Expecting a Royal Scandal

by Caitlin Crews

  She could feel the heat of it sweep over her, making her sweat and let out a harsh, loud breath. Her dress felt itchy all around her, suddenly. The combs that held her swept back veil felt prickly against her skull.

  And worse than all of that was Cairo, who watched her with wholly undisguised fascination.

  That and a very hungry sort of focus.

  “Brittany,” he said softly, so softly. “Do you have something you want to tell me?”

  “No.”

  He laughed at her reply, but the way he watched her with those dark whiskey eyes of his only seemed to deepen. And then expand inside of her. “Can it be? Is it possible?”

  The mortification and all that red heat seemed to roll tight inside of her, and she didn’t know what to do with it. Only that if she didn’t do something, she’d explode. She fought for some composure—but then came up hard against the far wall of the small, ancient room.

  She hadn’t even realized he’d been coming for her, or that she’d backed away from him. All the way across the room.

  And now it was too late.

  Cairo leaned in close as if he wanted to inhale the fine tremors that moved over her body, one after the next. Then he laid his hands on the cool stone wall, one palm on either side of her head, caging her where she stood.

  “Stop lying to me,” he ordered her, in that same quiet voice that did nothing to disguise the fact it was another steel-tipped royal command.

  “We’re about to get married for money so we can lead a tabloid life,” she managed to bite out in some semblance of her usual composed, measured tone. “I thought lies were a given.”

  “Brittany,” he said, and again, her name in that mouth of his did things to her she wished she could ignore, “are you the best-disguised and least likely virgin in the whole wide world?”

  CHAPTER SIX

  SOMETHING SHOOK THROUGH BRITTANY, long and deep.

  She had to stop this. She had to distract him. She couldn’t let him think she was an innocent, not today of all days. She didn’t think she’d manage to survive it if he thought she was anything but the hard-shelled, cold-eyed creature she’d spent so many years pretending she was that she sometimes believed it herself.

  Because she couldn’t allow herself to be vulnerable. Not here. Not with him.

  She didn’t know how to handle the fact that Cairo was the only person she’d met in years who didn’t see exactly what she wanted him to see when he looked at her.

  Masks, she snapped at herself. This relationship is about masks, not what’s beneath them.

  “Of course I’m not a virgin,” she said crisply, frowning at him. “Do people still use that word? Did it become the seventeenth century while I wasn’t looking?”

  He didn’t look convinced. And Brittany knew, with every last fiber of her being, that she had to convince him he was mistaken and she had to do it right this very minute before it was too late—

  Some part of her whispered that it already was.

  That it had been too late from the moment she’d set foot in Monte Carlo.

  And still Cairo looked at her in that deeply unsettling way of his, as if he could see straight through to her battered old soul.

  As if he already knew she was a virgin, whether she bothered to confirm it or not. As if a small fact she’d considered essentially meaningless for years told him everything he needed to know about her.

  She couldn’t have this. She couldn’t let him think this, especially because it was true. It would ruin everything, she knew it.

  “Impossible,” she said when he didn’t respond, but continued to watch her in that same considering way. It was much harder than it should have been to affect her trademark arch, amused voice. “Everyone knows I’m a whore, Cairo, and here’s a news flash. They’re not wrong.”

  “Including your own mother, I believe you mentioned.”

  Brittany would have said the names her mother had called her over time were a collection of very old scars set over wounds that had long since healed, and yet she ached when he said it. Still, she made herself smirk at him as if there were no scars, no ache, and never had been. Not beneath her mask.

  “Especially my own mother.”

  That it wasn’t strictly a lie gave her voice a little power, she thought. After all, some members of her family believed that listening to certain kinds of music rendered a woman instantly and irrevocably fallen. It was a slippery, easy slope from that to whoring about. Her mother had always been the first to say so, when it suited her.

  Cairo shifted then. He left one hand on the wall as the other moved to trace a lazy pattern along the line of her jaw. Down the length of it, from near her ear to her chin. Then back again. And the look in his eyes was more than simply dangerous, then. It was possessive. Triumphant.

  And very, very male.

  Brittany felt that shaking thing inside of her again, insistent and terrible. Some part of her wanted nothing more to surrender to it. To tell him the truth he’d already guessed. To stop lying about herself for one little second in all these years of living those lies to the hilt.

  Just here. Just to him. Just to the only man whose kiss had made her feel like a woman, not a means to an end.

  But that was insanity. That bordered on intimate and she knew better than to risk such a thing. Not with Cairo Santa Domini, in the name of all that was holy, given his version of intimacy likely involved cutting down to three orgies a week from seven.

  What the hell was she thinking?

  She blamed the dress. The elegant princess dress that gave a woman ideas, even a woman who should know better. The dress that looked as if it had fallen from the pages of a fairy tale and made even a trailer-park Cinderella like Brittany imagine princes were real and charming and right here in front of her at last.

  Life had taught her better than that. Over and over again.

  So she smiled at Cairo, suggestively and wickedly. She reached up and covered the hand he held to her cheek with hers, and arched herself into him. She pressed her breasts against his chest and she tilted back her head to keep her gaze on his, and she did her best to ignore the way those things made the fire inside her sear through her.

  “I can play a virgin if you want me to,” she murmured, her voice sultry. “Why am I not surprised that the most famous playboy in Europe likes a little role play?”

  That hot blaze in his eyes deepened. The air between them seemed to pull tight, as if something huge clenched around her, then squeezed. Hard.

  “Are we playing?” he asked quietly.

  “A marriage like this is nothing but a game.” Brittany made herself pout at him when he only continued to stare down at her, as if he really was trying to see inside of her. He shifted, dragging his chest against hers so that tendrils of flame curled through her and made it hard not to squirm where she stood. And harder still to remember she was supposed to be acting. “Why not take it into bed as well?”

  “You told me there was to be no sex in this marriage.” His gaze was on her mouth. Her heart pounded hard, like a sledgehammer.

  “You told me that wasn’t your style,” she countered.

  She didn’t know when she noticed that he’d angled his torso into her. That he was holding her there against the wall that easily, and Brittany knew she should have hated it. She should have felt caught. Captured. Compromised.

  She didn’t.

  His eyes glowed that dark amber that made her chest feel tight, and she couldn’t seem to pull in a full breath to save her life. His palm was surprisingly hard and warm against her cheek. She could feel it in her toes. His chest pressed against hers and made her breasts ache, the peaks pinching into hard points. And that beautiful mouth of his was set in a stern, resolute line that made something giddy and wild race through her, then coil tight lo
w in her belly.

  “I already told you I want to be inside you, Brittany,” he told her, and it had the ring of a vow. Of something stitched together, need and command as one, and a red hot punch straight to that place that already melted for him. “That hasn’t changed.”

  She rotated her hips, pulling him closer to her, and then she slid both of her hands around his neck. Her pulse was a riot, hammering through her veins and striking rapid blows in her temples, her throat, her wrists. And deep between her legs, where she ached and melted and ached some more.

  And Brittany forgot that she was playing a role. She forgot everything but the fact she wanted him, as extraordinary as that was. She wanted him. And the whole world already thought he’d had her a million times, so who was she saving herself for if not this curious man who got beneath her skin as no one else ever had?

  “Then why aren’t you?” she asked. Cairo seemed to freeze there before her, save the hand that had gripped her jaw. He dropped it then, but his eyes stayed locked to hers. “Why aren’t you inside me, when you are renowned the world over for your inability to keep it in your own trousers? Why have we spent our entire relationship so chastely and demurely?” She laughed at that, because she didn’t know the answer herself when the only thing inside her was this edgy, delirious need. “Or is this terrible reputation of yours no more than the fevered imaginings of an overworked publicist somewhere?”

  His gaze took on a light she’d never seen before, but she felt it. God help her, but she felt it, deep inside of her, where she was nothing but slippery longing and very bad ideas.

  “Why don’t we find out?” he murmured, his voice like silk.

  Silk and danger and too much heat besides.

  He shifted again, then. He reached down between them and began pulling up her heavy white skirt, never moving that demanding gaze of his from hers.

  Brittany couldn’t have said a word if she’d tried.

  She didn’t try.

  And this time, when he traced patterns over the top of one thigh and then dipped into the valley between her legs, he didn’t stop there. He found the silken panties she wore and smoothed his way beneath them, and then it was happening. It was really happening.

  He was touching her where no one else had ever touched her.

  Him.

  Cairo.

  He made a low, approving noise that rolled over her like another caress, as if finding her heat made him feel as raw as she did, and she surrendered herself all over again.

  She had the distant thought that she always would.

  Cairo stroked her tender flesh with his fingers, his eyes glittering darkly as her lips parted. Brittany did nothing—could do nothing—but lean back against the wall. And die from the pleasure of his touch, over and over and over. And let her hips rise to meet him with every slippery, decadent stroke, as if she was learning how to dance for the very first time.

  As if he was teaching her the steps to the most perfect dance of all.

  “It almost feels as if I know what I’m doing,” he murmured, his voice a low, throbbing thing that mixed in with the slick, delicious movement of his hand, there against an old castle wall. “I can almost imagine no publicist has been involved in the creation of my reputation. What do you think?”

  But everything else was lost in that fire he built in her and she couldn’t respond. She wasn’t sure she would have responded if she could. Not when she could disappear into the sweet glory of his touch instead.

  And that was when he found the center of her need. He pressed against it once, then again, making her moan out loud. She told herself an experienced woman wouldn’t react the way she did—but she couldn’t seem to help herself, not when he ground his hand against her.

  “Let’s consider this an object lesson,” Cairo murmured, dropping his head beside hers, his breath against her neck. “You have a habit of saying things no other person alive would dare say to me. Perhaps I have finally found the appropriate way to respond.”

  He twisted his wrist, plunging a finger deep inside her molten heat while the rest of his hand rocked hard against the place where she ached the most.

  It was an invasion. It was perfect.

  He did it again, then again, then added a second finger and did it once more.

  And Brittany simply...broke apart.

  She shook and she shattered, and she fell into a thousand pieces right there in her wedding dress with her fingers dug deep into his arms, and the only thing she knew in all the world was his hard hand and his rough voice at her ear. She might have fallen apart forever, tumbling this way and that into a million little shards of who she’d been. She felt as if she had.

  And when she came back to herself she was slumped against the smooth wall and the only thing holding her up was the arm she hadn’t realized Cairo had put around her waist, securing her there against him.

  He was watching her closely when she finally focused on him again, with an expression she’d never seen on his royal face before. Hard and solemn at once, and lit from within with a kind of hunger that made her clench tight all over again, against the fingers she could still feel inside of her.

  Inside of her. Brittany let loose a shudder, low and deep, through a brand-new lick of need and heat.

  Cairo smiled at that. He took his time pulling his hand away. He smoothed the silken fabric over her heat and then he drew his hand away entirely, letting the heavy wedding dress fall back into place to cover her weak knees and legs.

  As if none of it had happened, when she was still soft and soaked and trembling.

  “Brittany,” he began, as if that wasn’t the same sensual hunger that stormed through her turning his gorgeous face stark.

  And something surged in her then, shocking her back from that syrupy sweet place he’d thrown her into so easily, so expertly. Some kind of heightened awareness, or desperation. She didn’t know what it was, she only knew with every inch of her body that she had to act instantly or lose everything.

  “Is that it?” she asked, and she’d never sounded more bored. She heaved a sigh and pushed away from him, taking advantage of the look of arrogant astonishment on his face to swish her great skirts around him and start toward the other side of the room. “Clueless teenagers commit more interesting sins while fully clothed in the hallways of their high schools. I expected a little more finesse from a man who calls himself a king.”

  “Finesse,” he repeated, as if he was unfamiliar with the word, and he sounded far closer to her than she’d expected. And far more cutting. Every hair on the back of her neck stood, but she didn’t turn around. “The excitement of our wedding day must be playing havoc with my hearing. I just imagined you questioned my finesse mere seconds after you climaxed in my hands. Surely not.”

  She turned around then and her stomach flipped over, because he was right there.

  He kept coming. Brittany decided to stop moving and stood there at the foot of the four-poster bed, trying to exude bored experience while her knees still felt like jelly.

  “It’s okay,” she murmured, as insincerely as possible. She rolled her eyes. “I’m sure you’re great.”

  His head tilted slightly to one side and the way he smiled then, slow and hard, made her think of a wolf.

  “Oh, I am at that.” Cairo reached over and ran a finger down the length of her hair, then tugged on the end. Once, then again. Not precisely hard—and yet that small hint of sharpness seemed to rebound through her overheated body, blooming into something much hotter and more intense in the place that still ached for him the most. “But by all means, cara, do not take my word for it.”

  And then he bent down and swept her up off her feet, huge dress and veil and all, and tossed her onto the bed.

  * * *

  Cairo hardly let himself think.

  She landed on
the bed with a soft exhalation and then he was there with her, levering himself above her and holding himself up on his elbows.

  “Cairo—”

  “Quiet, cara. Allow me to meet the challenge you issued, if you please.”

  His voice was a lash of command. He hardly recognized it. But that didn’t seem to matter. Nothing seemed to matter except this woman dressed in white, with those dark eyes still so hot and wild and all for him. This woman who would shortly be his wife. My wife, he repeated, and the words seemed to reverberate inside of him, growing so big and so loud they filled him up—then crowded out everything else.

  The world. His sense. Everything.

  Cairo didn’t care. He traced her lips with his fingers and hoped she could taste her own need when he did. She flushed that intoxicating red again, and it made him feel dizzy. It made a beast he hadn’t known that lurked so deep inside him roar.

  For once in his life, he didn’t calculate the outcome of this encounter or worry about his performance. He’d left that somewhere behind them on the stone floor, tangled up in those abandoned little moans she’d made that left him so hard and so wild for her he ached.

  He ached.

  “Cairo,” she said again, and this time her voice was little more than a whisper. But he recognized the heat in it. The impossible fire that burned in him, too.

  He forgot how they’d come to be here. He only knew that finally, finally, Brittany was beneath him. Where she belonged, that beast in him growled.

  What else could possibly matter?

  He reached between them and pulled her dress up and out of his way. She made a soft, high sound, but when their gazes clashed she pulled her lower lip between her teeth. Then rocked her hips against him as he settled himself between her soft, leanly muscled thighs in wordless welcome.

  God help him, but she was perfect.

  He leaned in close and took her mouth with his, with all the desperate ruthlessness of a man about to explode. Her taste washed through him, sweet woman and all Brittany. He lost himself in the sheer perfection of it. He tasted her again and again, then angled his head for a hotter, slicker fit and did it all over again.