Serena Williams Debuts a Stunning Pregnancy Shoot and Reveals Why She Almost Curved Her Fiancé

Count on Serena Williams to make pregnancy effortless and sexy.

The champion tennis player and soon-to-be-mommy is the latest cover girl for Vanity Fair and looked breathtaking in the maternity style shoot.

Even better than the stunning photos is Serena's candidness about her upcoming pregnancy, her fiancé Alexis Ohanian, and why she is unrelenting in her opinion that she is, in fact, the greatest athlete of all time. “If I were a man, then it wouldn’t be any sort of question,” she says of her 23 grand slam wins.

So how does a modest tech guy like Alexis approach the greatest athlete in the world and ask her out on a date? Well technically, he kinda flopped at first. The two met while staying at the same hotel in Paris. Serena, who is not morning a person, got dragged downstairs for breakfast by her friends and was having a bite to eat when over walks the six foot five guy who plops down next to their table. Serena and her crew went to extreme measures to get him to go away, including lying and saying there was a rat by his table. “I’m from Brooklyn. I see rats all the time,” he replied. Serena then decides to invite him over to their table; and despite him knowing nothing about tennis and her knowing nothing about tech, they hit it off.

A year and a half later, Alexis surprised Serena with a spontaneous trip back to Paris, to the same hotel, and back to the same table where he staged a plastic rat. He then got down on one knee and proposed. Serena told the glossy mag that her gut told her exactly what would happen, and she prepared herself for the moment. “I knew it was coming. I was like, ‘Serena, you’re 35, you’re ready. This is what you want.’ ” Alexis said it didn't take long for him to discover Serena was the one. “I felt like a door had been opened to a person who made me want to be my best self," Alexis told Vanity Fair. "I find myself just wanting to be better by simply being around her because of the standard she holds.”

Earlier this year, Serena surprised Alexis with a gift of her own: a paper bag filled with sex positive pregnancy tests. It was right before the Australia Open, and despite being shocked as hell and exhausted from side effects of pregnancy, she won all seven matches. Now that's a true champ! The mommy-to-be is currently prepping the baby's room in their home and plans to return back to the court in January 2018.

Serena's Vanity Fair issue is currently on newsstands now and you can read the very romantic cover story in full at VanityFair.com.

From bars to restaurants to musicals, interracial couples give us all the details and discuss the initial chemistry they felt on their first dates.