He made a jagged noise and dragged his teeth along her generous lower lip, tugging then releasing. “I’m being too rough.”
“I need to know you feel the same. I want you so bad. You have no idea.”
“I do.” Another rough noise scraped from his throat. He dragged up the skirt of her gown, so when he picked her up as he pushed off the door, her legs were free to twine around his waist.
“But it’s only lust, bella. Tell me you understand that.”
She was on the verge of laughing, loving his easy strength. Her self-assurance slipped a notch, but she could feel him hard and straining between her legs. It was too beguiling to ignore, making her tighten her arms and legs, trying to increase the pressure there. “Whatever it is, I need it.”
He walked her unerringly to the bed and came down to settle his weight on her, mouth sealing to hers again. Writhing under him, she tried to touch all of him with her whole body, tried to drag his clothes out of the way while searching for hot naked skin.
“Slow down.” He grabbed her hands and pinned them over her head, then dragged his mouth along her jaw, down her throat and bared her breast for his fierce gaze. “This will not end before it starts.” He used his teeth on the swell of her breast, making her shudder. “I’ve fantasized about it too many times to rush now that I have you where I want you.”
A surge of moisture hit her loins. “I think about us when I’m in the bath.”
He lifted his head and with a hiss said, “You witch.” He levered up and rolled her over, swept her hair out of the way then slowly tugged open the ties behind her neck. “Tell me exactly what you do when you’re in the bath.” He set kisses down her spine. “Be specific.”
“I could show you.” She lifted into his hardness.
He grasped her hip and met her pressure with thrusts of his own, breaths thick and animalistic as he ground his erection into her soft cheeks. Then he slid a hand under her bunched skirt and across her stomach, fingers delving beneath her silk panties as he settled on her again. “Keep moving,” he said, gently sawing two fingertips between her damp lips, mouth planting wet kisses on her nape. “Show me how much you want me.”
She did. She rocked herself between his hand and his heavy hips until she was trembling with desire. She stopped, shaking with arousal. “I’m so close. I want to feel you inside me.”
“Not yet.” He shifted and settled his hand deeper, so his fingers slid inside her, so satisfying yet maddening. “Keep going.”
Helpless to her own body, she did, until she was releasing broken cries, fists clenching the blankets, body clasping uncontrollably at his penetration, shivering and completely lost. Utterly his.
“So good,” he said, licking between her shoulder blades, still mimicking lovemaking with light thrusts of his hips, drawing out her orgasm as he kept his hand in place. “I want you in a thousand ways. There will never be enough time for how much I want you.”
And he called it only lust?
She pushed against the mattress, trying to twist beneath him. He withdrew his hand, but hooked his fingers in her panties and pulled them down and off, sitting up on the edge of the bed to throw them away, then he shrugged off his jacket and kicked off his shoes.
She knelt behind him and reached to work down the buttons of his shirt. He turned his head to catch at her mouth with his, easily distracting her. Their tongues met and the heat kept growing, not appeased in the least. She sobbed and he turned to scrape his hands down her shoulders, brushing her gown away so she knelt in a puddle of near-black velvet.
He stood then, chest expanding in deliberate breaths between the edges of his open shirt, as if he strained to keep control of himself. “Don’t ever ask me again if you’re beautiful. Know it, bella. You are the kind of beautiful that could topple a kingdom.”
He reached out and wound her hair around his hand then bent to kiss her.
She tried to balance the bitter with sweetness in her own kiss, but her desire was too potent. It was all lust. He pulled back to yank his pants open then stripped, checking for a moment with one hand and reaching toward the night table.
“I can’t get pregnant,” she reminded.
He snorted and found a condom anyway, tearing it open with his teeth.
It shouldn’t have made her want to cry, but it did.
“Bella,” he chided as he pressed her flat and used a knee to part her legs, “I’m protecting you.”
It didn’t feel like it. But when he stroked his tip against her, hot and beguiling, he seemed to send electric lines of pleasure radiating through her. She forgot to be outraged or hurt. She set her hands on either side of his head and kissed him. Extravagantly. Invitingly.
And when he sank into her, it was her turn to bite his lip and groan.
“I’m going to make it last,” he said into her mouth. “All night.”
“Yes, please...”
* * *
Mario met them as they entered the palace. He smiled benignly at Tyrol, who was fussy after the travel, and said to Xavier, “The Queen expects you. She’d like to hear about Australia.”
Completely attuned to her husband after their night of lovemaking, Trella felt his surreptitious sigh.
“Of course.” He glanced at Trella from eyes bruised by their sleepless night. “Eat. Get some rest.”
She nodded and followed his retreat with her gaze, feeling as though he took her heart and spun it out like twine behind him.
All of her felt undone and achy. They’d had one conversation in the dawn light, bodies still damp with exertion, while her nerve endings had still been singing with joy.
“You know this doesn’t change what has to happen.” His voice had been grave, his body steely against hers.
She had shifted her head on his shoulder. “I know. But I’m not sorry. Are you?”
“I’m trying to be.”
She had turned her lips in to his throat and they had started all over again.
“Gerta can take the Prince up to the nursery, Ms. Sauveterre,” Mario said as they arrived on the second floor.
Signora Deunoro, Trella longed to say, but it had been agreed from the outset that she would not change her name. After Tyrol’s christening, she was to receive an honorific title of Dama, the lowest of Elazar’s ranks. A future monarch could not have a parent who was common.
“I’ll keep him. He’s having an off day.” And she was feeling neglectful after leaving him in Gerta’s care during the wedding last night. “You go settle in,” she said, since Gerta hadn’t actually seen where she would be living in the palace. “I’ll bring him when he’s ready for a long nap.”
With a curtsy, Gerta followed Mario’s direction to the nursery level while Trella turned toward the room she’d occupied before she’d gone into the hospital, the ones adjoined to Xavier’s.
Mario cleared his throat. “You’re in the dowager’s wing now, Ms. Sauveterre.”
This doesn’t change what has to happen.
Speechless, composure fraying, she let Mario escort her across the gallery, through a pair of doors, down a long hall where paintings of Xavier’s ancestors watched her progress in silent judgment, and through another set of doors.
The temperature grew cooler as they walked. Tyrol’s fussy cries echoed off the high ceiling with the sounds of their footsteps. She didn’t try to soothe him, just let him express exactly what she was feeling, and was viciously pleased to see Mario’s obsequious expression grow more and more strained.
She understood that the dowager’s wing had been deliberately placed to provide as much distance as possible between former queens and new ones. It wasn’t a horrible place. It had been prepared for her occupancy with cheerful floral arrangements, a new sofa and her very own lady’s maid, Adona, who was eager to prepare her some soup.
Mario offered a quick tour, pointing to a bright, empty room as a potential studio, if she wanted to provide a list of items she would like placed there.
“A crib and a change table,” Trella said, growing as fractious as her son. “Tyrol needs a nursery.”
Mario tilted his head in a way that was unbearably condescending. “Royalty inhabits the royal wing.”
“I see.” She sat on the sofa and dug in her shoulder bag for the receiving blanket she carried. She shook it out with a snap then tucked a corner into her collar as she met Mario’s gaze with a challenging one of her own. “And do I go on safari to the nursery to feed him? Or does he exercise his lungs through the palace every two hours as he is brought to me?”
Tyrol was showing off the growing strength of his lungs, recognizing the feeling of the soft flannel against his cheek as she draped it over him and growing frantic for her to open her buttons.
“It was understood the Prince was taking a bottle,” Mario said, mouth pinched, gaze averting self-consciously while his whole face went red.
Oh, was he uncomfortable with her breastfeeding? What a shame.
“He’ll need a bottle, won’t he? Or he’ll starve to death before we get to each other. Am I even allowed into the palace without an escort? He’s six weeks old. Still a few days shy of his due date. He’s not weaned and won’t be for a year.”
“As I see.” Mario cleared his throat and turned to the door. “I’ll leave you to it.”