by Lucy Monroe
“I have a full schedule today and tomorrow for that matter.”
“You work too much.”
“It would be pretty hard to pay the bills otherwise.”
“You are no longer alone.”
“What, we get engaged and suddenly I’m supposed to quit my job and let you take care of me?” The scathing tone left no doubt what she thought of that idea.
“Not quit, no, but cut back? I would prefer it. Wouldn’t your doctor?”
“She made no stipulations about my work. It’s not physical enough to be risky to my pregnancy.”
“You are tired.”
“Not right now.” But her honest blue eyes told their own story.
“You would like to cut back your hours,” he guessed.
“I’m not lazy.”
“No, you are not.”
“You don’t expect me to quit?”
“No.”
“Even after we are married?”
“Photography gives you a great deal of satisfaction. There is no reason you should give it up entirely.”
“What part should I give up?” she asked in a wary tone he did not understand.
“I do not know. Whatever assignments are not as interesting to you?” Communication with women had always been like navigating a minefield for Maks.
He had hoped with Gillian agreeing to be his wife, it would be more straightforward, less fraught with explosive traps.
“You don’t have any particular ones in mind?”
“No.”
“My father disparages my book covers and is barely more tolerant of my portraits, but they at least have some artistic merit in his eyes.”
“I am not your father. And your portraits are pure and amazing art. I am no expert in the industry, but I like your book covers as well.” Maks had seen Gillian’s portfolio.
Her photographic portraiture was indeed unique. He was actually quite surprised it didn’t dominate her work and had remarked on that fact in the past.
She’d told him her prices were very high for the portraits she did do and she was really picky about what clients she took on. She wasn’t nearly as choosy about her book covers.
She brought other people’s visions to life with them. For her, it was a different kind of art. Apparently equally satisfying, but different.
“You just want me to cut back my hours?” she asked cautiously.
“The life of a princess is not without its demands. Your body is already taxed with the pregnancy.”
“How long do you plan to be in Volyarus?”
“Two weeks. I should have left several days ago.”
“But then Demyan told you about our little problem.”
“Our baby is not a problem.”
“No, I didn’t mean it that way.”
“Good.”
“You’re awfully touchy.”
“I am going to be late.” He turned toward the bathroom. “Go back to sleep. It is still early.”
CHAPTER TEN
“BOSSY,” GILLIAN MUTTERED as Maks left the room.
She wasn’t really sure why the conversation had ended so abruptly. He’d thrown his need to leave and desire for her to accompany him out there and barely given her a chance to respond before dismissing her and what they’d been talking about.
True, he hadn’t left the apartment, but he’d effectively left the conversation, with instructions for her to sleep.
One thing Nana always said was that a woman who intended to enjoy her future had to begin as she meant to go on in any relationship. Whether of short or long duration, it was always worth setting expectations.
Their marriage would definitely fall under the long duration header.
Throwing back the covers, Gillian climbed out of the bed, glad the morning nausea that had plagued her seemed to be tapering off. She went to grab a robe, but then put it back deliberately. The water was already running for the shower.
He would just have to share.
It wouldn’t be super comfortable, but they’d done it before.
The bathroom was already filling up with steam from the hot shower when she reached it.
“You’re going to have to share the hot water,” she announced as she pulled back the shower curtain far enough for her to step into the tub with him.
He turned around quickly, his expression reflecting surprise.
She barely refrained from rolling her eyes. “Did you really think you could just tell me to go back to sleep and I would do it?”
“You need your rest.”
“We weren’t done discussing the things you’d brought up.”
“I thought we were.”
“Really?”
“Yes.” The exasperation in his tone would have been more impacting if his dark gaze wasn’t devouring her nudity.
“We made love twice last night.”
“So?”
“So, you look like you’re thinking about doing it again.”
“I am, but there isn’t time.” His tone was laden with unmistakable regret.
She laughed softly. “I don’t remember you being this insatiable.”
“Don’t you?”
Actually, he’d never made his fascination with her body a secret. “You’re more primitive about it now. I feel like you have this need to mark me.”
Incredibly, color washed across his cheekbones and then concern darkened his eyes. “Was I too rough?”
“No. Not at all. I like this less civilized side.”
“That is good to know.”
She put shower gel on a loofah and began washing him. “So, you want me to come to Volyarus.”
“My mother will want to see you.” He made a soft sound of pleasure in the back of his throat as she brushed the loofah over his chest.
“Will she be angry?”
“That you are not with me?”
She shook her head at this masculine inanity. “That we have to get married.”
“She approved my choice ten months ago.”
“Oh.” Gillian hadn’t realized it had gone as far as Maks talking his choice of a wife over with his mother. “My medical results certainly threw a spanner in the works for you.”
“Temporarily.”
She shook her head. “You really are an optimist, aren’t you?”
“I think you need that.”
“To counterbalance my so-called pessimism?” she asked sarcastically, her hands falling away from him.
His expression was entirely serious when he said, “Yes.”
“I’m not a pessimist.”
“Then you do a very good imitation of one.”
“People say hope doesn’t cost anything, but that’s not true. When you hope for things and you are disappointed, it hurts. When it happens a lot, hope gets harder and harder to let in.” She began washing herself, scrubbing with the loofah with jerky movements.
He reached to her, tugged the loofah from her hand and hung it from the hook on the enclosure wall, and then pulled her gently into his body. “I will do my best to fulfill the hopes you allow room in your heart.”
“You’re awfully poetic for a Cossack.” Tears tightened her throat.
“I’m not a Cossack.”
“Your ancestors were and sometimes genetics ring true.”
“Do they? What hope does our child have then?” he teased.
Gillian opined firmly, “She will have the best of both of us.”
“Was that optimism I heard?” He put his hand over his heart, feigning shock.
She smacked his chest, but gave a hiccupping laugh. “Yes.”
“Will you be able to join me in Volyarus?” Tension she didn’t understand after the humor and the charm came off him in waves.
“I think so. It will mean moving some things around and into the weekend, but then I can join you Monday and stay that week and through the weekend.”
“You will do that?”
Gillian tilted her head back so their eyes met. This needed to be said. He de
served to know she understood the differences that being his wife would make in her life. “Maks, I know that marrying you comes with a job title.”
“Princess.”
“It’s an honor.” That he’d wanted to give her ten weeks ago.
He grimaced. “But not one you aspired to.”
“No, but I always knew it would be necessary if I was to remain in your life permanently.”
“And did you have plans to do so, before?”
“You know I did.”
“You would have agreed to my proposal ten weeks ago.”
“If you’d made one, yes, I would have.” She wasn’t going to lie to him.
“But you had no intention of accepting my proposal when I made it four days ago.”
“You know why.”
He frowned, looking like he wanted to say no he didn’t, but was manfully refraining.
She couldn’t help laughing, though her humor might be more macabre than jolly. “I know. You don’t understand the fear that love might bring.”
“I thought the saying was perfect love casts out fear.”
“I’m not perfect and neither is my love.”
“On that we must disagree.”
“What?” Now she was totally confused.
He pulled her closer, their naked flesh fitting together so naturally under the cascading hot water that emotion choked her. “You are perfect for me.”
“Because I carry your child.”
“That’s part of it, yes, but then even that only shows how insanely compatible we are. No one else could have gotten you pregnant in a single night without condoms.”
“Conceited much?”
“No. This isn’t about my prowess…it’s about how we fit.” He was very serious, his espresso eyes filled with sincerity.
To hear his words describing the feeling that had been washing over her touched something deep inside, something she thought would always hurt. Only right now, the pricks and stings were absent.
It was not love, but it was something.
She buried her face against his chest, needing a moment, but he refused to let her hide from him. Even for a second. He tilted her head up the same time he lowered his mouth to hers and pressed their lips together in the gentlest kiss.
Tenderness remained, but the gentleness quickly morphed into something else. A passion that coursed through her, making her heart beat so fast she could barely catch her breath.
They were both breathing heavily, the steam around them not as hot as their bodies had become when he moved to kiss down her throat.
“I thought we didn’t have time,” she gasped.
“I already missed one meeting.” His hand slid down her backside and between her thighs, his fingertips playing over the slick flesh. “My pilot will have to wait as well.”
She didn’t argue, though she was sure it was more than his pilot that sex would put on hold. He knew it, too. And that just blew her away. Realizing Maks could be distracted from duty for the intimacy between them was more mind-altering than the pleasure they found in one another’s bodies.
And that always left her feeling like she’d had an out-of-body experience, or rather a very intense in-body experience.
The need to show how very much that meant to her grew inside Gillian until she became determined to do something she’d never done before. Dropping to her knees, she nuzzled into his lower abdomen, her intentions clear.
Her wet hair brushed over his already hardened sex and he groaned, his hips canting for more contact. The man was insatiable and she was glad. Really, really glad.
No, it wasn’t love, but it was something worth fighting for.
He sucked in air, another long, low groan pealing out of him as she turned and quite deliberately licked his length.
“What are you doing?” he croaked out.
“If you don’t know, I am not doing it right.”
“But you don’t do this.” He’d never asked it of her and she’d never offered.
“It isn’t because I don’t want to.”
“Then why?”
She looked up; able to admit something she wouldn’t have even twenty-four hours earlier. “I don’t know how.”
“You’ve never done it before.” He sounded almost awed.
She shook her head. Gillian was determined to do it now, though, as much for herself as for him. She’d always wanted to—with him, but she’d lacked the confidence to try when his sexual history was so much richer than hers.
She didn’t just want to try something new, she craved giving him pleasure like he’d never known.
Yesterday she would have doubted her ability to do that, but the day before Prince Maksim of the House of Yurkovich had not been so moved by his desire for Gillian Harris that he’d chosen to circumvent his own schedule.
While he did not make it a habit to cancel on her, he had never rearranged his schedule to spend time with her, either. Not once, not even pushing a meeting back by five minutes, much less rescheduling it altogether.
But not only was he purposefully giving up his takeoff slot at the airport, Maks had already missed a meeting to spend as much of the morning’s early hours with her that he had.
Overwhelmed with a kind of giddy joy at the thought of it, Gillian kissed the weeping tip of his erection, lapping at the moisture. It was sweeter than she expected and she made a sound of approval.
His swollen hardness jumped against her lips. “Put it in your mouth. Please.”
“Yes.” She took his head into her mouth and wondered how she was supposed to take more.
He wasn’t small by any means and her mouth only stretched so wide.
Refusing to worry about the fact she couldn’t take it all in, she swirled her tongue around the head, eliciting groans from Maks. He certainly didn’t seem to mind she wasn’t going to deep throat him like a porn star.
He fell back against the wall of the tub enclosure, his big body giving one long shudder. “Feels so good.”
She curled both her hands around the wet shaft and began stroking him as she changed her licking to sucking.
He shouted, his hips surging forward as if he could not control the movement.
He penetrated her mouth farther, but her hands on his shaft prevented him from going too far.
“Sorry,” he gritted out, making an obvious effort to remain still.
She felt like smiling, happy he’d lost control. It meant he didn’t have all the power in their relationship.
Part of her had known that, because she carried his child, but part of her had felt helpless in the face of her own love.
She was feeling anything but helpless right now with his extreme response to her novice, but enthusiastic efforts. Increasing the speed of her caresses, she was surprised at how excited doing this for him made her.
She wanted to bring him off, but she ached with the desire to be filled, too.
She couldn’t stop what she was doing to tell him. Didn’t want to stop pleasuring him with her mouth. It was such an amazing feeling, to have him at her mercy and yet be so emotionally connected it was like a live current of electricity arced between them.
But he grabbed her head, pulling her back.
She frowned up at him.
His pupils were blown, his face dark with passion and he rasped out, “I’m about to climax.”
“I want you to.”
He let out a pained groan, his hips flexing. “No. You don’t.”
“I like the taste.”
“Come is not as sweet as preejaculate, or so I’ve been told.”
“Really?” Her frown turned to a glare, some of passion’s haze dissipating.
He laughed, the sound almost tortured. “You have nothing to be jealous about. No other woman has ever affected me like you do. No other one ever will.”
She believed him. Today. This morning, after he chose to miss his takeoff slot to be with her, she believed him.
He tugged gently on her head, both han
ds on either side of her face and she found herself rising to stand in front of him. “I want to be inside you.”
“Y…” Her voice gave out, her own want was so deep. She cleared her throat. “Yes.”
He kissed her, his mouth laying claim to hers without apology or hesitation.
She kissed him back, asserting her own claim, letting him know with the ferocity of her response that he belonged to her as well.
She didn’t know which one of them broke the kiss, or how she ended up facing the far wall of the tub enclosure with her legs spread as much as they could go in the narrow space, her nipples aching in the moist air.
But she literally shook with the need for copulation.
His body blanketed hers, his sex aligned to the apex of her thighs. “Let me have you, sérdeńko, open yourself to me.”
“Yes!” She threw her head back against his shoulder, a tiny part of her brain insisting she’d find out what sérdeńko meant later.
His erection pressed between her legs, zeroing in on the opening to her body and pressing inside in one smooth movement. He filled her, the stretch so perfect, so intense and the angle just right for hitting her G-spot, ecstasy sparked hot along each nerve ending.
One long fingered hand reached around and delved between her folds to tease her clitoris, the other slid up her stomach to play with her breasts. The multiple stimulations were body buzzing and mind numbing.
Her brain stopped making fully realized thoughts as he touched her in ways guaranteed to bring her the ultimate in pleasure and she offered her body to him without limits.
The water beat down on them; Maks moved with passionate urgency, his sex caressing that sweet spot inside her, his fingertip rubbing circles of delight on her clitoris.
The pleasure spun higher and higher inside of Gillian, her body naturally arching up on her toes in response, her hands against the slick wall in no way holding her up. It was Maks’s strength doing that, his big Cossack’s body.
And then everything exploded in a starburst of color that rivaled the Northern Lights, her body convulsing around his sex, her womb contracting with ecstasy, her breath sawing in and out in passion-filled pants.
The scream of completion that ripped out of Gillian’s throat mixed with Maks’s feral shout as he climaxed, too, his body rigid behind her, their voices rising in a crescendo of delight.