Paddington Children's Hospital Complete Collection. Kate Hardy

       CHAPTER SIXTEEN

      AND VICTORIA WANTED to be in his bed too.

      ‘I’m very tired,’ she warned with a smile as they drove away from Paddington’s.

      ‘Victoria,’ he said, ‘I’ve been on call all weekend and you look like hell.’

      She looked at him all unshaven and with dark circles under his eyes. ‘So do you.’

      ‘Good,’ Dominic said, and glanced over to her, ‘so you’ll be able to keep your hands off me, then.’

      God, but he turned her on.

      His home was a large apartment, close to the hospital. They took the stairs up to his floor and, as he let them in, there were all the signs of a family in residence. Victoria was very used to coming home to her flat alone and finding it exactly as she had left it, but Dominic read a note that had been left on a table in the hall.

      ‘I just saw them back at the hospital,’ Dominic told her. ‘But it says that they won’t be back till this evening.’

      She was too tired to look around but there was a nice feel to the place and, as she glanced in the living room, she saw two heavy-looking leather sofas with rugs over the back of them.

      A stint of nights, then hanging around for the ultrasound and all the emotion of before, had left Victoria so tired that she felt cold despite the warm day.

      They stepped into his bedroom and she looked at the large bed and wanted to sink into it.

      ‘I am so going to enjoy sleeping with you,’ Dominic said as he closed the drapes and turned on a bedside light, and she laughed.

      ‘And I am so going to enjoy sleeping with you.’

      She slipped off her clothes and got into bed. It had the wonderful, soapy, fragrant scent of him that was now familiar. Victoria suddenly realised that she had never seen him naked. But she was about to get that pleasure now, and she couldn’t wait.

      Dominic took off his shirt. She saw his pale skin and the dark hair of his chest and she just lazily watched. He undid his belt and as he undressed she saw strong thighs and then his tumescent male beauty.

      ‘We are going to sleep,’ he promised, yet Victoria wasn’t so sure because she was starting to change her mind. There are moments so special that they have to be marked in some way, and this was one of them. So she stretched and sighed as he climbed into bed and turned off the light, and they lay there as a siren went past.

      ‘Thank God it’s not you out there,’ Dominic said, and he pulled her closer into him. ‘Every time I hear a siren I think of you, even before I found out that you were pregnant. I’ve been so worried about you out there.’

      ‘I will be again,’ she warned, because her career was incredibly important to her and she definitely would be going back.

      ‘I know that you will,’ Dominic said, ‘but you shan’t ever be out there again without knowing that I love you.’

      And then she looked at Dominic and saw right down to his soul, and found out that she resided there and that she had ever since their first kiss.

      She lifted her face towards him and he kissed not, at first, her mouth but her cheeks and eyes and then he kissed her lips long and slow.

      A goodnight kiss, even though it was morning.

      The kind of I’m not going anywhere kiss that she had never known, and then he held her tight in his arms as they drifted off to sleep together.

      For the first time they lay together to the sounds floating up from the street and the bliss of being in each other’s arms. They needed no more than this right now.

      It was a sleep like no other.

      The end of nights and their first together ensured that it was the sweetest, deepest sleep for them both.

      Victoria rolled onto her side and he wrapped around her and peace was made.

      * * *

      It was Victoria who stirred first. Dominic was curved into her and she was disorientated as to place and time, for the room was dark and the direction she faced unfamiliar, but she was blissfully certain of the man in whose arms she lay.

      Who knows how we awaken together? she thought.

      That moment when you realise someone else is present and by your side.

      When respite has been taken and you awake peaceful, and there is no need for a frantic examination for you to know it is a better world.

      And it was.

      His hand was on her stomach and she lay with eyes open to the darkened room, half asleep, half awake and completely content. Then Victoria closed her eyes as his hand roamed the curve of her hip and he moved in closer.

      Dominic kissed her bare shoulder and his hand toyed with her breast. She felt the pinch of his finger and thumb on her nipple and the nudge of him between her legs. She turned her face to him and they shared a kiss that was slow, but then both wanted more and so she rolled in his arms for just that. As she did so Dominic moved too. He held himself over her and halted her on her back, resting his elbows by her head and pushing up on his arms. She had never felt so deliciously trapped, yet so safe in love.

      On so many occasions Victoria had looked down when he silently demanded that her eyes meet his, but now she looked up to his gaze. Her hand came to the back of his head and she levered herself up to meet his mouth. But it was his kiss this time and so he pressed her back into the pillows and claimed her mouth as below she parted her legs for him.

      The feel of him inside her made her shiver, though their bodies were warm and still loose from sleep. His kiss was deep and intense and they moved slowly at first, revelling in the feel of togetherness and the naked heat of their skin. They simply entwined into one as they forgot they were parents-to-be and found out the couple they had now become.

      Each measured thrust he delivered brought her a little more undone.

      And she was his.

      For all the declarations Dominic had offered, when she had given none, with each building sob that she tried to hold in, she revealed herself to him some more.

      He placed his hands on the bed, either side of her breasts, and he moved up onto outstretched arms. The separation between them allowed her to lean up on the pillows as he took her, in short rapid thrusts, as she clasped his face and took his lips in a deep kiss.

      It was shockingly intimate for both of them—the kissing, the feeling, the watching each other so close to the edge.

      Then she closed her eyes, not to him but because the feelings were intense. He moved faster despite the slow caress of his tongue and she searched for a headboard to cling to but settled instead for his solid arms. She couldn’t resist the urge to tilt her hips and take him in more deeply.

      Everything gathered tight within and Victoria wanted to twist or to lift her knees, almost to shield herself from the throes of frenzy, but instead her hands moved up his arms and her fingertips pressed into his shoulders and she came hard.

      And there was nowhere for her heart to hide any more.

      Dominic sunk down from his arms and she accepted the weight like a raft, and for a moment they lay breathless.

      She waited, but this time regret did not arrive.

      ‘Are you going to say you’ve made a mistake again?’ Dominic asked in that familiar wry tone.

      ‘Well, if it is a mistake, then I intend to keep on repeating it.’

      She rolled to her side and they lay staring at each other for a while.

      And the feeling remained.

      So she told him something she never had said to anyone. ‘I love