“Alexander,” I say quietly.
“Yes?”
“Can we go somewhere else, maybe? Not home, though. I don’t mean that. Just a hotel or something?”
He stands up and whisks me to my feet, pulling me into an embrace that shields me from the past and the rest of the world. As he kisses me, it’s just us. The heat envelops all of me, dancing across my cheeks.
“When I claim you,” he whispers in my ear, kissing between the words, “you’ll know that nobody is ever going to hurt you again. They’ll have to get through me. And that’s never going to happen. Forget about stupid boys like Dirk. He is not worth your … your toenail.”
I giggle, nudging him. “My toenail isn’t worth anything, huh?”
“I love your sass,” he growls, biting my neck lightly. “I can’t wait any longer. Come with me, Samantha. I’m going to book the best suite this city has to offer…a suite to match the woman of my most alluring fantasies.”
Chapter Nine
Alexander
The things that Samantha doesn’t do make her just as attractive to me as the things she does. I know that if I brought another woman here, she’d immediately start assessing the place, looking at the large suite and all its billionaire furnishings with a gold-digger’s eyes, wondering how much she could wring from me in the future.
But my Samantha just strolls into the room, her hips swaying like the magnetic motions of calming waves, and turns to me with a crimson sheen to her cheeks. “Wow, this is awesome.”
I laugh quietly. It’s difficult to summon a full-bellied laughter when my manhood is sending impossible-to-ignore signals all throughout my body. I stalk across the room and stop mere inches from her.
Like a hunter attuned to all the minor changes in its prey, I can read Samantha. I know my woman better than anybody ever has or will, and I can see the goosebumps pricking her skin.
“It’s too damn tempting to possess you,” I growl. “If we were living in certain eras in history, epic poems would be written about you. I’d lead men to war for you, Samantha. And I’d fight my way through battlefields of a hundred men just to take what’s mine, by right, your maidenhead.”
She shivers. “Oh, God.”
I step forward and lightly run my hand up her arm. “If this was Ancient Rome, I’d volunteer to be thrown into the gladiatorial pit. I’d fight a hundred men and a hundred beasts, all the while knowing it was for you. I’d shed their blood so that I could taste your precious offering…”
I slide my hand down her body, the body I wouldn’t change in any way…except to add a bump to her belly.
“I’m going to fuck our offspring into your wetness,” I whisper, leaning close. The widening of her eyes, the prey-like submissiveness of her gaze, tells me she wants it just as bad as I do. She’s just as lost as I am. “And when I claim you, you’ll know you’re mine—”
“Forever,” she sighs. “I want that, too. Alexander. My gladiator. I want that more than anything.”
Chapter Ten
Samantha
He ducks his head and wraps his arms around my hips, throwing me over his shoulder. Nobody has ever handled me like this before. In high school, I’d watch skinnier girls being play-wrestled by their boyfriends, and wonder what it would feel like to be lifted as though I weigh nothing.
Well, now I know.
It makes me feel wonderful.
He carries me into the bedroom, with its four poster bed and vanilla scented candles making the room glow majestically.
“I called ahead,” he says, placing me on the edge of the bed. “My queen deserves the best. Always. Silk sheets. The finest food society has to offer. And a first time she will never forget…”
I lie back, nervous. Even now, knowing that he isn’t trying to trick me, it’s difficult to convince myself he’s not going to be disappointed with how I don’t immediately spring into action. I haven’t been schooled in all the various ways to please a man, and-
But there is no and.
Not now. Not with Alexander.
He crawls onto the bed like what he is, a hunter who has waited too long for his feast. The veins on his neck throb in his desire to ravish me. I leap up and find his lips, and we kiss like our lives depend on it, our tongues clashing and nerves buzzing with each stroking movement.
My body knows how to respond to the intimacy, even if my mind is nerve-wracked. I reach down and caress his manhood, fumbling with his belt and buttons. He pulls my dress and tugs at my underwear, until I’m naked. I’m so sensitive right now, even the fabric brushing my thighs makes me shiver.
His manhood springs free, a dollop of precome on the end. It slides down my thigh and then pauses near my sex, the giant head probing at my tight, virgin hole.