His Heir, Her Honor by Catherine Mann Page B

kiss increasingly frantic. Their legs tangling, he backed into his workspace, kicked the door closed and flattened her to the door.
    He didn’t know how this had flamed so high so fast, but he’d never wanted a woman as much as he had to have Lilah. Here. This minute.
    Her hands fell to his pants and made fast work of his belt. Even now, the woman was bold and efficient. Strong. He admired that about her. He wanted to wrinkle her perfect dress, to ruck it up to her waist and bury himself inside her until she was lost in the moment. Out of control. Calling out his name. Especially with her fingers nudging down his zipper.
    Good thing he was always prepared. He pulled the condom from his wallet and plucked out the packet of protection.
    Reflexively, he pushed back thoughts of the children he would never have. Of how he didn’t even dare risk adoption, risk exposing any child, any woman, to the dangers his family had faced. He would not, could not live through the nightmare of watching another woman suffer because of her connection to the Medina name.
    Restraint shaky, he gathered Lilah’s dress, bunching the silky fabric upward. He revealed his Grecian goddess inch by inch of creamy leg, nudged aside her panties and sunk inside. The warm clamp of her body took him to a level beyond anything he’d experienced…beyond anything he would feel again since this was the only night he could have with her….
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    Embers blurring as he stared, Carlos rubbed his fingers together, the moisture from Lilah’s tears soaking into his skin. Had he done the right thing in turning away from her, sending her to her room? Hell, half the time he didn’t know what he was doing when it came to her. He reacted with his gut instead of his brain.
    The tears she’d cried were so different from the ones shed by his patients and their worried parents. In those cases, he knew how to respond, his eyes firmly fixed on healing. Here, he didn’t know how to ease her pain.
    Then it hit him like the logs blazing back to life.
    He was the cause of her tears and her tension. He’d sensed her anger the day she’d told him about the baby—tough to miss when she’d slapped him. But so intent on protecting her with distance, he’d missed the obvious.
    Intellectually, he’d understood she believed him to be the father. He’d assumed she must have mixed up dates. Yet as he thought back to what she’d said in his office, he recalled her emphatic insistence that there hadn’t been anyone other than him for months.
    She had no reason to lie. Lilah had never been impressed by his money or his pedigree.
    Bracing a steadying hand on the mantel, he let the implications line up in his brain. That left him with two possibilities. Either the baby really was his or someone had taken advantage of Lilah without her knowledge, not as far-fetched as it sounded. Some bastard could have slipped any number of date rape drugs into herdrink. His hands fisted at even the possibility of her being taken advantage of so callously. So criminally.
    A fresh wave of protectiveness— possessiveness— flooded him until he accepted the inevitable. She was his. Which made her baby his regardless.
    The reality of that settled inside him. There was no cutting her out of his life. No turning his back. She and her child were his to keep safe. He hadn’t planned on linking his life to anyone else’s. Being a Medina had never brought peace to anyone, most certainly not to his mother.
    But walking away from Lilah was no longer an option.
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    The next morning, Lilah combed her fingers through her damp hair, wide awake thanks to her shower. Sleep had been hard to come by.
    Sure, she’d been reckless throwing herself at Carlos last night. Still, his rejection had hurt.
    She hadn’t cried again though. She’d refused to waste another tear on him. Instead, she’d stared dry-eyed at the soaring