Page 75 of Scarlet Promise

“This is definitely more interesting than tips or gossip.Malyshka…I don’t have words. I’m so fucking happy. A baby? Us?”

She looks at me and suddenly smiles, a tear slipping free as she lets out a small sobbing sound.

“You’re happy?” I ask.

“Yes.”

I take a breath, because the last thing I want to do is push, yet it’s the very thing I need to do. “Are you? Are you sure? It’s okay not to be. It’s okay if you don’t know how to?—”

“Ilya.” She takes my face in her hands. “I am happy, very happy. And I know how I feel. I knew immediately. Did I take a walk and think about it and wait for guilt? Yes, but this is right. It’s you and me. No guilt, just…happy.”

That makes me exhale a silent breath of relief.

“This is the best news, Alina. The very best.”

A bark comes from behind me.

I grin. “You brought Albert?”

“Of course,” she says. “He went upstairs when we got here. I think he was napping on your bed.”

That sounds like Albert. Shy and sweet until he’s safe, and then the shyness melts away until he’s happy and confident. And he has no troubles claiming what’s his, like my bed. The little rascal.

His tail thumps my leg. He looks up at me like he’s smiling, doggy-style. “He’s happy, too.”

I kiss her again, taking my time, showing her how I feel as I stroke my tongue lightly over hers, teasing out the kiss to soft and tender, only to deepen it in a wave of love that wells up from within me.

I’m so fucking turned on by this. By her. But I also need to show her the love that’s so big inside me.

I slip a hand down between us over her flat belly to rest it there.

There’s a difference, I realize, between understanding the way biology works and the idea of what’s just happened. The fact that I did this. The fact that it cements her as mine. Like I’ve marked her in the most primal way possible.

“So you really are happy?” she asks breathlessly.

“Never been happier in my life. And that’s a high bar to beat when it comes to you, because,malyshka, you seem to occupy all my top happy moments.”

She blushes. “Oh, Ilya…”

“Our baby. Yours and mine, Alina. I fucking love the thought of having a baby with you. I can’t wait to watch you get big with our child. I can’t wait for you to?—”

“Eat for two and start waddling?”

“It’ll be the sexiest waddle in the world.”

She squeezes me tight.

“As amazing as it’s going to be to watch you grow, I’m fucking turned on by the thought my seed did this. That filling you made something that binds us together. My virility claimed you.”

The words are over the top, but I mean every one.

She blushes. “Yes. I know.” She pauses. “We made a baby, Ilya.”

I kiss her and lift her in my arms, taking her down the hall and up the stairs to my bedroom.

The manly sofa I’m not that fond of mocks me in the corner, and though I’ll move it, I decide now’s the perfect time to claim that as ours. I drop her on the leather and reach beneath her dress to pull her panties off and kiss my way up her thighs.

“Oh, Ilya,” she whispers. “I want…”