The Bride's Baby of Shame

by Caitlin Crews

  Sophie couldn’t say she wished she’d married him after all, because she didn’t. But she could, and did, tell him that she wished she hadn’t let the mess of her personal life take center stage like that, and in full view of everyone they knew.

  She didn’t expect any replies, but when she put her mobile away again, she felt...lighter. Free, almost, in a way she never had before.

  Later, she lay in her bed and stared at her canopy again. She thought about Monaco and she thought about her baby. She thought about that night before her wedding, out on that dark country road, and the deep and utter despair she’d felt when Renzo had driven off and left her there.

  She remembered walking down that aisle with her father, her gaze locked on Dal there at the altar. She remembered the misery of each step. Her sheer panic at the prospect of having to give to Dal what she’d so happily and easily handed to Renzo.

  And most of all she remembered what she’d felt when the doors had slammed open behind her and Renzo had appeared.

  She let out a little gasp, alone in her bed.

  Because it hadn’t occurred to her until this moment that she was in love with him.

  Heedlessly, recklessly, foolishly in love with him. It had happened too fast, right there in Monte Carlo, surrounded on all sides by so much glittering European wealth. It had happened the moment he’d stood there before her and asked why she was sad.

  When he’d seen something in her no one else had ever noticed.

  She’d told him she didn’t believe in immolation and he’d set her on fire anyway.

  And then he’d taught her she could feel things she’d had no idea were even possible.

  She loved him. She’d never loved anything or anyone in all her life, but she loved Renzo. He was heat and light. He was sunshine. Even his fury excited her on some level—and more, she didn’t retreat into frozen affront when he provoked her, the way she did with everything else. She fought back. She lost her cool.

  He had thawed her out and she hadn’t even realized she was melting, all this time.

  And she found she could forgive herself for that. It didn’t mean she wasn’t accountable for the choices she’d made. She should have called off her wedding. She should have found Renzo the moment she knew she was pregnant and told him he was going to be a father. She never should have forged on with her wedding to Dal, much less tried to imagine ways she could pass her baby off as his.

  She would have to live with the knowledge that when pressed, she was the sort of woman who would do all of those things, and had.

  The truth was, she’d never been in love before, and it had made her a little crazy. Love wasn’t a factor in her world. It wasn’t a part of the marriages she’d known all her life. She wasn’t surprised, looking back, that she’d reacted to these overwhelming emotions with very little grace.

  But she’d apologized. Her parents and Dal could accept her apologies or not—but that was up to them.

  Here, now, she had other things to face.

  She sat up in her bed and looked at that door that sat there on her wall like a taunt. The truth was, she didn’t want to be Renzo’s mistress. But she didn’t see the point of locking herself away in this room, Rapunzel by her own hand, simply because he refused to offer her the things she really wanted.

  When she hadn’t even known what she wanted until today.

  She’d wanted to be free and he’d set her free, and her reaction to that had been to blame him for it.

  She’d wanted to lose her innocence on her own terms and he’d done that—oh, how he’d done that—and she’d blamed him when she’d fallen pregnant. Sophie might have been a virgin, but she wasn’t an idiot. She’d known that all those times he’d been inside her that night in Monaco he’d used protection...except that first time. And she hadn’t stopped him. She hadn’t even tried to stop him.

  She seemed to expect Renzo to read her mind and intuit her feelings even when she was a mystery to herself. Sophie might not know a whole lot about love, but she was fairly certain that wasn’t the definition.

  And she might not want an arrangement, cold and clinical—but then, Renzo could use any words he liked. She knew how bright and hot he burned. If he was clinical about anything, she’d never seen it.

  She could be his mistress, if that was what he wanted. She could love him just as much, and better yet, she could have him while she did. She could explore him every night. She could use these months to get to know the father of her child, the lover who’d blown up her life when she’d least expected it, the only man she’d ever loved or, she imagined, ever would.

  All she had to do was walk to that door, pull it open, and surrender.

  * * *

  Renzo heard the door latch and assumed he was dreaming.

  After all, he had this dream every night.

  Tonight was like every other time he’d dreamed this exact same thing. The door pushed inward, very nearly soundless. And then Sophie appeared, exactly as he wanted to see her. Her thick chestnut hair tumbling down around her shoulders. One of the little gowns she liked to sleep in that he remembered with great fondness from that morning in England. Her long, gorgeous legs were exposed, and the hem of her gown flirted with her thighs as she moved. Even her feet were bare, and he found himself as obsessed as ever.

  As if it were this woman’s vulnerabilities that got to him the most. As if her beauty was secondary.

  He knew the exact moment it dawned on him that this wasn’t a dream after all.

  It was when she paused there at the foot of his bed, her brown eyes nearly filled with gold then, and more than that—uncertainty.

  In his dreams she was bold. Daring.

  But it was that uncertainty that had him jackknifing up to sitting position, so he could hold that gaze of hers with his.

  “You appear to be lost, cara mia.”

  He hadn’t meant to sound like that. But he’d thought this was a dream and so his voice was scratchy with the sleep he needed, though he’d been wide-awake, as usual. Scratchy and gruff and too dark for the occasion, but he didn’t take it back.

  And she didn’t seem to mind.

  “I’m not lost,” she said softly.

  And the thing that rushed in him then wasn’t as simple as victory. It was edged with triumph, to be sure, and it seemed to come from different parts of him at once. There was all that longing that he had begun to think would never be assuaged. There was that endless greed for her that made him despair of himself.

  But more than that, he wanted his hands on her. As simple as that. It was almost as if he worried that she really was some kind of phantom and if he didn’t grip her as hard as he could, she might disappear.

  He was already moving when it occurred to him that he had never reacted this way to a woman in all his life. Renzo Crisanti was nothing if not sure of himself, particularly in the bedroom.

  But this was Sophie.

  And everything with Sophie had been different from the start, loath as he was to admit it to himself.

  He rolled to stand beside the bed and then met her at the foot of it, and once there, he indulged himself. He wrapped his hand over the nape of her neck and pulled her even closer.

  Renzo knew he could never dream anything as perfect as the feel of Sophie’s skin beneath his palm. Or her scent, that soap she preferred and the hint of something muskier that he knew was her. All her.

  “I thought you wanted me to beg,” she said, those pretty eyes of hers still not as certain as he might have liked, but with a smile on her sweet mouth.

  “I insist upon it.”

  “What does begging entail, then?” Her smile deepened and he could feel it where he was hardest. And neediest. “I assumed it would require I get on my knees.”

  “That is always a good place to start,” he said, expecting her to flinch at his boldness. />
  But instead, Renzo watched in a kind of stunned amazement as Sophie sank to her knees before him.

  CHAPTER TEN

  HIS CHEST WAS so tight it made it hard to breathe. And Renzo was so hard he had serious doubts that he would last more than a moment if Sophie actually did what it looked like she was about to do.

  Though that didn’t seem to matter much as she gazed up at him from where she knelt, that uncertainty in her gaze changing into something a whole lot more like delight.

  “What do you know about pleasuring a man this way?” Renzo asked gruffly.

  He already knew the answer. But he liked it very much when she responded as he expected.

  “Nothing at all,” she confessed, almost happily. “We didn’t get to that.”

  He found his hands at her face, his thumbs gently stroking the satiny expanse between her cheeks and her temples.

  “A shocking oversight,” he murmured. “But I want you too much, I think. I’m not at all certain I can allow you to play with me tonight.”

  Her delicate hands were on his thighs. She held his gaze as she slid them farther up, waiting until he hissed in a breath to stop.

  Renzo had gone to bed naked, as was his custom. He couldn’t decide, in this moment, if he regretted that choice or not. Or if, in fact, he was thrilled that she clearly didn’t wish to listen to him.

  “I’m here as your mistress,” Sophie said softly, the glint of something mischievous in her gaze. “It is my duty to serve you, is it not?”

  And she didn’t wait for him to answer.

  She tipped forward, lowered that mouth of hers, and licked him.

  And Renzo was only a man. Not a very good one.

  He leaned back against the foot of the bed, let his head fall back, and allowed her to do with him as she wished.

  That she was inexperienced was immediately evident, but much like that night in Monaco, it only made it better.

  Because she treated him like a wondrous discovery. She used her hands. Her mouth, lips, and tongue. And all of that blazed in him, brighter and hotter by the moment to match the sweet heat of her mouth, but what got to him most was her excitement.

  The little noises she made, as if taking him this way built the same fires in her as it did in him.

  And he didn’t have it in him to pull back from the edge when she licked and sucked him straight over it.

  But this was Sophie, the woman who seemed to have been put on this earth to match him sexually in every possible way, so all she did was drink him down as he emptied himself into her mouth.

  He pulled out, a new and not entirely welcome sensation working its way through his gut.

  It was another kick of the sort of shame he’d deny he was capable of feeling, he thought, as he looked down at her and saw only the top of her head. She’d settled back on her heels, one hand at her lips. He didn’t understand why she brought these things out in him. These...feelings.

  “I could have been more gentle,” he began, stiffly.

  But when she lifted her head again, he saw that she was smiling.

  And it was as if something in him simply...broke wide-open.

  He hauled her to her feet, then threw her down on his mattress. She laughed as she fell, but then he came down on top of her, and her laughter quickly turned to sheer fire and that wild delight that always arced between them. She wrapped her arms around him, he took her mouth, desperate. Determined.

  Addicted.

  He couldn’t get the gown off of her lush body fast enough. He tossed it aside and discovered that she was even better than he’d remembered. That morning in England had been a taste, and had only whet his appetite for more. For this.

  For her.

  And while he knew on some level that he had all the time in the world tonight, he couldn’t seem to slow himself down. He couldn’t seem to control himself.

  Instead, Renzo lost himself in her.

  She had called herself his mistress. And there was something in him that caught on that, even as the primitive side of him roared its approval.

  And either way, he intended to slake his thirst at last.

  He took his time, relearning every inch of her body. He lavished attention on her neck, that collarbone that fascinated him, and her delicate, surprisingly capable hands that he couldn’t seem to get enough of feeling against his own skin. He focused on her gorgeous breasts, worshipping one hard nipple and then the other. He worked his way down to her abdomen, testing the shallowness of her navel and the faint swell that he knew was his child, and smiled when she squirmed beneath him.

  He skirted that part of her he knew was as desperate for him as he was for her, and took his time learning those legs he’d spent far too much time admiring lately. All the way down one leg then up the other, then he flipped her over and tended to her back. The supple length of her spine. The swell of her hips and the endless intrigue of her rounded bottom, and then the dark secrets beneath.

  By the time he turned her over again, she was limp.

  And better still, she was begging.

  Just as he’d promised she would. And in some distant part of his brain, Renzo knew that he’d expected the begging to be different, somehow. That he would feel exalted and she would be humbled.

  But it wasn’t like that at all.

  “Please, Renzo,” she whispered. “Please.”

  And he was the one who was humbled that he got to touch her like this. That he alone got to bring her to the brink again and again.

  And that he alone ever would, he thought then, fierce and sure.

  He settled himself between her legs, and then, finally, licked his way into her molten softness.

  And for a while there was nothing but the way she writhed beneath him, lifting her hips to meet his mouth, his tongue, even the edge of his teeth.

  When she fell apart, she sobbed.

  But Renzo was only just beginning.

  He crawled his way back up her body as she lay there, flushed and boneless.

  Mine, he thought. All mine.

  And if there was something in him that whispered that mistress wasn’t the word he wanted when it came to Sophie—well. It was the word that would do for now. Because it had to do.

  Because he’d told her it was what he wanted.

  He reached between them and fit himself to her softness at last. As hard and as desperate as if she’d never taken the edge off at all.

  Sophie’s eyes fluttered open and her gaze met his, and he took that as a sign, sliding himself deep inside her.

  He wanted it fast. A wild pounding that would toss them both straight into oblivion, but she shifted beneath him.

  Her eyes were brown and entirely too gold. Her mouth was soft and something like vulnerable. She slid her arms around his neck and held him to her, and it wasn’t oblivion Renzo wanted.

  It was this.

  Her.

  It was a sweet, hot joining. His deep slide inside of her and the way she clutched at him, as if it could never be enough.

  They could never be close enough. He could never be deep enough. She could never take enough.

  But for what felt like forever, they tried.

  And Renzo knew fire. He knew wild heat and the oblivion it caused.

  But there was something secret here, in the dark of his room, with only the sound of their breathing to spur them on.

  There was something sacred in the way she held him and the sounds she made, sweet whispers and now and again, his name.

  This time, when they reach that edge, it was together.

  And there was no oblivion at the end of it.

  There was only bliss.

  * * *

  Once Sophie agreed to be his mistress, everything fell into place.

  Two weeks later, Renzo stood in the suite of roo
ms that had been hers when she’d first arrived, impatient and not doing much to hide it.

  He had long since had her moved into his bedroom with him, because there was no sense pretending she would ever sleep in another bed but his. Today he waited as the doctor’s assistants set up their equipment, turning what had briefly been Sophie’s room into a makeshift office.

  “You look happy,” the doctor said from beside him, in his jovial way. He clapped Renzo on the back. “Just as the proud papa should.”

  Renzo’s first instinct was to deny it. He looked at the doctor, the only man in the village who had ever treated him or his mother with respect back in those dark years, and then he looked back at the bed, where Sophie was lying down. She had an easy smile on her face, and he seemed to be the only one having trouble with the knowledge that she was naked beneath the sheet spread over her lap.

  Their days were filled with the hot Sicilian sun and sex, and Renzo could admit that he had never known anything quite like it.

  He woke her in the mornings, well before the sky was lit. He took her fiercely then, tossing her from half-asleep into that wildfire they shared with his first deep thrust. They never spoke during those mad sessions. He left her limp and panting when he took his shower, then made his way down to his office to tend to his business concerns spread out across different time zones.

  Hours later he met her for her breakfast, if business allowed.

  He told her he needed to inspect the growing thickness in her belly, and he did, all over the castle—and then took advantage of the sweetness of his hands on her skin. He knew every part of her better than he knew his own body now, and he liked the taste of hers a good deal more.

  Sometimes he knelt on the floor of the shower and licked her until she sobbed. Sometimes Sophie did the kneeling, proving to him what a quick learner she was every time she took him deeper into her mouth.

  Other times he lifted her against the nearest wall and surged inside her, riding them both straight back into that bliss that only seemed to expand every time they reached it, wide and glorious.