Expecting a Royal Scandal

by Caitlin Crews

  She lifted herself to meet him, her tongue meeting his and then driving him slowly, inevitably, gloriously insane.

  Cairo had been acting a part for a long time. He’d pretended to be lost in a thousand kisses, usually for the benefit of the cameras that always waited nearby. But there were no cameras here and the longer he indulged himself in this woman, the more he forgot he’d ever treated a kiss like a stage.

  This time, he really was lost.

  He wanted her naked. He wanted her without a stitch of clothing on her perfect, delectable body, spread out before him like the feast she was. He wanted to take his time. He wanted to wallow in sensation, bathe in passion, throw himself completely into this woman and never come up for air—

  But the bodice stopped him. It was a piece of understated elegance, embroidered and close-fitting, and it penetrated the fist of need that had him locked in its grip. Just enough to remember that there were people waiting. That there were other things he needed to do to Brittany today, like marry her.

  He could think of only one thing he wanted more, just then.

  He deepened the kiss. His mouth mated with hers, taking her and taunting her. Making her flush and buck against him, her hands clutching at him and urging him on.

  “Are you ready?” he asked her.

  “I’ve been ready for weeks,” she retorted, as he should have expected.

  Cairo reached down between them and worked at his trousers, then smoothed his hand back beneath her silken panties, still beautifully damp from before. She was still molten hot and mind-numbingly soft, and she was his.

  He’d been waiting for this moment since the moment he’d seen her picture, so long ago now. He’d longed for this since the night they’d met in Monte Carlo. He’d imagined this a thousand different ways since she’d walked out on him that night and left him to stew in his own wild need.

  Cairo had never wanted another woman more.

  He lined himself up with her slick, ready entrance at last, then thrust himself home.

  * * *

  It hurt.

  He was huge and hard and so deep inside her, and the sensation that burst within her was too much. Too much.

  Brittany went stiff, unconsciously slamming her hands in fists against his chest, and Cairo froze.

  She’d imagined she could play it off. She’d been so sure that all her years of dancing would have loosened her up, made this a nonissue, the way so many of the other girls had claimed it had for them. She’d wanted him so much that she’d been positive she could simply throw herself into this thing without him pausing or even noticing that it was her first time.

  But his eyes were dark and faintly accusing as they met hers now. His beautiful face was taut. He held himself very, very still above her, but there was no mistaking the steel length of him still sunk deep inside her, or the utter foreignness of the big, hard, decidedly male body nestled tight between her thighs.

  He was stretching her. He was inside her and he was stretching her and she could feel him everywhere. With every shuddering breath she took.

  But far worse than that, he had definitely noticed.

  Brittany felt tears pool in the corners of her eyes, when she hadn’t cried in longer than she could remember, and she couldn’t believe she felt so undone.

  “Do you care to explain this turn of events?” Cairo asked, conversationally, which only made that particular hot gleam in his eyes seem more dangerous.

  She tried to blink back the tears in her eyes and swallow down that lump in her throat, but only made a snuffling sort of sound instead. She snuffled. She was flat on her back in the most beautiful wedding dress she’d ever seen, His Serene Grace the Archduke Felipe Skander Cairo of Santa Domini braced above her and deep inside her, no longer a virgin no matter what happened next if she understood the mechanics of these things correctly, and she’d snuffled.

  Like some kind of animal.

  “Do not cry,” he ordered her. His gaze gentled as it met hers and it was astonishing how comforting Brittany found that. “Don’t you dare cry, tesorina. You have lived through far worse things than me, I am confident.”

  A moment ago she’d had a sob inside her chest, so big she’d been afraid it would burst straight out through her ribs like some kind of alien creature and engulf them both, and now she wanted to laugh. She loosened the fists she still had clenched against him, uncurling her fingers and then smoothing them over the elegant morning coat he wore. Almost as if she was comforting him.

  She opted not to analyze that.

  “I haven’t yet determined whether or not I’ll live through this,” she pointed out after a moment, and though her voice was thicker than normal, there were no tears in it.

  She could feel him, hard and so astonishingly hot, still wedged deep inside her. The very thought of it made her a little bit breathless, and then there was how it felt. Or maybe it was just him, braced above her so that thick hair of his fell down his forehead the way it always did. But there were still no tears. And then his mouth curved, and Brittany couldn’t imagine why she’d ever felt like crying.

  Cairo lowered himself to his elbows and cradled her face in his hands. It made him move the slightest bit inside of her, the faintest bit of friction where she was nothing but tender and new and scared, and it hurt again. She stiffened in the same instant she recognized that the pain was far less than before.

  “You will live,” he assured her. He held himself still again. “I promise.”

  He was heavy and hard, and her dancer’s thighs, which she’d thought could handle any amount of stretching, felt...different. They almost ached from this strange position, pressed down and wide open by another person so much larger and more solidly muscular than she was. Still, it wasn’t a painful ache. Not quite.

  “It is your maidenly virtue that we must mourn here today,” Cairo continued, sounding almost as lazy as he normally did, despite that caramel gleam in his dark eyes. “That and your penchant to lie directly to my face are two topics I imagine we will spend some time discussing in the days to come.”

  “Let’s not get carried away.” She frowned at him. “I might not have had sex before, but that doesn’t make me—”

  “A virgin? I think you’ll find that is, in fact, the textbook definition.”

  “Virtuous.” Her frown deepened. “I haven’t been remotely virtuous since I was a kid and I was never much of a maiden, either. I have three husbands who would agree.”

  “Three husbands, yes.” His gaze held hers, hot and gleaming, and he moved then. A simple little slide. An adjustment, nothing more, and it made her breath catch as she clutched at him. But it didn’t hurt. Not at all, this time. “But no one has ever been here but me.”

  She scowled at him.

  “I will take that as the confirmation I do not actually require,” he murmured.

  He pulled her closer to him, and Brittany was astounded to feel herself begin to melt all around him again. That look in his eyes changed again, and this time, the flush she felt was from something that felt a great deal like shame.

  “You should have told me.” Cairo’s voice was reproving, and there was that edge to it she didn’t quite understand. Once again, she had the wild notion she was looking at a Cairo no one else had ever seen, this man who looked at her with something akin to tenderness in his gaze. Deep inside, she trembled. “I did not wish to hurt you. I am not quite that monstrous. Not quite.”

  “I...” This was so far outside her experience. She didn’t know what to do, what to say. She’d never felt so many things at once, physical sensation mixed with a flash flood of emotion, and all the while Cairo simply held himself there. Not hurting her. Not rushing her. Not leaving her. As if he could stay like that forever. “I didn’t want you to know.”

  “Because you thought I would mind?” he a
sked, and though his voice was mild enough she thought she heard an edge in it. He still didn’t move. “Or because you thought it would give you better leverage to throw your virginity at the highest title in your vicinity?”

  She tipped her chin up as if she wanted to fight him for saying that. Maybe she did. Or maybe that was her only defense when he accused her of something so outside her imagining that she felt lacerated.

  “I can’t imagine a single person alive who would imagine that Cairo Santa Domini, patron saint of the lascivious, would have the slightest interest in whether or not someone was a virgin. You are whatever the opposite of a virgin is. Times a million.”

  His dark eyes gleamed. “As it turns out, I find myself deeply interested and also deep inside you. Perhaps they are related states.”

  She tilted her head back to glare at him more fully. “If I’d known the possibility of a truly white wedding mattered to you, because you are apparently a giant cliché masquerading as a man, I would have made certain to demand more money for going through with it.” Her voice was as icy as possible, and yet even she could hear she sounded much too rough. And that it was far too revealing. She soldiered on, “And if I’d known you were a walking caveman, I would have turned you down the way I wanted to do from the start, no matter how many provocative pictures you sold to the tabloids.”

  “I am a king, Brittany.”

  That rang out between them, and she thought she saw something like amazement on his face for a moment, though he blinked it away. He seemed to get harder, bigger. Propped over her like that, still lodged inside of her, he became the whole world.

  And Brittany found she couldn’t seem to say another word.

  “Not a cliché, not a caveman, not common in any way,” he told her, in that same quietly ringing tone. “And I may not have a kingdom or the subjects I deserve, but I will have a wife before this day is done. I will have you. Like this. As long as we are together, I will have you exactly like this.”

  Cairo said it as if they stood at the altar already and these were the promises he was making to bind them together. She shook again, deep inside. Then, following an urge she didn’t entirely understand, she moved her hips. She rocked them against his. His eyes darkened. And she pulled in a breath.

  Because that didn’t hurt at all. In fact, it felt...interesting.

  “And whatever games we play in public, Brittany, what we do in private is ours. More specifically, mine.”

  “Cairo,” she whispered. “I think I want you to start moving now.”

  Something flared in his gaze then, a deep, male satisfaction and that same hunger she recognized.

  “Your wish is my command, tesorina,” he told her. “But first you must say it.”

  “What do you want me to say?” She rocked against him again, against that impossible length of his buried so deep inside her, and shivered when sensation swirled through her. Lighting her up from the tips of her ears to the hard points of her nipples, past the molten place where they were connected, down into the toes that curled in the delicate shoes she still wore.

  “Tell me,” he urged her, and he pulled back then. Slowly. Slowly and steadily, inch by inch, and it made Brittany flush. Then try to meet him when he reversed himself and sank back into her. Deep and sure. “Tell me that in this, I am your king if no one else’s. That here, you are mine.”

  She would have told him absolutely anything just then. Anything at all.

  “Yours,” she agreed, her head moving against the bed as he repeated that luxurious slide. Even more intense, delicious sensations coiled in her and flashed like wildfire through her entire body. Again and again. “I’m all yours.”

  “You have no idea how true that is, tesorina mia,” Cairo muttered, dark and urgent, and then he really began to move.

  And Brittany simply surrendered herself into a mass of pure sensation.

  Cairo set a lazy, easy pace, and he encouraged her to meet him. Brittany moved her hips as he directed her, growing bolder with each stroke until she wrapped her legs around his hips.

  He built the fire between them high and bright and so intense she didn’t see how anyone could live through it. She also didn’t care. He thrust harder, deeper, and she gloried in it. In him. As if she’d spent her whole life searching for this. As if this, right here, was exactly where she was meant to be.

  As if her body knew things her mind didn’t want to examine.

  Still, he urged her on. Still, he swept her along with him, until she was hovering on another precarious cliff of his making.

  “I can’t...” she whispered.

  “But you will,” he replied, fierce and sure. “For me.”

  He reached between them and stroked her where she needed him the most. Brittany tipped her head back and gripped him tight as he pounded into her. Again and again—

  Until finally, she hurtled off into nothingness, breaking apart into too many scattered little bits to name.

  And this time, he called out her name and followed her right over that edge.

  She had the vague notion they floated out in that silken, beautiful darkness together for a very long time. It could have been years.

  But Cairo was already up and moving when she finally thudded back into her own skin and opened her eyes again.

  “Stay where you are,” he told her, in that bossy tone of voice she thought she really ought to object to.

  But she didn’t say a word. Nor did she move. She felt loose and lazy as she lay there on the old four-poster bed. There were all manner of thoughts and problems and issues hovering there, waiting for her to acknowledge them, but she ignored them. She listened to the cries of the seabirds on the other side of the windows instead, wafting in on the sweet summer breeze. She felt the sunlight dance over her face. She imagined she could hear the sea against the rocks, far below.

  She felt bright and sunny straight through, as if she could drift away into the blue sky forever.

  Cairo came back to her then, and she blinked, because he looked immaculate as he stood there at the foot of the bed. Not a wrinkle, or a hair out of place. As if none of this had happened when she could still feel him between her legs, where she was deliciously tender. She knew that should have bothered her. It should have done something other than make her shudder with a little more of that heat. He moved to put a hand on her belly and she shivered at his touch, then again when he used the cloth in his other hand to tend to her.

  “You did not bleed much,” he told her matter-of-factly, and she flushed at that. As if the words were more intimate than the act they’d shared. He tucked the cloth into her panties, pulled them back into place over her hips and then helped her to her feet, smoothing her dress down around her as she stood. “Leave that there until just before you walk down the aisle.”

  “What?” She wanted the floor to swallow her whole. She stared at the stones, willing it to do just that. “I don’t want to talk about this with you.”

  “Brittany.” She couldn’t help but obey him when he used that voice, but he took her chin in his hand to make certain. “You are wearing a very white dress and you will be standing in it before a large congregation and a great many cameras. This is no time for modesty.”

  She pulled away then and stepped around him, amazed that her legs held her up when she felt as if she’d been swept away. As if she wasn’t entirely herself anymore.

  As if the mask she’d worn all her life had shattered, leaving her with nowhere to hide.

  “This was a mistake,” she said, sounding stilted to her own ears. “That shouldn’t have happened.”

  It took everything she had to pull herself together. To lift her chin, run her hands over her veil, manage to smooth out her expression. She moved to the mirror and was as amazed as she was oddly disappointed that she looked exactly the same. The same as she had
before he’d come into this room and more, wholly unruffled. As if nothing had happened between them but a little chat, like all the other little chats they’d had over the past weeks. All she needed to do was reapply her lipstick and no one would ever be the wiser.

  She decided to take that as a sign. A portent, even.

  “That will never happen again,” she told him, raising her gaze to meet his in the mirror.

  He moved to stand directly behind her, and her body knew him. It ached for him. She felt herself soften, everywhere, and had no idea what to do about it. As if he knew it simply by looking at her, Cairo smiled. He slid his hand around to hold her there before him, stretching his palm against the tight waist of her gown.

  She felt the heat of it everywhere, like a promise. She wanted to lean into it, into him. She would never know how she kept herself from doing it. How she kept her spine straight and her knees locked.

  “You are going to marry me in approximately five minutes,” Cairo told her, and she couldn’t help but remember the way he’d said “I am a king,” as if he’d never said such a thing out loud before. She could hear the echo of it again now, and more, feel it deep inside her. Like a command from on high. “You are going to remember what happened here with every step you take down that aisle. I have no intention of a carrying on a sexless marriage, Brittany. Certainly not with a woman who wants me as badly as you do. Almost as badly as I want you.”

  “I...”

  But she didn’t know what she meant to say. What she could say, when every last cell in her body wanted nothing more than to throw herself back onto that bed again. To tear off her clothes and all of his and actually explore him this time. Then lose herself in all that marvelous shattering all over again. Right here, right now, and who cared how many noble personages waited for them below?

  “I was always planning to seduce you, Brittany,” Cairo told her as he pulled his arm from around her body. He righted her when she started to slump over because her knees really weren’t working, and she flushed at his touch all over again. His firm lips moved into that small curve that set off explosions all through her. “Now I will simply take comfort in the fact that inevitably, I will ruin you for all other men. I likely already have. What a great pity.”