She was beautiful, but more than that, she was my queen, my beautifulprincipessa. The necklace covered from the base of her throat all the way to where her cleavage started. The lowest stone settled in the silky dip of her cleavage, just between her perfect breasts.
“This is expensive,” she breathed.
“Very,” I said.
“I don’t know if I can keep this.”
“I have a lot of money,” I said, amused. “If I thought I couldn’t afford it, I would have put a price limit on my assistant’s purchase. No, you deserve this, and much more.”
I picked her up in my arms and took her back to bed, laying her down. She kept still, allowing me to slip her nightgown from her, leaving her clad only in the diamond necklace. God, she was devastating. I bent my head and took her nipple in my mouth, the firm flesh heavenly beneath my lips. She gasped and closed her eyes as I flicked my tongue gently against her breast.
“Why did you say what you said last night?” she whispered.
I raised my head. “About what?”
“About getting me pregnant.”
I sighed, resting my chin on her sternum. Part of that outburst had been purely driven by my need to have her, to exert my ownership over her. But another part was that same small desire I’d felt in Russia to see her pregnant, to know she was carrying my child. She was my wife after all.
“Do you want to have a baby?” she asked, her dark eyes fixed on mine.
I hesitated. The concept of wanting a child, of that even being an option, after so many years, felt so foreign.
“I would,” I said finally.
Her breath caught. “When?”
I considered it for a moment, although I already knew the answer. “Not until after I’m settled in as capo. Maybe, if everything goes well, you can stop taking your birth control in February. Is that what you want?”
She bit her lip, chewing on the sensitive flesh as her dark eyes searched my face. “I would like to have a baby. Maybe if things were different, I would want to wait. But I think it’s better we do it soon.”
“You’re talking about our age gap,” I observed. “You have a point. When our first child is ten, I’ll be forty-seven.”
“First child? How many do you want?” Her brows drew together.
I traced my fingers over her bare stomach, imagining her pregnant. She would be gorgeous, round with my child, her breasts swollen. “I don’t know. As many as it takes to have a son.”
She rolled her eyes a little. “You made men are all the same.”
“I can’t help the way things are.”
I laid my head on her lower belly, my arms slipping up to cradle her body. She was warm and perfect beneath me. Her skin smelled faintly of flowers and when I turned my head and ran my nose over the apex between her thighs, I caught the faint scent of her sex. Sweet and tangy. My cock hardened against the bed.
She sighed, a sound that came from deep inside. I parted her thighs just enough for me to slip my tongue between her folds. She tasted like coming home after a long time wandering in a dark and lonely place. We lay together, warm and tangled up in the sheets together, surrounded by the scent of roses. I ate her slowly, whispering praise to her lovely body under my breath until she came in a quiet rush. Then I gathered her against me and we slept.
Chapter Eighteen
Olivia
Lucien was tense the next few days. Outwardly, he was as calm and collected as ever, I felt the edge in everything he said and did. When I woke in the morning and went to join him in the shower, his shoulders were tight. He would keep still as I rubbed the hard muscles at the base of his neck and down his back, tracing the scars and tattoos that covered his skin. At night, he took me gently with a quiet kind of desperation. Almost as if he were trying to memorize the feeling of my body beneath his and the taste of our mouths together.
He spent three nights leading up to New Year’s Eve in his office with Viktor, Leonid, Duran, and Ahmed. I chose to ignore it, keeping to myself. I loved my husband, but I had no desire to see the bloody details of his plan. I didn’t want to be involved any more than I already was.
Instead, Iris and I spent the day before shopping. Despite my husband’s reaction to my clothing before, I decided to pick out something even riskier than the red dress. On our way home, we stopped by a high-end lingerie store and I chose a few pieces that I was embarrassed to even let Iris see. When Lucien pulled this off, when he became the most powerful man in the outfit, I was going to fuck him in the closest available room. It gave me such a rush to think of him on his knees in front of me, all that power at my feet, his perfect mouth working between my legs.
The next day, Lucien was gone at the office with Duran for most of the afternoon. Viktor had come in the early morning hours and left with five of his men and Ahmed, all armed to the teeth. Now the house was silent and empty.
I went to the bathroom and soaked in the tub, scrubbing every inch of my body, and shaving until my skin was silky. I’d gone the day before to get my pussy waxed and it was so smooth it felt almost slippery. That was the way Lucien liked it and it made my sex throb when he slipped his hands over the sensitive skin and locked eyes with me, giving me that look that made my knees weak.