Page 19 of Wedding Night In The King's Bed
Not a saint. He would never call himself that, but he did his level best to get as close as a man of flesh and blood could.
He told himself to step back, but he didn’t.
Proving once and for all how saintly he was not.
And so, instead, he drew his fingertips down one side of her lying face, still marveling at the silken heat of her soft skin. At that generous mouth of hers that had pleasured him so intently that he was sure he could still feel the scalding hot clasp of sweet seduction on the hardest part of him...
Damn the woman to hell.
“You are meant to be untouched, untried,” he gritted out at her. “Instead, last night made it obvious in every possible way that you have been put through your paces in a great many beds before mine.”
And then he didn’t have to worry about whether or not he could stop touching her, because Helene jerked herself back and out of his grasp. “I beg your pardon. Put through my paces? First of all, slut-shaming does not look good on any man, especially not a king. Second, I’m not a horse. What I am and always have been is an avid reader with an excellent imagination. I’m sorry if my enthusiasm offended you. I’m sure that will never be an issue again.”
For reasons he couldn’t fathom, Gianluca hated the fact that there was distance between them, even though he knew it was better that way. Even though he should have taken a kind of refuge in the fact that she dared speak to him like this, suggesting that he was the one at fault.
It was an outrage, and perhaps that was why he moved closer to her, curling one hand to cup the nape of her neck. He pulled her to him once more. “Your enthusiasm was overdone, Helene.”
“Or perhaps the great King has never met an enthusiastic woman before,” she shot back with a hint of temper that shocked him, coming from her. “Is that the kind of man you are, Gianluca?”
“Have you no conscience at all?” His voice was low, then. Soft. Deadly. “I took you into that shower expecting that I would have to wash your virgin’s blood from your thighs, but there was none. How do you explain this?”
“My deepest apologies,” she said, her dark eyes narrowing with another helping of that temper that he would have sworn had been bred out of her long ago. “I didn’t realize that the expectation was that we would wave stained bedsheets from the ramparts of the royal palace. I regret to inform you that hymen is not a conscience, despite a great many fevered fantasies, most of them male. And I have ridden far too many horses in my time to expect that there be much to mine, anyway.” She leaned in as if about to tell him a secret, but mockingly, and he should have hated this arch version of her. He should have, but he did not. “Fun fact, that doesn’t mean I lost my virginity to a horse. Something I would have thought did not need clarification, but then, this has been a deeply surprising morning already.”
There was a part of him that wanted to believe her.
Desperately, in fact.
But Gianluca had already seen a game like this unfold. He’d been raised in the middle of it, forever used as a scapegoat, as ammunition, and even, on occasion, as straight cannon fodder.
He took a step back. Then another. “Virgins do not behave as you did.”
And he thought that landed on her like a blow, because she jerked, quickly. Then held herself still.
It felt like a blow and he should have gloried in it, but instead it made him feel small. It made that heavy weight in him seem to press down harder.
“And you’re the expert on virgins, are you?” Helene’s voice was cooler now, more distant. But her eyes flashed even hotter. “Because it seemed pretty clear that you’re not one yourself.”
“What clued you in? Was it, perhaps, a certain level of enthusiasm that made it clear it was not my first time?”
“This is an unproductive argument.” And though Helene’s voice was not precisely even, she lifted her chin and stood her ground. Under other circumstances, he might have admired it. “If you require proof, I can’t give it to you. It seems silly to me that you have a law on the books but no way to ensure compliance one way or the other. I’m afraid you’re simply going to have to believe me.”
“What I believe,” he said, and then he was moving toward her once more, as if he could not control himself at all. As if he’d lost that ability entirely at some point last night. “What I know is that you are a liar. You deceived me, utterly. And I may not know how you did it, but I will find out. It is not only your lovers I will uncover but your objectives. And you can be sure that whatever they might be, you will not achieve them.”
He was close enough now to see the way her eyes flashed. And worse still, to smell himself on her skin.
That need, that hunger, nearly ate him whole.
“What if you’re too late?” she threw back at him, sounding very nearly reckless, another thing he would have said she was incapable of. “What if the whole of my objective was to be your queen. Now what?”
He growled something at her, not certain he even managed to form words. But it didn’t matter, because Helene—who he would have said had no temper to speak of—seem consumed with it now. She pushed herself closer to him, gripping that quilt around her like a set of royal robes.
“Will you divorce me, Gianluca? Call for an annulment? What if, even now, your child is within me? Will you be the first divorced, single father king to ever sit on the Fiammettan throne? Will your ancestors rise from their graves in protest?”
“Don’t tempt me.”
“Then why wait?” She turned and made to sweep toward the door. “Let’s tell the world right now. Gentle subjects, we consummated the royal marriage, but it was too...enthusiastic, so the Queen must clearly be a whore.” She threw a scathing sort of look over her shoulder, but it only made her more beautiful. It only made him harder. It only hurt. “Would you like to announce it to the populace or shall I?”
And he did not know if she tripped over her own quilt or if he was reaching out for her anyway, but one thing and another, Helene was in his arms.