Rooted (The Pagano Family Book 3) (22 page)

It all made her feel hollow and weepy this morning. Maybe all this weak, weepy bullshit was hormones. God, she really hoped so. The thought that she was turning into some kind of emotional gardenia infuriated her. Or, no. She wished it infuriated her. This morning, that thought made her cry instead. Jesus. She hated herself right now.

She dragged herself out of bed and took a shower. Not showing up for Thanksgiving would be more of a family scandal than getting knocked up and not telling the father.

As she finished drying her hair and pulled her robe over her shoulders, she heard a knock on the glass of her front door. Great. Now they were going to drag her over there.
Jesus Christ, give a pregnant woman five minutes to pull her act together, would ya?

She hadn’t closed the bathroom door—she lived alone; no point—so she wheeled angrily around the open doorway, figuring it was probably Luca, and prepared to lay into him for being an asshole and not giving her half an inch of space.

But it wasn’t Luca standing outside her door, on her sandy, windswept porch.

It was Theo.

What the fuck?

She did some quick math. Eli had found out about the baby about eighteen hours ago. He must have turned around and told his father almost immediately.

And Theo had come right away. But God, he looked like hell. He’d aged in the few months since she’d seen him.

He leaned into the door, his hands cupped around his face, peering through the glass into her house. He saw her. They locked eyes and froze.

He’d come right away.

To do what?

She didn’t care.

She went to the door and opened it. “Theo. I’m so sorry.”

He looked at her belly, showing more now than usual, because the belt of her robe was taut above it. Then he met her eyes again.

“Dammit, Carm. Goddammit.”

Before he could say more, Carmen threw herself into his arms.

And he caught her.

~ 16 ~

When Carmen wrapped her arms around him, it didn’t even occur to Theo not to hold her. God, she was so beautiful. She’d been the most beautiful woman he’d ever known since the day they’d met, but now, pregnant with his child, she was flushed and bright and exquisite, even in a fluffy blue robe.

She’d apologized. But for what?

He was furious, he was hurt, he needed a drink, and he was tired all the way to his marrow, but once she was in his arms, none of the angry things he’d intended to say mattered at all. He just held on and relished the feel of her lips against his throat.

Her fingers fed into his hair, and she brought his mouth to hers and kissed him. He held her more tightly and took it over, letting his tongue taste her full mouth. When she moaned and coiled her leg around his, Theo knew that if he didn’t say something now, they’d be in deep again before he had another chance. He took her head in his hands and pulled away. He tried to read the look in her eyes, tried to see the armor that always lurked there. What he saw instead was something sad and sweet—and desperate, perhaps.

“We need to talk, Carm.”

“I know. Later.” She tried to bring herself to his mouth again, and he held her off. There was only so much his heart could take, and he would find a way to stop right now if he had to.

“Not later, not for this. Do you love me? Straight and sober—do you?”

She blinked, but that was her only hesitation. “Yes. Theo, yes.
Yes
. I’m so sorry for everything I did to fuck us up. I love you.”

That was all he needed. He held her face and claimed her mouth, nearly four months of desolate need surging from his chest. She clutched him even closer, and her little belly pushed against his. Her belly, full of his child. God.

Gasping, he shifted his lips from hers and buried his face in the crook of her shoulder. Her hair covered his face and filled his senses. They were still in the doorway, so he walked her backwards into her house and caught the door with his heel, kicking it closed. “Where’s your bed?”

“Up there.”

He looked up and saw a loft above them. A quick glance around revealed an iron spiral staircase leading up there. “Fuck.”

Her laugh at that was almost a giggle. “There’s a daybed in my office. Behind me.”

“Good.” He commenced kissing her again, walking her backwards as he did so, his hands fumbling at the knotted belt of her robe. He finally got it open as they crossed the threshold into the room she’d indicated, and he pushed her robe off her shoulders, helping her step over the puddle of blue fluff.

The daybed was black wrought iron with a twin-size mattress covered in a vividly-hued striped fabric and big, colorful pillows. His scant attention to his surroundings had left the strong impression of a lot of color in her house, but the bed they were aiming at was the first thing he’d truly noticed. As he pushed her gently to sit on it, their mouths still locked together, their tongues still exploring, she reached back and tossed all the pillows to the floor.

As close as they were, Theo felt like he’d barely touched her yet. She was naked, sitting before him, her hands returning to his shoulders and pushing his leather jacket off and down his arms. She was naked and full of his child, and he felt afraid to touch her. As if she might evanesce from his hands if he weren’t careful.

But she was working the buttons on his shirt now, and she broke their kiss to look up into his eyes. “Help me. I can’t go fast enough on my own.”

Smiling down at her, their eyes fixed on each other, he stood straight and stripped. His cock fairly leapt to freedom as he dropped his jeans from his hips. She lay back as he undressed, scooting to the back of the daybed and making room for him to join her.

Before he did, he allowed himself a moment to see her, lying there waiting for him, so lovely. Her breasts, naturally full anyway, were even fuller, and her nipples had darkened. Her belly was firm and sloped, but not yet round. A faint line, just a shade darker than her skin, had developed from her navel downward.

He sat on the side of the bed and put his hand on her belly. She didn’t become mist under his touch. She twitched a little, and he moved his eyes up to her face and found her smiling sadly.

“Are you sorry?” she asked.

“That you’re pregnant? No. Are you?”

“No. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Carmen put her hand over his where it lay on her belly. “For all the reasons you said on the street that last day. Because you were right. I’m afraid. I think I’m always afraid. Of being wrong or fucking up, or getting hurt. Of just doing it wrong. I was afraid of what you’d say or do. I was afraid of what
I’d
say or do. I tried to tell you once, but when you didn’t respond, I used that as an excuse to avoid it.”

He laughed; she’d just said half the things he’d rehearsed on the plane. Though he’d intended to yell them at her.

“Can I ask you something, Theo?”

He turned his hand under hers and linked their fingers. “Sure.”

“Do you know when this happened?”

In the hours since he’d known, that question had been among the many teeming in his head. But he’d spent the summer drunk on bourbon and Carmen, and he had no idea. Now, he shrugged.

“You don’t?”

She shook her head slowly. “No.”

“Nor I. Dealing with the condoms is not among the most vivid parts of my memories of our lovemaking.”

She surprised him by laughing fully, and he cocked his head, not sure what he’d said that was so funny. “‘Lovemaking.’ That’s such an old-fashioned way to say it.”

“Romantic, you mean.” He grinned; it felt comfortable and familiar, the way she teased at his words.

“Maybe. But also lame.”

“You’d prefer what? ‘Fucking’?”

“I think that better describes what we do together.”

That abraded him a little, and he let his grin fall away and cupped her chin in his hand. “Not this time, Carmen. What I want to do with you now is make love. Honest love. Bare. I don’t want to hide behind roughness and pretend it’s not passion. I want to make love to you.
With
you. Is that ‘lame’?”

“No.” The word was a mere breath.

He stretched out along her side and leaned over her. As he lowered his head, intending to kiss her, however, she put her hand on his chest and held him off. When he stopped, confused, he saw that her eyes were at his throat. She moved her hand, and he felt her pick up his pendant in her fingers.

“You took the ‘M’ off.”

“I did.”

“When? Why?”

“About three months ago, I guess.” When Maggie had released him—or was it the other way around?—and his writer’s block had broken. At the time, he hadn’t been sure why, but he’d known it was time to take it off. “Because Maggie is not part of the life I’m living now. She’s my past.”

Carmen stared up into his eyes, and they were simply quiet together. Theo felt no impulse to fill the silence with further explanation. Finally, she said, “But you left this one.”

He smiled and lifted her hand away from the jasper disc still tied to his neck by a weathered leather cord. “Jasper is a healing stone.” He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed her knuckles. “It had more work to do.”

Her fingers tightened around his, and he knew she understood. “You believe in that—the healing properties of stones?”

“I believe in the symbol.”

Carmen smiled, and then her eyes widened slightly and her smile grew. She took his hand and pressed it firmly to the side of her belly. “Do you feel that?”

He felt nothing at first but anticipation—and then a light bump against his palm, little more than a flutter, but distinct nonetheless. That touch, of something, someone, to which he was so intimately connected and yet so physically removed, was itself a symbol. He grinned down at the mother of this new child. “I love you, beautiful girl. Make love with me.”

Nodding, she released his hand and looped her arms around his neck, her hands in his hair, threading her fingers through. “Yes.”

When he kissed her, he was gentle, moving his lips slowly with hers. He was going to take his time.

For long, quiet minutes, they only kissed. He lay at her side, propped on his elbow, one leg nestled between hers, his hand holding her face. Her fingers moved through his hair, combing and clutching in turns. He could feel her core, hot and wet on his thigh, but he didn’t rush. Even when she began to moan into his mouth and writhe against him, he took his time. He wanted to love her slowly and completely and not give her the chance to hide.

Not until she untangled her hands from his hair and reached down to try to take hold of him did Theo break their kiss. Moving to nibble the line of her jaw to her ear, he caught her errant arm in his hand and moved it to his back. Turning his attention to his mouth on her skin, he suckled her bare earlobe and then laved her neck, then the long, graceful span of her shoulder. He nipped at her collarbone and then moved lower, pressing soft, light kisses down the center of her chest, between her glorious breasts. When he paused between them, feeling their soft swells on his cheeks, Carmen arched upward and gasped his name. Then her hands left him.

He looked up and saw that she’d grabbed the ironwork of the daybed’s side rail with both hands. With the arc of her back, and her arms over her head like that, she presented her breasts to him like an offering.

Her eyes were closed, and she’d bitten down on her beautiful bottom lip. Like a fantasy she was, and Theo had a moment of unreality. For a hairsbreadth of time, he worried that he was lost in a drunken dream, passed out on the sofa in the Hunter’s library. But then Carmen squirmed again, and he felt the wet sear of her need on his thigh. She was real, he was here, they were true.

He lowered his head and took a dark nipple into his mouth, bringing his hand over to hold her other breast. At the touch of his lips and fingers, she cried out, “Oh, fuck!”

Theo stopped and lifted his head. “Carm?”

Smiling down at him, she said, “That’s fucking amazing. I guess it’s the baby, but all my nerves feel twice their normal size. Everything I feel is doubly intense.” She laughed. “For weeks, I’ve been so horny I can’t even describe it.”

“Good to know.” He dropped his head and returned his attention to her breasts, sucking and teasing, flicking his tongue and pinching his fingers over the hard puckers of her aroused flesh. Back and forth he went, cherishing her body, adoring the way she flexed under him as he brought her need higher and higher. When her moans took on the sharp edge that meant she was reaching a point of manic need, he backed off and blew lightly on her damp skin.

“Theo, please. Fuck me.”

“No, my love. Not today.” As he said the words, he moved his hand between her legs.

She gasped, whispering, “Yeah, yeah.” But he only grazed her folds gently, brushing the backs of his fingers over the neatly-trimmed hair between her legs. He could feel that she was swollen with need, and every touch brought a twitch from her so strong that it was a spasm. Her hands still grasped the daybed, and as he watched her face for its reaction to his touch, he could also see the way her biceps and triceps stood out. He loved to get her stirred up like this, usually to the point that she screamed wildly when she came, but that was not his plan now.

He pushed her long legs wider and then shifted down and between them. When Carmen realized what he was doing, her hips came up from the bed. He pushed her back down and settled in. They were on his terms, not hers, today.

First, he kissed a line up each thigh, stopping just shy of the apex, his tongue making light circles behind every touch of his lips. When her hips began moving in time to her rhythmic moaning, he slid his arms under her ass and wrapped them around to hold her down. Finally, he licked the length of her, dipping in for a taste and ending with a feather-light swirl of her clit.