Page 17 of Wedding Night In The King's Bed
He kept repeating that to himself. Her betrayal.
But no matter how he tried to think around it, the damage was done. He had married her. He had claimed her as his queen in front of the whole kingdom.
She had not only made him a liar, she had seen to it that he was now participating in an unlawful activity. He, the King. He, Gianluca San Felice, who had long prided himself on his unimpeachable character—the antidote to his parents.
He had to assume that this had been her plan all along. And so, even though it had not been fully dawn, he’d woken up his aide and demanded that her background be investigated. Again. And far more comprehensively.
“As you wish, Your Majesty,” his aide had said. “But our initial investigation was remarkably thorough.”
“Not thorough enough,” Gianluca had retorted.
And then, because he refused to act as if he could not control his temper when that had never been an issue for him before now, he’d taken himself out of the bedroom where his beautiful, treacherous wife slept on. He stalked through his apartments until he reached the room set apart for his personal gym. He threw quite a lot of weight around and then he put in a great many miles.
All of that and yet he felt that great betrayal claw at him all over again at the sight of her.
“Step inside,” he ordered her, when all she did was gape at him. “Unless it is part of your plan to experience hypothermia when you have only just managed to lie your way into the crown of Fiammetta.”
“My plan? Did you say I lied?”
She sounded baffled. And he studied her, because she had fooled him. He, who prided himself on his ability to take the measure of any person he encountered at a glance. He, who had always been praised for his cool head and his ability to cut through so much of the pomp and drama that surrounded Fiammettan politics.
Gianluca had come to stand out here in the cold because there was nothing like a high alpine winter to clear the head. And he had decided that the fault must have been in that longing he’d felt for her. She must have known. She must have discovered his trick of taking a first, unobserved look and played on it.
This woman had managed to manipulate him, something he would have sworn—he had sworn—could not be done.
Even now he could not believe how credible she seemed. How utterly believable. She walked back inside, then began to shiver as if it was only then, back in the warmth of the bedchamber, that she’d realized how cold she’d really been. It was a fine little detail that he might have thought proved her innocence on any other morning.
But he had been here all of last night. He had been lost in her, completely out of his head with that driving, impossible lust, and she had met him at every kiss, every thrust.
Gianluca knew better, little as he wanted to.
She went and stood near the fire that was not quite banked, keeping her back to it as if she did not dare turn her back to him.
“I don’t understand what you’re talking about,” she said when all he could do was glare at her, trying to see into her. Her voice was even. Careful.
He had the fleeting notion that she was speaking to him as if she expected him to explode and was attempting to minimize the damage. She was managing him. Gianluca would have objected to that, too, but he also could feel that he was the most unsettled he had ever been.
Though he did not explode the way both of his parents always had.
He folded his arms over his chest and made certain that his voice was as frigid as the weather outside. “It is an ancient law,” he bit out. “Outsiders are forever calling this law archaic, but the truth of the matter is that it brought peace to this kingdom when all the rest of Europe was at war. For many, many centuries. The Kings of Fiammetta learned that marrying virgins was not simply culturally smiled upon, particularly in our less enlightened periods, but kept everything neat and clean, with no need for the sorts of wars that might crop up in other scenarios. Situations in which, for example, enemies or aspirants to the throne might call into question the precision and accuracy of an heir’s paternity.”
“Thank you.”
She didn’t sound as if she was offended. Or even particularly upset. She certainly didn’t act like she’d been caught out. If anything, she still seemed baffled. He would not like to play poker with her, Gianluca thought bitterly.
Helene continued in that same quiet manner of hers that had lured him in the first place. “I’m actually familiar with the laws of Fiammetta, to some extent. I thought you knew that the palace made certain I was tutored in the intricacies of your country’s traditions and a great many of its laws since almost the moment you proposed.”
“The virginity of the Fiammettan queen is of paramount importance,” he growled at her, sounding nothing at all like his usual composed self, and he blamed her for that, too. “For a great many reasons, not least among them being that the fact you lied means that I have now unwittingly broken the law. You may not care what is right and what is wrong, Helene, but I must assure you that I do. I cannot make the laws if I break them so cavalierly.”
She pulled that quilt tighter around her. Her hair was a mess, falling wildly where it would, but it was his mess. He had raked his fingers through her wavy dark hair so many times he could feel the heat of her in the indentations on his palms. He could smell the scent of the shampoo she used. And he hated that despite his fury, he wanted her.
Oh, how he wanted her.
He was hard, achingly so, and having sampled her throughout the night only seemed to make that worse. Because he knew. He wanted to pull her to him. He wanted to throw that quilt to the floor and lay her down on it, then explore her all over again with the daylight washing over her. He wanted to feed her, wash her again, and stay inside her for a week.
For a start.
Gianluca did not understand how a man as civilized as he had always been could turn into such a monster. He had watched his father lose this battle. He had been collateral damage.