A Ring to Secure His Heir

‘Like what?’ Rosie demanded defiantly, intimidated against her will by the sheer imposing size of him standing within a few feet of her while her mind was bombarded with intimate images she had buried deep: Alexius setting her on fire with his clever hands and even more erotic mouth; Alexius driving her wild from dawn to dusk, his hunger for her knowing no bounds. ‘What’s wrong with the way I’m dressed?’

‘You’re showing far too much flesh for a pregnant woman,’ Alexius declared without hesitation. ‘It’s indecent.’

‘I don’t look pregnant yet!’ Rosie flung back at him furiously, wondering if her no longer perfectly flat stomach was visible and all stirred up by the suspicion that she might be looking rather ridiculous.

‘But you are pregnant,’ Alexius reminded her with something very much like satisfaction. ‘And throwing yourself about the dance floor in your condition isn’t sensible.’

‘What would you know about it?’ Rosie snapped, mortified by that cutting description of her behaviour. ‘We’ve never danced together and doesn’t that say all there is to know about us? We’ve never danced. We’ve never had a first date.’

Frustration assailed Alexius. ‘It’s a little late in the day to worry about that.’

‘I hate you!’ Rosie launched at him, having failed to get a rise out of him with what to her was a very salient point. ‘You’re trying to lay down the law and you’ve got no right. What I wear and how I behave is none of your business!’

‘But the baby will always be my business,’ Alexius reminded her succinctly. ‘Of course you don’t hate me.’

‘How do you know? You dumped me!’ Rosie spat back at him with tempestuous bitterness. ‘Did you think that was good for me and the baby? And what about all that sex?’

‘We enjoyed each other,’ Alexius pronounced with supreme assurance, studying the lush pout of her mouth with diamond-bright eyes. ‘You had no complaints at the time.’

His intense gaze set her on fire inside her dress, tightening her nipples, causing a surge of moist heat between her thighs so that she pressed them together. Unbearable hunger pulsed through her slim body and her hands clenched into defensive fists. He reached for her with casual cool, lean fingers closing round her wrists to tug her close.

‘No!’ Rosie yelled at him fiercely, terrified of being touched and giving him the response he no longer had the right to claim.

But his mouth still ravished hers in a taste of heaven and hell. The heaven was the sweet flood of revitalising longing he released and the hell was her inability to suppress her response. His tongue delved deep and made her shudder violently. He hauled her up against his big powerful body, crushing her tender breasts against his muscular chest while his hands slid beneath her skirt to curve to her slender thighs, parting them as he lifted her to clamp them round his waist.

‘What the heck are you playing at?’ Rosie condemned, entrapped by his strength and what she saw as her mental weakness.

‘I want you … you want me, moraki mou. It’s that basic,’ Alexius growled against her swollen mouth. ‘Come home with me now.’

‘No way. We’re over—you made that clear.’

‘I wasn’t thinking clearly,’ Alexius grated. ‘You took me by surprise and then you flounced off before I could do anything about it!’

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‘Put me down!’ Rosie shouted at him, desperate to break free of her terrifying longing to cling to him. ‘I left you a week ago and you’ve done nothing … you didn’t even phone!’

Alexius stared down at her, his light eyes reflective. ‘I thought you would phone me.’

It was true: he had thought that after a little breathing space she would phone him. She was such a chatterbox, always had a thousand things she wanted to share with him. He had assumed she would not be able to resist the temptation to speak to him and he had resented her silence almost as much as her absence.

With a determined flex of her inner thigh muscles, Rosie contrived to loosen his hold and shimmy down the length of him, although not without discovering the potent thrust of his arousal and gritting her teeth on the thought that only sex could motivate Alexius to such a demonstration. She broke away from him with enraged green eyes. ‘How dare you ask me to come home with you?’

‘That’s where you belong—in my home with me,’ Alexius informed her.

‘You dumped me!’ Rosie shrieked at him again.

Alexius winced at her shrillness. ‘I want you back. Back in my home, back in my bed, back with me.’

‘It’s not going to happen!’ Rosie raked back at him in a blazing temper as she stalked to the door and wrenched it open. ‘You had your chance and you blew it!’

Alexius was indignant. He was willing to make amends, willing to talk, but he was not about to grovel for a hearing. Yes, he had made mistakes but so had she.

As the lift doors opened her grandfather stepped out. ‘Did you talk to Alexius?’ he pressed.

‘So, you did set us up?’ Rosie queried.

‘Anything was preferable to watching the two of you acting like sulking teenagers on opposite sides of the room,’ Socrates admitted.