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“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 would 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.
