by Lucy Monroe
She didn’t understand at first and almost overcame his self-control trying to get back in his arms, but all at once she also seemed to realize what they were doing and where they were. Eyes gold with desire went round and wide while the pale perfection of her skin turned a rosy hue from embarrassment.
She primly straightened her sweater over the pants that clung to her sexy legs. “I forgot where we were.”
He smiled. “I also.”
She shot a sideways glance at the flight attendant who was pretending to be very busy in the galley.
“She’s as discomforted as you are,” he assured Alexandra.
“Is that meant to make me feel better like telling me a spider is more frightened of me than I am of it?” she asked, her blushing cheeks now almost fire engine red.
Unable to help himself, he reached out and cupped her nape. He needed to touch her in some way. “They are both the truth.”
She cast another glance at the flight attendant, whose back was to them while she moved things around the galley in an obvious attempt to give them privacy. “I’m willing to buy the embarrassment thing, but not the spider theory.”
He rubbed the delicate skin of her neck with his thumb. “After we have reached altitude, we can retire to the relative privacy of the bedroom.”
That brought a smile, a very feminine, flirtatious smile. “You mean so I can get my sleep? Pregnant ladies need lots of rest, or so some domineering father-to-be has been telling me all week long.”
He smiled at her reminder that she had not always taken his concern for her welfare with good grace. “I will assure you get your rest.”
“Before or after?” she asked, her eyes sparkling with teasing lights he’d thought never to see again.
It was going to be all right. He would make it so. “After, most definitely after.”
She gave an exaggerated sigh and clasped her hands, fluttering her eyelashes like a 1920’s film star. “I can’t wait.”
The minx. “I’ll make it worth your while,” he promised, knowing that in this, he could satisfy her every desire.
“I’ll see that you do.”
Alexandra stood before Dimitri, divested of her travel clothes, her body throbbing with a desire he had fed until she was ready to scream for fulfillment. And that was before he undressed her. He was equally naked and his body’s desire was apparent in the glorious size and rigidity of his erection.
His eyes were intent, appearing almost black in the dimmed lighting of the plane’s bedroom. “You are so beautiful.”
She felt the words clear to her toes and other nether regions that affected her breathing and her ability to stand. “I feel beautiful when you look at me like that, not like a misshapen woman with a football for a waistline.”
“Misshapen?” His expression turned feral. “You are carrying my child. Your shape is the biggest turn-on imaginable. I get hard every time you turn sideways and I get a picture of the difference my son has made in your body.”
She turned in silhouette, purposefully, provocatively and invitingly.
He accepted the invitation with all the speed of a jaguar going in for the kill. As prepared as she thought she was, she still squealed in the most embarrassing way when he swept her into his arms and then onto the bed in one heady rush.
He rolled onto his back and pulled her on top of him, spreading her legs so she was poised above his manhood, kissing him intimately. “You control how deep,” was all he said.
And she did, sliding onto him centimeter by tantalizing centimeter. The feel of his hardness filling her so completely was incredible. She couldn’t take all of him comfortably any longer, but he didn’t push her or complain. He didn’t seem disappointed at all if the look of intense ecstasy on his face was any indication.
While he allowed her to dictate the level of his penetration, he set the pace by holding her hips in an unshakable grip and moving her slowly and gently on his shaft. Her eyes slid shut as sensation crowded through her. How could she have survived months without this?
The answer was: she hadn’t. She had spent that time living as half a person, hating him, missing him and wishing with all her heart things were different.
But now she was once again connected to the other half of herself and she celebrated the bliss that connection gave her. She forced her eyes open again. She wanted to see him, see the effect of their joining on him.
His eyes were slits, his face rock hard with passionate need. His grip on her hips was almost bruising, but she didn’t complain. She needed to know she could push him to this place of no control. It gave her hope that his feelings for her were something more than guilt and responsibility, or even run-of-the-mill desire. There was nothing ordinary about the feelings they sparked in each other.
He increased the pace of their loving and she gasped as the pleasure increased as her insides began to tighten toward that ultimate satisfaction only he had ever given her. She couldn’t support herself anymore and she whimpered, knowing she could not just collapse on top of him.
He seemed to understand her need because he rolled them both to the side, keeping their bodies intimately connected, pulling her thigh over his own. He took over the thrusting, holding her to him with a hand cupped possessively on her backside. Now that her hands were no longer occupied with holding her up, she could touch him. She brushed her fingers through the black silk of his chest hair and he shuddered.
She smiled, remembering what made him shudder even more and began to run light circles around his male nipples. When they were hard, she pinched them and his body bowed toward her in animalistic joy. She cried out as his body brushed hers in abandoned desire. The inner contractions started and she lost sense of time and place as her body convulsed in wave after wave of ecstatic delight.
His release was accompanied by a feral shout that left her eardrums ringing. The ecstasy of their union went on and on until they lay spent and sweating. He brushed his hand down her shoulder and her entire body contracted on another wave of pleasure. She moaned. It was too much.
He pulled her closer, until she was resting against him, shivering with intermittent aftershocks from their cataclysmic release. He soothed her with a hand on her back. “Shh. It’s all right.”
A sob welled up in her. “It’s too much.”
The calming motion of his hand did not stop. “No, agapi mou, it is so wonderful your body can barely stand it, but it is not too much.”
Everything in her went still. Had he called her his love? Then reason asserted itself. After something as incredible as what they had just shared, any man would be forgiven for using such a tender term with his partner. It was just sex talk, but even so, it made her feel good and she hugged the endearment close to her heart.
She sighed and snuggled closer. “Relative privacy is right. If your crew didn’t hear you shouting, they’re deaf.”
“I was not the only one making noise, hmm?”
She smiled against his chest. “I’m not answering.”
Masculine laughter rumbled in his chest, vibrating through her. “I do not need this answer. I have ears to hear.”
She didn’t reply and they rested together in silence for several minutes before he shifted away from her. She murmured a protest, but he picked her up and carried her into the plane’s small shower, where he proceeded to wash her so thoroughly she made a lot more noise and could not stand unaided when he was finished. He carried her back to bed and she fell asleep as he pulled her body snugly into his own.
She didn’t know how long she slept, but when she woke, the lighting was no longer dimmed and Dimitri lay beside her watching her with an intent expression she could not decipher.
She smiled at him. “Hi. You’re watching me.”
“You are beautiful when you sleep.”
Her smile turned wry. “Right. I bet my hair is sticking on end and I’m not wearing a speck of makeup.”
A gentle finger traced the contours of her face. “You do not need m
She scooted into a sitting position. “I’m hungry.”
He swung out of bed. “Stay where you are. I will order some food.”
He pulled on a robe hanging in the miniscule closet and went into the main cabin. Which just went to show the difference between them. While she had modeled lingerie on the catwalks of Paris, she couldn’t have faced the flight attendant in her bathrobe to save her life.
Dimitri was back fifteen minutes later carrying a tray laden with food. He laid it across her lap, dropped his robe and slid back into bed beside her. She ate a bowl of wild rice and mushroom soup, a crusty roll, and a brownie before sitting back against him, replete.
He pulled away from her long enough to set the tray on the floor. Settling back into their previous position, he laid his hand on the baby. Their son kicked and rolled, making both of them laugh. “He’s very active in there, my son. He will be champion football player, that one.”
“More like he’ll keep us running with his antics.”
“If he is anything like his mother, he will keep me on my toes until my hair turns gray.”
She smiled at that and laid her hand over Dimitri’s. “You know, you never did explain how you came to the conclusion the baby is yours.”
“I told you about my friend.”
“The doctor? Yes. I remember. That explains how, but not why. I mean just because you realized it was possible for you to be the father of my child, didn’t mean you had to believe you were the father.”
Dimitri exhaled a long breath. “I knew the truth long before I went to Nikos and asked him how it could be possible.”
“Why?”
She felt his body go tense against her and she lifted her head off his chest to look into his eyes. They weren’t revealing anything. “My mother and father died in an avalanche when I was ten years old.”
“I know.” It was the only thing he’d told her about his parents and one of the few things she knew about his family.
“My father was bringing her back from the ski lodge where she had been staying with her current lover.”
“Current lover?”
Dimitri nodded, his head moving in a precise movement that was painful to watch. “She fell in love with daunting regularity, only one of those times was with my father.”
She laid her hand over his heart and caressed the skin there in a comforting gesture. “Oh, Dimitri…”
He frowned as if her sympathy bothered him. It probably did. He was a very proud man.
“She had left before. There was even some question as to whether or not Spiros could claim the Petronides bloodline. My father insisted on having the tests done, my grandfather told me, not because he didn’t love my brother but because he wanted to squelch the rumors. I believe he would have paid to have the tests doctored if they had come back negative. They did not.”
“But if your mother was unfaithful, why did your father remain married to her?” She could not imagine a proud Petronides male doing so.
Dimitri’s frown turned to a scowl. “He was obsessed with her. He too called this feeling love. Their marriage was volatile, their reunions dramatic but in the end her concept of love and his obsession killed them both.”
No wonder Dimitri had such a jaundiced view of love. A depressing sense of hopelessness came over her. Would he ever allow himself that level of vulnerability after the example his parents had set him?
“It is not a pretty tale.”
But it explained why he hadn’t trusted her. He’d seen too much at an impressionable young age to take the fidelity of a woman for granted.
“We all have memories we would rather forget. Every family has its skeletons.”
“Not according to your mother.”
Alexandra smiled at his attempt at humor, but it was a small one. She didn’t feel like laughing when she’d come face to face with Dimitri’s reason for distrusting love. “Not all women are like your mother.”
He shrugged. “Adultery is not such an uncommon thing.”
“Is that why you were so sure I’d had a lover?”
He’d been waiting for her to betray him like his mother had done, because her betrayal had not only been against her husband. She’d done terrible emotional damage to her children as well.
The tension in him grew almost palpable. “It shames me, but yes.”
“My unexplained trips must have played upon your fears.”
“I was not afraid.”
Right. “You don’t like discussing your feelings, do you?” Why hadn’t she caught on to that before?
“No, but you asked for a reason for my belief.”
“Your mother’s behavior explains why you didn’t trust me. It does not explain what changed your mind.”
“I realized you were not like her.”
Hope erupted in her like Mount Vesuvius. If he already accepted she was nothing like his mother, he might eventually learn to trust her enough to let himself love her.
“I’m not,” she reiterated for good measure. Then, because she was curious and couldn’t help wanting to know, she asked, “When did you realize it?”
“When I returned to the apartment and found the pregnancy test on top of the lingerie.”
“Oh.” So, those final frantic moments in the apartment hadn’t been wasted.
“There was a message in that, was there not?”
“Yes.”
“You connected the pregnancy with our lovemaking.”
He really did understand how her mind worked. “Did it make you remember what it had been like between us?” That was what she had intended.
“Yes.” His expression was grim. “I knew you could not be that way with someone else. I still did not understand why you took trips you refused to explain to me, but I knew they were not to meet another man.”
“Now you know.”
“Now I know.” His expression lightened and the hand on her shoulder ventured lower. “I know something else as well.”
“Oh, what’s that?” she asked breathlessly. That hand had found an already aching peak and gently tweaked it.
“There are things I would rather do with you than talk.”
“I’m so surprised.” She tried to sound mocking, but his touch was affecting her and her voice came out husky instead.
They spent a week in Athens, Dimitri insisting they have a honeymoon before he took her to the family home to meet his grandfather. It was a blissful seven days filled with touristy stuff and making love, lots and lots of making love.
Dimitri took her to see the obstetrician. She turned bright red and wanted to hide in a closet when Dimitri insisted on verifying her former obstetrician’s advice about making love. He wasn’t content until the doctor had done a full examination and Dimitri even requested an ultrasound to check the progress of the baby.
At four months, she hadn’t been able to make out much on the ultrasound, but this time she didn’t need the doctor to tell her where the baby’s head and feet were. Nor did she need his interpretation to affirm the male sex of her child.
She pointed to the baby sucking its thumb in the womb and turned to share her delight with Dimitri. He was pale and his eyes had the dazed look of someone in serious shock.
“Mr. Petronides, are you all right?” the doctor asked.
“Dimitri?” she prompted when he didn’t answer.
He turned to her, his eyes suspiciously bright. “That is my son. You nurture and protect him with your body. How can I ever thank you for this gift?”
She stared at him, nonplussed. She knew fatherhood had affected him strongly, but this was over the top…and she loved it. “No thanks necessary. He is my gift as well, mon cher.”
Then Dimitri bent down and kissed her lips very gently as she lay on the examining table with the ultrasound gel making her tummy glisten.
The doctor looked on with tolerance. “You will be an indulgent papa I fear,” he said.
Dimitri straightened to his full six foot, four inches and smiled. “Perhaps.”
And Alexandra felt suffused with a glow of contentment.
That contentment lasted until Dimitri told her it was time for her to meet his grandfather.
“But what if he hates me?” she asked nervously. “He has every reason.”
“Don’t worry. He cannot help but adore you and he has no reason to hate you.”
She would probably have been more confident of that concept if she were confident in Dimitri’s adoration. But while he was overtly affectionate, complimentary and the charming companion she remembered, he never spoke words of love. He’d never called her his love again either. Not in Greek, not in English or even French which they slipped into frequently, it being the language they had originally used to communicate.
Love words never passed his lips…even in the height of passion.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THEOPOLIS PETRONIDES did not look at all like a seventy-one-year-old man who had undergone heart by-pass surgery only a few months ago. Even leaning on a cane for support, he stood commandingly tall in the middle of the spacious Mediterranean-style room. His almost black eyes bore into Alexandra with disconcerting force from below steel-gray brows that matched the hair on his head.
“So this is my new granddaughter, heh?” He put his hand out commandingly. “Come here and greet your family, child.”
Alexandra stepped forward with an assumed air of confidence, knowing to show her fear of his disapproval would be to lose his respect. She put her hands on his shoulders and reached up to kiss his cheek in greeting. He returned the salute with an approving smile before she stepped back.
“She doesn’t look like her pictures,” he said to Dimitri. Then he turned back to Alexandra. “I like you better this way. More natural. No fancy curls and dye jobs in your hair. My Sophia, she never used color on her hair.” His gaze roamed over her face like he was taking inventory. “Eyes a nice hazel, not some impossible green. It suits you.”
She bit back a smile at his blunt speaking. “Thank you. Dimitri thought maybe I was too ugly to support myself modeling any longer.”
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