The Pregnancy Shock (The Drakos Baby 1)

‘Oh, yes. It matters to me, moraki mou,’ Alexei told her in Greek. ‘A more honourable man would walk away, because I’m not making you any promises.’

‘I know that.’ Billie was quick to dispel any suggestion that she had such expectations, yet the denial was like a stab at her heart.

Simmering golden eyes fringed by inky black lashes assailed her. ‘But, for what it’s worth, I feel more of a connection with you than I have ever felt with a woman. Somehow we fit, khriso mou. I respect you. I like you. Everything feels natural with you, nothing forced or false.’

‘It’s just all the emotion of the last few days,’ Billie protested, fearful of allowing herself to believe that anything was happening between them that could mean something to him, because she thought that such a conviction could only lead her to the madness of false hope and disillusionment. ‘And the alcohol.’

‘The…alcohol?’ Alexei carolled in disbelief. ‘Are you suggesting that I might not know what I’m doing?’

‘I don’t want to take advantage of you,’ Billie said deadpan.

Laughing uproariously, Alexei pulled her to him and held her close to kiss her with a hungry passion that was passionately free of restraint. The sexual heat flowed through her again while he strung a line of provocative kisses down the extended length of her throat and across the alabaster slopes of her breasts. She was boneless, breathless even before he returned to the hot dampness between her legs. With exquisite skill, he toyed with the satin flesh, probing the delicate entrance where she ached for a fulfilment she had never known before. His sensual onslaught was a sweet torment, lighting up her every nerve-ending with longing. Her excitement built and built to a towering height and she couldn’t stay still or silence the tiny gasps and whimpers breaking from her lips.

He put a pillow below her hips and came over her with practised ease. ‘I’ll try not to hurt you,’ he promised thickly. ‘But I want you so much I’m in agony.’

Feeling him nudging at the entrance to her body, she tensed. He urged her to stay still and as relaxed as possible before he sank his engorged shaft slowly into her tight inner channel. She was lost in the extraordinary feeling of his erotic invasion. A flicker of discomfort came as a warning before the main event, when he plunged deeper into resisting flesh, and she yelped at the flash of pain, only to be mortified when he stopped.

‘No, don’t stop…just get it over with,’ she mumbled through gritted teeth.

‘How can I resist such an invitation?’ Alexei groaned, pausing to brush his lips across her brow in a comforting motion before driving deeper until her body yielded and sheathed him completely. Becoming accustomed to that sensation of fullness, she shifted her hips and as swiftly savoured the flood of intense erotic feelings roused by his slow, steady movements. She brought up her knees, lifting her hips to accommodate his thrusts and crying out her pleasure in encouragement. He abandoned his control, sliding his hands below her to lift her even higher and deepen his penetration, his heart labouring against hers. He ravished her with long driven thrusts and sent her excitement climbing so high she screamed when she tipped over the edge into an explosion of ecstasy and wild ripples of sensual delight gripped her quivering body in the aftermath.

‘Bliss…for the first time I see the point of your name, khriso mou,’ Alexei breathed from the rumpled depths of her hair, slowly lifting his tousled head to gaze down at her with wondering appreciation. ‘That was amazing, but—’

‘But?’

‘We have just had sex without precautions. I can assure you that I’m clean. I have regular check-ups and I have never until this moment made love without a condom.’

Billie was much more tense than Alexei, whose big powerful frame was comparatively relaxed against hers. ‘Without?’

‘We should have gone back to my room. What part of your cycle are you in?’

Embarrassed by the enquiry and rigid with apprehension, Billie had to think and then they had to count, a pastime that Billie was much better at than Alexei, whose unusually slow mental arithmetic only reminded her that he was very far from being sober. Although she was in the second half of her cycle, he decided that there wasn’t much to worry about. Billie was, however, less sanguine, momentarily picturing the horror of conceiving a child by a male who revelled in his freedom and who wouldn’t want an illegitimate kid or its mother.

Claiming a hot, driving kiss, Alexei coaxed her out of that pensive mood. He shifted against her, cupping her hips to bring her into contact again with his renewed arousal. Billie was startled, not having realised that he might be ready again so quickly or even that he might want to repeat the experience. ‘It was so good I can’t wait to do it again,’ Alexei told her raggedly, his hands straying to more sensitive places to lessen any reluctance she might be suffering from.

Billie was astonished by how fast he could make her want him again even when she was a little sore. She melted below his urgent kisses. He put her in a different position on her side and made love to her slowly and provocatively, driving her to an even more earth-shattering climax the second time.

‘This is crazy,’ he acknowledged lazily in the aftermath. ‘I’ll have to go and get some condoms. I don’t want to get you pregnant.’

‘We’re being very irresponsible,’ Billie agreed breathlessly, so limp, weak and mindless after that last wave of pleasure that she could barely speak.

‘That’s what I like about you, khriso mou,’ Alexei husked, brushing aside the dark red damp hair at the nape of her neck to kiss the tender skin there. ‘You bring out another side of me, an irresponsible side. I’m different with you.’

The mattress gave as he slid out of bed and she flipped over with anxious eyes. ‘Where are you going?’

‘The shower, then to my room to take care of the contraception.’

For a couple of minutes, Billie lay on the bed as though she were welded to it. Shock was sinking in fast and filling her with apprehension and doubts. Although she had sworn that she would never be foolish enough to sleep with Alexei, she had just done so. In fact she had taken part in a shameless sexual romp that was indefensible for, while she might love him, he did not love her. What price now her long-held secret belief that she was somehow morally superior in her restraint to her mother? That she was different? More sensible, more steady? Shame drenched her in a tide of drowning regret. As far as Alexei was concerned now, she would just figure as one more in a long line of willing bed partners…

‘Billie?’ Alexei called, startling her.

‘What?’

‘Come and join me,’ Alexei urged impatiently.

In the shower? In no immediate hurry to extend her sexual education, Billie slid uneasily off the bed and padded into the en suite, snatching up a towel from the doorway and holding it against herself.

‘Drop the towel,’ Alexei exclaimed, making her jump as he rammed back the glass door to survey her with a raised brow of enquiry.