Page 15 of Pregnant Behind the Veil (Brides for Greek Brothers #3)

Reluctantly, I stand back and hold the door open, closing it quietly behind him.

When Michail gave me a tour of the plane, I thought this bedroom was huge.

The same white walls as the main cabin, the space dominated by a king-size bed arranged with a mound of pillows and a dove gray silk comforter.

A mini bar sits in one corner and the plane equivalent of a cozy armchair in the other.

But as I turn to face my husband, the room shrinks. His scent curls around me, woodsy and tempting.

“Explain.”

“Yes, I ordered the nursery furniture without talking to you.”

Disappointment tightens my throat. “Why?”

“Partially because I wanted to surprise you.” The tendons in his neck tighten. “And because I’m used to making decisions on my own.”

I sigh and run a hand through my hair. “You can’t just make decisions for me. If this is going to be a co-parenting relationship, a partnership, you have to talk to me. You also have to accept you can’t control everything so that it meets what you want. That’s what…”

My voice trails off, but it’s too late. A shadow drops over his face.

“What were you going to say, Alessandra?” His voice is a low growl.

My stomach rolls. “Nothing.”

“No, please. Enlighten me.” He crosses his arms over his chest, his muscles straining against his shirtsleeves. “That’s what Lucifer used to do?”

There’s no getting around this. “Yes, my mind went there. I’m sorry.”

“Nice to know what you truly think of me, Mrs. Sullivan.”

“Oh, don’t you even try to play that card,” I snap. “Not after the way you treated me for weeks.”

His chin comes up. “I explained that.”

“Yeah, explained but didn’t apologize! Yet I have gone along with everything you’ve asked. I’ve accepted help, even though that’s hard for me. You’ve taken every capitulation, and now you’re trying to force even more down my throat without talking to me about it!”

“I’m not forcing anything on you,” he ground out. “Donate the money if it bothers you so much. Send the furniture back. I’m not threatening you with it.”

How did I think that things had improved the last couple of days? We were just coasting on the residual happiness left over from our wedding ceremony. We are two very different people, and he will never understand me.

“Do you know what happens when you surrender your independence? When you trust someone else? When a man accidentally gets you pregnant and encourages you to drop out of college to raise the baby, but then decides a couple years later he needs time to ‘find himself’? Or when your parents suddenly decide that you’re not good enough, that nothing you ever do will be good enough, and their handouts come with conditions designed to make you feel as small as possible?

I saw my mother suffer that. It wasn’t until she took a stand and started relying on herself that she was happy.

The people who should have loved her and held her up instead crushed her under the weight of unrealistic expectations. ”

My voice trembles but I don’t back down.

“Two weeks ago, you thought that I was only out for your money. And now, after you’ve finally accepted you were wrong, all you want to do is push your wealth on me to satisfy your own need to control.”

A vein pounds his neck. “You see this as me trying to control you. I don’t know what your mother went through.

But I can tell you what mine went through.

How one of her biggest regrets was missing out on almost all of my early years because she was working two, sometimes three jobs, trying to keep us in a mold-infested apartment on the wrong side of the tracks. ”

My heart pitches down to somewhere around my knees.

“Michail…”

“And instead of making her life easier, I made it harder because I wanted a dad who kept promising to come visit but never showed. Instead of appreciating the parent I had, I got into fights and stirred up trouble, adding more stress on her shoulders.” He pauses, his hands clenching into fists, as if he can hardly bear to think of the past. “Yes, two weeks ago I was wary of your motives. But things have changed. If wanting to provide a better life for the mother of my child so she doesn’t have to suffer the same hardships my mother did makes me controlling, so be it. ”

I start to retort. My eyes drop down to his lips. The angry charge between us shifts, heightens. Electricity crackles across my skin as I remember the way those lips felt on mine, on my neck, my breasts, lower still.

I swallow hard. I don’t want to look at his eyes. I don’t know what I’m more terrified of: that I won’t see the same need, the same desire, or that I will.

His fingers settle on my wrist. Just a graze of his fingertips, but it might as well be a live wire with the effect it has on me. My heart shoots into my throat as my breathing quickens. Slowly, he trails his hand up my arm, leaving behind a burning trail of sensation.

His hand moves to my face, deliberate, slow. Giving me time, I realize with a sudden clench of my heart, to pull away. To stop him. And I should. I really should.

But I don’t want to.

He cups my face. Tilts my head up. I lean forward and our lips meet.

Passion explodes. The first touch of his mouth on mine makes me moan. I lock my arms around his neck and press myself against him. Wanton, wild. Everything I’m not, but that he brings out in me.

He groans. The sound fills me with feminine power, as does the hard length pressed against me.

Emboldened, I slide one hand up his neck and into his thick hair.

His hands clamp down on my hips and pull me tightly against him.

He slides a tongue along the seam of my lips.

I don’t even hesitate opening for him, savoring the intimacy.

One hand slides up, grazes the side of my breast. My hips rock against him as need becomes a physical ache inside me. I want him, I need him, need him to take me inside and strip us both naked as he—

His other hand shifts, grazes the swell of my stomach. He freezes.

Reality crashes in. I let go and step back so quickly it’s a miracle I don’t trip and fall.

We stand there, breathing ragged, chests rising and falling. The breeze intensifies, cool against my heated skin.

I stare at him. His blue eyes are sharp, his jaw tight. His hands are clenched into fists at his sides.

I want him. I want him so bad it hurts. But I learned the hard way watching my father walk away from my mother after their last fight, hearing her cry at night those first couple of years as she tried to figure out how to pull us out of the poverty he’d left us in, that it’s often the people we care for the most who have the power to destroy us.

“I’m not spending that money.” I raise my chin. “And no more kissing.”

I wait for… I’m not sure what. Anger, persuasion, anything but the steady gaze fixed on my face.

“Is that what you want?”

No. “Yes.”

He watches me for another heartbeat. Eyes on mine, searching, penetrating. Then he nods. Walks past me. A moment later I hear the door open, then close again with a soft click.

I suck in a shuddering breath as I sink back down onto the bed. I have nothing to feel guilty about. Nothing. The kiss was amazing. Incredible. Just as potent as the kisses we shared back in Santorini, but with a sensual knowing we didn’t have before.

But kissing means nothing without trust.