“It isn’t about what we want, Alison. It’s about what’s right. What’s best for our child. You’ve already made so many decisions based on that. I know you love the baby already, that you were already prepared to make major changes in your life in order to offer him the very best you could give. Now the best has changed.”
It would be so much easier to refuse him if he were simply being an autocratic tyrant, if he were being demanding and arrogant and commanding and all those things she knew he was capable of being. But he wasn’t. He was appealing to her need to reason and plan and choose the best, most sensible way to do something. And he was winning.
He was right. The only reasons for her not to marry him were selfish. All of the reasons to marry him benefited their child. If she could see another way she would grab it.
“Okay,” she said slowly, feeling the words stick in her throat, “I’ll do it. I’ll marry you.”
A SENSE of triumph, along with a compressing sensation in his throat that felt suspiciously like the tightening of a noose, assaulted Maximo. It was necessary; the only thing that could be done. The only way for him to truly claim his child, make him his heir. And the only way to claim Alison.
A heavy pulse throbbed in his groin at the thought of claiming Alison in the most basic, elemental way. He wanted her with a kind of passionate ferocity that was foreign to him.
He would have wanted her no matter what, would have desired her had he passed her when she was walking down the street. But the intense, bone-deep need to take her, to enter her sweet body and join himself to her … that had to be connected to the pregnancy because it was outside anything in his experience. He’d experienced lust—the basest kind that had nothing to do with emotion—and he’d been in love. This didn’t resemble either experience.
He could satisfy his lust for her without marriage, but marriage was necessary for him to have the sort of relationship with his child that he wanted, that he craved. And it was the only way he could give his child everything he or she deserved.
“My acceptance isn’t without provisos,” she continued, her gorgeous face deathly serious. “I agree that marriage seems to be the best solution, but don’t expect that I’m just going to cave into all of your demands.”
“Even after knowing you for only a few days, I would never expect that,” he said drily.
She swung her legs over the side of the bed, a cracker still in her hand, and stood. She wobbled and he reached out for her, hooking his arm around her waist to steady her. His response was immediate and fierce, his blood rushing south, his body hardening instantly. He could feel her heart pounding hard against his chest. Her copper eyes were wide, her lips parted slightly. How easy it would be to dip his head and taste her again …
She straightened, much too quickly for his taste, and pulled away, adjusting the hem of her casual T-shirt, her mouth now pulled into a tight line.
“Thank you,” she said tartly, moving back from him again, creating even more distance between them. “I’m not feeling very well.”
“So you said. Is it like this every day?”
“Pretty much. It hit with a vengeance right when I entered my sixth week.”
“How far along are you?” He realized then that he’d never asked.
“Seven weeks.”
His stomach tightened. She was nearly two months along already. It wouldn’t even be nine months until he held his son or daughter in his arms.
She was still slender, her stomach flat. He had to wonder if her breasts had already changed or if this was her normal shape. He could easily imagine her filling out, her belly getting round. Some previously undiscovered, primitive part of him surged with pride at the thought.
Pride … and a hot tide of arousal. He’d never actually thought of pregnant women as sexy before, but he could very easily imagine running his hands over Alison’s bare, full stomach, feeling his child move beneath his hands.
“The baby’s due in October,” she said.
He’d heard of pregnant women glowing, but he’d never seen it before. Until now. Alison’s whole face was lit up, a sweet, secret smile curving her lips slightly. The absolute joy he could see shining from her eyes was staggering. And it reminded him again why marrying her, providing his child with both parents, was the absolute best choice. She would be a good mother; he was absolutely certain of that. Were he not, there was no way he would have considered marrying her. If he wasn’t sure of that he would have simply sought sole custody of their child, and he would have done it without compunction.
“You are excited about it,” he said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.
“Of course I am.”
Their eyes locked and held, and the tightening in his stomach intensified, radiating outward, desire gnawing at him with an urgency that was impossible to ignore.
“We’ll have to have the wedding soon. Before you start to show,” he said, his voice harsher than he’d intended.
She chewed her lip, her eyes betraying insecurity, fear, for the first time since he’d met her. Anger he’d seen, sadness, too, but never this bleak hopelessness. It made his chest ache as fiercely as the rest of his body.
“As I said, there are provisos to my agreement.”
“You did say. What you didn’t say was what those little stipulations were.”
“I don’t want our child in boarding school or anything like that. I want him or her to have as much of a normal upbringing as possible. No team of nannies, no catering to his every whim. I don’t want a spoiled child, either.”
“Do I seem like I was a spoiled child?”
“Yes.” She replied without missing a beat, and then continued. “I want to continue being active in advocating for children. Maybe organize a charity or something.”
“A wonderful idea. We have several organizations in place and having my princess closely involved would probably do wonders for them.”
“And I don’t … I want my own room.”
He inclined his head. “That is a common practice in royal marriages.”
“I don’t think you understand. I don’t want for us to … I don’t want to have a sexual relationship with you.”
Alison tried to clamp down the wild fluttering in her stomach. She knew Maximo wouldn’t be happy. Hadn’t he referenced their physical attraction as a reason for marriage? But this was what she needed in order to be able to accept his proposal, such as it was.
His kiss had decimated her control, had made her forget who she was, who he was, where she was. Going to bed with him … What would that do to her closely guarded self-control? The thought of surrendering herself like that, of stripping herself bare both physically and emotionally before another human being in that way, terrified her to her bones. Marriage she could deal with, but sexual intimacy was several steps beyond her.
She was attracted to him; unreasonably so. And that only made her more determined to maintain a healthy distance between them. If she didn’t want him like this, if being near him didn’t make her limbs weak and her pulse pound in her chest, at the apex of her thighs, if she didn’t get embarrassingly wet with wanting just from the brush of his mouth over hers, she might be able to simply deal with it. But it was the ease with which he robbed her of her common sense, her ability to think coherently, that had all of her internal alarms going off. He had too much power over her already, and throwing sex in with that big mess of emotions was a recipe for absolute disaster.
“That makes no sense. You can’t deny that