Modern Romance March 2021 Book 5-8 Carol Marinelli (ebook reader computer txt) 📖

his gaze drop to her swollen belly, even more beautiful now that she wasn’t wearing clothes to conceal it.

His heart beat at him in a new way, then. More intense. More wild and dangerous.

A different kind of greed.

Balthazar slid his hands over her belly. He heard her breath catch, and though he ordered himself not to do it, he looked up and caught her gaze.

And for a moment he forgot who they were.

For moment he was nothing more and nothing less than a man holding the pregnant belly of a woman, both of them fully aware that the child they’d made was just there, just inside.

She sat astride him and a different kind of electricity moved between them. He could feel it. It was part of him, part of her. Not a lightning strike from elsewhere, but made from this. From the heat they sparked between them, and had from the moment she’d stepped into that gazebo.

He was unsurprised and something like furious and deeply glad all at once when she moved her hands to cover his.

And for a long while there was only breath. There was only this.

Only this.

There was creation and revelation. Wonder and hope. Sex and need and a baby woven into the middle of that.

Woven so tightly it only then occurred to Balthazar that he’d been kidding himself all this time to imagine that this wasn’t the very point of...everything.

This was life. Kendra had brought him life.

And in that moment, Balthazar could not bring himself to care what her reasons might have been. What her agenda was, then or now.

In that moment, he forgave her anything and everything, because there was this. The two of them, skin to skin. Their hands tangled up together to hold the new life they’d created.

The two of them breathing new life into him. Into her.

There was a them.

A family, something in him whispered.

It hit him like an explosion. A burst of near-incapacitating sensation.

It burned him alive.

“I need you,” Balthazar gritted out. “Now.”

And for a moment, he could have sworn that she was baffled. She blinked at him as if the words he used made no sense.

He shifted his hands to her hips, to grip her and move her into place. As he shifted her it seemed to dawn on her what she could do. She blew out a breath, then leaned forward, bracing herself on his chest.

Then he watched, somehow thrown and charmed at once, as she awkwardly tried to lift herself to take him within her.

And failed.

“Surely we are past this now,” he said, his voice gravelly with need. He reached between them to grab his own length and guide himself to her softness. God help him, to her heat. It nearly undid him. “I have already married you, Kendra. What is the point of continuing to play these games?”

“What games?” she asked, panting a bit as she wriggled against him, as if attempting to slot him into place.

As if she’d never done something like this before.

But that was not possible.

“I do not require you to pretend to be innocent,” he managed to say as she was poised there above him, her hair falling down to cocoon the both of them in all that fire.

His dreams could go to hell. This was better.

“Of course I’m not innocent,” Kendra replied with a laugh, holding herself up with her thighs splayed wide. “You took care of that in New York.”

“What does that mean?”

She blew out another breath as if gearing herself up. Then she took him into her body with a sudden thrust, sheathing him fully.

Finally.

Sensation punched through him. He almost lost his control, but wrenched back, barely.

Barely.

And she couldn’t have meant what he thought she’d meant. He was half-mad with wanting her, that was all.

“What do you mean about New York, Kendra?” he demanded, ordering himself to wait. To hold on.

To hear her answer before he lost his head.

“Oh,” Kendra said, sounding flustered and breathless. Sure enough, that telltale flush rolled down the length of her body, lighting her up as surely as a billboard in Times Square. “I thought you knew already. I was a virgin that night.”

And then she began to move.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

HER BODY WAS different now. Kendra felt awkward in her clothes and sometimes couldn’t figure out how to move the way she’d used to. There were new aches and strange pains in all kinds of surprising places, but this—

This was the same.

Better.

Balthazar was deep inside her again. At last. And this time, she was fully aware of every inch of his flesh and the fact that there was nothing between them.

This time, there was no pain.

There was only the reality of him, hard and thick, filling her so completely that it was almost too much. Almost. She had to keep moving so that the sensation grew, but never quite tipped over into pain again.

The more she moved, the better it felt.

And there was something about the look on his face as he gazed up at her. An intensity so close to a scowl that if she’d been doing anything else, she might have frozen in place—

But there wasn’t a single part of her that wanted to stay still. Much less freeze.

Instead, she braced herself against him, leaned into all that glorious heat, and let her hips do as they wished.

She took him inside her, then lifted herself away. She was fully aware of the moment he took over that rhythm, moving her instead of letting her rock herself against him, and that was better.

Everything he did was better.

Sitting up like this, different sensations buffeted her with every thrust. Her breasts bounced gently. There was a stretch in her thighs that seemed to arrow straight to the place they were joined. And that new belly of hers changed how she fit against him.

Or maybe it was as simple as the position. How would she know?

Balthazar muttered something she didn’t understand, a rough scrape of Greek. Then he tugged her lower so he could take one of