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“We can go.” The alternative was to sit here at home, staring at a television neither of them would really watch. “But are you sure you feel all right? You look pale.”

“I…” Her breath hiccupped. “I’m worried I’m not pregnant. I knew it wasn’t realistic to imagine I could have a baby before…”

“Asteri mou.” He took her in his arms. “I understand. I do.” If it was in his power to give her a baby before Herena passed, he would do it, but he couldn’t imagine she’d be with them long enough to find out whether she had conceived, let alone carried and delivered. “But that sort of pressure isn’t helpful when you’re already so worried. If it doesn’t happen this month, we’ll forget about a baby for now.”

She pulled away. “You want to stop trying?”

“I don’t want you setting expectations on something we can’t control.” That way lay madness. He knew that all too well. “We’ll make it less of a goal and more something that nature can decide.”

* * *

Alia’s heart sank. All she heard was that he didn’t need a wife anymore and didn’t even want her to have his baby.

The last thing she wanted to do was attend a dinner party, but she pulled the gown off the hanger, then stood with it in her hands, feeling as limp as the silk.

“Alia?” He turned her, trying to cup her cheek and see into her eyes, but she dropped her forehead against his shirt, letting the gown slither from her fingers onto the floor so she could cling helplessly around his waist, hating herself for being so weak, but she needed some small sign that he still wanted her.

“Do we have time?” she lifted her face to ask.

“Always.” His voice rumbled inside his chest. He cupped the back of her head, dislodging the towel from her damp hair, and slanted his mouth across hers.

He tried to kiss her gently, but she didn’t want tenderness. She wanted him to be that greedy man from Singapore, the one who matched her own need. She tried to incite him by dragging at his clothes and nipping at his pecs, pushing her hand into his open fly to clasp and stroke and arouse him.

As his clothes hit the floor, he pushed off her robe and picked her up.

This was the man she had really married, she had learned. He was as strong and powerful physically as he was in every other way. She wrapped her legs around his waist and his thick erection rubbed erotically against her folds as he walked them to the bed and pressed her to the cool satin of the duvet cover.

She arched, reaching to guide him, driven by a desperate need for this primal connection to him, but he murmured, “There’s no rush,” and started to drift his lips into her neck.

She didn’t let him pull away.

“Stay here. Please.” She opened her mouth to deepen their kiss, digging her heel into his buttock to force his intrusion, even though she wasn’t quite ready and it pinched.

The heft and throb inside her, the sting, gave her the sense that, just for a few moments, they were melded indelibly. Together forever.

She writhed and stroked her hands over him and moaned with frustration, wanting all of him. Wanting him to break the way she felt like she was fracturing and falling apart.

He was too strong, though. Too fully in control of himself and her.

“Be careful,” he chided as he pinned her with ease and maintained a measured pace that was sweet and unhurried and too tender to withstand when she was caught in such turmoil.

He watched her as he moved, driving her higher and higher toward a pinnacle that kept shifting a little further out of reach.

“Don’t watch me.” It hurt for him to see her like this, caught between exquisite sensual pleasure and his absolute control. His detachment. “I can’t bear it.”

“But you must, asteri mou. Because I love seeing you like this.”

He didn’t love her, though. And he continued to torture her in his agonizingly erotic way until, eventually, he couldn’t endure this acute level of arousal, either.

His breaths shorted with his thrusts. His teeth clenched and the tendons in his throat flexed. She lifted her hips to lock with his and climax detonated within them at the same time. Pulses rocked back and forth between them while they groaned in ecstasy, gripping each other as though the world were ending.

For her, it felt as though it was.

Slowly their breaths evened out and their heart rates settled. Spiro skimmed his lips against her cheek and froze when he found it damp.

“I hurt you?”

“No. I just love you so much,” she admitted, not meaning to say it, but the words came out and hung in the silence for eternity.