A Scandal in the Headlines by Caitlin Crews

she wanted to see. He sat forward, those dark, cruel eyes fixed on her, and she reminded herself that nothing shook this man. Nothing could. Especially not minor little earthquakes like her.
    “Congratulations, Elena,” he said, his voice a sardonic lash. “I believe that’s the first honest thing you’ve said to me since you told me your name.”
    She had to wrench her gaze away from his then, while she ordered herself to stay calm. To tamp down the chaotic emotions that surged inside of her, taking her over, making her want nothing more than to sob—once again—for something she could never have. Something she never should have wanted in the first place.
    Unbidden, images of what they’d done together, here on this very same terrace, skated through her mind. His mouth, those hands. The wild heat of him,his impossible strength and his ruthless, intense possession—
    Something occurred to her then, slamming through her as hard and as vicious as if he’d punched her in the gut. He might as well have. It couldn’t have been worse.
    She had been on birth control pills throughout her relationship with Niccolo, but the past six months had been so hectic. She’d run away and run out of the pills, and she hadn’t wanted to leave any kind of record of where she’d been—so no doctors. She hadn’t imagined it would be an issue. And then, today, she’d simply forgotten she wasn’t protected.
    She’d forgotten
.
    “We didn’t use anything,” she gasped out, so appalled she could hardly get the words past her lips. She felt numb with horror.
    Alessandro went still. Too still. And for the first time in their brief, impossible acquaintance, she couldn’t read a thing in the narrow, considering gaze he aimed at her. She could only see the darkness.
    “I’m clean,” he said. Cool and concise. And nothing more.
    And the caustic slap of that helped her, strangely. It reminded her who she was, what she was doing here. Why she’d decided to give in to her desire for him in the first place.
    “You think I’m a liar and I know very well you are,” she said, trying for a calm tone. “You’ll excuse me if I have no particular reason to believe you.”
    Temper streaked across that arrogant face of his. “You know I’m a liar, do you?” His deceptively gentle tone made her skin prickle. “And how exactly do you know that?”
    She laughed, deliberately callous. “Because I know your name.”
    A deep blackness flashed through his dark green eyes and over his face then, old and resigned, with the faint hint of some kind of pain, and Elena fought off a sharp stab of regret. She shouldn’t care if she hurt this man’s feelings. He certainly didn’t care if he hurt hers. So why couldn’t she stave off the bizarre urge to apologize? To trust him the way that insane part of her urged her to do?
    But even as she opened her mouth to do exactly that, she stopped herself. Because their carelessness had changed everything. She knew enough about him to know that he would never send her back to Niccolo if he thought she might be carrying his baby. Not a proud man like Alessandro. Not when the blood between the Falcos and the Correttis had been notoriously bad for generations.
    Which meant, after all of this, she really was as safe as she’d always felt with him.
    It should have felt something more than hollow.
    But she had to keep going no matter how it felt. She had to push this to its logical extreme. This was her chance to stay hidden away in a place Niccolo could never find her. In a place he’d never dream or dare to look.
    “I could be pregnant,” she said, steeling herself to the look on his face then, to her own intense horror at what she was doing. But she had no other option. There was so little time left, and she couldn’t let Niccolo find her. She would do anything to keep that from happening, even this.
    “I’m familiar with the risks,” Alessandro bit out, temper still dark on his face, in his eyes,