But after their split, Dimitri discovers that Xandra Fortune is not who he thought she was - and she is also pregnant with his child. Now he has to track her down and claim his mistress as his wife!
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~Excerpt~
Alexandra nervously smoothed the kerchief style silk halter-top
over the non-existent bump where her baby rested under her heart.
The unaccustomed warmth of late spring had allowed her to wear
the sexy outfit to boost her flagging morale.
She turned to the side and surveyed herself in the full-length mirror in her
bedroom. Her willowy body encased in the
champagne silk hip-hugging pants and sexy halter looked no different than it had
when Dimitri had left for Greece.
The week old knowledge that she was pregnant with his child
might show in her wary hazel eyes, tinted sultry green by colored contacts, but
it had not yet affected the shape of her body.
She adjusted the gold chain belt resting low on her hips and the multiple thin
bangles she wore on her wrist tinkled like small bells as they clinked
together. Then in a nervous gesture, she pulled
another curling strand of her hair down to frame the soft angles of her
face.
Permed and professionally bleached so many shades, it looked
like rippling sunlight when she let it down, her hair was a Xandra trademark.
Only right now, she didn’t feel like Xandra Fortune, popular model and lover to
Greek Tycoon, Dimitrius Petronides. She felt
like Alexandra Dupree, daughter of an old New Orleans family, convent educated
and shocked to be unmarried and pregnant with her lover’s child.
"You look beautiful, pethi mou."
Alexandra spun away from the mirror. Dimitri stood in the door, masculine appreciation
burning in his startling blue eyes. For a
moment she forgot her condition. Forgot the
many truths she needed to tell him. Forgot her
fears. Forgot everything but how much she had
missed this man over the past three weeks.
She flew across the room and threw herself against his
chest. "Mon cher, I have counted
the minutes since you left!"
Strong arms locked around her in an almost convulsive movement
while his body remained strangely stiff. "It
has only been a month and you have been busy with work. You cannot have missed me that much."
His words reminded her how he had resented her refusal to quit
modeling when they had become lovers, but she had not wanted to be any man’s
kept mistress. Nor had she had the option of
quitting her job. She needed the money she made
to support the family he knew nothing about.
"You are wrong. Nothing can
keep me so occupied I do not notice your absence. A day. A week. A month. I grieve
them all." She grimaced inwardly at her blatant
vulnerability. Where had her sophisticated cool
gone, the career model façade that had initially drawn Dimitri to her?
The first crack had appeared when he’d told her he was going to
be in Greece longer than anticipated and she’d cried. After two-and-a-half weeks of morning sickness, a
positive pregnancy test and her mother’s horrified reaction to the news, the
Xandra Fortune persona was in definite risk of extinction.
***
Dimitri tried to hold onto his self-control, not an easy
thing around Xandra. And this was Xandra as
he’d never seen her. Clingy. Almost vulnerable, but he knew that could not be
true. They had become lovers a year ago and
although she shared her body with a generosity that moved him, she kept her
heart and parts of her life hidden from him.
Their relationship was modern and free of long term commitment,
something she’d made it clear by her actions she did not expect from him.
She pressed her body to his in blatant invitation and he
laughed. "You mean you have grieved my absence
from your bed, do you not?"
That was the only place he was convinced she need him. She wouldn’t let him support her, making it obvious
she would rather spend time away from him than give up any part of her
career. None of this, however, made it easier
to say what needed to be said. In fact, he was
sure it would be harder for him to say the words than for her to hear them. His sophisticated lover would not appreciate an
drawn out, or emotional good-bye any more than he would.
She shook her head, stretching up to link her hands behind his
neck and brushed the hair at his nape. "I
missed you, Dimitri. There was no joy in
cooking for myself alone, no pleasure in watching the French Open without you to
mutter when your favorite double-faulted on game point."
He frowned, remembering the play. She smiled at him with a look that spelled his doom
if he didn’t get his news out quickly. It had
already wrought an instant response in his body. "I have news I must tell you."
Her arms went stiff in reaction to the seriousness of his
tone. "Can it not wait, mon
cher?"
He reached behind his neck to remove her hands, but she locked
her fingers with surprising force.
He clasped her wrists. "We must
talk now."
***
Alexandra did not want to talk.
She was not ready to share her news. He’d
seduced her from the beginning. She’d given him
her heart, her body and her fidelity, as committed to him as any wife could
be. Only she wasn’t his wife and she didn’t
know how he’d respond to his lover getting pregnant.
Fear more than desire prompted her hips to grind against
him. "No." She
kissed his chin, tasting the skin and letting her body absorb the return of its
other half. "No talk." She brushed her unfettered breasts behind her thin
top back and forth across the crisp white silk of his shirt. "First, this."
"Xandra, no." He pulled her
hands away from his neck, but made the mistake of letting them go.
She tunneled under his jacket and pushed it off his
shoulders. "Dimitri, yes."
He glared at her, but he did not stop her from pushing his suit
coat to a pile of expensive Italian designer fabric on the floor. She smiled in approval. "I want you, Dimitri. We can talk later."
She needed the affirmation that they were two halves of the same
whole before she could tell him the truth about the baby she carried and equally
as terrifying, the truth about who and what she was.
He grabbed her round the waist and lifted her until her mouth
was even with his own. "Heaven help me, I want
you too."
There was something about the angry tone in his voice she did
not understand, but she could not focus on it for long, not with his warm lips
closing over her own in overwhelming passion.
She tore at his tie while he made quick work of the two hooks
holding her top together. He helped her with
the buttons on his shirt. The two garments fell
to the thick pile carpet together and his lips never separated from hers. He pulled her flush against his body and the naked
flesh of her already aroused nipples brushed the heat of his muscular chest.
She shivered in reaction while he groaned.
"We should not be doing this."
The words registered only subliminally, planting a question as
to why they should be said, but she could not consciously respond to them. She was too overwhelmed by the feel of his flesh
against her own for the first time in over a month. He seemed similarly affected as his arms tightened
around her until she could barely take a breath.
Seconds later they lay entwined on the bed, the rest of their
clothes discarded, hungry hands touching intimate places, mouths devouring one
another. They climbed to the heights together
with a speed they never had before. When they
tumbled into starbursts and oblivion, masculine shouts mingled with her own
cries of pleasure.
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