The Playboy Prince’s Pregnant American: Sovalon Royals Book Two

by North, Leslie

  As his thoughts jumped from Kyra to Ava and back, he heard the screen door slide open behind him. He turned to see Kyra, wrapped in a light sweater, slipping outside. She smiled at him.

  “Hey there,” he said. “How’s Ava?”

  “She’s out cold.” Kyra took a seat beside him. “I think the events of the day wore her out.”

  “Full belly too,” Marcus said, and Kyra laughed.

  “Yes. That girl can eat her weight in spaghetti.” Kyra eyed the two wine glasses he’d brought out to the patio. She placed a hand on the unopened bottle. “Wine?” she asked.

  “Of course not,” he said. “It’s sparkling cider.”

  “Very thoughtful of you,” she said.

  Marcus poured two glasses and handed one to Kyra. He couldn’t help but notice how her skin seemed to glow in the light of the moon. She wore no makeup, and yet her face shone. Her beauty was all-natural.

  “Well here’s to one successful day of…” He wasn’t sure how to phrase it so it didn’t sound presumptuous, so he raised his glass and went with his original thought. “…parenting.”

  Kyra laughed again and clinked glassed with him. He watched her bring the glass to her lips and take a sip of the bubbly cider.

  “I have to admit it was nice to share duties with someone for a change,” Kyra said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Sometimes I feel like I’m already a single parent.” Kyra’s face clouded, and she started twirling her hair around one finger. “My sister hasn’t always been the most responsible person. Somebody has to watch out for her and Ava.”

  “And you’re that somebody?” Marcus asked.

  Kyra shrugged. “Our father left when we were really small,” she said. “Our mama had to make ends meet, so I grew up fast. I took care of myself and Maggie while Mama worked.”

  “What kind of work did your mother do?” Marcus wanted to know everything about Kyra.

  “Oh, she did a little of everything for money—waitressing, retail—but at heart, Mama’s a musician, a singer.”

  Marcus smiled. “Cool. What type of music?”

  “Jazz mostly,” Kyra said. “She played a lot of smaller clubs in Atlanta, nothing big. Once when I was in high school, she had an audition for a really big opportunity in Nashville. She spent weeks preparing for it.”

  “So what happened?”

  “The guy she was dating at the time was supposed to drive her to the audition, and he never showed. We didn’t have a car, and it was too late for her to take a bus or anything else. She was screwed.”

  “Oh man, that’s awful.”

  “It really was.” Kyra shook her head. “I’ll never forget that day. My mama curled up in a ball crying, cheeks all streaked with mascara, smoking a cigarette. She was so mad.”

  “I’m guessing things with the boyfriend fell apart after that,” Marcus said.

  Kyra nodded. “From that day on, she never stopped reminding me to be independent and to never depend on a man to get what I needed out of life.”

  Marcus was quiet for a moment, digesting Kyra’s words. Suddenly he saw Kyra’s insistence on raising their child alone in a different light. It wasn’t a personal rejection of him; it was a dogma she’d been fed her entire life. He longed to make her see that all men weren’t like her mother’s loser ex-boyfriend.

  “Mama continued to play smaller gigs,” Kyra went on. “And work her tail off doing other jobs to pay the bills.”

  “So you and your sister spent lots of time in nightclubs?” he asked, trying to lighten the mood.

  Kyra threw her head back in laughter. “Oh, hell no! Our mama would never allow us to go to her shows. Too seedy. She was strict, and we had a healthy fear of crossing her.” Kyra rolled her eyes then. “At least I did. Maggie became something of a wild child that I had the pleasure of trying to keep under control.”

  Marcus sensed resentment in Kyra’s tone. “A lot of responsibility for a young girl,” he said.

  “There are only five years between us, but I always felt like I was in charge of Maggie, and that responsibility doubled when Maggie got herself pregnant with Ava,” Kyra said, her finger still twirling away inside her dark curls. “Her boyfriend, Ava’s father, was a deadbeat. He couldn’t hold down a job let alone support Maggie and a child.”

  “Does Ava even know her father?” Marcus asked, unable to imagine what it would be like to know you had a daughter out there somewhere but not be a part of her life in any way.

  “No,” Kyra said. “He split soon after she was born and hasn’t been in touch ever since. So, I threw myself into my career and my family full-force—with no time left for anything else. I had to. I knew I had to be successful to provide for us and to deal with Maggie and whatever shenanigans she got into along the way. And any time I wasn’t working, I was taking care of Ava, and making sure Maggie had a safe place to land after another one of her wild ideas fell through.”

  Marcus stared into Kyra’s warm eyes, listening with his whole heart. He sympathized with Kyra but also felt a little sorry for Maggie. She seemed to be the ne’er-do-well of the family, and he knew what it was like to be saddled with that label. He placed a hand over Kyra’s and squeezed, and Kyra looked up at him, her gaze serious.

  “I’ve worked really hard at advancing my career, Marcus,” Kyra said. “I never made time for a social life or relationships. Having kids of my own wasn’t in my plans at all, and I don’t know how a baby will factor into my life at this point.”

  “I’d like to be there to figure it out with you,” he told her honestly.

  She smiled but didn’t respond. He could tell she was unsure about letting herself rely on anyone, and, after hearing her story, he couldn’t blame her. This woman had the weight of her family on her shoulders. She was the sole caretaker. Marcus wanted her to know that he understood.

  “Family is hard to navigate,” he said, echoing her sentiments and adding his own. “I didn’t grow up with financial struggles, but life wasn’t always “palace perfect” in our family either.”

  Warmth flooded him when Kyra managed a smile at his silly pun.

  “So what kind of struggles did you have then?”

  Marcus hesitated. He knew that opening up to Kyra would bring them closer, but still it wasn’t something he loved to talk about.

  “I was always sort of the black sheep in my family, I guess,” he admitted. “I was a troublemaker as a young boy. Not fights—nothing violent—but I guess you could say I was the class clown, more interested in acting out and making people laugh than in focusing on classes. No one took me seriously anyway, and I kind of ran with it.” He shrugged. “The reputation followed me and stuck.”

  Kyra looked perplexed. “But you were a little boy,” she said, defending him.

  “A mischief-making little boy,” Marcus said, half-joking to hide the hurt he felt over the whole thing. “A problem child. And that’s the way everyone has had me pegged since I was ten years old.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  Marcus tried to act like it didn’t bother him but found himself recalling a time from his childhood when he realized how problematic his reputation really was. He was ten and had a crush on the daughter of a prestigious family who was staying at the castle. He’d made friends with the young girl, Lena, taking her for walks on the castle grounds and later playing an innocent game of truth or dare. On the third afternoon of their stay, her parents came to fetch her from the game room where they were listening to music together. Lena had protested, saying she wanted to stay for a little while longer, but her mother whisked her away. Marcus had surreptitiously followed them down a corridor on their way out, if just to be near Lena for another few minutes. He would never forget the words he heard her mother say to her.

  “If you’re going to be paired with one of the Ashton clan, it most certainly won’t be that one. That boy may be rich, but he’ll never be respected.” The mother paused to tuck a stray hair behind Lena’s ea
r, and Marcus hid inside a shadow, hoping she wouldn’t see him standing there in his shame. “He’ll be nothing but a playboy, you mark my words.”

  The incident was still painful to think about and even more painful to recount now to Kyra. She put her hand over his and peered sympathetically in his eyes.

  “Marcus, I’m so sorry that happened to you. It must have hurt very much when you were so young,” she said. “But look at you now. That snobby old woman was way off.”

  Marcus snorted. “Kyra, I am a playboy. That’s how everyone sees me, including my family. My oldest brother, Edward, has always been the heir, my middle brother, Alton, was the spare, and I’m the one nobody expected to ever settle down. Nobody’s first choice, always the consolation prize. No one ever wanted to get serious with someone like me, so I used my already sordid reputation as an excuse to stroke my ego with lots of playing the field. Different girl every night—that was me.”

  Kyra’s eyebrows rose, and Marcus was quick to reassure her, “I’ve always wanted it, and truthfully, I don’t regret how things worked out, because it all led me to you.”

  “How?”

  He decided to get totally honest with Kyra. “You don’t know this, but my father placed me on the advisory board for the crisis center as a punishment for “bad behavior.” He placed air quotes around the word for effect. “Some tabloid reporter caught wind of a relationship I was in and smeared me,” he said and rolled his eyes. He finished off his cider and placed the glass on the table with a clink. “Turns out the girl was already engaged to be married—to another prince, no less—even though she never bothered to tell me.”

  “Yikes.”

  “I hadn’t realized she was betraying anyone, but I’d known all along that she was just using me. It didn’t occur to me to mind.” He moved his eyes from the dark forest in the distance to look straight into Kyra’s. “Now I know what it feels like to really care about someone.”

  Kyra smiled, and he thought he noticed the faintest flush creep onto her cheeks in the moonlight.

  “When people expect nothing of you, why bother trying? That’s what I thought before,” he said. “But since I met you, Kyra, I have a damn good reason to try.”

  Suddenly a zig zag spear of lightning lit up the sky. Marcus grinned, imagining it was Mother Nature’s way of emphasizing his admission of his feelings, but when he looked back at Kyra, her face had paled, and she was obviously on edge.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “I’m okay,” she said, but he could hear the tremble in her voice. “I don’t like storms is all.”

  “Well, this one’s still pretty far off,” he said. “Nothing much to worry about yet.”

  Kyra nodded and swallowed. He could tell she was still nervous. “When I was young, my family narrowly survived a tornado. We were visiting my granny on her farm, and we had to hustle into her storm cellar.”

  Marcus noted that Kyra’s eyes hadn’t left that sky. Thunder clapped, and she jumped.

  “Granny’s house was destroyed,” Kyra said. “We would have been killed had we not made it to the cellar in time. Ever since that day, I’ve been terrified of storms.”

  “Well, I can tell you that in my twenty-six years in Sovalon, we’ve never had a tornado, so you don’t have anything to worry about.” Marcus felt the urge to comfort her. “Here, come sit next to me, and we can watch the lightning together.”

  Kyra stood from her chair across from Marcus and started toward the one beside him. Before she could sit down, he reached out and pulled her onto his lap. He wrapped his arms round her and felt her relax into his body.

  “Better?” he asked.

  “Mmm hmm.”

  Marcus relished Kyra’s nearness as she leaned back into him, closing the gaps between their bodies. He tucked his face into her hair and inhaled the sweet jasmine scent of her. How was it possible that a woman could smell this good? Feel this good? But the truth was that being with Kyra felt more than just good. It felt right.

  As the wind picked up and began to whip around them, Marcus felt Kyra’s shoulders tense.

  “Do you want to go inside?” he asked.

  “I think so.”

  Just as the words left Kyra’s lips, the sky opened up and raindrops came at them like bullets from the sky.

  Using his body to shield hers as best he could, Marcus ushered Kyra back toward the house, but they both were soaking wet by the time they got inside.

  * * *

  Kyra was shaking so badly she could hardly see straight. Even now that she was inside the house with Marcus, she still didn’t feel quite safe. Her hands trembled as she gripped the granite countertop in the kitchen and watched Marcus shake the rain from his dark mane of wet hair. Marcus had shielded her head from the rain with the nylon jacket he’d been wearing, but the rest of her was soaked through from the shoulders of her button-down shirt to the hem of the denim skirt she’d put on before dinner. She slipped out of her damp shoes and kicked them aside as lightning flashed through the kitchen windows, shaking her once more. She leaned into the counter and set her head in her hands, grossed out by the feel of wetness on her toes and frustrated with the phobia that had haunted her all these years.

  After wiping his face dry with a kitchen towel, Marcus looked at her. “Kyra, it’s okay,” he said and rushed to wrap his arms around her. “We’re safe. It’s just a little thunderstorm, I promise.”

  “I’m alright,” she lied.

  Just then, another boom of thunder shook the walls. Kyra flinched, and Marcus held her close. “You’re freezing,” he said. “Let me find some bath towels, so we can dry off.”

  Kyra’s teeth chattered as she followed him silently. Even though she was frightened of the lightning, she liked being so close to him. She hated the idea of depending on any man coming to her rescue, but Marcus did soothe her anxiety. It was a strange but good feeling to allow him to hold her in the face of her fear. She wasn’t used to letting anyone get that close or to see her in her weakness.

  She turned the corner behind him into the bedroom just as he called out to her from the guest bath beyond.

  “I found the towels.”

  A bolt of lightning lit up the dim room, and Kyra gasped.

  Damn it. Why was she so jumpy? It was just a thunderstorm, not a tornado.

  Marcus hurried back into the bedroom with a pile of towels in his hands, looking ready to hand them off, but when his eyes met hers from across the room, he stopped dead. Thunder crashed in the distance, and a jolt of electricity seemed to pass between them. She felt the temperature in the room rise as he approached her. Slowly, with what looked to Kyra like a decision in his eyes, he closed the distance between them until he was only an arm’s length away. Kyra stepped a few inches nearer to him to let him know she’d made her decision as well.

  Marcus set all but one towel down on the bed beside them then used the one in his hands to pat Kyra’s face dry, all the while his eyes never leaving hers. He moved the towel slowly to her shoulders, carefully dabbing each droplet of rain that was there, treating her as if she were a precious work of art. Kyra sighed as he brought the towel to her neck and down the center of her torso. She let her head drop back and closed her eyes as he worked over her breasts and down her back.

  The feel of his fingertips teased her. She wished they would tear through the terrycloth of the towel and even through her clothes. She ached to feel his hands on her fiery skin. With painstaking care, Marcus lowered himself and smoothed the towel down each of Kyra’s legs, stopping on the second one to kiss the sensitive flesh at the back of her knee. She heard herself moan as his lips touched her bare flesh.

  As Marcus stood and faced her, she felt her lips fall open with longing. He accepted the invitation and crushed them with a kiss so passionate, there was no question as to what would happen next. His hands found her waist and pulled her body into his, as he continued to kiss her hungrily on her mouth, her neck. Circling behind her, he continued trailing kis
ses on the back of her neck, sending shivers of pleasure down her arms. Kyra felt her body respond to him like it had never responded to anyone before. She leaned back into his chest as he unbuttoned her wet shirt and slid his fingers beneath the silk of her bra. When his thumbs began to circle over her hard nipples, she had to bite her lip to stop from crying out.

  She wiggled out of her shirt and bra as she turned to face him again, then pulled his wet T-shirt over his head. As before, Kyra was turned on by his chiseled body. She ran her hands over his ripped abs then pressed her body into his, kissing his hard chest.

  They fell onto the queen-size bed together, and Kyra slid out of her skirt then helped Marcus out of his shorts. They lay next to each other, their hands and mouths exploring. She thought she’d die with need when Marcus ran his hands up and down her thighs, tickling the flesh at the top of her legs then back toward her knee. She angled herself into him and nearly cried when his fingers snuck beneath the lace of her panties. He took a moment to play his fingers along the folds of sensitive flesh, driving her crazy, then slipped her underwear off.

  A moment later, he slid his body over hers. She could feel him—rock hard—against her thigh and wanted nothing more than to be filled up with him. She pushed her body up into his, to tell him without words that she was more than ready for him.

  “Not yet,” he whispered and kissed her lips gently. He massaged her breasts with both hands then kissed her neck and chest, then her belly button.

  As Marcus worked his way slowly down Kyra’s body, he left a path of kisses at each swatch of skin. He kissed her inner thigh then placed his warm mouth on the spot that caused fireworks to go off behind her eyes. As he moved, ever so slowly, his tongue drew circles over her flesh. He nibbled and licked as she arched her back. He used his finger to trace lines where his tongue had been. When his finger entered her, she couldn’t stand it any longer.

  “Please Marcus,” she said. “I want to feel you inside me.”

  And, finally, he gave her what she wanted.

  When they came together, both cried out with satisfaction and joy, their cries only intensifying as they worked each other higher and higher until they reached their peaks.