Their relationship was modern and free of long-term commitment, something she’d made it clear by her actions she did not expect from him.

She pressed her body to his in blatant invitation and he laughed. “You mean you have grieved my absence from your bed, do you not?”

That was the only place he was convinced she did need him. She wouldn’t let him support her, making it obvious she would rather spend time away from him than give up any part of her career. None of this, however, made it easier to say what needed to be said. In fact, he was sure it would be harder for him to say the words than for her to hear them. His sophisticated lover would not appreciate a drawn out, or emotional goodbye any more than he would.

She shook her head, stretching up to link her hands behind his neck and brushed the hair at his nape. “I missed you, Dimitri. There was no joy in cooking for myself alone, no pleasure in watching the French Open without you to mutter when your favorite double-faulted on game point.”

He frowned, remembering the play. She smiled at him with a look that spelled his doom if he didn’t get his news out quickly. It had already wrought an instant response in his body. “I have news I must tell you.”

Her arms went stiff in reaction to the seriousness of his tone. “Can it not wait, mon cher?”

He reached behind his neck to remove her hands, but she locked her fingers with surprising force.

He clasped her wrists. “We must talk now.”

Alexandra did not want to talk. She was not ready to share her news. He’d seduced her from the beginning. She’d given him her heart, her body and her fidelity, as committed to him as any wife could be. Only she wasn’t his wife and she didn’t know how he’d respond to his lover getting pregnant.

Fear more than desire prompted her hips to grind against him. “No.” She kissed his chin, tasting the skin and letting her body absorb the return of its other half. “No talk.” She brushed her unfettered breasts behind her thin top back and forth across the crisp white silk of his shirt. “First, this.”

“Xandra, no.” He pulled her hands away from his neck, but made the mistake of letting them go.

She tunneled under his jacket and pushed it off his shoulders. “Dimitri, yes.”

He glared at her, but he did not stop her from pushing his suit coat to a pile of expensive Italian designer fabric on the floor. She smiled in approval. “I want you, Dimitri. We can talk later.”

She needed the affirmation that they were two halves of the same whole before she could tell him the truth about the baby she carried and equally as terrifying, the truth about who and what she was.

He grabbed her round the waist and lifted her until her mouth was even with his own. “Heaven help me, I want you, too.”

There was something about the angry tone in his voice she did not understand, but she could not focus on it for long, not with his warm lips closing over her own in overwhelming passion.

She tore at his tie while he made quick work of the two hooks holding her top together. He helped her with the buttons on his shirt. The two garments fell to the thick pile carpet together and his lips never separated from hers. He pulled her flush against his body and the naked flesh of her already aroused nipples brushed the heat of his muscular chest.

She shivered in reaction while he groaned.

“We should not be doing this.”

The words registered only subliminally, planting a question as to why they should be said, but she could not consciously respond to them. She was too overwhelmed by the feel of his flesh against her own for the first time in over a month. He seemed similarly affected as his arms tightened around her until she could barely take a breath.

Seconds later they lay entwined on the bed, the rest of their clothes discarded, hungry hands touching intimate places, mouths devouring one another. They climbed to the heights together with a speed they never had before. When they tumbled into starbursts and oblivion, masculine shouts mingled with her own cries of pleasure.

Alexandra laid her hand over Dimitri’s heart. It still beat with the accelerated pulse of recently spent passion.

“Such a strong heart,” she murmured, “such a strong man.” Would the news she had to share direct that strength toward her or against her?

His body tensed as if he had some premonition of what was to come. He rolled away and ejected himself from the bed. “I need a shower.”

She stared at the six-foot-four-inch sexy giant towering above the bed. Tension was emanating off him in waves.

“I’ll join you.”

He shook his head. “Stay there. I will be quick.”

Her heart squeezed at the small rejection, but she smiled and nodded. “All right.” Craven coward that she was, she gladly accepted another excuse to put off telling him her news.