Lord's Fall (Elder Races #5)(87)

“I guess you learned this dream stuff a couple of months ago,” she said. “Peanut, you are too precocious for your own good. You are a baby. You need to get back into my uterus and stay there for a while.”

“I think my name is Liam,” said the peanut. “At least I like it.” He looked at her uncertainly. “Is that okay with you?”

Liam Cuelebre. Her eyes moistened. “It’s more than okay. It’s beautiful, and I love it. I love you. But why am I baking a birthday cake?”

He hooked a long finger into the batter and licked it. “Because it’s my birthday, and I think I’m going to like cake. Don’t worry, Mom. Everything is going to be fine. I’ll make sure of it.”

She pointed the spatula at him. “You are not supposed to say that to your mommy. Your mommy is supposed to say that to you.”

The peanut gave her a sunny, innocent smile.

She plunged awake as the baby gave an especially robust kick, pow, right under her ribs, and as she put a hand over her swollen abdomen, she looked around at the deeply shadowed room, disoriented. She was pretty sure she was awake, but this wasn’t their bedroom in the penthouse either.

Dragos stretched out beside her on the bed, lying on his stomach, fast asleep. His long, powerful body was dark against the pale top sheet that had slipped to his waist, his broad shoulders relaxed. The king-sized bed—they couldn’t sleep in anything but a king-sized bed—took up most of the room. A couple of dressers were against the wall, cosmetics strewn on one and cufflinks and a plain, masculine hairbrush on another. The door to a bathroom was half open, from which a dim night-light shone.

She rolled onto her side and peered over the edge of the bed. A pair of high-heeled ivory pumps lay on the floor, along with a tangled heap of a knee-length, pale chiffon maternity dress. It was her wedding dress from Target, and it had cost all of eighty-nine dollars.

Reality settled into place around her, and it looked a lot like a fat, contented cat.

That’s right. They had gotten married that morning.

She held up her left hand to admire the simple, classic gold band that now nestled beside the outrageous, T. rex–sized diamond ring. Dragos had a gold band that matched hers. She grinned as she remembered how that particular conversation had gone.

It had been short and sweet, and to the point. They had been standing at a jewelry counter at Tiffany while an attendant showed them rings. Pia admired one particularly sleek, elegant set of his-and-hers wedding bands.

“But I collect jewelry,” said Dragos with a frown. “I don’t wear it.”

She glanced at him. His frown was more bemusement than anything else. He stood very close to her, still dressed in a white shirt and dark suit from his day’s work. He had removed his tie and unbuttoned the first couple of buttons on his shirt. His head was angled as he studied the rings in the black velvet tray, his gold eyes gleaming with acquisitive interest.

She recognized that look. She said telepathically to him, We do not need this whole tray of rings.

His gaze shifted to her. Are you sure?

I’m quite sure. Just beyond his shoulder, she caught sight of a woman standing some twenty feet away from them. The woman was model thin, sleek, intelligent-looking and immaculate. Her makeup, hair and polished nails were color coordinated, and her outfit and accessories hit around the ten-thousand mark. Thanks to Stanford, Pia was getting better at judging that sort of thing.

The woman stared fixedly at Dragos, not even bothering to disguise her naked hunger even though Pia stood right there with him, clearly pregnant, and together they were one of the world’s most recognizable mated Wyr couples.

But neither mating nor marriage had necessarily anything to do with fidelity, and there would always be some sexual predator hoping to get her claws, even for a brief time, into the multibillionaire head of Cuelebre Enterprises.

None of them fazed Dragos for a moment. They were so unimportant to him that they didn’t even register on his radar. Pia wished she could truly be that indifferent, but at best she could only fake it.

Pia turned her attention back to Dragos. She said, “Maybe you don’t wear jewelry as a general rule, but you’re going to wear this ring.”

Amusement played at the edges of his hard, sexy mouth. “You know this because . . . ?”

“Because I get to have everything I want.” And she wanted nothing more in that moment than to put her claim on him so that everybody could see it. Without bothering to lower her voice, she added, “And that includes having lots of fantastic sex whenever I like.”

His smile deepened, and his eyes gleamed molten hot under lowered lids. “That you do.” He bent his head to kiss her, while their attendant grinned and looked away.

Did she do it? Yes, yes, she did. While she sank one hand into Dragos’s silken hair and tilted one foot up, she held up her other hand behind his back, and she flipped up her middle finger as she kissed him. By the time they finished the kiss, the piranha had stalked off.

Dragos wore the ring.

And she did get everything she wanted.

She insisted that she plan the wedding. She told him that he could plan any kind of honeymoon he liked—as long as it was just as they had talked about, some kind of honeymoon where they were truly alone. No household staff, no sentinels, no psychos. No Stanford, no cell phones, no Kristoff “making this one exception” on some business emergency or other. Nobody but them and the peanut.