The Bodyguard's Baby (Russian Alpha Erotic Romance Book 3)

by Kendall Duke

  “Julie…” He paused, blinking down at me. “Julie you are not on the pill.”

  “No,” I said, feeling confused for a minute. “I have no reason—” I trailed off in mid-sentence, staring at him. The realization hit me like a ton of bricks, and I started to sag back to the floor. Ivan grabbed me, scooping me up again and carrying me back to the bedroom; this time, instead of laying me down, he cradled me in his lap, tucking my head under his chin.

  “I never thought this would happen to me,” I whispered. “I want to be a doctor—how could I—”

  “Who say you cannot be doctor?” Ivan pulled back a little to look at me. “No one say you cannot be doctor.”

  “Ivan, how can I go to school if… If…” I felt myself starting to cry, the tears rising in my eyes before I could stop them. He hushed me, gently kissing my tears away and peering into my face.

  “Sweet one, you will be doctor, very good doctor. And very good mother.” He swallowed, so loudly I could hear him. It made me turn to look at his face; he was studying mine, his dark eyes gleaming. “If you want to be.”

  “I… I’ve never even thought about it—I’ve barely thought about sex!”

  Ivan nodded, seemingly unsure of what to say; unlike anything else we’d encountered, this problem seemed beyond his managing. He stroked my cheeks and kissed my forehead, his watchful eyes studying mine the whole time.

  It suddenly occurred to me that Ivan wasn’t upset. Ivan wasn’t mad at all—he didn’t even seem surprised, actually. “Ivan… Is there something you need to tell me?”

  He looked confused. It was the first time I’d ever seen that expression on his face—he looked so confused, in fact, that I almost laughed out loud. But the moment kept me from it; the loss of my dreams felt too tangible, too close and painful to laugh. “Nyet, I do not understand, Julie,” he said, his raspy voice so comforting even now. “I have something for tell you? Something bad?”

  “Yes,” I said slowly, staring into his eyes, searching and searching for the truth. “Ivan, did you get me pregnant on purpose?”

  “No.” He spoke with a finality that relieved me. “I did not want to have sex with you at all—” He stopped himself, trying to find the right words to deliver a more nuanced thought. “I did not want to hurt you, endanger you. I did not want a relationship between us. I only want you to be safe.” Ivan spoke with conviction. “I… I want you, Julie,” he said softly, meeting my gaze head-on. “I want you always. But I want you to be happy and safe more. I was surprised…” A faint blush, the lightest shade of pink possible, brightened his olive cheeks beneath the ever-present five o’clock shadow. “I did not expect you to want me too, Julie.”

  “So we did nothing to prepare,” I said, completely bowled over by my own idiocy. “Nothing.” Ivan was silent, watching me. I stared at him. “Say something!”

  “I did not prepare,” he finally said, managing to stop a shrug from rolling across his broad shoulders at the last second when he saw the expression on my face. He bit his lip again, a delicious tell. “Julie… I did not care, either.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I do not care if I get you pregnant,” Ivan said, his voice suddenly defiant. “Perhaps… Perhaps, for the first time in my life, I did not think about this thing—did not ever buy condoms, or think to buy them, did not once check your bathroom cabinet for pills, nothing—perhaps I did not do this because I wanted to get you pregnant.”

  “Did you?” I gasped. “Ivan—did you?”

  “Yes,” he said simply, and abruptly stood up and walked across the room. The room was completely silent, the walls absorbing every sound from the neighborhood outside and the house around us utterly still, except for the pounding of my heart. I could hear the sound of my own blood pounding through my veins, of my heart, rapid and flightless as a trapped bird in my chest.

  “Julie…” He was staring down at the dark street outside, the curtain slightly ajar. Ivan didn’t turn to look at me as he spoke, but I could see his reflection clearly in the window glass. “Julie, I did not get you pregnant on purpose. I did not… I did not plan to get you pregnant.” He was quiet again, and then I saw his adam’s apple shift as he swallowed, gathering his nerve for a confession. “The hardest thing I ever do, in my life, Julie, is share you with another man. See pleasure on your face someone else give you. I have buried my mother, my father… I have killed many people. Many.” He exhaled sharply. “I have listened to them beg for their lives, have seen them try running away. Some of them, I knew, did not deserve to die. They died because I was told to kill them, not because they did something wrong, not because they were bad.” He stared out at the night. “The hardest thing I ever do, even after all this, is know I love you, and you must marry Alexei. Make me want to die. But I will not—” His voice was fierce. “I will not die, I think to myself—I cannot leave her, this girl. She marry Alexei, I will be bodyguard. I will never leave her. Never.” He swallowed again. “And then you say you love me, and I want to die again. Not because I am sad—because I am happy, but I know it cannot be, and I cannot let it go. I cannot live with being bodyguard any more, not after you let me touch you.” He finally turned towards me. “I did not plan to get you pregnant, Julie. I did not plan any of it. I only love you. More than anything else—more than my life, more than my future. I love you, Julie. And if I put baby in your body…” He spread his palms out, his dark eyes searching mine. “I am blessed. God has forgiven me, I do not know why. God give me you, and to give me baby, too…” I was shocked to see tears in his eyes, sparkling in the corners. “I can not be sorry. I can not apologize.” He exhaled again, long and slow, and dropped his hands to his sides.

  I sat there for a long time, absorbing his words. He turned back to the night, looking out at the street below, his shoulders hunched and tight. I tried to think about all of it, objectively, like the woman of science I wanted to be—Alexei said I didn’t have to give up being a doctor. He told me that. I looked deep inside of myself and asked the question: was I really upset that I was pregnant? Or was I just disappointed that the future I finally got to believe in after I was free of my father seemed lost? If I could be the doctor I wanted to be, would it be so bad to have Ivan’s child?

  I knew the answer was no. I knew it in my heart.

  “Ivan,” I said, and he immediately turned towards me. “Were you serious, about what you said before? You would still let me be a doctor?” The words felt like ash in my mouth, but I knew what I was up against; I was my father’s daughter. Russian gangsters let their women do things. They allowed them to do things.

  But Ivan surprised me. He came towards me with his eyebrow raised, one of my favorite expressions on his handsome face. He was so perfect, even now. “I not let you, Julie. You do this. You are smart. You make very good doctor, help many people. I not let you—I help you. I want you be happy, milaya.”

  “You promise? You won’t change your mind?” I felt the hope welling inside of me—my heart was filling to bursting. “You… You would help me go to medical school?”

  “Da, of course,” he said, his eyebrow raised so high it was honestly comical now. I started to laugh, and then he smiled—I loved his beautiful smile—and then he laughed with me, shaking his head. “Why? Why so funny?”

  “I’m just—I’m just so happy,” I said, and just like that, my laughter was overwhelmed by tears. Happy tears, but tears all the same. He seemed to understand right away and sat down next to me, pulling me tightly against his chest. He tucked my head beneath his chin and murmured to me in Russian, stroking my cheek with one long finger. Finally, when my mood settled, he leaned back and looked down at me.

  “Julie… Does this mean you happy about baby, too?” Ivan’s face was very still. He was trying very hard to be neutral, but I saw the look of hope haunting his eyes, the wish there. He wanted us to have a baby together.

  He loved me that much.

  “Yes,” I whispered, and started to cry all over
again. Ivan held me close, and I realized his tears were spilling together with mine, down into our laps, the smiles on our faces tasting like salt. It took us a long time to calm down.

  “You will be very tired tomorrow, lyubimaya,” he said softly, and picked me up only to rest me on the bed, settling my head on the downy pillows. He was right; I felt completely exhausted. “We never take test,” he said suddenly, looking as though he might jump up right then and run to the store. He sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at me, a sheepish expression on his face. “We should do that. Tomorrow.”

  “Okay,” I said sleepily. Something occurred to me, just before I started to drift off. He was watching me, a rare peace on his features, but his eyes lit up when I focused on him again. “Ivan, how did you know? That I was pregnant, and didn’t just have the flu?”

  “My older sister, she have two babies,” he explained, and although his eyes met mine there was something furtive behind his gaze. “She very nice girl also, live in New York now. I help her.”

  “You get to see her often?”

  “Not lately, no,” he said softly, looking down at me. “I have been very busy. Latest client is very bad girl sometimes, need to be watched closely.” There was a delicious spark in his eye. I laughed.

  “Tell me more about her,” I asked. He had shared with me before that he had one sister, a woman that was born in Russia to a different mother, but the same father. She was named Irina. I hadn’t known he was an uncle, though.

  “My sister was married to man from another family—mostly legit, but political.” I took this to mean, given the context and our mutual family histories, that meant she was married to someone from a rival mob family that was part of the political wing of the mafia. This happened sometimes—sometimes for love, but more often marriages would be arranged as part of an alliance between two families to solidify campaigns or to dominate a particular market. My marriage to Alexei would have been similar; an American wife with high social standing would allow him some lee-way in the States, be a reasonable form of payment from my father for his own misdeeds, and presumably entail a certain amount of money as well. But we’d thwarted all of that with a very wild night and Alexei and Ivan’s clever plotting. “He was…” Something darkened in his expression. “He not good to her. Treat her badly.” Ivan leaned back and looked at something else, something not in the room with us, his eyes suddenly blank as his carefully constructed veneer of cool snapped into place. “So I treat him badly. Now they are not together any more. Is good—she is happy now, babies happy now.” He shrugged as if this were all perfectly normal. “Is better.”

  “Ivan, is she safe?” I felt fear for her; these kinds of things were standard issue for us—betrayals, beatings, even murder—but he’d been here with me for a long time. “Should she be alone?”

  “She not alone,” he said, looking down at me with a quizzical expression. “You know Petyr?”

  “Yes.” The giant blonde Russian had also been present on that first night, the first time Ivan was in my kitchen with his cronies and captured my heart. “Well, I don’t know him, but I remember him, yes.”

  “Petyr cover New York. Is his…” He fished for the word, his eyes lighting up when he found it. “District. He keep close eye on Irina and the babies for me.”

  “Her husband just let her leave?”

  “No,” Ivan said, shaking his head as if this were a silly question. “But I… I talk to him. I explain. Is good business, da? Is best thing for everyone.” He shrugged again. I was beginning to wonder if every time he shrugged it was because what he was describing was doubtlessly important—so important that it was imperative to appear casual when he was anything but. I watched him closely. “He say okay, divorce, now everybody happy.”

  “Ivan.” I narrowed my eyes at him.

  He looked away, and sure enough, another casual shrug. “Is best thing.”

  “Okay,” I said, letting it go. I didn’t really want to know what Ivan had done to him anyway, did I? I already knew he’d killed people—many people, he’d said. If Irina’s abusive ex-husband was one of them, did I really want the details? “But you said you were with her? When she was pregnant?”

  “Da,” he said, smiling at the memory. “She was very sick, so sick she could not eat, the first time. We have to take her to hospital many time for IV, she dehydrated.” He slowed down, taking time to find all of the right words. “My sister, she is very proud, very stubborn woman, but she call me when she feel like she cannot be well. She did not think she was pregnant—she was worried something wrong, like cancer.” He glanced at me. “Her mother die of cancer, very sad. So Irina remember, because she take care of her. But then we have happy news.” He smiled at the memory, his lips curling sweetly at the corners.

  “Why didn’t her husband help her?” It seemed so obvious. Even if he was terrible in other ways, he would have taken care of the woman pregnant with his child, right?

  “I tell you—he is not so good. Not good man.” Alexei shrugged it off, and this time I assumed the worst. “But he does not matter now. Irina have two beautiful babies she raise by herself—well, with nanny. I help her find nanny.”

  “Nannies can be very helpful,” I said, and gulped. I remembered Vera, the Russian woman that locked me in my room for days and wouldn’t teach me any Russian. She represented some of the loneliest moments in my entire life. Ivan seemed to realize something was wrong.

  “Her nanny very helpful,” he said, watching me. “But you look… What wrong with nanny? All those stories on the television,” he told me, waving his hand dismissively, “we don’t worry about these things. People are not foolish enough to try something when they know who we are—”

  “No, no, Ivan,” I said, laughing again at his casual belligerence, “that’s not it.” The laughter died in my throat while he looked at me expectantly. “I… I was just remembering Vera. That woman I told you about. My father—”

  “That woman was not a nanny,” Ivan said carefully, his eyes watching mine. “She was father’s mistress. Bad lady. And she died long time ago, when a drop went bad. She make bad choices, think she can do things she cannot do.” Ivan inspected his nails. “For good person, I can be very sorry when this happen—most people, they only make mistake because they not paying attention. That is mistake.” He looked down at me, his eyes hard. “She pay close attention. She make choices, not mistake. She cannot be forgiven.”

  I gulped. I wouldn’t wish whatever he was implying on anyone. Even Vera. “How do you know all that?”

  “I ask Sergei. I tell him what you tell to me, months ago, and ask what happen to this lady.” His lip curled almost imperceptibly, then relaxed again in a microsecond. “I tell him I like to talk to her, to know more about what your father do and what you are like. Whether you telling the truth about him not coming back.” He shot me a sharp look. “I say all this and it have to be true. Sergei will know if anybody lie. But I do not have to tell him all the truth. I do not have to tell him how I feel about you.”

  “If Alexei knew right away, you don’t think Sergei—” I shivered. Ivan saw me and pulled the blankets tighter around me.

  “Alexei and Sergei very different,” he said carefully. “I tell you, Alexei is not good man… But he is loyal. Alexei is more like brother to me…” His face twisted, unsure; the events of recent days might make brotherhood seem a little bit of an odd choice for a description, but he eventually nodded as if it were the right one. “But Sergei does not see love, because he does not feel it. Sergei only love money. He does not suspect love because to him it is not real.”

  “Alexei doesn’t strike me as the type to think about love either,” I said, and Ivan pursed his lips, not enjoying the direction of the conversation.

  “Alexei knows love. He does not like love,” he clarified, and then added, “and neither do I, before you. I not sure I believe it possible—if it is, it is not for me. But now…” His gaze softened as he looked down on me, eve
ntually reaching out to stroke my cheeks, my brow and lips. His calloused fingers never failed to make my body respond, heat filling me in spite of my tiredness. Ivan read my body instantly, a small smile on his lips. “I love you, Julie.”

  “I love you, Ivan,” I said, wishing he would kiss me. As if he read my mind, he leaned down and pressed his broad lips to mine. I reached out, teasing the seam of his mouth with my tongue, and he grasped my bottom lip with his teeth, sucking gently as I moaned. He felt amazing.

  “Julie, you very tired, and the baby…” He looked genuinely nervous, his lovely face hovering above mine. Suddenly his expression became vulpine. “But I can make you sleep, my Julie. I sing you lullaby.”

  I laughed at the thought, but then lost my breath when his teeth gently nipped my earlobe and his tongue caressed my collarbone. I was still naked, and his clever tongue found its way across my body, making my back arch, my breasts beg for his attention. My nipples were hard, scorched buds, standing upright, wobbling on my swollen breasts. Ivan took his time, winding down my torso, pulling the sheets with him as he went. My nipples were so sensitive that the lightest touch made me moan, and when he sucked on them I almost came. He gave me just enough to get me close, then gently pulled away. The cool air breezed over them, and I hissed like a cat. Ivan moved lower, kissing his way across my bell, nimbly sliding between my legs and caressing my thighs with his rough hands. His mouth was an inferno, a blast of heat and sin, and when he finally planted his lips on my pussy I screamed out, rocked by the suddenness of my orgasm. I pushed my pelvis up, greedy in spite of the sparks already pulsing through me, and Ivan began, to my shock, to hum. He wasn’t kidding; his voice rippled into my body, the low tune a child’s sleepy song from Russia. I had the vaguest memory of it, but I didn’t know where I’d heard it before. It didn’t matter now. Ivan sucked and licked my tiny, begging button, his clever tongue sliding inside of me as he sang me to sweet oblivion. The next orgasm that wracked my body left me breathless and sweating. He merely smiled, licking his lips, and kissed my cheek as my eyelids fluttered.