Page 113 of Ivory Oath

“Mikhail…” she says softly.

“I’ve been trying to figure out why you wouldn’t tell me and the only thing I can come up with is that it isn’t mine. Because if this was my baby,” I say, laying my hand over her stomach, “you would have told me when I had you bent over my desk.”

She reaches for my hand, but I jerk away. I pace across the kitchen floor, putting some distance between us before I turn into an animal and fuck her again.

“You would have told me when I was fucking you from behind, waxing poetic like a goddamn fool about how much I wanted to see you carrying my baby.”

“Mikhail.” She slides off the counter, her bare feet slapping against the tile. I wonder if she’s cold before I remember I shouldn’t care.

“If that was my baby,” I continue, “you would have told me when I stood here five fucking minutes ago and told you I wanted to fuck a baby into you.”

She seems to wilt when she realizes she missed her chance to come clean. “This isn’t how I wanted to tell you. I wanted to?—”

“You wanted to keep it a secret until you could come up with a cover story?” I finish for her. “Or was this some kink of yours? You’ve been with two of the three brothers, so it was well past time to bag the last?”

The words are barely out of my mouth when Viviana swings at me. I snatch her wrist out of the air and she quickly comes at me with the other one.

“You asshole!” She tries to kick me and I pin her ankle between my thighs. She hobbles on one leg, naked and furious. “Let me go!”

“You’re going to hurt yourself if you don’t calm down.”

“You can’t say something like that and then tell me to calm down!” she cries out. “If you really think so little of me that you think I’d sleep with your brother, then you shouldn’t care if I get hurt. So, let me go!”

I let her ankle drop, but just as she gets both feet under her, I spin her around and crush her to my chest. She wriggles her naked body against me, grumbling and fighting. “Let me go!”

“Why?” I spit, holding her tighter.

“So I can kick your smug, stubborn ass!”

“No.” My voice is low, the words whispered against the back of her ear. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

All at once, Viviana softens. She sinks against me, the fight suddenly gone. “I was going to, Mikhail. I was… waiting.”

Her body is warm and liquid in my arms. I was just inside of her, but I want it again. My cock twitches and I let her go. “Waiting for what? You had two positive tests! Were you going to wait until you had the baby just to be extra sure?”

“I didn’t want to get your hopes up again.” She snatches her jeans off the floor and pulls them on. The insides of her thighs are a mess and it satisfies some twisted part of me.

“I’m a grown man, Viviana. My hopes are fine.”

“I didn’t want to get my hopes up, either.”

“Who the fuck cares about Anatoly’s hopes, right? Makes perfect sense that you’d tell him before you’d tell your husband.”

She marches over to where her shirt is draped across the coffee pot and pulls it on. When she turns to face me, some of that fire is back. “You’ve made it impossible for me to leave this house on my own. I had to take someone with me to the clinic and since Anatoly is my friend—” She places special emphasis on the word. “—I asked him to go with me. He was pestering me to tell you from the moment we left the clinic.”

“He was right. You should have told me.”

He should have told me. And he’s going to have hell to pay for keeping it from me.

“Don’t be mad at him. I begged him not to tell you. I was just waiting for the blood test to confirm things. It’s more reliable. And since I had the false positive before, I didn’t want to—” She stops, her mouth turning down in a frown. “Wait… You said—Two positive tests? I only took one. I was waiting for the results for the other test.”

“Raoul threatened the doctor and saw your chart. Both tests were positive.”

She stares at me with wide eyes. I can practically see the news sinking in.

She’s pregnant.

She’s pregnant.

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