Page 45 of Forgotten Mistress, Secret Love-Child
But she had to hide it.
Her breath hitched audibly as she saw the wide bed that took up one end of the vast room. Canopied in emerald green silk, perfectly centred between French doors that gave on to a balcony overlooking the lake, it took her breath away.
A long garland of roses was strung across the bed head, and rich velvety petals, like a shower of cream and blush and crimson, lay scattered across the sheets.
It looked like nothing so much as…
‘Our wedding bed.’ Alessandro’s deep voice was resonant with an inflection she could almost swear was satisfaction.
Except she knew he had no desire for intimacy. No desire for her. This union was pragmatic, necessary. A legality.
Carys opened her mouth, but no words came. She drew a difficult breath, suddenly aware of how the tight silken bodice cupped her breasts and of the delicate scratch of her new bra’s hand-made lace against peaking nipples.
Hot embarrassment flooded her. And more heat that wasn’t embarrassment, creating an unsettling, pooling sensation way down low in her womb.
She shifted in his hold, praying he wouldn’t notice her traitorous body’s reaction to him.
‘Your cousins have been busy,’ she said in a scratchy, unfamiliar voice. Now she understood the presence of the other women in the house this morning, whispering and laughing over some secret as they made their way upstairs.
She felt the shrug of powerful shoulders. ‘Another tradition. It’s supposed to bring luck to a marriage. Blessings and, who knows, maybe even fertility.’
Carys wriggled, now desperate to escape. She couldn’t keep up this façade of composure. Not when she felt his heart thudding against her, the warm tickle of his breath in her hair and the heat of his hands cradling her.
He made her want things she shouldn’t. Things that could never be.
‘The union is already fertile. We have Leo. We don’t—’
Her words died as, instead of releasing her, Alessandro carried her to the bridal bed. A moment later she was sprawled across the mattress, the rich, sensual perfume of damask roses rising from the petals crushed beneath her.
Automatically she struggled against the encumbering long skirts and the veil dragging her down.
Then she looked up and froze. The expression of feral hunger in Alessandro’s face made her heart hammer in her chest. Adrenaline spiked her bloodstream.
She told herself it was from fear. But she didn’t believe it.
‘You wouldn’t condemn Leo to being an only child, would you?’
Alessandro looked down at the woman who was now incontrovertibly his and felt a satisfaction such as he’d never experienced.
It outstripped the pleasure of finally wresting the family company back to a secure footing. Even the recollection of his first major business coup, the difficult and astoundingly successful acquisition of a rival manufacturing firm, couldn’t match the exultant surge of pleasure that shot through him as he looked down at his woman.
His wife.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. It was supposed to be convenient, sensible, a considered option to safeguard the interests of his son. But right now only his own interests were at the fore of Alessandro’s mind.
This week had been a test of endurance such as he’d never known. Time and again he’d reined in the impulse to reach for her and make her his, assuage the physical hunger and, more, the edgy sensation that she could fill the nameless void at the core of his world.
When she’d walked down the aisle, an ice-cool, delicious vision of femininity, his temperature had soared and his libido had leapt into urgent life. It had taken all his resolve to stand and wait, not to throw her over his shoulder and abduct her to someplace private.
Laid out before him like a delicacy awaiting his approval, Carys stoked a fire in his blood for which he knew there could be only one solution.
Sex. Hot and satisfying.
Alessandro drew a slow breath, inhaling the scent of flowers and woman that had haunted him all afternoon.
Damn it. Carlotta had done her job too well. That dress emphasised every sultry line and curve of the woman he’d married. It had driven him crazy from the moment he saw her.
His gaze skimmed the perfect swell of her breasts, hidden yet accentuated by the shadowy V of a neckline that had dragged his attention back again and again. With those scintillating blue stones on the bodice drawing his gaze, he’d spent half the reception ogling his new wife instead of speaking to guests.
When they’d danced he’d put his hands around a waist that was surely too tiny for a woman who’d given birth, and felt a powerful surge of possessiveness overwhelm him.
It didn’t matter that he couldn’t recall the past between them. It was the present that mattered. Not even his doubts about her trustworthiness impinged on his thinking. Right now nothing mattered more than slaking his desperate lust for his brand new wife.
