Page 27 of The Maid's Pregnancy Bombshell

The minute those frank words left her lips, Alana almost groaned in annoyance because she had not intended to be quite that blunt. No, she had started out planning to be subtle even though she wasn’t sure that subtle would get her anywhere with Ares.

In the darkness, a sudden surprised grin of unholy amusement flashed over Ares’s taut features as he lay with care on the far side of the huge bed.‘Deprived?’

Alana sniffed. ‘I’m sure I have marital rights too. How am I supposed to feel? You hand out such mixed messages. One minute you’re pouncing on me as if you haven’t had sex in months and the next I’m in the same bed and it’s like I have a physical force field around me.’

Ares was smiling. ‘I accept that that would be confusing. I didn’t quite see it that way though. I know you haven’t been well most days—’

‘How do you know that?’ Alana demanded, taken aback because she had believed she had successfully hidden her attacks of nausea from him.

‘Edith mentioned it. You should have,’ Ares added.

‘It’s no big deal. I’m pregnant. At this stage pregnant women sometimes throw up,’ Alana told him breezily, not wishing to sound like a sick person, an invalid.

‘You’re going through a lot right now. I didn’t want to make assumptions and I didn’t know what you wanted—’

‘You could have tried asking,’ Alana pointed out with audible impatience.

‘You make it sound so simple. It didn’t feel that simple to me.’

‘But that’s because that’s you. You make a four-course meal out of every potential problem even if there isn’t one that I can see!’ she complained with spirit.

Ares laughed out loud, wondering why he had never met anyone like Alana before, why no other woman had ever dared to challenge him with such fearless honesty. He rolled over the bed, across the boundary he had carefully respected, and closed both arms round her slight frame, pulling her close. He was as hot and hard as he had been every night sharing the same mattress. Even at a distance, scenting the lemony scent of her hair products, sensing her tiny movements only feet away and hearing her breathy little sounds, he had loathed the belief that he shouldn’t touch her any more.

You made me feel like a call girl, she had told him in Geneva. That statement had hit him hard and chastened him.

‘So, do I have marital rights?’ Alana teased.

‘Of course you do, but after what you said in Geneva—’

‘Let’s not get into that again. I was upset.’ Alana shifted into a state of quivering anticipation as he disposed of her pyjamas and brought his sensual mouth down hungrily on hers, sending every pulse in her body racing. Her fingers slid into his hair, possessiveness licking through her like a river of lava rushing along her veins, lighting her up inside with white-hot energy.

She couldn’t get enough of him and he didn’t seem able to get enough of her. It had only been a week since they had last been intimate but it felt like one heck of a lot longer. They came together in a tempest of passion as he sank into her with a hungry growl and the pace was frantic, feverish and spectacularly sexy. She reached a peak fast and her climax drove his, plunging them both into hot pleasure and gasping satisfaction.

‘I’m never going to move again,’ Ares swore raggedly into her tumbled hair.

‘That was incredible,’ she framed a little smugly, hands smoothing over any part of him she could reach.

‘It was...and now you have to sleep. You need your rest,’ he reminded her.

‘When you get bossy, I get irritated,’ she warned him.

‘Go to sleep,moraki mou. Tomorrow will be a long day.’

Alana drifted off in a blissful haze, everything right again in her world, and awakened to breakfast in bed without Ares, who would apparently meet her when he joined her flight in Paris.

Hours later, groomed within an inch of her life by the stylists who had arrived at her husband’s penthouse apartment in Athens, she walked down a red carpet into a blinding blitz of flashing cameras with one hand daintily anchored on his arm and an overwhelming sensation of being out of her depth. Yet she knew she looked her very best. The extravagant emerald and diamond necklace was round her throat, an embellishment to the designer white beaded sleeveless gown that swept down to her toes, highlighting her curves but essentially showing nothing. Ares had chosen it on that shopping trip before their wedding and it looked amazing, she had to give him that. He had added to her sophisticated appearance with a diamond tiara that very evening.

‘It belonged to my grandmother, Katarina Sarris,’ Ares had imparted, intervening to direct the stylist to put her hair up and personally anchoring that glittering crown of flashing diamonds into her upswept hair. ‘It’s a shame that she’s no longer alive to see my wife wearing it.’

And there had been an odd dark tone in his deep voice that persuaded hernotto ask for an explanation just at that moment when they had an audience.

‘Did your grandmother pass away recently?’ she asked instead in the limo on the way to the benefit.

‘Yes.’

‘I’m sorry—’

‘No need to be. I never met her.’ Expressionless, Ares glanced down at her. ‘Tomorrow, we’ll be visiting the ancestral home of the Sarris family. I’ve never set foot there before either...something to look forward to—’

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