and receding of a tide gone mad. It all gathered, towered, held at its zenith like a tidal wave before the devastating crash. Then the blows of release hit like those of a giant hammer, striking her core again and again, expanding shock waves that razed her, wrung her around his girth in contractions so violent they fractured breath and heartbeats. She clung to him in the frenzy, inside and out as if she’d assimilate him, dissolve around him. Then she felt him roar his release as he jammed his erection to her womb, jetting his pleasure to fill it, causing another wave to crash over her, shattering her with the power of the sensations, of wishing that they’d make a baby this way in the future. When they didn’t have one…

She came back to awareness to find him beneath her on the bed, still hard and pulsating inside her, setting off mini quakes that kept her in a state of continuous orgasm.

A question wavered from her in a scratchy rasp. “So was that goodbye sex?”

He jerked beneath her. “You go out of your way to pick the exact words that will cut me deepest, don’t you?”

And she wailed, “What else could it be?”

“It was you-turn-me-into-a-raging-beast-in-perpetual-mating-frenzy sex. It was I-can’t-have-enough-of-your-pleasure-and-your-intimacy lovemaking.” Every word flowed over her like a balm on a wound, drowning the doubt demons who whispered he was just over-endowed and would enjoy any sexually voracious female. “Not that that excuses what I did. I didn’t come here intending to take you like that. I was resolved not to confuse issues. But I saw you about to sign those papers and almost burst an artery.”

Her lips twitched in spite of her confusion. “Glad the pressure found another outlet.” She relived the moments when it had, splashing against her inner walls, filling her with his scalding essence, mixing with her pleasure…But…wait a sec! “But you want me to sign the papers.”

He rose onto his elbow, looked at her with the last trace of heavy-lidded male possession vanishing, that bleakness taking over his eyes. “I want a bullet between the eyes more.” She gasped, the thought of anything happening to him paralyzing her with terror. “But since I can’t prove that to you by words or lovemaking, and you have every right not to accept either as proof, after all the lies that almost cost you your mind and your very life, I’m down to action. And the proof of time.”

He extricated himself from her, rose off the bed, walked to gather the papers and came back to lay them beside her.

Before she could say she didn’t want any proof, just wanted to be his, if he really wanted her, he turned and gathered his clothes.

She sat up shakily as he started dressing, his movements stiff, his face clenched with that intensity she now believed betrayed his turmoil. And finally, she understood. Just as she’d given him the freedom to divorce her, the divorce papers were his proof that she was equally free. Even if he’d rather end his life than lose her, he was letting her go, if it meant her peace of mind. Oh, God…

She’d caused him so much pain, even if inadvertently. Then, when he’d told her how long and how much he’d been hurting, she’d added indelible insult to injury when she’d imposed her distrust of those who’d blighted her life with letdowns, who'd made her doubt that she was deserving of love, as pretext to condemn his motivations.

But a man who wanted only his child wouldn’t have done one thousandth of the things he’d done for her. He would never have said he loved her, would rather die than lose her. And even if any other man might have lied to that extent to achieve what he considered a highest cause, the stability of his child’s family life, Rodrigo wouldn’t. He was too honorable.

Even when he’d kept the truth about their baby’s paternity from her, he’d done it only to protect her, had been willing to never proclaim his baby as his own flesh and blood, to preserve the illusion he’d thought essential to her well-being.

She made a grab for the papers, sprang off the bed and ran to him, grabbed one of his hands as he started buttoning up his shirt, tears of humility and contrition and heart-piercing adoration pouring from her very soul to scorch down her cheeks. “Those papers are your I’m-free-to-come-back-to-you-of-my-own-free-will gesture, right?”

He seemed to struggle to stop himself. He lost the fight, reached out with his other hand, wiped away her tears, cupped her cheek, his face the embodiment of tenderness. “They’re not a gesture. You are free. And you must not consider me in your decision. You’re not responsible for how I feel.” Exactly the opposite of what Mel and her family had done to her. They’d made her feel responsible for their feelings toward her, guilty of inciting Mel’s pathological possessiveness or their equally unnatural negligence. “In time, if you become satisfied that I am what you need, what will make you happy, come back to me. If you don’t, then sign those papers and send them back to me instead. The other documents should prove you are in no way pressured to make the best of it for anybody else’s sake but yours.”

And she revealed her last and biggest fear. “W-what if in time you decide I’m not what you need?”

He huffed a harsh laugh, as if she were asking if he might one day fly under his own power. Certainty solidified in her every cell as she grinned up at him with sudden unbridled ecstasy. Then the rest of his words registered. “The other documents…”

She looked through the papers, found those with the heading that had triggered her crazy doubt that he’d take the baby.

Custody papers. Giving away his parental rights. To her. Unconditionally. She’d choose if he was part of his baby’s life.

She stared at the words, their meaning too huge to take in.

Her eyes flew dazedly up to his solemn ones. “Why?”

“Because without you, nothing is worth having, not even my child. Because I trust you not to deprive him of my love even if you decide to end our marriage. Because I want you to be totally free to make that decision if you need to, without fearing you’ll lose your baby, or become embroiled in a custody case. Because I need to know that if you come back to me, you do it not out of need or gratitude or for our baby’s best interests, but because it’s in your best interests. Because you want me.”

Then he turned away, looking like a man who had nothing to look forward to but waiting for an uncertain verdict.

She flew after him, joy and distress tearing at her. She wrenched him around, jumped on him, climbed him, wrapped herself around him and squeezed him as if she’d merge them. His shuddering groan quaked through her as he hugged her back, crushed her to him, his arms trembling his relief.

She covered his face and neck and anything she could reach of him in tear-drenched kisses and wept. “I don’t just want you! I worship you, I crave and adore and love you far more than life. And it’s not out of need or gratitude. Not the way you fear. I don’t need you to survive, but I need you to be alive. I’m grateful you exist, and a few light years beyond that that you love me, too. I don’t deserve you or that you should feel the same for me. I-I hurt you and mistrusted you and it doesn’t matter that I was reeling from the shock of the regained memories and the revelations-”

His lips crushed the rest of her outburst in savage kisses. Then she was on the bed again, on her back, filled with him as he drove into her, growled to her again and again that he believed her and in her, and she screamed and sobbed her relief and gratitude and love and pleasure.

It was hours before that storm abated and she lay over him, free of doubt or worry, of gravity and physical limitations.

She told him, “You make me feel-limitless, just like what I feel for you. But you are too much, give too much. It would have been criminal to have all this without paying in advance with some serious misery and heartache. I love the fates that tossed me around only to land me in your lap, and by some miracle make you love me, too. I just adore every bit of misfortune and unhappiness I had that now make me savor every second of what we share all the more.”

Rodrigo swept Cybele with caresses, agreed to every word she said. They were the exact ones that filled his being. He did believe they wouldn’t have come to share this purity and intensity without surviving so many tests and…

He shot up, his nerves going haywire.

Under his palm. He’d felt it.

“The baby…” he choked. “He moved.” And for the first time since he’d shed tears over his mother’s death, his tears flowed. With too much love, pride and gratitude.

She pushed him onto his back, rained frantic kisses all over his face. “No, please-I can’t bear seeing your tears, even ones of joy.” That only made the tears flow thicker. After moments of panting consternation, wickedness replaced the stricken look on her face and she attacked him with tickling.

He guffawed and flopped her onto her back, imprisoning what he swore were electricity-and magic-wielding hands over her head with one of his, his other returning the sensual torment.

She squirmed under his hand, nuzzled his chest. “I can’t wait to have our baby. And I can’t wait to have another one. One we’ll make as we lose ourselves in love and pleasure, flesh in flesh.”

“This one was made of our love…well, my love, at least.”

She nipped him. “Yeah, I have to make up for my initial lack of participation in the love department. But from now on, I’m sharing everything with you. And not only about our baby. I want to be involved in everything you do, your research, your surgeries…” The radiant animation on her face faltered. “Uh-that came out as if I’ll hound your every step…”

He squeezed her, cutting short her mortification, laughter booming out of his depths. “Oh, please, do. Gives me an excuse to hound yours.” Then he grew serious. “But I know exactly how you meant it. I want you involved in everything I do, too. I’ve never felt more stimulated, more empowered, more satisfied with my work than when you were there with me. And then there’s every other instance when I see or feel or think anything, and it isn’t right, isn’t complete until I share it with you, knowing you’re the only one who’ll understand, appreciate.”

She attacked him with another giggling, weeping kiss that almost extracted his soul. Then she raised a radiant face, gestured for him to stay where he was.

He watched her bounce out of bed to rummage in her suitcase. He hardened to steel again, licking at the lingering taste of her on his lips as she walked back, ripe and tousled and a little awkward, all the effects of his love and loving, short-and long-term ones. She was holding something behind her back, impishness turning her beauty from breathtaking to heartbreaking.

“Close your eyes.” He chuckled, obeyed at once. He couldn’t wait to “see” what she had in store for him.

Her weight dipped the mattress. Then he almost came off it.

She was licking him. All over his chest and abdomen.

He growled, tried to hold her head closer, thrusting at her, offering all of him for her delicate devouring.

“Keep those lethal weapons of yours closed.”

He did, his heart almost rattling the whole bed in anticipation. Then he felt a sting on his chest.

The tail end of the sensation was a lance of pleasure that corkscrewed to his erection. It slammed against his abdomen. Air left his lungs on a bellow of stimulation.

Another sting followed. Then another and another, on a path of fiery pain and pleasure down his body. He’d never felt anything like this sourceless manipulation of his sensations. He could swear she wasn’t touching him, was pricking each individual nerve cluster mentally.

He thrust at her, incoherent with arousal, his growls becoming those of a beast in a frenzy. He at last thrust his hands into her hair, tugged until she moaned with enjoyment.

“Tell me to open my eyes,” he panted the order, the plea.

Another skewer of delight. “Uh-uh.”

“I don’t need them open to take you until you weep with pleasure,” he threatened, almost weeping himself again with the sharpness of the sensations she’d buried him under.

“Which you routinely do.” Another sting. He roared. She purred, “Okay, just because you threatened so nicely. Open ’em.”

He did. And couldn’t credit their evidence for moments.

Then he rasped between gasps as she continued her meticulous sensual torture, “This is-hands down-the most innovative use of a micro-grasping forceps I’ve ever seen.”

She was tugging at his hairs using the most delicate forceps used in micro-neurosurgery. And sending him stark raving mad.

“It’s also the most hands-on method I could think of to say thanks.” Her eyes glittered up at him, flooding him with love.

“Not that I’m not deliriously thankful for whatever made you invent this new…procedure, but thanks for what, mi vida?”

“Thanks for all the patience and perseverance you put into getting my hand back to this level of fine coordination.”

He dropped his gaze to her hand. It was true. There was no sign of clumsiness, weakness or pain as her precious hand performed her pioneering form of carnal torment.

He groaned, glided her over his aching body, grasped her hand gently and took it to his lips, thanked the fates for her, for letting him be the instrument of her happiness and well-being. “Thank you, for existing, for letting me be forever yours.”

Cybele cupped his face as he continued his homage, wondering how one being could contain all the love she felt for him.

She caressed his hewn cheek, traced the planes of his chiseled lips. “If you’re satisfied with my precision, can I apprentice at your hands in neurosurgery?”

He enfolded her and she felt as if his heart gave her the answer. To everything. “Just wish for it and it’s done, mi alma. Anything you want, the whole world is yours for the asking.”

She took his lips with a whimper, then she whispered into his mouth, “I already have the whole world. You, our baby and our love.”