Page 14 of Wedding Night In The King's Bed

Still he pressed in deep, then deeper still.

She threw back her head and tried to ride it through, the stretching, the pressing. She was so soft and the fire inside her was so bright, and all of these things felt as if they were braided together.

As if it was all meant to be this way, the flames burning hot on one side, and the press of pain on the other, yet somehow working together. So that somehow all of it was wildfire and wonder, and she arched into him, surrendering herself to the grip of it. To the inevitability of the way he slid in, so deep, until she felt him kiss up against the very depths of her.

It was as if everything she was, everything inside her, rippled.

And then shattered.

And the shattering was its own kind of dance, its own slick and sweet marvel, a wonder all its own. Too magic and too wild for her to do anything but let it take her.

Over and over.

The way he did as he thrust within her, again and again and again.

So that when she fell back into herself anew, returned from all the shattering, that was all she knew.

Once. Twice.

Until she broke apart once again, so completely that she was little more than a shooting star off there in the cosmos—

But she heard Gianluca’s voice, his wild cry of need and wonder as he came with her, and she thought she could stay like that, scattered out there in the stars, forever.

Particularly if he was with her.

She wasn’t sure she would ever come back to her own body again, and when she did it felt wrong. As if she was not meant to be solid like this, separated from him in the indignity of flesh and bone.

Not when they could shine. Not when she knew they could dance like that, out where galaxies collided.

It took her a long while to understand how she was even lying there on her side, curled up next to the blazing hot body of the man she’d married. The man she barely knew.

The man whose addictive taste she had in her mouth, even then.

There were no lights on in this great room of his, but there was a fire dancing in the grate, and she liked the way the firelight moved over his skin and hers. As if it was keeping them connected the way no small part of her felt they were meant to be.

Always.

Just as they had been out there in the stars he sometimes carried in his eyes.

But the longer Helene lay there, the more she found herself going over what they’d just done again and again in her mind, so that her heart began to pound all over again. She had been taught repeatedly that it was always best to allow oneself to be led so that one could more easily adapt to whatever might befall her, but surely that didn’t apply to this. She was lying there, laid out like the grandest sort of meal, and the man had made her his queen. If rank had its privileges, surely she did not need to deny herself ever again.

So Helene shifted, pushing herself up on her hands so she could look down at the King, her husband, there beside her. He lay there with one arm thrown over his eyes, as if he knew the firelight danced over all the lines of his body and made him into art.

And she had found him gorgeous from the start, there was no denying it. But he seemed something more like celestial to her now. She leaned down over him, smiling as her hair found him before she did. She let her soft, dark waves trail across the skin of his chest, as if she was using it like a tool.

Because she was following wherever this mad pleasure led, and more, because he liked it. He began making the most fascinating sound, low in the back of his throat, that made that abundantly plain.

Helene pressed her lips to the pulse she found, beating in time with hers, at the base of his neck. And then she simply gave herself over to that beat. To the longing inside of her.

To the magic of this, and every new marvel she uncovered along the way.

She found the corded tendons in his neck entrancing. She followed them down to his collarbone, lost herself for some while in that shoulder and the underarm he was presenting to her with his arm in that upthrust position. And better yet, his bicep.

After a while, she felt drawn to his chest again, and shivered, because she could remember so clearly how all those hair-roughened muscles had felt against the tips of her breasts. She could feel it again now, as if her body was preparing itself.

But that gave her an idea, so she leaned in and found his nipple, teasing it with her tongue until she heard that growl once more.

And then, more exciting still, she felt the way his big, strong hands clenched deep in her hair.