Rumours: The One-Night Heirs: The Innocent's Secret Baby (Billionaires & One-Night Heirs) / Bound by the Sultan's Baby (Billionaires & One-Night Heirs) / Sicilian's Baby of Shame (Billionaires & One-N

And then he rolled off and onto his back and lay breathless, unsated, both turned on and angry.

He told her why. ‘I don’t do virgins.’

There was so much she could protest at about that statement.

Do?

And her response was tart, to cover up her disappointment and, yes, her embarrassment that he had brought things to a very shuddering halt.

‘What, only experienced applicants need apply?’

‘Don’t you get it?’ He ripped off the condom and tossed it aside, and ached to finish the job. ‘There’s nothing to apply for, Lydia. I like one-night stands. I like to get up in the morning and have coffee and then go about my day. It’s sex. That’s it. There are no vacant positions waiting to be filled in my life.’

‘I wasn’t expecting anything more.’

‘You say that now.’

And now Raul sulked.

He had heard it so many times before.

Raul didn’t do virgins, and with good reason—because even the most seasoned of his lovers tended to ask for more than he was prepared to give.

‘I mean it,’ Lydia insisted.

‘Do you know what, Lydia? If you’ve waited till you’re twenty-four I’m guessing there’s a reason.’

There was—she’d hardly had men beating down the door.

But a small voice was telling her that Raul, as arrogant as his words were, was actually right—making love would change things for her.

Then again, since she had met Raul everything had already changed.

‘Go to sleep,’ he said.

‘I can’t.’

‘Yes, Lydia, you can.’

His voice was sulky, and she didn’t know what he meant, but as she lay there Lydia started to understand.

She felt a little as if she was floating.

All the events of the night were dancing before her eyes, and she could watch them unfold without feeling—except for one.

‘What happened to your back?’

Her voice came from that place just before she fell asleep. Raul knew that.

Yet he wished she had not asked.

Lydia had not asked about one scar but about his whole back.

He did not want to think about that.

But now he was starting to.

CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_4a85cc68-9a6b-56e7-8270-3e1ee3a3eb79)

‘IT’S YOUR MOTHER’S FUNERAL,’ the priest admonished, but only once Raul had been safely cuffed and led away.

Raul and Bastiano, the police decided, should not be in the same building, so Raul was taken to the jailhouse to cool down and Bastiano was cuffed to a stretcher and taken to the valley’s small hospital.

A towel covered Raul’s injury, and he sat in a cell until a doctor came to check on him.

Raul loathed anyone seeing his back, due to the scars his father had put there, but thankfully the doctor didn’t comment on them. He took one look at the gaping wound and shook his head.

‘This is too big to repair under a local,’ the doctor informed him. ‘I’ll tell the guards to arrange your transfer to the hospital.’

‘Is Bastiano still there?’ Raul asked, and the doctor nodded. ‘Then you’ll do it here.’

The thought of being in the same building as Bastiano tonight was not one he relished, and a hospital was no place for his current mood.

‘It’s going to hurt,’ the doctor warned.

But Raul already did.

The closure of the wound took ages.

He felt the fizz and sear of the peroxide as it bubbled its way through raw flesh, and then came the jab of the doctor’s fingers as he explored it.

‘I really think…’ the doctor started, but Raul did not change his stance.

‘Just close it.’

Deep catgut sutures closed the muscles and then thick silk finally drew together the skin.

He was written up for some painkillers to be taken throughout the night when required, but he did not bother to ask the guards for them.

Nothing could dim the pain.

It was not the wounds of the flesh that caused agony, more the memories and regret.

He should have known what was going on.

His mother’s more cheerful disposition on his last visit was because she’d had a lover. Raul knew that now.

And there was guilt too—tangible guilt—because she had called him on the morning she had died and Raul had not picked up.