Chapter 55

Struggling to appear unaware of that lengthy all-male scrutiny, Miah  asked herself what she was doing sitting on his bed. Was that being standoffish? More businesslike in her approach? Discouraging? Shame sat like a lump of lead in her stomach but she didn’t budge. Without warning the prospect of keeping her distance from him and restoring platonic limits had all the appeal of a heavy rainstorm on her horizon.

‘I like that you’re completely sober,’ Alexander commented.

‘I learned to leave my glass full and everyone stopped pushing more drinks in my direction,’ she confided with a comical expression.

Charmed by that cheeky smile, Alexander switched off his phone, tossed it aside, and reached for her with purposeful hands. She came up on her knees, and he knotted one hand in the heavy fall of her golden hair and slowly, sexily ravished her mouth while he pushed the wrap and the straps of her nightie down off her slim shoulders. As the garments fell to her knees, he captured her breasts and kneaded the quivering tips until she was gasping, shaken by the immediate surge of heat between her thighs.

‘I can’t stop wanting you,’ Alexander growled, long fingers dropping down to part the golden curls on her mound and gently tease the sensitive bud of her clitoris before venturing to stroke the lush, damp lips she would have hidden from him.

Her breath was rattling in her tight throat. She parted her thighs for him, awkwardly balancing herself with a hand on his shoulder, until he hauled her up into his arms and tipped her back on the bed. Her body was humming, as desperate for every caress as though their earlier encounter had never happened. He kissed a tormenting passage down over her writhing, shifting length.

‘I want to make love to you the way I should have this afternoon,’ Alexander breathed thickly. ‘I can’t wait to drive you crazy with pleasure.’

And just as he knew what he was doing, she did as well. Later, she would make herself acknowledge that shameful fact, but while he was doing gloriously arousing things to her weak and easily tempted body, she was a complete pushover. What she was feeling was impossibly strong and left no room for questions of right and wrong. He pleasured her with his mouth and his tongue and his fingers until she was a trembling, overheated heap of excited nerve-endings 

crying out for more.

Hot and ready, she watched him as he donned protection. When he finally sank into the tight wet sheath of her womanhood, the sheer excitement of his entrance sent her careening headlong into violent orgasm. Her sobs and convulsions of delight almost made Alexander lose control as well. Fierce strain etched in the hard, handsome contours of his face, he lifted her knees to hold her still and drove his hard male heat into her yielding flesh with insistent hunger.

Her excitement never once dropped by so much as an atom and she soon hit another high, a climax ripping through her like fireworks blazing up. Afterwards she thought she would never move again. Her limbs were heavy, her body languorous and the most amazing sense of well-being and peace engulfed her. Alexander rolled over, keeping his arms wrapped round her so that he carried her with him.

‘You are so hot, my sweet,’ he intoned, his stunning dark golden eyes glittering with rich appreciation, his heart still thundering against her, his bronzed length damp with sweat. ‘I may never let you get out of this bed again.’

Miah  was so exhausted that she had no strength left to move. She consoled herself by dabbing kisses on whichever part of him she could reach and he stretched indolently and this time around he stayed close, letting her have her way.

‘Ysabelle told me you’re still stressing about the breakdown of your parents’ marriage,’ Alexander murmured. ‘That’s crazy—’

Miah  stiffened. ‘Why is it crazy?’

‘You lived in a happy, united family for over twenty years. You should appreciate how lucky you were.’

Miah blinked in shock at that rebuke from an unexpected quarter. ‘Why? What was your experience?’ she snapped, mortified by his criticism.

She sighed. "Alexander, we should talk about those visions, those dreams. We cannot ignore it. We need to—

“Not now, we have too many enemies, we don't know who was behind all this, but in time, sweetheart. Not now. I need to know more about our past. Let me recall everything before we talk about it.”

“Okay. About my human parents? I recall about having a father in and out of prison for stealing cars—he was a thief and a stupid one. I also had to put my mother to bed drunk every night,’ he breathed wryly. ‘My father was shot dead in the street for stealing a local gangster’s car and a year later my mother’s liver finally quit and she died…’

Caught up in the dark story of his childhood, Miah  wriggled round in the circle of his arms to look at him wide-eyed with disquiet. ‘What age were you then?’

His lean strong face bore no emotion. He might have been talking about someone else’s life. ‘Thirteen. Ysabelle insisted on giving me a home with her. We were strangers because my father was a lousy son as well,’ Alexander recounted levelly, grim dark eyes meeting hers. ‘She was my only experience of family life and I gave her a hard time. I was as feral as a wild animal.’

Miah  traced the stubborn shape of his sensual lower lip with an admiring fingertip. ‘I can imagine that.’

Alexander released a spontaneous laugh of disagreement. ‘No, you can’t. We grew up in different worlds. Yours was cosy, middle class and protected. I bet you got just about everything you ever wanted.’

‘No, I didn’t!’

‘Tell me one thing you didn’t get,’ Alexander challenged, absorbed in the constant play of animation across her heart-shaped face, while he wondered why he was talking to her when he never wasted time doing that with a woman.

‘I fell in love with someone else’s boyfriend once,’ Miah  admitted, offended by his apparent belief that she had been spoiled and cosseted with good fortune all her days. ‘I had to get over it, but it was a very unhappy time for me.’

‘Didn’t you make a play for him?’

Miah  gave him a shocked look. ‘Of course not. He was my sister’s boyfriend.’

‘If you weren’t prepared to fight for him, you can’t have wanted him that much, milaya moya,’ Alexander quipped, wondering darkly if she would fight for him or whether she was guilty of being as shallow as her profile beneath that surface show of niceness.

‘Alexander…’ she said ruefully. ‘There are such things as family loyalty and moral standards.’

‘I wonder if our child will inherit your outlook.’ His dark brows drew together in a slight grimace. ‘I’m very cold-blooded when it comes to protecting my own interests. One or two of your genes mightn’t do too much damage but too many would make him or her weak in my world.’

In receipt of that speech, Miah  blinked in bewilderment and jerked back from him. ‘Our child? What are you talking about?’

Scanning her perplexed face with a frown, Alexander loosened his hold on her, allowing her to break the connection. ‘If that’s a joke, it’s not a very good one.’

‘Why would it be a joke? I agreed to marry you…’

‘And have my baby, as you are very well aware,’ Alexander countered with impatience. ‘But if you agree, and I don’t see why you shouldn’t, I’m willing to push the time frame back a month or two.’

And have my baby. That fatal assurance rang like a clarion call in Miah ’s head and froze her to the marrow. Mirabella could not possibly have agreed to such an iniquitous contract. It couldn’t be true, it couldn’t be!