Page 26 of Pregnant By the Russian Pakhan

He grabbed Mira’s hand. “Let’s go. That has to be the boutique.”

She saw him throw a glance at where his hand was clutching hers and he belatedly recalled her edict that he was not to touch her after their marriage. Without her saying a word, he released her hand at once and strode briskly downstairs, leaving her to follow at her own pace.

When he arrived the living room, however, he was shocked when he saw the tall, classy woman perched against an end table, uncaring of whether it could support her weight or not.

“Alena!”

She lifted her head as soon as she saw him and launched herself across the room. Before he could shield himself, she was kissing him ferociously. He waited to feel any reaction, but all he felt was about as much tingle as anyone would feel kissing a tree.

He lifted his hands to her waist to push her away just as a shocked gasp announced Mira’s arrival.

Alena leaned away, looking triumphantly toward Mira. Her mirth vanished as soon as she saw what Mira was wearing.

She swore furiously in Russian and started for Mira, arms outstretched as though to tear the skin off her face.

Mikhail was quicker this time and snagged her around the waist, forcing her to halt. He looked apologetically at a white-faced Mira. “I’m sorry. This is not what it looks like. Alena is an old friend.”

“Alena is his girlfriend whose dress you’re wearing, bitch. Give it back,” Alena ordered.

Mira didn’t say a word. She simply looked from Mikhail’s face to that of the angry woman in his arms who was straining to break out of his grip.

Then she reached behind her, unzipped the dress, and let it slide to the ground to pool at her feet.

She looked like a red-haired goddess wearing nothing but a pair of pure-white lace panties and a matching lace bra. She looked like a magazine cover, Mikhail thought, feeling his groin tighten anew. Even Alena stopped struggling to stare.

“I’ll be in my room when the new clothes arrive,” Mira announced, turning to leave, only to halt again because the doorway was blocked by Madame Pruitt, who had just arrived with two attendants, all of whom were open-mouthed too.

Madame Pruitt transferred her piercing gray gaze to Mikhail and declared, “If this Aphrodite is who you’ve called me here to dress, then I shall love you forever, Mikhail.”

He couldn’t respond. He looked on, still caught somewhere between arousal and confusion.

Mira apparently decided to take matters into her own hands, because she walked forward, one arm outstretched as she said formally in very precise French, “I am pleased to meet you Madame.”

Madame Pruitt clasped the girl to her bosom and covered her cheeks with kisses.

Fine, Mikhail thought grumpily. So Madame Pruitt approves. What else is new?

Everyone seemed to like Mira, and he had no quarrel with that; except for the fact that she didn’t like him. She’d let him know in no uncertain terms when she banned him from touching her again. Once he’d gotten his revenge on her father, he would let her go, he decided.

But as he watched her saunter away on Madame Pruitt’s arm, her well-rounded, lace-clad derriere twisting this way and that, he couldn’t help wondering if it would be as easy as he thought to let her go when the time came.

“Walk away, ho!” Alena called, yanking out of his grip to grab her dress off the floor. “Just remember one thing, every time he’s boinking you, he’s really thinking of me. I’m the one that got away. Alena! Remember my name.”

Mira stopped on one of the stairs and turned to look down at them both. Something in her regal bearing and attitude made Mikhail feel very small all of a sudden. He caught a faint sheen of tears in her eyes, but she blinked and it was gone.

Then without another word, she turned away and kept walking, leading Madame Pruitt and her assistants to her room.

Mikhail caught Madame Pruitt’s eyes and her dagger glares could have pulverized rock. He knew at once that she was telling him without words to get Alena out of there.

He turned to do just that when he caught Alena also glaring at him with tears in her own eyes. “I’ll destroy you, Mikhail. You left me for that…that trash.”

He grabbed her hand and gave her a small shake. “The only one who has behaved like trash today, and in the past, is you. Give it a rest, Alena.”

“You call me trash for falling in love with Dmitri, but then you killed him. You killed the man I loved and you kicked me out. And now you want to move on to someone else. Listen to me, Mikhail. I won’t let you be happy. If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll destroy you and your little twelve-year-old slut,” she vowed.

They didn’t sound like empty words. They were the words of an enraged woman. He knew he should throw her in his dungeons and throw away the key, but he couldn’t bring himself to hurt her no matter how much she had hurt him.

He called for his men and when they came, he thrust her at them unceremoniously. “Get her out of my sight and get me that housekeeper.”

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