Chapter Seven
Maddie couldn’t quite decide if she liked having Alex around or not. He was such an odd sort of man. She felt bizarrely comfortable around him, and yet his exterior shell was almost impossible to crack. She wondered if it was the whole royalty thing. Maybe he was just wired differently. He was certainly formal enough to be royalty. The guy was practically buried in protocol.
She noted the way he sat on her overstuffed chair with his back ramrod straight. “Do you ever relax?”
“Of course.”
“When?” she shot back. He looked at her as though he wanted to answer, but couldn’t. It was sort of sad. She patted the sofa beside her. “Come on. Come closer. I promise I won’t bite.”
Now he seemed really stiff. He stood up. He moved around the coffee table. And then he sat primly on the edge of the cushion beside her feet. “There. Happy now?”
“Oh absolutely!” She didn’t bother to hide the sarcasm in her voice. “Buddy, if you had been this stiff at the club that first night, I would have never gotten pregnant. What is your deal anyway? You’ve seen me naked. I’ve sucked your cock. And we screwed so enthusiastically that you broke a condom, which is what landed us in this situation. So why are you afraid to sit next to me on a freaking couch?”
Alex looked mystified by her outburst. She didn’t know why that struck her as funny, but it did. Maddie started to giggle, and before long she was pressing her hands over her mouth to stifle her unladylike guffaws. This man was such a conundrum. She just didn’t get him!
A slow smile spread across his handsome features, and Maddie stopped laughing. The guy was so attractive it was like a kick to the gut every time she saw him.
“I remember the first time I saw you,” she said softly. “There was something about you that gave me chills.”
“You were wild,” he murmured. “I’d never met a woman who was mad as a hatter and yet so sexy she could make me have decadent thoughts about what I wanted to do to her in bed.”
“You walked up to me in the club. I had just come off the dance floor.” Maddie shifted position on the couch. She gathered her legs beneath her and got just a little closer to Alex. “You took my hand, informed me that I was going to be dancing with you, and then you led me out onto the floor. There was something so powerful about the way you moved that I almost melted into a puddle.”
***
THE PICTURE SHE was painting raised the hair on the back of Alex’s neck. He recalled that night perfectly. Maddie had looked like a goddess. The moment he’d touched her hand he had felt as though the sex was inevitable. He had wanted to possess her. And nothing much had changed since that night.
The air between them right now was charged with something dark and sensual. He watched as she raised her hand. Her fingers brushed his face. She traced the line of his jaw before moving to his nose, his eyebrows, and finally sinking her fingers into his hair. She tugged at the strands to bring him closer to her. He allowed her to lead just this once. Taking a deep breath, he waited. Then her lips pressed against his, and the civilized facade he wrapped around himself burned away beneath the onslaught of need she awakened within him.
Alex slid his arms around Maddie’s body and pulled her closer. He locked her into place against him. Twisting his head, he altered the angle of their kiss and took utter possession of her mouth. He slid his tongue between her lips and plundered everything she had to give. He heard her tiny whimpers and felt her nails scoring his scalp. He didn’t care. He tasted her mint toothpaste and that underlying, indefinably sweet flavor that was only Maddie, drinking her in as though he would take it all and still demand more.
She was squirming against him. He felt the fullness of her breasts and could not resist the urge to cup one of the full globes in his hand. He thumbed her nipple to hardness through the crushed velvet of her dress. She arched her back and pushed against his hand, silently begging for more. The only thing Alex could think about was how wet he knew she was at this moment. He’d never met a woman so hot and wet as Maddie. He longed to feel her pussy once again. He wanted to excite her and feel her come for him in return.
He slid his hand down her torso toward her hips. She moaned against his mouth, but he didn’t release her from their kiss. Instead, he crumpled the fabric of her dress in his hand and drew her skirt up to expose her hip. His fingers encountered the soft satin of her panties. Finding the elastic band, he slipped his index finger beneath the barrier.
She was stretched out full length against him now. He reclined against the arm of the couch and used his legs to keep her spread on top of his body. Delving beneath her underwear, he let his finger glide over the light dusting of hair covering her mound. She gyrated her hips forward and pressed herself closer to his touch.
***
MADDIE WAS GOING to die of acute arousal. Her pussy was so wet she was afraid she was about to die from wanting this man. His finger was so damn close to her clit. She squirmed helplessly, trying to get him to push between her nether lips and just give her what she wanted. But Alex was in control, and that wasn’t likely to change.
He was still lazily exploring her mouth with his tongue. His kisses were long and languorous. They seemed to be in perfect rhythm with the way his finger swept across her mound and drove her crazy with lust. Then he suddenly used his second and third fingers to spread her pussy wide open. The exposure intensified her need. She clenched her buttocks and whimpered, but she didn’t have to wait long.
Using one long finger, he stroked her from her opening to her clit. The wet sound of him touching her was erotic as hell. Maddie groaned in relief. He began to circle the tiny bundle of nerves using the pads of two fingers. She started to tremble as she rose rapidly toward orgasm. This was what she wanted. It felt so damn good. Seconds later she dissolved into a symphony of high pitched cries and wails as her body hit a peak and came hard. She was nearly insensible as her hips thrust toward Alex’s hand and her inner muscles clenched tight.
She collapsed against him, letting the warmth of his body soothe her agitation. He tugged his hand free of her underwear and cradled her gently in his arms. Why did it feel so natural right now to be close to him? He wasn’t stiff. He was supple. The way the angular planes of his body seemed to cup hers made her feel as though the two of them were meant to be together in this way.
He exhaled a sigh and touched her hair. “It’s a little disconcerting to think of having sex while you are already pregnant.”
Maddie drew back in surprise. Raising her head a little, she gazed up at him and wondered what he was getting at. “Are you afraid you’re going to poke the baby?”
“I don’t know.” His expression showed he was being very transparent. For once he wasn’t hiding what he felt. Emotions flitted over his features at light speed. She saw worry, curiosity, surprise, more apprehension, and then a softness that made her feel strangely cherished.
“Nothing the two of us are going to do will hurt the baby,” Maddie assured him. “The kid is pretty durable while he’s baking in the oven.”
“You have the oddest way of phrasing things.” Alex shook his head.
She snorted. “Call it a Texas thing. It makes me popular at parties around here because nobody knows exactly what I’ll say.”
“And you like being unpredictable,” he suggested.
“Who wouldn’t want to be unpredictable?” She thought of all of the people back home in Dallas who had made some pretty strong assumptions about who and what Madison Castillo was. She would do anything to prove every single one of them wrong.
***
THERE WAS SOMETHING lurking beneath the surface of Maddie’s words, and Alex could not put his finger on what it was. Her voice often grew soft when talking about Texas and home, but he had a sense that she felt in her heart that she could not return there. He wondered why. Not only why, but when she would feel secure enough with him to divulge what she obviously considered her personal secrets.
“It is odd to be physically intimate with someone and yet not know their deepest held secrets,” he said suddenly.
Her lower lip puckered into the most adorable frown. “Deepest held secrets? Do people actually trust each other with that stuff? Sounds dangerous. Don’t you think?”
“Don’t bat your eyelashes at me,” he warned with a chuckle. “You Americans are all obsessed with the tragic Romanov story. If I have to sit through another romanticized version of my own family history, I will die of boredom.”
“The way you say that makes me think it’s your family putting you through that misery and not a bunch of romantic American women.” She put her finger in the center of his chest. “Am I right?”
There was no harm in telling her a little about his mother. After all, the poor woman was going to have to know something if she was going to be a part of his life in any manner.
Alex made a face. He didn’t like talking about his mother. “Let’s just say that my mother married into the Romanov family on purpose.”
“And I would guess that you were the prize she coveted the most.” Maddie’s expression suggested she didn’t approve.
He was surprised by her insight, but uncertain if she truly understood what he was getting at.
“I was her ticket to the succession,” he explained. “She wants so badly to be a dowager Duchess. Every time another title is handed out—whether deserved, ceremonial in name only, or otherwise—my mother begins to spin schemes to somehow manage to have me bump my cousin off the throne.”
“I didn’t think there was a throne.” Maddie sounded confused. “Are they really trying to reestablish the Imperial Throne and put a tsar back in power?”
“Some people feel it would be best.”
“Probably because they don’t remember what it was like when the Romanovs were in power.” Two lines appeared between Maddie’s elegant brows. “I recall learning about that time in history. It was confusing to the general populace, plus Nicolai and his wife were more than a little obsessed with that whole hemophilia thing.”
Alex sighed. “Yes. It was ironic that the Tsarina brought that disease with her, and yet nobody realized at the time that it was genetic and all of the girls were carriers.”
“Wait a second,” Maddie said slowly. “Will our kid have that?”
He grunted. “No. My line descends from Nicolai, not Alexandra.”
“Okay. So now are we actually talking about this baby?” she continued. “Because that’s something we’ve sort of glossed over a bit.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” His stomach clenched at the thought of trying to iron out those details, but most of the problems would be on his end and not hers. It wasn’t Maddie’s fault that his family had ridiculous aspirations of grandeur that held no place for a woman from Texas.