by Trish Morey
But now Vittorio was telling her it was time. She trembled. His breath was warm against her skin, his own scent flavoured with the cognac he’d had with coffee. It was a powerful combination. Addictive.
Her heart was thumping in her chest as they made their exit and he walked her down the long passageway, their footsteps ringing out on the stone floor, the sounds of the reception given up to silence.
She didn’t talk.
There were no words. And even if there had been, her throat was too tight.
He didn’t talk.
He didn’t rush. His steps were measured. Unhurried.
It was nerve-racking.
Excruciating.
A flight of stairs took them to the next level and then into his apartments. By the time he opened the door to his softly lit suite her nerves were stretched to breaking point. She knew her things had been moved into his suite while the formalities took place today, but this was the first time she’d seen his room. As she took it in, the dark wood furniture, the big leather sofas and the wide expanse of the massive four-poster bed, one word immediately sprang to mind.
Masculine.
He closed the solid door behind them with an equally solid thunk. She jumped at the sound.
‘Nervous, my Princess?’ he said, close behind her.
She’d dispensed with her veil before the reception, and now there was nothing between the puff of his breath and the nape of her neck. So close that she could feel his heat.
‘It’s been a long day,’ she said.
She would have taken a step away, but his hands were already at her shoulders, and his lips—she gasped—his lips were pressed to that place where his breath had touched. Warmth suffused her flesh and threatened to turn her bones to jelly.
‘Did I tell you,’ he whispered, his thumbs stroking the bare skin of her back, ‘how beautiful you look today?’
She nodded. He had—though not in so many words. And he’d made her believe it.
She’d expected he’d turn her then, and pull her into his kiss, but instead his thumbs traced a line down the V at her back, his touch sparking fires under her skin.
‘And I love this dress,’ he said, his fingers reaching the point where the row of tiny buttons began. ‘But now it’s time to do something I’ve been itching to do all evening.’
She felt his fingers settle on the top button. His long fingers on his big hands. She wanted to protest—he would never manage to undo the tiny buttons, she would have to call for a maid to help.
But she felt the first button give. His lips pressed to the other side of her neck and she felt the brush of his hair against her skin and breathed him in. She would have turned herself then, to kiss him, to replay that wondrous deep kiss he’d given her after they were married, but he wouldn’t let her, and his surprisingly nimble fingers were still working away at the buttons.
But, as with his measured steps, he didn’t rush. He took his own sweet time, pressing his lips to the skin of her exposed back as his fingers moved still lower, until he reached the small of her back, where the touch of his fingers tripped a secret cord that pulled tight inside her so that her muscles clenched. His hands were nowhere near her breasts, but she felt them swell, her nipples turning to bullets.
The gown was loosening around her. ‘You don’t have to do them all,’ she said, surprised to hear how husky her voice sounded.
He chuckled softly against her skin and the sensation reverberated through her flesh and down to her bones.
‘You sound impatient, my Princess.’
If she wasn’t mistaken, his voice had gone down an octave.
‘Surely you don’t want me to hurry the most special night of your life?’
She was, and she did,—but she wasn’t about to admit that.
She was at fever pitch when she felt the last button give. She felt his hands slide down inside her dress to cup her cheeks, and then sweep up her sides to cup her breasts. Breath caught in her throat. At last!
Then, and only then, he turned her and lifted her face to meet his. Lips met lips. Mouth slanted across mouth. Breath intermingled. And it was like returning to a fantasy place where her every dream came true.
She groaned, protesting into their kiss as he angled her away, but only to ease her arms from the sleeves and let the gown fall in a pool at her feet.
‘Dio...’ he said, looking down at her, taking in the tiny scraps of delicate lace that barely covered her breasts and the tiny triangle that concealed the V at the apex of her thighs. Thigh-high lace-topped stockings completed her underwear. ‘What are you doing to me? All day long and you were as good as naked under that gown.’
Rosa felt empowered. ‘Do you like them? I made them myself.’ She could see by the flare and the heat in his eyes what his answer would be before she asked the question.
‘Like them?’ he said, his fingers tracing the intricate gold patterns in the lace.
‘It’s lace made by the Andachstein Lace-Makers’ Guild. I ordered it especially.’
He lifted his eyes to hers. ‘Did they have any idea what you planned to do with their lace?’
He sounded as if he had a lump in his throat that it was difficult to talk past. She smiled. ‘Do you think they’d mind?’
‘I’m not sure, but I’ve got a pretty good idea you’ve just committed an offence against the moral fabric of Andachstein society.’
‘You’d charge me?’
‘No, but only on one condition.’
‘Which is?’
‘You let me take them off.’
She smiled, hope creeping into her heart. ‘I thought you’d never ask.’
He gave a roar of triumph and swept her into his arms, placing her reverently on the bed before shedding his dress uniform. Shoes and other garments were going everywhere, until he stood naked before her, proud and erect. She gasped. Her memories had failed her. Her dreams hadn’t done him justice. The man was magnificent.
And now he leaned over her, kissing her lips, his big hands in her hair, cupping her cheek, following the curve of her shoulders and seeking the clasp for her bra, finding it.
He slid the fabric away and drew back. Air hissed through his teeth before he dipped his head again and drew one nipple into his hot mouth. So hot. Her back arched as he suckled, sending spears of pleasure straight to her core, and then again when he turned his attentions to her other breast.
‘So beautiful,’ he said, before he scooped his hands lower, over the curve of her abdomen and the flare of her hips.
She was panting when he dipped his head and pressed his lips over the place where their unborn child lay. So gentle. So tender. She wanted more. Needed more.
But he bypassed the heated place that screamed out for his attention, and moved straight to her ankles, sliding off first one high-heeled shoe and then the other, before kissing his way up her calf and then her inner thigh, until she was molten and pulsing with need.
‘Vittorio!’ she cried.
‘I know,’ he said, his hands curled into the sides of the scrap of lace that was all that separated them. ‘I feel it too,’ he said, and slowly drew them down her legs.
She was burning up before he slipped a hand between her thighs and coaxed them apart. She was on fire before he slipped one finger between her lips and brushed past that tight nub of nerve-endings, inciting it to fever-pitch.
‘So hot,’ he said on a groan.
‘Vittorio!’
‘I know,’ he said again, soothing her as he knelt between her legs, his big hands palming her body, her breasts, her arms, her belly, her legs, as if he couldn’t get enough of the feel of her. He poised himself over her, kissed her deep and hard, devouring her like a starving man who had been served up a feast.
She welcomed him at her entrance. Cried out with the contact, with the agony and the ecs
tasy of it, with the frustration and the promise. Cried out again when he surged into her, filling her, pausing before he withdrew and surged in again. This was skin against skin, his skin against hers in the most intimate of contacts, and it was pure magic.
She was already on the brink, already close, when he dipped his mouth and tugged on one peaked nipple. A shooting star flashed behind her eyes, one star that became two, and then another, until her world hurtled through the path of a meteor shower and everything was light and fire and the brilliance of feeling.
She was still spinning back down to earth, still finding her place back in the world and feeling warm and delicious when she said it.
It wasn’t her fault—not entirely—but she was lulled by Vittorio’s big body next to hers, his strong arms still around her, their legs interwoven, and they seemed the most natural words in the world to well up inside her at that moment.
She pressed her lips to his magnificent chest, felt the squeeze of his arm at her shoulders. ‘I love you.’
She felt him stiffen. Felt every muscle in his body tense. Felt him pull away.
‘Vittorio...?’
‘No,’ he said, his body stiff as he rolled away. ‘Don’t say that. I didn’t ask you to say that.’
Only then did she realise that she’d spoken out loud the words branding her heart.
‘Why? What’s wrong? I know it’s too soon. But it’s how I feel.’ She reached out a hand to his shoulder, feeling as if she was losing him. ‘I can’t help how I feel.’
He sprang from the bed. ‘Did I ask you to love me? Don’t love me,’ he said. ‘Never love me. Because I can’t love you back.’
‘Vittorio—’
‘Don’t you remember? I was a bastard to you at Carnevale. I used you.’
‘What? That’s all in the past. We’re beyond that. Why are you dragging it out now?’
‘Because you need to remember the kind of person I am. I don’t love people, Rosa.’
‘But now... Surely now that we’re married—’
‘You know why I married you. If you hadn’t been pregnant we wouldn’t be married now. It’s got nothing to do with love.’
His words stung. So what if he was speaking the truth? It was his attitude that slashed at her soul. ‘But it could. What is to stop me loving you and you loving me? It’s normal. It’s natural.’
‘Not in my world!’ he yelled. ‘Do you think I can simply flick a switch? So don’t love me. Don’t ever tell me you love me. And don’t expect anything of me. It’s not going to happen.’
‘You just made love to me—’
‘It was sex, Rosa. Just sex! That’s all it was. It’s time you understood that. That’s all it can ever be.’
He stormed out of the room through a side door that slammed heavily in his wake. She heard water running. A shower. And she sensed he wouldn’t be back to share her bed tonight.
She sat shell-shocked in the bed, perilously close to tears, her wedding night reduced to ashes, her hopes and dreams in tatters. But she refused to let loose the tears. She took great gulps of air until the urge to cry was suppressed, even as Sirena’s words came back to haunt her.
‘He’ll never love you. His lot aren’t capable of it.’
What was Vittorio so afraid of? He’d acted as if it was a curse. A horrid affliction for which there was no cure and death the only release. But there was nothing to fear from love.
And he was wrong, she knew it. He could love. A man who had grown up from a boy who would rescue a drowning kitten. A man who rescued strays and the vulnerable. This was not a man devoid of love.
He just didn’t know how to show it.
Or maybe he just didn’t know how to show it to her. Maybe he’d loved his first wife so much that he’d never got over her death.
Rosa was too afraid to ask. That wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have on their wedding night.
The new bride sniffed, a new resolution forming in her mind. She knew how to sew. She was good at stitching pieces of fabric together and making something good, something worthwhile. So she would take the tattered shreds of her hopes and dreams and stitch them back together.
Because, despite what Vittorio had told her to do, there was no way she was giving up on her hopes and dreams just yet.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE NEW PRINCESS of Andachstein threw herself into her role. She visited the local primary schools and read the children storybooks and every child was entranced. She gave speeches at colleges into which she incorporated her newfound knowledge of the history and the proud heritage of Andachstein.
Wherever she appeared with Vittorio they were mobbed by cheering crowds waving the Andachstein flag. And when the first pictures of her baby bump were snapped and flashed to the world by the media, satisfaction levels regarding the principality went through the roof.
And if Vittorio himself wasn’t entirely happy with how things were proceeding, Prince Guglielmo was beside himself. ‘You got yourself a gem there, Vittorio,’ he said during their weekly meeting. ‘An absolute gem.’
Vittorio couldn’t disagree. Rosa was proving perfect in the role. She was proving perfect in his bed. This night of their wedding had been an aberration. She’d made no unwanted transgressions since. But then, how could she when she said nothing at all? Sure, she was passionate enough, but they made love without a word from her. It was as if she was there in body, but not in soul.
But wasn’t that what he wanted?
‘What is the Princess up to today?’ his father asked, dragging him out of his misery.
For the first time Vittorio noticed that his father looked a little better. A little younger than he had before. It couldn’t all be down to the recent haircut he’d clearly had.
Vittorio leaned one hip against the desk and tossed the crystal paperweight from one hand to the other. It spoke volumes for his father’s lighter mood that he barely blinked at Vittorio’s audacity. He sighed.
‘She’s at a meeting of the Lace-Makers Guild. She’s asked to become their patron. Apparently the women were delighted to have a patron who is herself a seamstress.’
The old man nodded his approval. ‘Her first solo appointment? Impressive. We’re not working her too hard, are we?’
‘I don’t think so.’
But maybe that was the problem, Vittorio mused, looking out of the window at the harbour below. Maybe she was just tired.
He shook his head and turned back to his father. ‘Rosa seems to be loving it. And the baby is growing well. Rosa just had her twenty-week scan. All is looking good.’
‘Good! So we’re still expecting a boy?’
Vittorio smiled. ‘That is now beyond doubt.’ He’d seen the unmistakable evidence on the screen himself.
The old Prince grunted. ‘Excellent.’ And then he sighed and walked to stand in front of one of the big picture windows, his hands clasped behind his back. ‘Late November, then...’ he said, his voice reflective.
‘That’s what they say.’
‘My doctors say there is a new technique. Still risky, but less so.’
For a moment Vittorio searched for this thread in the conversation, and then his father spun around and said, ‘I’m thinking I would like to see my grandson growing up. I’m thinking I should tell the doctors to go ahead with my surgery.’
‘But still risky?’ Vittorio queried.
‘Eighty per cent chance of success, they tell me. That sounds better than one hundred per cent chance of death if I don’t have it, wouldn’t you say?’
* * *
Vittorio left his father in unusually high spirits. The chance offered by surgery, he guessed. That would do it.
But then he saw Sirena walking towards him. ‘Contessa,’ he said.
She smiled. She was dressed in what he’d heard was called a ‘tea dress’, all b
ig floral skirts and a tribute to the fifties, right down to the gloves, hat and strappy shoes.
‘Buongiorno, Vittorio,’ she said, stopping to kiss him on both cheeks. ‘I hope married life agrees with you.’
‘What are you doing here, Contessa?’ he asked, sidestepping the question. He’d hoped that now he was married she would set her sights on some other target.
‘I have an appointment with Guglielmo.’
‘With my father?’
‘Well, not really an appointment, as such. We’re having a picnic down by the lake. It’s such a beautiful day for a picnic, don’t you think?’ She raised her eyebrows and gave a flutter of her gloved hand. ‘I’d better go. He’s waiting for me.’
And with a click-clack of her heels she was gone, and Vittorio was left thinking, maybe she already had.
* * *
Rosa had enjoyed her first solo appointment. She’d been right to tell Vittorio she could handle this one herself.
The women of the Lace-Makers’ Guild had made her so welcome. They’d given her an amazing display of their craft—flashing hands shifting threaded bobbins and pins—and she’d been dazzled by their skills. They’d even given her a lesson in lace-making, and watched patiently while she’d attempted to follow the pattern before declaring that she was much better at using their lace in her sewing projects than creating it. Then they’d all laughed and shared late-morning tea together.
Then they’d presented her with two gifts. One a lace shawl for their baby. So fine and beautiful, with a pattern of doves cleverly tatted through it. And the second a pair of pillowcases for the royal bed. Exquisitely made, they must have taken weeks and weeks to create.
She’d promised them that they would be cherished, even if she couldn’t think about her marriage bed without a tinge of sadness. It had been weeks since their marriage—weeks during which she’d said not a word during their lovemaking. Weeks during which she wasn’t even sure Vittorio had noticed.
