Page 19 of The Maid's Pregnancy Bombshell

‘Make yourself comfortable,’ he advised, seemingly unaware that his very presence ensured that she could not relax.

Yet she still watched him while he poured the drinks. He was breathtakingly eye-catching in that instant, his carved, classic features illuminated by the sunlight flooding through the windows. He was exquisite, bronzed and extravagantly handsome in his perfection, every line of his lean, powerful body balanced and fluid and outlined by his designer tailoring. Heat simmered low in her body and she looked away again hurriedly.

Ares watched Alana from below black lashes that carefully cloaked his expression.Theos, he was burning up for the sweet release of her hot, tight body. There she was, minimally clad, lush breasts barely contained by a crop top, pointed nipples on view and then those pants, hiding nothing, not the bouncy full swell of her pert derrière or the faint but definable cleft of her sex.

The pulse at his groin was positively painful. Just looking at her roused the most primitive instincts and the most powerful memories but he was not planning to surrender to those urges again, he reminded himself fiercely. He was going to do what he should have done in the first place: explain to her why there could never be anything deeper between them. Possibly she didn’t even need that explanation, possibly she had already moved on, labelling their brief encounter in Abu Dhabi a mistake just as he had. Surprisingly, that suspicion was not as welcome to him as he had believed it would be.

Alana carried her drink into the dining room, almost bemused to find two places set close together at the vast polished table where she normally sat in solitary state. ‘Why do you have this house when you hardly use it?’ she asked as he strode up to join her.

‘I used it as a conference centre before I bought the London house.’

‘You should use it for relaxing at weekends,’ Alana told him.

Ares collided with misty green eyes, reading the softness there and retreating from it in haste because it made him uncomfortable. He was very still while plates were slid in front of them and then he lifted his bright head and said wryly, ‘I don’t really do weekends or relaxation.’

‘That’s not healthy,’ she pronounced, embarking on the colourful chicken salad with its tangy dressing. ‘You need downtime like everyone else.’

Ares sipped his wine and set the glass back down again with the hint of a crack. ‘You asked me a question that I chose not to answer in Abu Dhabi. You asked mewhyI thought we were a bad combination.’

Alana stiffened defensively. ‘Those weren’t the words I used.’

Ares lifted and dropped a broad shoulder in dismissal of that protest. ‘What I meant was that I couldn’t offer you what you would want and expect,’ he intoned flatly. ‘I don’t do attachments. I’m not from a normal background.’

Alana’s chin came up. ‘I don’t think that sort of a thing matters.’

‘Let me try to explain. My father impregnated my mother when she was only eighteen. He didn’t support her and she ended up on the streets. She was a drug addict and eventually she moved into a brothel,’ he explained grimly. ‘I spent my formative years in a cathouse. My mother abandoned me there when I was four. She took off with one of her customers and I never saw her again because she died a few years later in a car crash. Her co-workers in the house looked after me for six years until the authorities learned of my existence and intervened...’

Alana stared back at him, unable to hide her shock at those impassive revelations. He had spent his early years in a place where women, including his mother, sold sex to survive? His mother had then deserted him? She was appalled and she lost colour, her tummy giving a queasy lurch at the image of any child being subjected to the damage of such an environment.

‘As a result of that background, sex for me is a transactional exchange bereft of finer feelings...and it could never be anything else.’

‘You mean...’ Alana hesitated in confusion. ‘You mean, you...you go to hookers for—?’

Ares shot her a dark look. ‘Never!’ he rebutted with a fierce frown. ‘I would never choose tobewith a sex worker. I saw too much of that lifestyle growing up and I would never take advantage of such women. But in recent years I did choose to keep a mistress solely for sex. She would fly out and join me wherever I was when I wanted her and in return I supported her financially. It was a discreet arrangement and caused nobody any harm. There is, however, no current mistress in my life.’

A combustible surge of reaction overtook Alana. She was relieved that there was no other woman in his bed but saddened by the dispassionate choices he had made. ‘That seems a very cold, emotionless way to live.’

‘It was practical. It would not be practical for me to be with you. I can’t give you what you would want from me—’

‘You don’t know what I want,’ Alana whispered shakily. ‘Maybe I simply want tobewith you.’

‘A romantic wish I have no doubt died the moment I told you about my disgustingly sordid background,’ Ares assumed with a sort of grim satisfaction that chilled her.

‘No...’ Alana framed slowly. ‘Your background has no influence at all on how I feel about you. I am sad and hurt on your behalf that you should have endured such a terrible childhood, but it doesn’t change anything for me. You rose above all that and became who you are today. That is even more impressive after such a humble and challenging start in life.’

Colliding with the surprisingly shining eyes now locked to him, Ares flinched and thrust his empty plate away to spring upright. ‘You can’t mean that—’

Alana stood up as well, pretty colour flooding her cheeks. ‘I meant every word of it. I don’t look at the world through rose-tinted glasses, Ares. But I do try not to judge other people because I’m not perfect either and neither is my background or my parentage.’

Ares drew close, staring down at her with intent black-as-night eyes that glittered. ‘You’re full of idealism and I’m trying not to hurt you.’

‘Let me worry about me being hurt,’ she advised breathlessly.

‘Without heels, you’re too small to talk to standing up,’ Ares censured, startling her as he planted big hands to her hips and lifted her up to set her on the table, nudging her knees apart to stand between her thighs.

Her breath feathered in her throat, her entire body suddenly on alert at the intimacy of his stance. The intangible scent of him that close stole into her nostrils, warm and masculine and unbearably familiar, starting up a sensual hum between her legs and a terrifying craving.

Looking into those bright eyes, Ares ran a knuckle lightly across her delicate collarbone. He saw the pulse flickering like crazy there and it lit a roaring fire of desire inside him that he could not suppress.

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