The Secret Casella Baby

They only ever met at weekends. She couldn’t leave her animals and he couldn’t get time away from his job, which she assumed took him travelling all over the country, selling all that computer stuff which made her glaze over whenever she thought too hard about it. But the time they spent together was so intense, so vibrantly, wildly alive, that she couldn’t confess to having a second’s doubt that he was just the best thing that had ever happened to her.

He was her lover, her soul mate. He was the guy she knew she could share everything with, from the small things, bits and pieces of local gossip, to the really big things like when some of the shelters had lost their roofs the year before in a snow storm and the bank had been digging its heels in about lending her the amount she needed to repair them to the standard she wanted. Well, Luiz had sorted it all out for her, and in fact had managed to talk the bank manager into lending her enough to really bring the whole sanctuary up to an incredibly high standard, far better than she could ever have imagined.

Plus, he had looked through all her deeds and papers and found a stash of cash sitting in an unused account dating back to the original sale of the farm. With the accumulated interest over the years, she hadn’t even had to pay for any of the refurbishments. He was her rock.

As they did every time she thought of him, her fingers rested lovingly on the tiny red pendant he had given her the previous Christmas as a present before he had returned to Brazil—for, as he had told her, ten days of agony without the bliss of seeing her for the weekend. Her eyes had welled up at the present, because he had remembered her once telling him that rubies were her favourite stones, but he had waved aside her thanks and vaguely assured her that it was just a great copy, nothing to get all worked up about.

Over time, he had lavished her with a number of such great copies of precious jewellery. He knew a guy who knew a guy who could work magic when it came to terrific reproductions, he had told her. In return, she had given him little things she picked up at the craft fairs she occasionally went to. She had knitted him a sweater because his sweaters were far too thin—London sweaters, she had laughed, only useful for London winters. She had bought him a first edition of a book he had mentioned liking which she had found in an antique-book shop in an out-of-the-way village near Middlesbrough.

She smiled at the memory of how concerned he had been at the extravagance, but in truth, ever since he had set up that website, the finances of the place had never been so good. Donations more than kept them going and there were now a couple of really generous anonymous online donors who almost single-handedly ensured that the sanctuary was in tip-top condition with money to spare.

Lost in her daydreams, she started at the sound of the door knocker and she was already succumbing to the thrill of anticipation as she pulled open the door.

‘I couldn’t get here fast enough…’ Luiz kicked the door shut behind him and pulled her into his arms. En route, he had rolled up the sleeves of his shirt and his tie was stuffed into his trouser pocket. In weather like this, it would have made sense to have changed into something cooler before boarding his helicopter, but as always the need to see her was so urgent that he just couldn’t bring himself to take time out to return to his apartment and change.

In fact, it was a source of continual gratification that he had use of a helicopter. Had he been obliged to take the train and a taxi, which he knew she assumed he did, he would have gone mad during the journey. Hell, no woman had ever been able to hold his attention for the length of time that she had and now he buried his head in her hair, breathing in her unique, gloriously womanly scent.

‘There’s wine outside.’ Holly’s laughter caught on a breath of intoxicating desire as he pushed her back to the wall and teased open the small buttons at the front of her dress.

‘The wine will have to wait.’ Luiz half-groaned. ‘I’ve been thinking of nothing but this since I got into that taxi. Why the hell have you worn something with a thousand buttons, Holly? Are you trying to drive me crazy?’

‘I’m not wearing a bra, though…’

‘Then it’s a good thing you answered the door to me,’ Luiz growled possessively. ‘Because that’s something for my eyes only…’ He couldn’t get the buttons undone fast enough. His impulse was just to rip the dress open, but he knew that she would fret about the cost and he would be impotent to replace it. Eventually, the buttons were undone to the waist and he peeled the dress aside so that he could feast his eyes on her wondrous breasts.

Breathing unevenly, he flung his head back, nostrils flared, eyes half-closed before cupping those breasts in his big hands and rubbing the pads of his thumbs over the distended, swollen peaks of her large, circular nipples. He could have taken her right here, standing in the hallway, with her pressed up against the wall. Instead, he swept her off her feet and carried her into the front room where at his instigation, and with a great deal of persuasion, she had accepted the gift of an enormous sofa from him, big enough to take them both and essential, he had said, to cater for the times when they just couldn’t make it to the bedroom. Which was often. He deposited her on the sofa now and stood up to remove his shirt.

Holly adored the hunger in his eyes. From the very beginning, unused to such naked desire, she had revelled in the way he made her feel: sexy, beautiful and very, very necessary. He went up in flames the second he touched her, he had told her, and she believed him because she could see the proof of it in his eyes. She pushed herself up and tugged down the zip of his trousers. His erection was big, bold and barely restrained by the boxers. She wriggled her hand to touch his arousal and he covered her hand with his and held it still.

‘Don’t,’ he commanded in a strangled voice. ‘Not unless you want to see me react like a horny teenager who has never had sex!’

Holly laughed and ignored him. The very first time they had made love, she had nervously wondered whether she had done all right. He was a man of infinite experience. She had known that the second he had trailed his finger along her cheek and down to her collarbone, watching her with a half-smile as she had shivered and shuddered and wondered whether she was doing the right thing.

That had been on his third day of sharing the cottage with her. His curiosity about her had been thrilling and insistent. And she had been bowled over by his confidence, his easiness, his wit, his intelligence. She had been ripe for the taking and she had loved every second of it.

‘Tell me,’ he had murmured softly, washing away the dregs of her hesitation all that time back, ‘What could be wrong about this?’ And he had teased her body with a sexy, feathery touch until it had felt as though it would go up in flames. He had taken his time and she had been swept away on a tide of passion. There had been no chance of her finding anything to cling to, no chance of common sense pulling her back to safety. Every expectation she had ever had of a normal life with a normal guy doing normal things and progressing down a normal route had been turned on its head and she hadn’t regretted any of it for a minute.

She was no longer insecure about touching him, not like that very first time. He made her feel wonderfully, deliciously needed. She touched his pulsating erection with the delicate tip of her tongue and he groaned and shuddered.

‘I can’t wait… Get your clothes off.’ He watched feverishly as she wriggled out of the annoying dress and the lacy underwear. He had introduced her to that concept the very first time he had returned to see her, only days after he had left: lacy underwear to replace the sensible cotton briefs. She had made a token protest but it hadn’t lasted long. Even she could see how outrageously sexy the tiny bits of lace made her look. Sometimes, he would strip her down to that lacy underwear and tease her through the lace with his tongue until she was on fire for him.

That wouldn’t be happening tonight. Not when he could barely keep a lid on his own uncontrolled libido.

She was divinely sexy lying on the bed with her hair rippling around her in waves of vanilla, caramel and gold. She let her legs drop open so that he could see the seductive details of her womanhood and he stilled in the process of pulling off his shirt when her fingers lightly touched herself. Her amazing eyes were half-closed but he knew that she was watching him, enjoying his reaction to what she was doing. He ripped the last two buttons of his shirt and subsided on the bed next to her.

‘If you want to touch something…’ He firmly guided her hand away from herself and back towards his erection. ‘Then you can touch me!’ He slid his fingers along her wetness and loved the feel of her moisture that made them slippery.

‘We should be talking,’ Holly whispered unevenly as insistent waves of pleasure began swelling inside her as he continued to stroke and rub between her legs.

‘You’d be shocked if I didn’t walk through that front door and grab you,’ Luiz said with masculine satisfaction. ‘You can’t resist me.’

‘You are so egotistic, Luiz Gomez!’

‘Just reporting on what your body’s telling me. Right now, you’re hot and wet and those are definitely not the signs of a woman who wants to talk…’ To emphasise his point, he straddled her in one easy movement and, on cue, she arched back, offering her breasts to him and closing her eyes as he began the languorous process of exploring every inch of them.

He could spend hours teasing and playing with her breasts. He loved everything about them. He had long given up asking himself how he could ever have gone out with women who weren’t as generously built as the woman who was now writhing underneath him.

Holly’s breathing was fast and interspersed with small little moans of satisfaction as he licked and nibbled. She half-opened her eyes to gaze lovingly at his dark head. When he nudged at her with his erection, she slipped into a bubble of pure ecstasy, and as he thrust forcefully in she was swept away. Their bodies moved in perfect harmony. She was already so excited that she could feel her orgasm building as he continued to push into her but she had learned to hold off until she could feel them both at the same point.

It came quickly, then she let herself go. Her moans became cries until her mind and body parted company and she was no longer capable of thinking. She shuddered, raking her fingers along the length of his back and feeling the hardness of muscle and sinew under them. More than anything, she wanted to shout out how much she loved him but she held it in.

Ages ago he had told her about a woman he had been seeing, a woman he had almost married whom he had believed was madly in love with him, only to find out that she had been stringing him along. He hadn’t given any details and Holly had known not to press. She had kept a steady smile on her face while he had told her this story in passing. Who was she to demand explanations when she, too, had once fancied herself in love, only to realise that once the first flush had faded there was just not enough there to pull them through.

Now, of course, she could see that what she had felt at the time had been nothing. That said, instinct had told her that telling him how much she loved him might not be something he wanted to hear, even though they had now been seeing each other for so long that he must surely guess, just as she did.

He fell back next to her on the sofa and flung his hand over his face before turning on his side and pulling her against him.

‘How do you do that?’ Luiz murmured. ‘How do you always manage to get me so worked up that I can’t control myself?’ He gave her a crooked smile and outlined her full mouth with his finger. Not only could she get him so worked up that he couldn’t control himself, she also managed the impossible feat of making him want to take her all over again within moments of being sated. No woman had ever been able to do that, but then again no woman had ever been so utterly lacking in any kind of agenda. It was just perfect.

‘Don’t tell me I’m the first to do that.’ Holly smiled back at him. She thought of that woman he had once been in love with, the woman she had had no trouble tossing away in a cupboard at the back of her mind. Except now, with a bottle of wine growing steadily warmer outside, and talk of a future between them on the cards, that mysterious woman was demanding some attention. ‘What about… you know, Clarissa… the woman you nearly married seven years ago.’

Luiz frowned and drew back to gaze down at her flushed face with a quizzical expression. He had no idea how he had been persuaded into telling her about Clarissa, his biggest mistake and valuable learning curve. But, then again, hadn’t he told her a lot of things over time, from that very first moment when he had found himself confiding in her about his father and his feelings of grief that had blinded him to the dangers of the icy country lanes? The grief that had sent his car spinning out of control and landed him in her cottage and, not long after, in her bed. She occupied a special position, one which was far removed from his daily life and, as such, he had ended up telling her a hell of a lot more than he had ever told anyone else in his life.

But now she was smiling and asking about Clarissa and his antenna was picking up signals that were sending little threads of alarm through him. Although he was sure that he was just imagining that. He relaxed and held her close to him.

‘Let’s not go there.’ He nuzzled the column of her neck and felt her shiver responsively. ‘The past should never be raked up. What’s the point?’ He moved to kiss her lips, a long, gentle lingering kiss that did all those wonderfully familiar things to his manhood. ‘I don’t ask you about your ex,’ he pointed out.

‘You don’t have to.’ For once, the feel of him against her and the rub of his arousal pushing to insert itself between her thighs was not enough to bring all her brain functions to a grinding halt. ‘You know everything there is to know about him.’

‘I don’t understand where this is coming from.’

‘I’m just curious. What was it about her that you fell in love with?’

Luiz pulled away and lay on his back in silence for a few seconds, hands clasped behind his head. ‘It was just one of those relationships that didn’t work out,’ he said abruptly. ‘I should go and have a shower.’ He levered himself off the sofa with a twinge of regret. He would have liked to stay put, lost himself in her again, but he really wasn’t interested in prolonging a conversation about Clarissa James.

When he had told her about Clarissa, it had been to assuage her curiosity about his unmarried status. Once bitten, twice shy, he had wryly concluded, having omitted most of the details of the relationship—notably the fact that Clarissa James had played him for a fool. He and Clarissa had gone out and she had been a breath of fresh air after his diet of elegant, eligible women. She had been wild, willing and, to start with at least, satisfyingly hard to get. By the time doubts had set in and Luiz had found himself ready to move on, she had declared herself pregnant.

The wild child with the tangle of gypsy-black hair and eccentric clothes that had always looked just right had somehow morphed into a calculating woman who was in a position to call all the shots. It had just been a fortunate accident that he had discovered the stash of contraceptive pills buried in a compartment in her handbag. The packet that was one pill lighter every day for the seven days he had routinely checked.

She had played him for a fool and in the aftermath he had had to endure his family cautioning him about gold-diggers and his sisters gleefully thinking that they could arrange his private life to save him the bother of another mistake—not to mention friends and colleagues to whom he had given no explanation for the break-up, only to say what he had said to Holly, that it hadn’t worked out. Doubtless they had drawn other, more elaborate conclusions for the sudden demise of the relationship.

‘Why won’t you talk about her?’ Holly demanded. She sat up and reached down for her discarded underwear. For a few seconds she had the strangest sensation of being suddenly cast adrift on unknown waters. There was an edginess to the atmosphere that made her want just to keep quiet and go with the flow as she had done in the past, but something else was pushing her on to ask him the question that had been playing on her mind for the past couple of months: where were they going? What was the next step for them?

‘Because there’s nothing to talk about!’ Back in his clothes, Luiz turned to see that she had also got into hers although she still had that tousled, thoroughly kissed look that could do things to his body.

‘Were you in love with her?’

Luiz paused. He felt as though he had taken a direct hit. The comfortable situation in which she was pleasantly deluded about his wealth, his power and the horror of how it could corrupt no longer felt quite so comfortable. Nor was it so easy to sidestep the reality that the piece of fiction which now lay between them like a gaping chasm wasn’t quite as harmless as he conveniently liked to pretend to himself.