Page 17 of The Maid's Pregnancy Bombshell

‘That’s my line,’ he censured.

‘So far, the fun has all been mine,’ Alana pointed out.

Ares laughed, dark golden eyes smouldering. ‘I don’t have fun. I’m a very serious guy.’

She wanted to tell him that he wasn’t going to get away with being serious twenty-four-seven with her around, but she wasn’t yet sure that he would give her the chance tobewith him. It was like being on trial, she acknowledged nervously, waiting to see how he reacted to her, what he would want...perhaps, he wouldn’t want a repeat or anything else. After all, theirs was not a real marriage, she reminded herself, and it was on paper a marriage without a future.

But from that first kiss, Alana had been entrapped and she had turned off her critical thinking. Instead, she was taking a risk and Ares Sarris was very much an unknown quantity. He was so generous with everything but information. He didn’t tell her anything about himself, his life, his background, his feelings. All of it was a closed book and she hated that because she was frantic to know him better and learn exactly what drove him aside from an evident need to make mountains of money.

‘We’ve only begun,asteri mou,’ Ares husked, leaning over her, dark stubble accentuating his beautifully sculpted pink lips. His narrowed gaze, thickly lined with black lashes, was stunning that close, eyes burnished by every shade of gold just like that night by the lake.

Her heart skipped a beat and she lifted her head and found his mouth again for herself. He released her reddened lips and trailed his own down over her cheeks to her throat and she shivered with reaction, nerve endings awakening where she had not realised they existed.

‘I’m not expecting rainbows and kittens,’ Alana told him with innate practicality.

‘Is that supposed to encourage me to sink to the level of your low expectations?’ Ares enquired lazily as he lowered his lean hips, sliding between her thighs, and she felt him hard and ready at the heart of her. ‘That’s one challenge I won’t be accepting.’

The tender tissue at the heart of her was so wet, he slid against her and a ripple of arousal ran through her afresh. He tugged back her knees and settled her into a more favourable position, rocking over her, grinding down with his hips, stimulating her clitoris with every movement until the hunger began to heat and course through her veins again. He entered her slow and steady and she tipped back more as he spread her knees wider. As he pushed deeper, there was a slight burn that was bearable and then he glided out and into her again, pushing forward, punching through the barrier she had not even guessed still existed. The sharp pain made her rise up and cry out, gritting her teeth hastily on any further noise, chagrin filling her as Ares stilled.

‘I hurt you... I’m sorry.’ He murmured something in Greek and brushed his lips across her brow in a surprisingly tender gesture .

Well, not so much a fantasy woman any more,’ Alana reflected ruefully as he stilled. ‘Don’t stop,’ she urged unevenly. ‘It’s not hurting now.’

And in a smooth shift of his lean hips he withdrew and then drove into her again and a jolting thrill gripped her, the pleasure receptors at her core reacting to that raw invasion. Her hands rubbed across his strong shoulders and stroked down his smooth, muscular back to grip him. Now she was finding out what sex was all about, not those first moments after all but much more was to be discovered in what followed. His every powerful thrust made her clench her inner muscles round him and the friction sent her excitement racing up the scale. Heart thundering in her ears, she gave herself up to the intoxication, rising up against him, frantic for his driving pace to continue and when she reached the ultimate peak and convulsed again in what felt like a million glittery pieces of drowning pleasure, she was shaken but satisfied as he too shuddered with completion.

Happy, she wrapped round Ares like an octopus.

‘I love being close to you like this,’ she whispered.

It had been years since anyone had dared to touch Ares without permission, even in bed. He didn’t cuddle, he didn’t snuggle. Alana’s easy affection cut through the drugging glaze of his physical satisfaction. It reminded him that she had none of his emotional damage, that she waswholeand that he had nothing whatsoever to offer such a woman. She would want love and affection and a family and, not only was he not equipped to meet such needs, but he also knew that he would never seek out such binding ties. In that acceptance of his fatal flaws, Ares dropped instantly from what felt dimly like the heights of some unnamed emotion to rock-bottom reality and, a split second later, he pulled free of Alana and sprang out of the bed.

From the doorway, he looked back at her and momentarily stilled, his powerful bronzed body taut. ‘This was wrong forbothof us,’ he told her grimly. ‘I’ll leave early in the morning and you’ll stay for the rest of the week as planned. Next week you’ll move into Templegreen, my country house in Surrey.’

‘I don’t understandwhyit’s wrong,’ she declared defiantly.

‘I won’t answer that,’ Ares countered tautly.

Alana didn’t say anything more. In that moment there didn’t seem anything to say that wouldn’t invite an even greater humiliation. As the door thudded closed, she was pale as death and chilled to the marrow. She huddled into the cocoon of the sheet and shivered, no longer feeling brave, bright and happy. He had rejected her, indisputably rejected her. There would be no coming back from that. He didn’t want what she had to offer and really, when all was said and done, what did she have to offer a male as sophisticated and spoilt for choice as Ares Sarris? It wasn’t as though the fact that they were married counted in the balance because Ares had never intended it to be a real marriage. And obviously in the seductress stakes she had struck out badly as well.

She wanted to call her sister and spill her guts in the hope that that outlet would take away some of the anguish building inside her. But some stuff, she acknowledged heavily, wasn’t for sharing. She couldn’t empty her heart to her sister when Enzo and Skye knew Ares and Enzo did business with him. That wouldn’t be fair to Ares when she had been a fully participating partner in everything that had happened between them. Never mind that stupid contract that had already been broken by their intimacy, but shehadpromised not to talk about him,hadagreed to protect his privacy. And privacy meant more to Ares than to most men. He didn’t deserve a punishment for the mistake of having had sex with her, did he?

He was entitled to have sex with a consenting partner and then walk away afterwards if he chose to do so. It was a free world...for Ares, if not for her. That meant that she wasn’t entitled to chain him up in a dungeon somewhere and torture him until he agreed to be hers andonlyhers. They were only husband and wife on paper and she didn’t have any of the rights of a wife.

What Ares did next was none of her business. He could be with other women if he chose to be with other women. He didn’t have to be faithful to her, althoughshehad to be faithful to him. Yes, she had read those parts of that iniquitous contract and appreciated that, while he remained essentially free, she remained bound to consider appearances and the onus was on her to conduct herself as the wife of Ares Sarris should at all times. And that meant she was not to do anything that might attract publicity or be seen out in public in the company of other men. Not that anyone but her immediate family and his lawyers even knew that they were married as yet, but she presumed that over time their marriage would become more widely known.

On the score of her behaviour, however, Ares had already contrived to turn her right off the prospect of any sort of involvement with a man. Just then, Alana felt horribly responsible for her own downfall.Shehad wanted Ares from the very first moment she saw him. Admittedly, that had not been why she’d offered to be his fake wife. She had done that because she was in debt and saw no reasonable way of clearing that debt unless she chose to hurt her sister by telling her the unlovely truth about the stepfather she had adored. Whichever way she looked at the current situation, it made her feel guilty. After all, she had married Ares, secretly armed with foolish hopes and dreams that she had next to no chance of fulfilling.

Before they had had actual sex, he had attempted to back off and she had argued him out of that decision, insanely convinced that intimacy would bring down his barriers and give her a chance with him. But all she seemed to have achieved was that Ares had built his walls even higher and was now asserting that anything between them was a mistake. It might not have been a mistake for her but clearly it was for Ares. And that was life, she told herself with helpless self-loathing. You didn’t always get what you wanted and people didn’t always react as you wished. She had made her best effort and lost. He didn’t want her. He was walking away untouched while she felt torn apart and desperately hurt.

And what were these feelings that he had thrown back in her face? No, she wasn’t travelling any further down the road of regret. She had had a one-night stand and she had always wanted more for herself, had always hoped that when she finally had sex, it would be within a meaningful relationship. The last laugh was on her for being as naïve as to believe that she could share anything meaningful with Ares Sarris.

At least she hadn’t run the risk of getting pregnant, she consoled herself, thinking of the contraceptive pill she had begun taking a couple of years earlier for her painful periods. Just at that point, she froze in dismay and jumped out of bed in haste to retrieve her handbag and check on her pills. When had she last taken one? It was an effort to concentrate and the answer was not reassuring. It had beenbeforethe wedding and she had taken none while she was ill, forgetting about them entirely. Even worse, she had changed handbags and come away without the packet.

Apprehension filled her. She assumed that Ares had taken precautions of his own and then she frowned because she couldn’t recall any evidence in that field. If they had both been careless, and she was challenged to believe thathewould have run that risk, where did that leave her? In a stupid panic of ever-increasing worries, she scolded herself. It was foolish to fret about what she couldn’t change.

But the damage had already been done. Blinking back stinging tears, Alana lay sleepless most of the night. She finally drifted off out of sheer exhaustion but only after she heard a helicopter arrive and then depart again. She knew then that she was now alone in the villa, aside from the staff.

CHAPTER SIX

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