by Lucy Monroe
He smiled down at her. “So you have decided to wake up.”
“I fainted.” She couldn’t believe it.
“It happens sometimes, when the feelings are very, very intense.”
A surge of purely possessive jealousy coursed through her and she stiffened, glaring up at him. “I suppose you’ve had lots of lovers faint in your arms.”
He shook his head, all trace of smile gone. “Never, yineka mou. Only you. Only now.”
“But…” How had he known?
He shrugged as if she’d asked the question aloud. “I am a man. It is something I have heard.”
“Thank you.” He had given her pleasure she’d never dreamed of, not even in his arms.
His blue eyes, the color of the midnight sky, bored into her. “It is I who thanks you. I have never experienced anything like the fire you give me when I touch you.”
He laid the towel across her torso, giving the illusion of modesty and straightened to stand beside the bed.
“Dimitri?”
“I will leave you to sleep in privacy if that is your wish.”
She stared at him, her heart pounding in her chest. “Don’t you want me?”
He laughed and flicked a self-deprecating hand in the direction of his shaft. It stood proud and pulsatingly erect out from his body. “I want you more than my next breath, but I will not take what you do not wish to give.”
She would have expected him to shore up his victory in the shower with a complete seduction. In fact, she was almost sure that had been his plan. She did not know what changed his mind, but only that it touched her deeply he had. He was giving her a choice, not trying to coerce her with their physical compatibility.
And in giving her that choice, he robbed her of her resolve. She wanted him, so much. The pleasure he had given her in the shower was beautiful, something she would never forget, but she needed to feel the connection of their bodies for it to be complete.
She tugged the towel from her body and dropped it on the floor beside the bed.
His face looked hewn from stone while a wild hope burned in his indigo eyes. “Alexandra?”
She put out her arms. “I want you.”
He came to her in a rush of masculine possession, covering her body completely with his own and entering her all in one incredible move. Then he went still. “This for me is a taste of Heaven on Earth.”
Alexandra strove to breathe in the face of an indescribable pleasure she’d thought never to know again. His size was such that she was stretched and filled to capacity, but her earlier pleasure had made his swift penetration easy and smooth.
She too felt a need for stillness. She wanted to savor a sensation she thought lost to her. It felt different and at first she didn’t understand why, but then she remembered. He hadn’t donned a condom. He hadn’t needed to. She was already pregnant with his baby. She loved the feel of naked flesh against naked flesh in such an intimate way.
She tipped her head and met his gaze.
He smiled. “In this, we are in one accord.”
She couldn’t help returning his smile. “Yes.”
Then he started to move, sliding almost completely out before entering her again with torturing slowness. “We will not hurt our son?”
She shook her head vehemently. Her obstetrician had informed her she could continue conjugal relations right up until her son’s birth as long as it remained comfortable for her. She hadn’t appreciated the information at the time.
She groaned as he slid in again.
“Are you certain of this?”
She forced her mind to focus so she could tell him what the doctor had said. His look of shock was so funny, she came out of her passion glazed daze enough to tease him. “You are a man. This is something you are supposed to know.”
Red scorched his well defined cheekbones. “This we do not discuss.”
She giggled. “I bet you didn’t know that there’s a chemical in your fluid that helps me go into labor when the time comes, either.” That had been another helpful tidbit she’d wanted to yell at her obstetrician for sharing. She’d thought she would be spending her pregnancy alone and the prospect of getting Dimitri’s help in this way an impossible one.
The surprised expression turned to a smug one. “A Petronides knows his duty. I will be certain to provide you all the chemicals you need at the time.”
She laughed, refusing to ruin the moment by reminding either of them that she was still unsure whether or not she wanted to be in a position to allow that. Both her laughter and her disturbing thoughts melted away as he began to move more aggressively. He rocked her body with his hands while he plunged in and out of her with passionate fervor.
Incredibly she felt a tightening sensation in her lower belly, telling her that her body was preparing for another explosion of pleasure. She grabbed his shoulders, holding on so tight with her fingers that her nails dug into his skin while their bodies rocked together toward a crescendo of satisfaction.
Just as she felt herself contracting around his hardened flesh, he went absolutely stiff above her and shouted out his release. For the first time in their relationship, she was allowed to feel every pulse as his warmth flooded her and she could not believe how that impacted her emotions. It felt more intimate than anything they had ever done.
It was as if he’d always held part of himself back from her, but now he willingly gave her that which had accidentally brought about the new life in her womb. She wanted to thank him again, but the moment was too profound for words.
Whatever became of their future, she would always have this moment.
CHAPTER SEVEN
DIMITRI rolled off her, but pulled her body close to his side as if he were afraid she was going to make a break for it.
She was almost too tired to breathe. She wasn’t going anywhere. “I locked the door,” she murmured on a yawn against the warmth of his chest.
“Yes.”
“How did you get in?”
“Do you think I only know how to make money? I can pick a lock. My grandfather’s security chief taught me when I was sixteen. He said every man should have the ability. I confess it has never been of use until now.”
She laughed softly, picturing a younger Dimitri learning such a questionable skill. “Did your grandfather know?”
“It was his idea.”
“You’re having me on.”
“No. Grandfather believes a man should be able to do things for himself, even if he has the money to pay someone else to do them.”
She snuggled in closer. It felt so good. “No wonder you never balked at helping me with dinner. I always thought you were surprisingly domesticated for such a traditional Greek man, not to mention such a rich one.”
“I enjoyed the simplicity of our life in Paris.”
“Right. You threw a fit when I told you I didn’t want a live-in housekeeper, cook and maid.”
“It surprised me.” He defended himself. “Most women who worked as hard as you did would have been happy to leave the domestic chores to someone else.”
“It kept me grounded. It would have been too easy to get wrapped up in the glitter and glitz surrounding the fashion industry.” She sighed and kissed the hair roughened skin of his chest simply because she couldn’t help herself. “I guess I didn’t want to end up like my mother with my view of life and the world blinkered by the society surrounding me.”
But like her mother, she’d willfully worn blinders in one area of her life…with him. She had refused to consciously acknowledge the transitory nature of their relationship, living only in the present. So, when he ended it—she had been devastated. She didn’t want to think about that right now, maybe never again.
“Why the darkness?” she asked instead.
“I needed it to be only you and I. No more pain. No past. No present. No future. Just us.”
She understood that. Allowing this area of their relationship to be tainted by the differences that plagued them wou
ld be like taking a color marker to the Mona Lisa.
They lay like that for a long time, his fingers brushing her side in an absentminded movement while her hand rested over his heart. It reminded her of their last time together and her words then. A strong heart.
“You said your grandfather had another heart attack? You never told me about the first one.”
“It happened while I was in Greece that last time before you left Paris.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Why didn’t you tell me who you really were?” he countered.
“I was Xandra Fortune in France.”
“Yes, and you took periodic trips that were not modeling assignments and yet you would not tell me what they were. Presumably they were to return to your life as Alexandra Dupree.”
“Yes,” she admitted.
“I thought you had met someone else.”
She sat up and stared down at him, his beautiful black hair tousled by her fingers, his naked body gleaming bronze above where the sheet rested across his hips. “You thought I was two-timing you?”
Chance would be a fine thing. If he had believed that about her, he would not have stayed. “I had never had another lover. Did you think that now I knew what sex was, I couldn’t wait to try it with someone else?”
She wasn’t prepared for the guilty stain across his cheeks.
“You did!” She didn’t think about it, she just balled up her fist and smacked him right on the chest. Hard.
He grunted and caught her hand in his own. “I did not believe it. If I had, I would have ended our relationship.”
Right. That sounded like him. “But you thought the baby was someone else’s.”
“Yes. I did hold this tormenting belief for a week. I have no excuse.”
She glared at him. “No, you don’t.”
But inside she had to acknowledge her trips home could have looked suspicious to a lover as possessive as Dimitri. He’d hated the fact she had things in her life she refused to tell him about. She’d kept it that way to stop him from taking her over completely. She had loved him so much, she’d needed the defense mechanism of having a part of herself he did not know. Only when she returned to living that part of her life, she took the pain of his loss with her. The defense had not worked.
“My grandfather refused to have necessary by-pass surgery until I promised to set a date for my marriage with Phoebe. I was not ready to give you up, but I was not prepared to let him die, either.”
She stared at him in disbelief. “You cannot be serious. You always told me what a great guy your grandfather was. How could he blackmail you like that into ditching me?”
“He did not know about you.”
This new view of what had happened three months ago left her feeling disoriented. “But still…”
“He wanted an assurance I would do my duty by the Petronides name.”
“And instead you got your mistress pregnant and yourself featured in a public fight with her.”
He grimaced. “Yes.”
“He’ll be furious if you marry me.”
He looked amused. “He will be thrilled to become a great-grandfather and he cannot help but be charmed by so lovely a new granddaughter.”
“I’m not beautiful anymore. You said so.”
He used the grip he had on her hand to tug her down to his chest. “I said you looked ill, not ugly, you foolish woman.”
“But I don’t have sultry green eyes now,” she said, remembering what he used to say about them.
“Now you have eyes that change color with your mood. It is quite tantalizing.”
“My hair is short and mouse brown.”
He laughed and tousled the aforementioned hair. “It is sexy as sin and you know it. As for the color…how can you complain when it shines like liquid sand?”
“But I’m shaped like a pumpkin.”
He used one knee to part her legs so she draped across him in intimate disarray. His male hardness pressed against her. He thrust upward. “Does this feel like I think you are ugly?”
What was the question? She couldn’t remember; she was too busy melting into a puddle of desire on top of him. Silence reigned while he touched her in ways she’d forgotten and brought her body to the peak of pleasure over and over again. She didn’t have the energy to start another discussion when they were done. She found herself slipping into sleep cuddled against his side, feeling more at peace than she had since discovering her pregnancy.
Warm security surrounded Alexandra and she didn’t want to make the trip to full wakefulness. How many times had she had this dream since leaving Paris? She was back in Dimitri’s bed, his arms wrapped around her like protective bands, their lower limbs entwined to make them two parts of one whole. It seemed so real, but she knew if she allowed her mind to continue its journey toward complete lucidity, the fantasy would disappear, leaving cold reality behind.
He shifted against her, rubbing his hairy leg between her smooth limbs and she rocketed to complete wakefulness. She opened her eyes to black curling hair over a bronze, muscled chest. Dimitri. Along with her sensory impressions, memories of the night before blasted her conscious mind.
They had made love. Many times. He had been afraid of hurting the baby, asking her every time if it would be all right and she had reassured him. Again and again. Because she had wanted him. The last time, he’d woken her around dawn and seduced her with a sensitivity that had touched all the way to her soul.
It was incomprehensible that the man who had treated her so tenderly the night before could be the same one who had walked away from her without a backward glance.
Only according to him, he had looked back and found her gone. His grandfather had refused life-saving surgery until Dimitri had set a wedding date with Phoebe. While the knowledge her eviction from his life had not been voluntary soothed some of her still lacerated emotions, it did not soothe them all.
Would his grandfather have made such a demand if Dimitri had told the older man about Alexandra and implied she had an important place in his life? The problem was, she had not had that place at the time. She had been a temporary lover to Dimitri, a mistress to an unmarried man.
Last night had not felt like the joining of a man and his temporary lover or mistress, though. It had felt almost sacred.
Knowing about his grandfather put a new perspective on the events four months ago, but the older man wasn’t the reason Dimitri had denied paternity of their baby. As much as she didn’t want to, she had to take some of the blame for that one. By withholding part of her life from him, she had set up fertile ground for distrust to grow.
In some ways, Dimitri had done the same to her. He hadn’t told her about his grandfather’s heart attack and when she asked about his family, he had been reticent. She knew things about his brother and his grandfather, but he’d always changed the subject when his parents came up. They hadn’t died until he was ten, so it couldn’t be because he had no memories of them. He’d never taken her to meet his family, never invited his brother to the apartment for a meal when the younger man was in Paris.
Now he wanted her to marry him. She shifted restlessly, at once both loving and hating the sense of security his warmth provided. What had changed? The answer to that was obvious, she derided herself. One, she was pregnant with a baby he now accepted he had fathered. For a Petronides male, that would change a lot. Hadn’t she known that when she told him?
At the time she had hoped it would have the exact result it finally had: his desire to marry her. Now that desire felt like too little too late.
The second change was that his wife-to-be had married his brother. Dimitri had acted like the betrayal hadn’t mattered to him, but even if his emotions had not been involved…his pride would have been. A quick marriage of his own would assuage some of the wounds his pride had sustained, particularly if it was to a woman who had adored him like she once had done.
She’d recognized last night that she still love
d him, but she didn’t adore him. Did that make her any less vulnerable?
“Have you figured it all out yet?” Dimitri asked from above her head.
She tilted back to look him in the face. “Figured what out?”
“Your life. My life. Our life together.”
“What makes you so sure I was thinking about us? Or that I was thinking at all, for that matter?”
His smile was grim. “As much as you may want to deny it, I know you, pethi mou. You often spend your first waking moments lost in thought and what is of more importance to you at the moment than the future of the baby you carry?”
“You assume that future has to include you.”
“You know it does. Married or not, lovers or enemies, whatever relationship you and I share, I will have a part in my son’s life.”
She didn’t balk at the implacability in his voice. She hadn’t meant to imply otherwise. Her wording had been unfortunate. “I didn’t mean that. I will not withhold your child from you.”
“No matter how much you despise me?” His voice was bleak and his face expressionless.
She stared at him. Could he honestly believe she despised him after the way she had responded to him last night? “I don’t despise you.”
“But you no longer love me.”
To answer would require a lie, so she sidestepped. “Did you have plans for today?”
“Yes.”
“Then, I guess we’d better get up.”
He smiled wickedly down at her. “Not necessarily.”
“But…”
“My plans today are to woo you. I think here,” he said, indicating the bed, “is where I am at my best.”
She didn’t know what she would have said because at that precise moment, the phone rang. Giving her a last lascivious look that made her giggle despite her heavy thoughts, he turned to answer the bedside phone.
Was he really going to woo her? The thought was tantalizing. She remembered his two-month-long pursuit before he’d seduced her into bed and talked her into moving in with him. They had been heady days. Living with him had been pretty wonderful too, but a wooing…well, it sounded nice.
