by Lynne Graham
Her heart hammered and her body quickened. It shook her that the very idea of being a prisoner in Sergei’s bedroom roused a response from her body that she could not stifle.
‘I’ve thought of nothing else,’ he confided, sinking down beside her and setting his champagne flute down.
‘Since you went away you’ve done nothing but eat, sleep and breathe business.’ Alissa could not resist making that contradiction.
‘The faster I closed the deal, the sooner I could return. You’re the only reward I wanted,’ Sergei told her thickly, pulling her to him to taste her ripe mouth with a warm sensual pressure enlivened by the deeply erotic dart and thrust of his tongue. Her fingers sank deep into his black hair while her senses leapt into awareness and she moaned beneath that onslaught.
While he kissed her, he let his hand roam over her silk-encased length, lingering on the firm swell of her breasts and the prominence of her taut nipples. Soon little responsive sounds trapped in her throat were escaping and she was trembling on the edge of an excitement so intense she feared it. With a hungry groan, he hoisted her up into his arms and strode indoors.
‘Would I need to chain you up?’ Sergei asked thickly, standing her between his spread thighs and lifting the robe she wore to explore the quiveringly ready body concealed beneath.
She could barely breathe for excitement but she had not forgotten his forecast that some day she would be as clingy and adoring as his other lovers. ‘Yes, you would,’ she told him even as she let her head fall back and her lips part on a helpless whimper of response as his thumb rubbed her clitoris and his skilled fingers probed the hot slippery heart of her femininity, sending delirious waves of delight pounding through her as wildly as breakers on a beach.
‘Patse luy min-ya…kiss me,’ he commanded roughly, lifting her and bringing her down on the edge of the table.
And, wanting his mouth again, she did as he asked and rejoiced in his passion. The wood of the table was cool beneath her overheated skin but she didn’t care. She was pulling at his belt, wanting, needing with a strength that came close to pain. Sergei brushed aside her fingers and dealt with the clasp that had defeated her. With a guttural groan of relief and pleasure, he finally drove his engorged length into her hot damp sheath. A drowning, dizzying rush of honeyed sweetness and excitement surged through her as every sensation forced her closer and closer to a rapturous climax.
‘Don’t stop…don’t stop!’ she gasped wildly.
Holding her tightly to him, he pounded into her tender core with spellbinding passion. And when she went into orgasm, it was like a massive firework display going off inside her, her entire body burning and soaring with the all-encompassing high of ecstasy. The languor and peace of satiation finally followed.
‘I can never get enough of you, angil moy,’ he breathed raggedly into her hair, turning up her face to steal a scorchingly possessive kiss from her lips while smoothing her tumbled hair back from her damp brow and studying her with smouldering dark eyes. ‘One minute after I come I want you again.’
Little tremors and aftershocks of pleasure were still quaking through Alissa’s slight body. She was shattered by the force of need he had awakened in her and the mind-blowing pleasure he had given her. As the intense sensation faded she was aghast at the reality that he had enjoyed her on top of a table while still fully dressed. She watched him as he impatiently shed his clothes in an untidy heap.
‘Aren’t you ever tidy?’ she sighed.
‘I have more important things to do. But you’re talking like a wife,’ he commented in surprise and he laughed, dark golden eyes suddenly glinting with amusement.
‘Isn’t that what you want?’ Alissa traded, lifting her chin.
‘Da…yes. I want the full package. But right now we need a shower,’ he told her, peeling the robe she wore off before he gathered her up into his arms.
‘I can’t give you the full package,’ Alissa reminded him in an anxious warning. ‘Don’t you dare try to get me pregnant.’
Sergei frowned. ‘Not without your consent. I’ve used a condom every time I’ve been with you…except the first time,’ he mused, startling her with that admission. ‘That was before I knew who you were and there seemed no point in taking precautions when the ultimate goal was a child.’
As Sergei lowered her down to stand on her own feet in the spacious shower Alissa was pale and tense. She had assumed that he had protected her the first time as well. She had been so out of control that she hadn’t noticed and she was furious that she had failed to look out for herself. ‘Let’s hope we get away with it,’ she remarked in a brittle voice.
‘I was expecting it to take at least a year for you to conceive and the last thing I would want is for that to happen now, when we no longer have either an understanding or an agreement in place. Of course, as you get to know me better, you may well change your mind on that issue—’
‘No way!’ Alissa asserted fiercely. ‘I won’t change my mind. A child needs a mother and my child will need me—’
‘You’re so sexist, angil moy,’ Sergei censured, pulling her into the path of the multi sprays of water, laughing without reserve when she yelped as a needlesharp spray hit a sensitive spot. He hoisted her up against him, her arms coiling round his neck as he braced her hips against the marble wall and wrapped her legs round his waist. ‘What would you do with my baby? Use it as a weapon against me? Would you keep us fighting never-ending custody battles and constantly up the stakes to feather your own nest while hitting out at me?’
‘Is that what you think women do?’
‘I’ve watched a lot of my friends go through hell over access to their children by former partners. Even marriage is no protection. It’s not a situation I will put myself or my child in with any woman. Women often want revenge when a relationship breaks down.’
Shocked by the strength of his opinions on the subject, Alissa just shook her head slowly. ‘I would just love my baby and no matter what happened I would try to base all my decisions on what was best for my child.’
His lean dark features clenched hard. ‘You say all the right things, milaya moya. You said them to your sister on the phone as well but unfortunately you don’t always seem to live up to them.’ He released her and strode out of the shower.
Alissa took a moment or two to get her thoughts straight and then raced after him to yell, ‘How the heck do you know what I said to my sister on the phone?’
‘I had your calls monitored. I wanted to know if you were telling me the truth.’
Alissa gave him an appalled appraisal. ‘You had them monitored—you snooped on me? That’s a dreadful thing to do!’
‘Unlike you I didn’t lie, cheat or set out to defraud anyone,’ Sergei responded drily. ‘You can always trust me to give you the truth, but I will not be kept in the dark about anything that concerns my interests.’
Belatedly becoming aware of the chilly evening air striking her wet, dripping body, Alissa coloured and dived back into the bathroom for a towel. While she dried off her damp hair she struggled to recall what she had said to Alexa during that phone call and cringed at the awareness that Sergei must have heard every word. He was watching the business news when she reappeared. Ignoring him, she wriggled into silk pyjamas and got into bed.
‘Are we actually going to share the same bed all night?’ Alissa demanded abruptly. ‘I thought you didn’t do couple-type stuff.’
Sergei ran an appreciative hand down over the curve of her hip as she lay there with her back turned to him. ‘You’ve taught me to see advantages I never saw before. For the next few weeks we are going to share everything like normal newly marrieds.’
But Alissa could not understand the reasoning behind that decision. If she was not about to give him a child what was the point of greater familiarity? And surely so much intimacy was not required to make their marriage look real from the outside? From what she could work out they were unlikely to see enough of his grandmother for there to b
e any need to put on such a show of being close.
‘Stop agonising over everything. So, you’re not perfect, but then I never expected you to be and my desire for you makes me more tolerant,’ Sergei murmured with unnerving intuition. ‘Relax, close your eyes, go to sleep.’
And somehow she did, waking at some stage of the night to find that she was closely entwined with Sergei’s lean muscular body and far too close to him for comfort. Her squirming efforts to ease free without waking him roused him very thoroughly in a way she had not intended and her pyjamas did not last long as a barrier. Exhaustion kept her asleep until dawn when once again the touch of his expert hands on her sinfully sensitised body set ripples of tormenting need loose inside her and tightened every nerve ending to screaming point. When he finally entered her, slow and deep and sure, the breath left her body in a hiss of reaction and the flood of sweet, painfully intense sensation engulfed her. The yearning was more than she could bear and all control fell away as he sent her hurtling headlong into the burning, melting waves of irresistible satisfaction.
Afterwards, she twisted round in his arms and buried her face in a broad bronzed shoulder, breathing in the scent of his sweat-dampened skin as if it were the elixir of life while she hugged him close. Her body wasn’t her own any more; when he touched her she could not resist him. That scared her. Too much exposure to Sergei was bad for her. She felt clingy, which appalled her, and she had no intention of letting that urge out to cause havoc with her self-discipline. She only hoped she wasn’t pregnant, for she did not share his apparent conviction that one act of lovemaking without protection was insufficient for conception. And that was one complication they could certainly do without…
Chapter Nine
‘TY V poryadka?…Are you okay?’
A frown of annoyance mingled with concern stamped on his lean bronzed face, Sergei hovered on the threshold of the bathroom, held back only by Alissa’s frantic hand signals warning him to keep a distance. ‘Look, I’m calling a doctor. I think you’ve caught a bug.’
‘I don’t need a doctor,’ Alissa protested, freshening up at the sink, her voice rather shrill because with every day that passed her anxiety was steadily mounting. Her period was well over a week late, her breasts were sore and attacks of nausea were making her throw up without good reason at odd times of the day. She had already worked out which diagnosis she most feared.
Ignoring her objections, Sergei got on his phone to arrange for a doctor to be brought out to the yacht as soon as possible. Alissa was a sickly green colour and he was convinced that she had succumbed to some ongoing bug or infection. He stared down at Mattie, the little scruffy dog frantically wagging his stub of a tail and licking at his shoes. He finally bent down to give Mattie a reassuring pat to prevent him from demanding attention from Alissa, who was clearly in no fit state to respond to needs other than her own.
Over three weeks had passed since Alissa had been ashore and had first seen the dog lying injured in the gutter. One minute she had been by Sergei’s side looking in the window of a gold merchant in Corfu town and the next she had been racing across the busy road at great risk to her own safety and getting down on her knees to attend to the dog. A trying day for Sergei had followed while Mattie was treated by the local vet and identified as a stray and therefore homeless. In spite of a visit to an animal sanctuary, where Sergei had made a very generous donation, Mattie, with his three legs, his tatty coat and perennially anxious expression, had somehow contrived to move in with them on the yacht. Now as Mattie cried anxiously for Alissa in the doorway Sergei sidestepped the little animal to scoop up his wife and carry her back to the bed in spite of her vehement protests.
‘Just lie there, angil moy,’ Sergei instructed, out of all patience with her independence. ‘Stop being so stubborn! You’re sick and you should rest.’
In truth it was a relief for Alissa to lie down in comfort and close her eyes for a few moments. She still felt dizzy and nauseous, and she was torn between exasperation at her physical weakness and dismay that she might have fallen pregnant by a man who wanted to have a child and raise it without her.
Sergei surveyed the pallor of her face and the slightness of her body in the bed. He was convinced she had lost weight and her healthy appetite had noticeably dwindled. He was genuinely worried about her. Possibly he was guilty of having made her overdo things. She looked fragile and he should have been treating her accordingly. But being selfish came naturally to him, he acknowledged grudgingly, and he had insisted she go swimming and waterskiing most days. When Sergei cut his working hours his unlimited energy needed the outlet of physical activity. In and out of bed, theirs had been a very active honeymoon. He had taken her everywhere with him, regardless of the reality that she was no more into fishing than she was into football. On the other hand, he reflected abstractedly, she could add an excitement to a picnic in a deserted cove that no fish alive or dead could have delivered.
‘I’m being a real drag,’ Alissa sighed, fighting back her fatigue even to speak. ‘I bet your last honeymoon wasn’t like this.’
‘Most days Rozalina was far from sober or nursing a heavy hangover and she stayed in bed until nightfall,’ Sergei countered with unhidden distaste. ‘You feeling off colour occasionally is nothing.’
Alissa had pushed herself up on her elbows to study him with bemused eyes. ‘Didn’t you appreciate that she was a heavy drinker when you married her?’
‘I didn’t notice. I was only twenty-two and the marriage was a joke. She was a party girl round the clock and it got on my nerves even before the honeymoon was over.’
‘I can imagine,’ Alissa murmured. She had noticed his caution with alcohol and he never drank very much. After his experiences with an alcoholic mother, a wife who couldn’t stop drinking would have been a serious turn-off for him.
‘Your addiction to chocolate is a lot easier to live with, milaya moya,’ Sergei quipped, looking so astonishingly handsome as his sensual mouth curved into a charismatic smile that her heart skipped a startled beat.
A middle-aged doctor was collected at the harbour and brought out to the yacht within the hour. When Sergei showed worrying signs of wanting to stay for the consultation, Alissa persuaded him to leave. She wasted no time in telling the doctor that she thought she might be pregnant, but that she preferred to keep that private if he decided that her suspicions were correct. After an examination and an on-the-spot test, he was able to give her that confirmation and, even though she had thought she was prepared for that news, the acknowledgement that she had indeed conceived Sergei’s child left her in a state of shock.
Sergei rejoined her and shifted his lean brown hands in a gesture of frustration. ‘The doctor said the sickness would go away and that there’s nothing to worry about. Shouldn’t he have prescribed something for you to take?’
‘I’m not that sick…maybe I’ve just got a little rundown,’ Alissa suggested, swinging her legs off the side of the bed and gathering up the panting bundle of dog that hurled itself ecstatically at her knees. ‘Mattie’s so affectionate, isn’t he? He just loves to be fussed over. You can tell that he’s never had so much attention before.’
Sergei watched Mattie turn up his tummy to be tickled and suppressed a sigh. She was more concerned about the dog than about her own health. ‘Stay in bed for a while—get some sleep,’ he urged, snapping his fingers to bring the dog darting back to his heels as he left the suite.
A baby, Alissa thought in wonder, checking her still-flat tummy in a mirror while she ignored Sergei’s advice and got dressed. Sergei’s baby…that he wouldn’t want to share. He didn’t trust her sex and she had given him good reason not to trust her. What was she supposed to do now? When it occurred to her that out of distrust he might try to take her child away from her she just wanted to run and keep on running away from him.
And feeling like that was a great shame, she acknowledged heavily, after such a long happy run spending over three weeks together on board
Platinum. In truth, she had become very deeply attached to Sergei, but nothing would have elicited that admission of deep love and even stronger caring from her. She had got so used to being with him…the sudden explosions when anything went wrong…the immense satisfaction when things went right. Without a doubt Sergei was a volcanic personality, but he absolutely fascinated her and he could make the most ordinary pursuits entertaining.
When had she reached the stage that she would sneak down to look through the glass wall of his office just to get a look at him while he spent several hours away from her to catch up with business? When the sight of him lying asleep by her side in the early hours could turn her heart inside out? Or when a glimpse of him covertly petting Mattie could make her eyes smart with stupid tears? He hadn’t wanted the little dog at all at first and had been astonished when she had failed to leave the injured animal to recuperate at the sanctuary. But, day by day, Alissa had watched Mattie limping and hopping valiantly out of his basket to steadily wear down Sergei’s defences and wheedle his way into full acceptance. It was becoming more and more of a challenge to keep her emotions under control around him.
But normal life was about to intervene. It was the last full day of their honeymoon and she was already wondering ruefully when she would next have Sergei all to herself. He had not yet told her when they would be leaving but Platinum was cleaving through the waves at a purposeful pace far different from the idyllic lazy cruising that had distinguished their exploration of the Greek islands.
She had spoken to Prince Jasim’s wife, Elinor, several times in recent weeks. She had enjoyed catching up with news about Elinor’s life and children and had found it a comfort to be able to chat to her friend, even though she had not felt able to confide fully in her.