by Lucy Monroe
Leaning back against the counter by the sink, she asked, “You didn’t live on campus?”
“The first year, yes, and that only meant I didn’t have to do my own cooking. My second year, I moved into an apartment with Demyan.”
“And you didn’t have a housekeeper?” She couldn’t imagine Demyan doing anything for himself, either, honestly.
“We both wanted our privacy.”
Young college men, sowing their wild oats? That was more understandable than she wanted it to be.
“It was good for you.”
“It was. Not everyone living in Volyarus is born in a palace. I need to understand the lives of my people if I am going to make decisions that best serve them.” He shrugged out of his suit jacket, hanging it over the back of the kitchen chair.
“You think living without servants for six years helped you do that?”
His tie followed, draped neatly over the top. “That and the time I have spent living with different families throughout Volyarus in the summers, each one with a different job from a different walk of life.”
“Wow. I wouldn’t have guessed.” Her voice went up an octave as he unbuttoned his shirt, exposing his snugly fitting undershirt. “I’m surprised your parents allowed it.”
“They insisted on it. My father did the same and his father before him.” He kept the shirt on, but there could be no question how he expected their evening to end.
She didn’t call him on it because she wasn’t entirely sure the confrontation would end up with a victory on her side.
So, she ignored his blatant gestures of intent. “That’s kind of amazing.”
“And may well be impossible for our own children. Security issues grow increasingly bleak.”
“The world is too connected.” In years past, a mostly unknown country and its monarchy would have found their first form of defense in their very anonymity.
The internet and a new level of paparazzi that catered to it ensured no one of any note remained entirely anonymous in today’s world.
“For the freedom we once knew in Volyarus, yes it is.” He leaned negligently against the wall beside the built-in desk where she paid her bills.
Feeling unsettled, she moved around the kitchen, rearranging things on the counter, checking the timer on the dishwasher, and avoiding his gaze if she could help it. “Now, you’re forced to live the life of a royal because if you don’t, you could be kidnapped.”
It was a disturbing thought and quickly morphed to the realization her child would be facing the same risks in the future.
“Or assassinated.”
A cold chill passed down her spine and Gillian stopped abruptly to face him. “Don’t say that.”
“Now you know how I feel when you make similar pronouncements about our baby.”
“I didn’t mean to upset you with the truth.”
“Nor I you.”
“Okay, fine. I get it. No more mentioning the possibility of miscarriage.”
“And marriage?” he asked, with a hopeful charm she found utterly irresistible, but then what about this man wasn’t to her?
“On a cruise ship?”
“If you don’t like the idea, we can come up with another.”
“No. I like it.” Too much.
“Ariston will be pleased.” Maks grinned, showing the man very pleased was himself.
“You’ve already approached him?”
“I’m an efficient man, Gillian. You know this.”
“Yes, but…”
“Ariston has had his own marital challenges. He is only too happy to help.”
Gillian wondered what a Greek shipping tycoon would consider “marital issues” but was too wrapped up in her own at the moment to ask.
“I want Nana and Papa there.”
“Absolutely.”
“The prenup isn’t going to be pretty.”
He tried to look all serious, but the grin lurking in his eyes and flirting with the corner of his lips was unmistakable. “Be aware that any assurances you ask for from me, I will demand from you as well.”
“No problem.”
He nodded, like he hadn’t expected any other answer.
She took a deep breath and gave in to the inevitable. “I’ll marry you.”
Because when it came down to it, she would not deny their child its birthright. But also because she loved him. Because he was committed to making their marriage work in a way a lot of men in love weren’t.
Because her future had too bleak a cast without him in it.
“Thank you.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the familiar blue box.
“You knew.”
He flipped open the box, revealing the ring so perfect for her. “I hoped, but I had a backup plan.”
“What was it?” Seduction probably.
“My mother.”
Gillian felt her eyes widen. Some backup plan. That was a woman who could and had been ruthless for the sake of her family and country.
“I’m glad it didn’t come to that.”
Maks laughed as he removed the ring and set the small blue box aside. “She’s not that bad.”
“She’s a heck of a lot scarier than Demyan.”
“I do not think so.” He smiled and reached for Gillian, his intention to put the ring on her finger clear.
She flinched back without thought, the inexplicable urge to avoid him overwhelming.
Maks looked gobsmacked. “I cannot touch you?”
“I…” She didn’t know why she’d shied from him this time.
His eyes narrowed. “You are not adverse to my touch.”
“I don’t think I am.”
He began moving forward, his expression predatory. “You are not.”
“But—”
He put his finger on her lips, pressing with gentle firmness. “No. Our separation has caused you to withdraw from me. Now I will bring you back into the sun.”
“You are not the sun.”
“But you are a flower about to bloom again.” The naughty look in his espresso dark eyes gave all sorts of connotations to his words.
“Stop trying to sound like a desert sheikh.”
He laughed. “I assure you, I am very content to be Volyarussian.”
Of that, she had absolutely no doubt.
No man was as proud of his heritage as Crown Prince Maksim of the House of Yurkovich. Part of her craved physical closeness with this dynamic man, and yet Gillian felt this inexplicable urge to push Maks away.
She tried to will her body to relax, but the muscles in her back and neck were rigid with no hope of releasing the tension.
Maks’s eyes narrowed and his hands landed very deliberately on her shoulders. Her body tightened, her first instinct to jerk away from him again, but she managed not to give in to it.
He advanced and she backed up, could not help doing so, until she was up against the refrigerator.
Her breath came out in short, near-panicked pants.
He trailed one finger down her throat until it rested over her rapidly beating pulse. “This reaction is excessive, don’t you think?”
“Yes.” She did; she just didn’t know how to fix it.
Their bodies were so close she could feel the heat coming off his. In the past, that heat had always excited or comforted her.
She’d loved it when he spent the night, thinking that he could have kept her warm on even the coldest nights in her Alaskan hometown.
Now, his hotter body temperature made her feel trapped, even marked by his nearness.
She did not understand it.
His fingertip brushed back and forth over her pulse point. “Your body shies from my touch and reacts with alarm to my nearness.”
“I don’t know why.” Only maybe she did.
His leaving had devastated her, left her hurting in a way even her parents’ ongoing rejections never had. Her atavistic reaction to him was that of one animal mauled by another.
Even if the mauli
ng had been purely emotional and equally unintentional, she understood that now it had left her entire being wary of this man.
He could not guess at the depths of her pain because he did not truly understand the terrible power of her love. He was right about one thing, though, that power had not been a positive force in her life yet.
And only she could change that.
She’d thought it was all on him. His rejection. His lack of love for her.
But she should have fought for him. If she wanted him and she so did. Only she’d learned way too young that fighting for some things was futile.
“I tried. It didn’t work.”
“What did you try, mýla moja?”
The Ukrainian my dear touched her when she wasn’t sure she was ready to be touched, reached her heart where she wasn’t sure she was ready to be reached. “To get my parents to love me, to want me.”
“Even if I refuse to give love room in my life, I want you, Gillian. I always will.”
Could he promise that? His expression said he could and he would. She wasn’t so sure, but she wanted to believe so much, that it was another, sharper pain to add to the dull ache that never left.
“You thought that by being as perfect as you could be, you would make them want to be with you,” he guessed, his dark gaze filled with more understanding than he should be capable of.
“Yes, but it backfired. They thought I was well-adjusted without them. Even my grandparents never understood how painful Rich and Annalea’s absence from my life was. Annalea even touts me as an example of what making rational choices can do for everyone involved.”
“She believed it was best for all of you for her to abdicate her role as your mother.”
“That’s what she says.”
His espresso gaze searched hers. “It would have been kinder to allow you to be adopted.”
“Nana would not hear of it. She insisted on raising me. She and Papa love me, even if they won’t claim me as their own.”
“They have never denied you.”
“Not as a granddaughter, no.”
“But they do not consider you their daughter, though they raised you.”
“They can’t.”
“It would mean admitting your father, the son they love, is not the man they choose to believe him to be.”
His understanding shocked her until she realized that in Maks’s family, he had plenty of experience with the exact same dilemma. “Yes.”
“Even so, you are still a fighter.”
She wanted to break eye contact, but couldn’t. “About other things.”
“Important things.” There was a strange inflection in his voice when he said the word important she couldn’t interpret.
“Important yes, but not all-important.” Would he understand the distinction?
His dark brows drew together and she knew she’d have to spell it out for him. She didn’t mind so much, now.
“I called in sick and cried continuously for three days after you left my apartment that morning.” She managed to look away, not wanting to see his reaction to her admission. “I’ve had nightmares only to wake up and realize they were memories.”
“That is…” His words trailed off as if this master communicator was at a loss for words.
“It’s what people who have suffered a debilitating loss do.”
“I did not die.”
“Our relationship did.” She looked back at him, needing him to see she spoke absolute truth. “I’d lost you. Had no hope of you returning.”
“And yet you did not call me as soon as you realized you were pregnant.” Confusion clouded his expression.
“I knew you’d insist on marriage and chances were, I would not be strong enough to say no.”
“There is no weakness in doing what is best for our child despite what you believe it may cost you.”
“The weakness comes in how much I want it,” she admitted. “I didn’t want to trap you.”
“I do not feel trapped.” He swallowed, his jaw taut with tension. “I never intended to hurt you that way.”
“I believe you.”
“Nevertheless, I did it.”
“Yes.” Because he didn’t love her, he could not have guessed at what losing him would cost her.
“I will not leave you again.” It was a vow, accompanied by the slipping of the ring on to her finger.
Even though it was prompted by her pregnancy and the fact she now carried the heir to the Volyarus throne, the promise in his voice poured over the jagged edges of her heart with soothing warmth. The small weight of the metal band and diamonds on her finger was a source of more comfort than she would ever have believed possible.
She was not sure her heart would ever be whole again, but it did not have to hurt like it had been for ten weeks.
“I won’t leave you, either.”
“I know.” A small sound, almost a sigh, escaped his mouth. “Now we must convince your body that it still belongs to me.”
“You have a very possessive side.”
“This is nothing new.”
“Actually, it kind of is.” He’d shown indications of a possessive nature when they were dating, but he’d never been so primal about it before. “You’re like a caveman.”
His smile was predatory, his eyes burning with sensual intent. “You carry my child. It makes me feel very possessive, takes me back to the responses of my ancestors.”
Air escaped her lungs in an unexpected whoosh. “Oh.”
“I have read that some pregnant women desire sex more often than usual.”
“I…” She wasn’t sure what she felt in that department right now.
She always seemed to want him and could not imagine her hormones increasing that all too visceral need.
“However, I had not realized the pregnancy could impact the father in the same way.” There was no mistaking his meaning.
Maks wanted her. And not in some casual, sex as physical exercise way. The expression in his dark eyes said he wanted to devour her, the mother of his child, sexually.
Gillian shivered in response to that look.
“Cold?” he purred, pushing even closer. “Let me warm you.”
“I’m not co—” But she wasn’t allowed to finish the thought.
His mouth covered hers in a kiss that demanded full submission and reciprocation.
Her body, the same body that had shied away from his every touch, now capitulated without a single conscious thought on her part. She sank into him while her mouth softened under his, allowing him immediate access to the interior.
Like the marauder his ancestors had been, he took advantage, his tongue seeking hers out with sensual intent. The hand on her throat slid down to her shoulder and then lower to cup her breast.
Sensitive from the hormones running rampant through her body, she felt that initial touch through her pajama top to the very core of her. Gasping against his lips, she pressed into his hand.
His triumphant growl was both animalistic and unbearably exciting.
This man might have all the urbanity expected of a prince on the outside, but underneath beat the heart of a ruthless Cossack. He wanted nothing less than everything.
She understood that finally, in absolute clarity. It wasn’t enough for him to put a ring on her finger and name her his princess. No, this man would hold absolute possession of her body, would demand nothing less than complete loyalty of her mind and the heart he eschewed interest in.
And God help her, she’d promised to give it.
Not in so many words, but agreeing to marry him carried with it all sorts of ramifications she hadn’t even considered ten weeks ago.
Another shiver rolled through her and the hand still on her shoulder tightened before moving to her bottom. That big, masculine hand curved over her backside, squeezing, proclaiming ownership without a single word.
Then she was being tugged even closer, their bodies as intimate as they could get with clothes on.
Her own hands found their way to his neck and into the silky, mahogany hair at the back of his head. She tugged on the strands, not to move his head away, but simply because she couldn’t help herself.
He responded by deepening the kiss and flexing the leg between her thighs, using his hand on her bottom to maneuver her against his leg and increasing the stimulation to her clitoris almost unbearably.
She wanted to be naked, but couldn’t stop kissing Maks long enough to tell him so.
His hand on her bottom kneaded the flesh there, moving inexorably toward her inner thigh and pulling her higher onto his leg at the same time.
Small bursts of pleasure exploded inside her with every small movement. She wasn’t even sure she wouldn’t climax before they ever got their clothes off.
He seemed intent on bringing her as much pleasure as possible in as short a time as he could. It was not his usual technique.
But then he’d said he was feeling desperate for her, hadn’t he?
She didn’t know if it was the pheromones coming off her body because of her pregnancy, or if he was simply feeling the separation of ten weeks and his celibacy over that time. And she didn’t care.
This grittily passionate lovemaking was exactly what Gillian needed.
She needed him not to treat her like fragile glass because she carried his child. She needed to feel his desire for her to the deepest recesses of her soul.
CHAPTER NINE
GILLIAN HAD COMMITTED to a lifetime with this man without his love.
Knowing his passion for her was strong and imperative gave her hope for their future together.
His hand found its way under her sleeping T-shirt to the unfettered breast beneath. He brushed his fingers over her achingly hard nipple before cupping the flesh around it.
She moaned, no thought of hiding even a smidge of her reaction to him.
In this, at least, there was gut level honesty and an undeniable connection between them and she hoped always would be.
