The Greek's Pregnant Bride

by Michelle Smart

  She leaned down to kiss him on the mouth, still holding his wrists.

  With a simple flick he could be free from her clasp.

  Instead, he kissed her back, succumbing to the delights she wanted to bestow on him.

  Her soft mouth pressed along his jaw then she released her hold on his wrists and slowly made her descent. No part of his chest was left unkissed or unstroked, his skin alive under the trail she made.

  When she reached his groin she completely ignored his erection, her mouth working around it, her hands cupping his balls while her tongue darted out to taste them.

  Her movements were clumsy, a sign of her inexperience, but this only added to the eroticism of the moment.

  This was all for him.

  Her tongue flickered onto the base of his shaft.

  A powerful bolt shot through him, a groan escaping his lips.

  He gripped the bed sheets in his fists and clenched his teeth even tighter, finding a spot on the ceiling to focus on.

  For a moment he’d been certain he was going to come.

  ‘Is something wrong?’ she asked, stopping what she was doing to look at him, her eyes clouding with doubt.

  Speech wouldn’t form. He shook his head and sat up, leaning forward to clasp her cheeks and pull her into another kiss. In a tangle of arms and legs they collapsed together, Alessandra beneath him, devouring each other with their mouths.

  He tugged at her knickers, pushing them down her hips, using his thighs and legs to pull them down. When they reached her ankles she kicked them off then wrapped her legs around him, raising her bottom so her heat rubbed against his erection.

  And then he was inside her, burrowed in her tight heat, the relief giddying.

  The first time they’d made love he’d been blown away with how deeply he’d felt everything, every touch, every movement magnified.

  This was something else completely.

  Slowing their kisses, he began to move, keeping his groin ground to hers.

  Her soft moans fired him, her kisses fuelled him, her roaming hands and fingers burning through his skin.

  He opened his eyes to find her gazing at him in a dazed wonder.

  Reaching for her hand, he brought it up to rest by the side of her head and clasped it tightly, kissing her with renewed passion as his thrusts deepened. It was as if he’d fused into one with her.

  He felt rather than heard her come. Her grip around his erection thickened and tightened, her lips freezing on his, her only sound a tiny, almost breathless mew.

  He was hardly aware of his own release. His senses were too full of Alessandra, watching every last moment of her climax.

  Finally spent, he burrowed his face into her neck, careful not to put too much weight on her belly, and savoured the most delicious warmth he’d ever known spread through him.

  The heavy weight of sleep soon came to claim him, and he shifted his weight off her. She followed his movements and settled into the crook of his arm with a contented sigh.

  * * *

  He awoke a few hours later. The suite was in darkness, a sliver of moonlight shining through.

  Alessandra was draped over him, breathing deeply, her hair tickling his neck and chin. He smoothed it down, marvelling at its silkiness.

  He tried to doze but sleep refused to return.

  How could he sleep with so much racing through his mind? When there were so many emotions racing through his chest, it was a struggle to catch his breath.

  The first time he’d slept with her, in her apartment in Milan... He’d struggled for thoughts and breath then too.

  This was much worse.

  He’d felt her getting too close in Mikolaj’s restaurant, that feeling she could see through the veneer of his skin and through to the heart of him. That feeling had been compounded after the visit to his mother’s house. He’d retreated to New York partly to talk sense into Rocco but mostly for space to compose himself in preparation for his new life.

  Marriage wouldn’t change anything, he’d convinced himself. He would compartmentalise Alessandra’s presence in his life just as he did with his mother. They would live together but they wouldn’t be together.

  Making love to her again... Something had come alive inside him. He’d felt it uncoiling when they’d exchanged their vows but with everything going on that day had put it to one side. Now it, whatever it was, had uncoiled and bitten him, hard enough that it felt like a physical pain.

  Before he could hope to decipher it, she roused in his arms, pulling herself up enough to kiss him, deeply, passionately, awakening in an instant.

  He responded as if he’d been lying there waiting for her to wake, groaning when she slid onto his already hard length.

  Doing nothing but hold on to her waist to support her, he let her take the lead. The moonlight bathed her, letting him watch as she took her pleasure, watch the lips that parted, the eyes that glazed. Her soft moans deepened until she ground herself onto him. He felt her release as deeply as he felt his own, revelled in the pulsations that seemed to draw his own orgasm into unquantifiable realms.

  Afterwards, when he thought she was falling back into slumber, she pressed a kiss to his chest.

  ‘I could get used to this,’ she said, her voice sleepy but tinged with a smile.

  And tinged with something that sounded like hope.

  His eyes opened with a jerk.

  He remembered the look in her eyes when they’d exchanged their vows. Now he knew what it had been: hope.

  Alessandra had hopes for their future as a married couple.

  She was changing towards him—she had changed towards him.

  And with that change came the realisation that he could forget sharing a bed with her when they both wanted it.

  Unless he kept a proper distance from her, he would soon have the power to hurt her.

  Carefully he disentangled himself from her arms and got out of bed.

  ‘Where are you going?’ she mumbled.

  ‘To get a drink. Go to sleep. I’ll be back in a minute.’ But he knew his words were a lie even as he spoke them.

  He needed to protect her.

  He needed to protect her from himself.

  * * *

  Alessandra slipped into her robe and headed to the bathroom where she could hear the shower running.

  Her skin flushed to think of joining Christian in there, lathering his gorgeous body...

  She stretched for the third time, shaking the lingering sleepiness off, and turned the door handle. It was locked.

  She tried the handle again and still the door didn’t budge.

  She didn’t know why—what experience did she have of men in a sensual sense?—but it surprised her that he might want his privacy whilst he showered. After the things they’d done to each other...

  The flush on her skin deepened, penetrating through her flesh and down low, erotic memories of what they had done together, making her glow from the inside out.

  It had been even better than she remembered. The alcohol during their first time might have been enough to loosen her inhibitions but it must have dulled her senses a fraction too.

  Or maybe it was because this time there was something real between them that surpassed mere lust.

  All Alessandra knew was that she wanted nothing more than to spend the day in bed with him. The only thing to spoil her memories was awakening to find his side of the bed empty.

  Instead of waiting for him, she dived into the adjoining bathroom and deliberately kept the door ajar, an open invitation for him to join her.

  After a good few minutes of soaping herself under the powerful walk-in shower and washing her hair, boredom kicked in.

  She dried herself quickly, rubbed the towel over her hair and mo
isturised her face.

  She made to leave the bathroom, pausing at the last moment to put her robe back on, not yet confident enough to walk around stark naked in broad daylight.

  The door of the bathroom he’d been using was open. Masculine scents mingled with the steam of the shower, filling the empty bedroom.

  Maybe he was ordering breakfast for them.

  She wandered through to the main living area of the suite and found him at the dining table—fully dressed and working on his laptop.

  He looked up and flashed a quick smile. ‘Good morning.’

  She nodded slowly, caught off-guard to find him working. For surely he must be working? He hadn’t even donned casual clothes but wore a white shirt and blue pinstriped trousers.

  ‘Are you planning on wearing that to Marrakech?’ she asked. They were due to fly there later that afternoon for a four-day honeymoon.

  An uncomfortable look spread over his face, quickly gone, but there long enough for her chest to sink down to her feet.

  ‘I’m afraid we will have to take our honeymoon another time,’ he said calmly, looking back at his laptop. ‘An emergency has come up.’

  ‘Another one?’

  He threw her a smile that was clearly intended to bestow patience when all it did was make her want to throw something at him.

  ‘You know my job is all about finance. When financial problems hit companies, prompt action is needed.’

  ‘I appreciate that. What I don’t get is why it has to be you—why can’t someone else step in and act as saviour?’

  ‘There is no one else.’

  Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. ‘What about our honeymoon and the way it’s supposed to convince the world we’re in love?’ Why did her heart clench to say that?

  ‘I joined the board of an Athens shipping company last month in an advisory capacity. One of my staff has been going through the accounts and has discovered a large hole in the company’s finances. Unless we plug that hole in the next two days, fifty thousand people will not receive their pay cheques. That’s fifty thousand people who will struggle to pay their bills, their mortgages, feed their children. We will go to Marrakech at a later date.’

  How could she argue with that? She couldn’t, not unless she wanted to sound like the most selfish person in the world.

  She eyed him coolly, trying to decide if the whiff of duplicity she detected was real or the workings of a tired, disappointed mind. Four days in Marrakech with nothing to do but laze under the sun and make love had sounded like heaven.

  She didn’t dispute the crisis he’d described was real. What she did dispute was his assertion that he was the only person in the world able to resolve it.

  Throwing a tight smile, determined not to show her disappointment, she said, ‘Seeing as you’re going to be busy, I’ll return to Milan. There’s a lot of stuff there I need to be getting on with.’

  ‘No, you will stay here in Athens with me.’

  ‘Are you giving me an order?’

  He sighed. ‘If you return to Milan on your own, the day after our wedding, suspicions will be aroused. People will understand the postponement of a honeymoon because of a financial crisis. This is Greece; the whole country’s in crisis. They will not understand a new wife who is not at her husband’s side during it. We need to live together full-time as man and wife for a few months to keep the doubters at bay. We already agreed this.’

  Alessandra’s teeth were clenched so tightly against the metaphorical kicking they’d just received that she had to fight to prise them apart.

  Suspicions would be aroused?

  That was one way to bring her back down to earth.

  While she fought the despondency crashing through her like a wave, she fought even harder to keep her composure.

  This was a timely reminder that theirs was not a real marriage. The romance of their wedding day— what Christian had done to get her brother there, the wondrousness of their love-making—all must have combined to set off some new hormones within her that made her look at Christian in a fuzzy light.

  Dio, she must have been cast under a spell.

  She blinked rapidly to clear the fuzzy light, wishing she could clear the churning in her belly with the same ease.

  ‘Okay, I’ll stay in Athens with you, but remember I’ve a shoot scheduled for next Thursday so we need to be back in Milan for that.’

  He bowed his head. ‘I’m sure that won’t be a problem.’

  ‘Good.’ She didn’t add that should a ‘problem’ occur she would fly to Milan and do her work regardless. ‘I’m going to order some breakfast. Do you want anything?’

  ‘Just a pot of coffee, thank you.’

  Christian watched her pick up the suite phone and place their order then turned his attention back to the screen in front of him.

  His eyes wouldn’t focus.

  After the incredible night they’d shared he’d been expecting much greater resistance from Alessandra about the postponed honeymoon, had braced himself for the worst.

  If he hadn’t seen the flare of despondency in her eyes he would believe her understanding and calmness at the situation was genuine.

  As much as it hurt him to hurt her, he knew it was for the best.

  He had to put their marriage on the footing they had originally agreed.

  There were women who could separate love and sex. He no longer believed Alessandra to be one of them.

  The hope he’d seen in her eyes as they’d exchanged their vows and then the hope he’d heard in her voice after they’d made love...

  What did he, the gutter rat from Athens, know about love?

  All he knew about it was that it broke hearts and destroyed people. It had destroyed his mother and Alessandra’s father.

  He wouldn’t know how to love or show love if he tried. All he knew was how to make money. A woman like Alessandra deserved so much more.

  Physical distance wasn’t enough. He needed to put emotional distance between them too. Now. Before he hurt her.

  If he allowed their sexual relationship to develop, her feelings would likely develop too while his...

  He’d never had a proper relationship before. Never. He had no idea how long it would take for boredom to set in, when the thrill of making love to the one woman would abate and he’d be looking for a new challenge.

  If her feelings grew stronger whilst his decreased, the pain it would cause her would be immense.

  He had to nip it in the bud now. For both their sakes.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHRISTIAN’S HOME WAS a pebblestone villa in a private enclave of Athens, set away from the hustle and bustle of the city. Surrounded by acres of green land, the villa itself was found by means of a private driveway; indeed, the one word that sprang to Alessandra’s mind as she got out of the car was private. They could be anywhere. They could be nowhere.

  The villa was beautiful, there was no denying that— picture perfect—but the silence was deafening. Villa Mondelli had been much the same, the majority of her childhood spent in its splendid isolation. She’d adored the infrequent trips to Milan Rocco would take her on when he was home from university—loved the noise, the smells and the bustle of the big city, that feeling of being a small cog in a big wheel where all the tiny component parts jostled together nicely to make the big picture.

  They’d left the hotel after breakfast, waved off by their remaining guests. She’d forced a bright smile, forced jollity.

  On the drive to his home he’d explained in more detail what he was working on. She’d tried hard to be sympathetic and understanding about the importance that the situation be speedily resolved. That did nothing to prevent the underlying resentment.

  She was used to workaholics. She’d been raised by the various nannies
her workaholic grandfather had employed for her. Her brother was of an identical mould.

  But she was one hundred per cent certain that, if such a situation had occurred hours before Rocco’s honeymoon, he would have put Olivia first. At the very least he would have discussed the matter with her and taken her input before making a decision.

  The big difference was that Rocco loved Olivia. She was his world.

  All Alessandra was to Christian was the vessel carrying his child, married to secure his heir and avert a scandal. Love did not and never would feature in it, no matter what foolish feelings had been stoked on her wedding day.

  Against her better judgement she’d allowed hope to rear its head.

  Sex was a dangerous game to play. It evoked feelings that had no business being conjured.

  In future she would make love with her body and detach her mind. Somehow. She was certain it could be done. Lots of other women were able to do it so why should she be any different?

  The vows she’d made had been given honestly but for the sake of the little life growing in her belly, not for herself.

  It would be wise for her to remember that and stop letting her hormones off the leash.

  Christian followed her out of the car and walked her to the large front door, the driver tasked with bringing her luggage in.

  A woman who Alessandra judged to be in her mid-forties opened the door to greet them. Christian introduced her as Evanthia, his head of housekeeping.

  Evanthia took Alessandra’s extended hand, uttered a friendly greeting in Greek then stood back so they could enter.

  The interior was every bit what the average person would expect a bachelor billionaire’s home to look like: lavish. Ostentatious. Cold. All vaulted ceilings, white walls and lots of marble.

  The reception area where they stood led through to an enormous open-plan living space. While she stood at the threshold, craning her neck to take it all in, Christian and Evanthia had a quick conversation.

  ‘I need to go,’ he said to Alessandra a few moments later. ‘Evanthia will show you around and show you where your room is.’