But Roman also knew that simply giving in to her demands would appear too easy—and although he had once thought his wife naïve and innocent, she was most definitely not stupid.
‘If you have conditions, then so do I. If I travel for work, then I want you with me.’
‘And if I travel for work? I have a fledging business that will require a lot of international travel.’
‘What is this business?’
‘Do you need to know?’
‘In so much as you seem to need to know about most of my reasoning.’
‘It’s the one I told you about before,’ she said, not having to explain what ‘before’ meant to either of them. Before they were married, before Ella had become pregnant. Before he had revealed his true self.
‘You’ve done it?’
‘Yes. Well…started to,’ and Roman couldn’t help but respond to the spark of pride and excitement in Ella’s eyes. He recognised it, had seen it in his mother’s eyes when she would sometimes dance for him, beneath the stars in the night sky. ‘Célia is at the offices now—they’re being set up as we speak,’ Ella pressed on, drawing him back from memories of the past. ‘So I will need to be in Paris.’
‘And I will need to be in Moscow,’ he growled, chafing against the demand in her tone.
He watched as Ella valiantly struggled with her own anger. The flame of it lit her eyes and flushed her cheeks and for a moment he was back in that bed three months before and gripped by the arousal that had plagued him ever since, in spite of the shocking revelation that had seemed to change his life in an instant. In spite of the mental decree he had placed on himself never to touch Ella in such a way again. Possessiveness cut him to the quick. Her body, cradling the life they had created, was somehow even more appealing to him, and he felt every inch the beast he knew himself to be. He wanted her with a fierceness that stunned him. The need to taste her on his tongue, to feel her beneath his hands and body was now almost painful.
‘If we can’t figure even this out, then what kind of hope do we have?’
Her words drew him out of the sensual haze he found himself in and he forced his mind to broach the practicalities of the situation.
‘Do you have any clients yet?’
‘We’re in the process of—’
‘That’s a no,’ he concluded, perhaps more harshly than necessary. ‘While I have not one, but two businesses based in Russia.’
‘I appreciate that but, of the two of us, who will be least exhausted by travelling between the two places? I can barely even make it to the shops.’
‘Should you even be working then?’
‘Do not even suggest that this pregnancy would undermine—’
‘Not what I meant, Ella,’ he cut in before her ire could reach its full strength. ‘Fine. I’ll relocate to France, but we can’t stay in your friend’s apartment. I will need to return to Russia to wrap up a few things, but I’ll be back with a list of properties we will visit.’
‘I am perfectly happy to start looking myself.’
He ignored her as he pressed on to the one thought he simply couldn’t rid himself of.
‘And my one last condition is that you will share my bed.’
‘Oh, please,’ she scoffed, but the sound was only half able to disguise the true response he could see flaring in her eyes, in the way she hid from his gaze, in the way that her pulse kicked at the edges of her jawline.
‘Ella, you demanded that I not lie to you. And yet you would try to lie to me in this?’ he demanded. ‘I would perhaps forgive you your inexperience that night, and the fact you have no comparison, so let me tell you. What we shared that night was unique.’ Her gaze snapped up to his, as if she was shocked by his words. A shock that he felt every single time he thought of it, of being surrounded by her, of her body tightening around his, simply by their joining.
‘And if you are demanding that you know me, if you want to see the truth of me, then you must have it all.’
At least, he promised himself, until the insane attraction that blazed through him the night they’d conceived their child was spent, was rid from his system. But until then he intended to indulge every possible moment he could have of it.
* * *
His words shocked Ella. The vague ideas she’d had of them sharing a living space but being able to retreat to their own privacy of an evening disappearing in the haze of smoke created by his demand. Because she had wondered whether that night had been…normal—it had been impossibly wondrous to her but perhaps it might have been almost habitual to him. But his words, the sincerity ringing in his eyes, the intensity as he somehow managed to bring forth her own intoxicating attraction and desire for him, they soothed as much as they aroused, linking them both on a level field of need and want. One that she’d craved and battled since leaving his bed.
‘You agree?’ he demanded from her silence.
She nodded, unable to speak past the sensual web he’d woven around her with a few simple words and a heated glance. But, despite the arrow of desire hitting a mark deep within her chest, she agreed because she desperately wanted to make this work. Their child was innocent and she wanted more for it than what they had had, more than the constant repetition of a cycle of vengeance that had brought them here.
She watched as he
