His Contract Christmas Bride / Confessions Of A Pregnant Cinderella. Эбби Грин
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not quite believing what he’d just told her. ‘So let me get this straight. You thought you’d go ahead with some modern-day enactment of Cinderella’s slipper and I’m supposed to coo with delight in response?’
‘I certainly had hoped for something a little more enthusiastic than your current reaction,’ he offered drily.
‘Well, please don’t bother in future. Like I said, I’m not the biggest fan of surprises. In fact, don’t bother with—’
But her sentence was destined never to be completed because Drakon had pulled her into his arms and was kissing her. Kissing her so thoroughly that all the breath left her lungs. And Lucy let him. No, that wasn’t quite true. She actively encouraged him. Was it lack of oxygen which made her so instantly yielding? Which made her gasp out a note of breathless approval as his mouth roved hungrily over hers, before darting her tongue into his mouth as if it were a weapon? Or was it simply that she was so incensed by what he’d done—by his arrogance and control—that she felt as if she’d been taken over by a different kind of desire? So that very quickly the kiss became something it had never been on Prasinisos. This wasn’t soft and searching but punishing, and hard. It was driven by frustration—that he had been so high-handed about overhauling her appearance and given someone she’d never met carte blanche to play such a key role in changing it. But there was physical frustration, too, gnawing away inside her like some alien creature she had no idea how to handle. She wondered if sex would release some of the tight frustration which was coiling inside her like a compressed spring. Whether now was the time to tell him she didn’t want his partner buying her clothes for her. That she wasn’t just some kind of doll who could be dressed up for his approval before she was permitted to be seen in public.
‘I don’t know why we’re fighting about clothes, Lucy,’ he said unevenly as they broke away to drag oxygen into their air-starved lungs. ‘Since my expressed preference is to see you not wearing anything at all.’
And wasn’t it pathetic how thrilled she was to hear that husky compliment? As if she was only just beginning to realise that, despite her somewhat homely appearance and complete lack of fashion sense, Drakon Konstantinou really did fancy her. But that was one of the reasons she was here, Lucy reminded herself. Her midwifery training wouldn’t mean a thing without the white-hot chemistry which seemed to combust whenever they touched.
She felt blindsided by the sense of something which, having been awoken, now needed urgently to be fed. Was that why she let him kiss her again and to deepen it with provocative intimacy, so that she moaned softly into his mouth? And something about that moan made him lever her up against the wall, his face dark and inscrutable as he looked down at her. She could sense the tension which was making his powerful body seem as tight as a strung bow and, where they were touching, her skin felt as if it were on fire.
His fingers were unbuttoning her grey coat and unashamedly roving beneath her sweater and when he jutted his hips forward like that, she could feel the hard column of his erection pressing against her. Beneath her thick denim jeans the molten slick of desire made itself known and Lucy longed for him to touch her there. His fingers were whispering over the cool skin of her torso, moving down towards the top button of her jeans, and she shivered as he popped it open then slid her zip down with a dexterity which suggested he must have undressed millions of women before.
But suddenly Lucy saw herself as an outside observer might see her—all windswept and rumpled with the Greek tycoon’s fingers burrowing their way inexorably towards her panties. Why, she hadn’t even taken her coat off! She’d only been in his apartment for ten minutes and all they’d done was to fight and kiss and now he was about to take it one step further. If she didn’t put a halt to this then before she knew it, she would be pressed up against that wall with Drakon thrusting deep inside her.
She pressed her hand against his chest, feeling the powerful pound of his heart beneath her palm. ‘We need to stop this right now.’
‘Oh, Lucy. That’s not the message I was getting a moment ago,’ he drawled.
Well, it’s the m-message you’re getting now,’ she said, unable to iron the tremble from her voice. ‘I need to freshen up before Sofia comes back with the baby and to...’
‘To what?’ he questioned mockingly as her words tailed off.
Lips pressed together, she gave him a determined smile. ‘To unpack my case and settle in. And to be honest, Drakon...’ She hesitated. ‘I think you’re right about having separate rooms, but let’s do it properly, shall we—with no sneaking around the corridors at midnight? Maybe we should wait until we’re married until we have...’’
‘Sex?’ he supplied, his eyebrows arching in disbelief. ‘Is that what you’re trying to say?’
She could feel hot colour flooding her cheeks and, although she realised she could be accused of having double standards, wasn’t it better this way? Because what if her earlier doubts came true and she drove him crazy—wouldn’t it be easier to draw a line under the whole thing if they hadn’t become lovers? Easier to walk away if she hadn’t had a second distracting taste of physical intimacy? And it would do Drakon good to demonstrate that he wasn’t the one making all the rules, and she wasn’t going to be totally submissive. To show him that she might have agreed to this marriage of convenience but that didn’t make her into some sort of puppet.
‘That’s exactly what I’m trying to say,’ she agreed primly.
Still he waited, as if she was going to suddenly turn around and tell him she was joking—as if no woman in her right mind would refuse the opportunity to fall into bed with him at the earliest opportunity.
And Lucy wouldn’t have been human if she hadn’t enjoyed the brief look of disbelief which flashed from Drakon’s ebony eyes when he realised she meant every word she said.
LUCY AWOKE TO the sound of a baby’s cry and instinct made her sit bolt upright in bed, her heart clenching with painful recognition. Hunger, she thought, as she listened some more. Funny how you could still recognise the different nuances of an infant’s cry even though it had been so long since that sound had been part of her daily routine.
Heavy-eyed after a restless night, she got out of bed and it took a few seconds for her befuddled brain to realise she wasn’t tucked up in her cosy riverside cottage, but in the fanciest bedroom she’d ever seen. Her new home. The vast Mayfair apartment where she would live as wife to one of the world’s most powerful men. Above her head, a chandelier glittered like a shoal of falling diamonds and silk rugs lay strewn over a pale wooden floor, which felt deliciously silky against her bare feet. Grabbing her dressing gown, she knotted it tightly around her waist. It was actually her old dressing gown which she’d brought with her from home because it seemed that her luxury replacement wardrobe didn’t cater for a sensible garment you could throw on first thing in the morning to cover up your pyjamas and feed a baby in. Presumably because once she was married she would no longer be wearing pyjamas. Running her fingers through her hair to tame its tousled wildness, she set off towards the nursery.
The crying had stopped by the time Lucy got there and she was greeted by a scene of perfect domesticity. Sofia was sitting on a yellow sofa giving Xander a bottle while soft nursery rhymes played gently in the background. It felt a little strange for Lucy to be standing in her nightclothes in front of someone she’d only met a couple of times but the middle-aged nanny merely looked up and gave her a friendly smile as she entered the room.
‘Good morning, Lucy,’ she said. ‘Did you sleep well?’
‘Very well, thank you,’ said Lucy with more politeness than truth—because nothing was more boring than hearing someone relate the story of what a bad night they’d had. She certainly didn’t want Sofia quizzing her about the reasons for her restlessness. Reason, she corrected herself silently. One reason alone—all six feet