“Your what?”          Her head was still fuzzy from the kiss, her limbs heavy with arousal, and she was certain she must have heard him wrong.“My wife. I have thought it through and it’s the only thing to be done.”          Maxim had said it so pragmatically, as though anyone should be able to see his point.“I’m not going to marry you,” Michaela concluded, trying to match his tone.          If he wanted to try to have an insane discussion as calmly as if they were talking about the weather then she was more than up to the challenge. She certainly wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of rattling her self-control more than once in a five-minute time span.“Michaela, you’re a very intelligent woman. And given your career choice, it&rsquo

          A sense of triumph, along with a compressing sensation in his throat that felt suspiciously like the tightening of a noose, assaulted Maxim. It was necessary. It was the only thing that could be done. The only way for him to truly claim his child, make him his heir. And the only way to claim sweet, feisty Michaela.           A heavy pulse throbbed in his groin at the thought of claiming Michaela in the most basic, elemental way. He wanted her with a kind of passionate ferocity that was so strange to him. Maxim would have wanted her no matter what would’ve desired her had he passed her when she was walking down the street.           But the intense, bone-deep need to take her, to enter her sweet body and join himself to her… that had to be connected to the pregnancy because it was outside anything in his experience. &

          The smile on his face while holding that woman was so bright, so breathtaking and it made her feel extremely overjealous. “Michaela,” Maxim said, tightening his hold on her waist, “this is my younger sister, Princess Alessandra Catarina Lucrezia known as Sandra.”           The suspicious knot that had been tightening in her stomach released its hold on her as soon as Maxim announced his relationship to the very beautiful Alessandra. She was relieved, Michaela realized, to find out that she was his sister and not…           She cut off that train of thought before it could go any further. It wouldn’t have mattered if she were a lover or a former lover. It wasn’t her business. And there was no reason for her to care. “Nice to meet you,” Sandra said and dropped a light kiss on Michaela’s cheek. “I’m so pleased t

          Michaela shifted and winced as the boning in the corset top of her gown took another dig at her side. The air was hot… Goodness gracious, it was so hot! And humid. And sticky… And annoying…           Stray wisps of her hair hung down out of her glamorous updo in thin strands. The air seemed thick, and breathing it in only seemed to increase the nausea that was her constant, loathed companion.           The maid that had helped her get dressed had insisted that this was a formal announcement and would require a formal dress. So here she was, made up, sucked in, pushed up, and buffed to a highly glossed sheen, waiting behind a heavy red curtain for her time to step out onto the balcony with Maxim so they could make a horribly clichéd announcement to the television cameras and the citizens who had gathered below.  

          The flight to Amaris Island was short. The small plane touched down in a field of green grass only ten minutes after takeoff. The island itself was less mountainous than Carpathia, with white sand beaches that bled into expansive fields and thick olive groves.           There was no car waiting for them when they disembarked from the plane. Maxim had spent most of the half-hour flight on his phone making arrangements for any work he needed to do to be finished remotely from the island.           She’d spent the whole flight feeling shaky and… strangely, very excited? No. Just shaky about the prospect of being almost alone with Maxim in such a beautiful, isolated, romantic place. “You were joking about the honeymoon thing, right?” Michaela asked, surveying the vast expanse of green around them.