Page 25 of Wedding Night In The King's Bed
Helene waved a hand. “Yes, yes. You will have your revenge.” It made her feel strong, she could admit, to come so close to laughing when nothing was funny. She thought she had never understood her mother more, for what could be more infuriating to a man who wanted to cause upset than...not to seem the least upset? She smiled at Gianluca. “In the meantime, however, it would be so much more pleasant to have a bit of music while we eat, don’t you think? To cover up the echoing silence and seething recrimination between us.”
“I imagine we will have something,” he told her in that same dark way that made her wish, despite herself, that all of this was the way she’d imagined it might be last night. “You can be certain of that.”
“Marvelous,” she said brightly, tucking into her second course. “In the meantime, I believe you mentioned crisis management. Which involves me playing the role of broodmare, does it not?”
When he laughed, then, it was a dark, grim sort of sound that nevertheless set off explosions and wildfires all over her body. As if, no matter what, they were connected now. They were connected intimately, so that even a laugh like that winnowed all the way down her spine.
Then settled there, spreading until it hummed deep between her legs.
And the only shame Helene felt was that it didn’t matter that he thought her a liar. It didn’t matter to her body at all. She felt swollen with need, aching with it. Even if, at the same time, she had the distinct urge to take one of the forks lined up so prettily beside her plate and stab him with it.
She didn’t know how she could feel so many things at one time for the same person. She didn’t even like the man very much right now and yet she knew that if he reached over and put his hands on her again, she would melt into his arms. At once.
“You act as if providing heirs to the throne was not your primary purpose all along.” Gianluca lifted a brow. “Or were you somehow under the impression that the King of Fiammetta went about looking for a bride with certain requirements for sport?”
Once again, something inside Helene shifted. She couldn’t tell what she felt, then. She only knew that it was dangerous. That it seemed entirely too likely to tear her apart.
Steps, she reminded herself. And the only step available to her was to breathe.
And to stay very still, so none of the things inside her erupted.
“This is not a love match, Helene,” the man who had been inside her in too many ways to count growled at her. “For which I can only count myself endlessly grateful. The good news is that there is no longer any reason whatever to pretend otherwise.”
He pushed back from the table then, standing up so swiftly that she was caught first by the grace in the way he moved. And she knew him on a far more intimate level now. But there was also that lurching sort of hope that bloomed in her immediately, because some part of her clearly wished that he would reach for her after all—
But instead, he stalked from the room, as if he could not bear another moment in her presence.
Leaving behind the sort of bone-deep silence that she doubted very much any music could cover at all.
So there was nothing to do but sit there, staring down at her plate, whispering words that seemed to rebound back at her.
“I wasn’t pretending,” she said, because something in her felt as if it might break into pieces if she didn’t say it.
She said it again, then again, to the plate before her and the mountains that pressed in from the night outside.
But it didn’t make her feel any better when she did.
CHAPTER SIX
HELENE DIDN’T KNOW a whole lot about typical honeymoons, that having been considered low on the priority list of marital concerns across the board, but she did feel fairly certain that most people did not spend it in as much of a deep freeze as she and Gianluca did.
A deep freeze that had nothing to do with the typically blizzard-like conditions outside, that was.
While the snow fell—and fell and fell—the palace was toasty and warm. Fiammettans were well used to their excessively cold winters and Helene’s astonishment at the snow that built up on her balcony rail each morning only made her aides laugh.
This was how she knew that what she viewed as entirely too much winter weather was perfectly normal to them.
She tried to tell herself that the same was true of her marriage. It wasn’t as if she had a host of friends who were also queens who she could ask, so for all she knew, this was bog-standard behavior for kings of all kinds.
Helene assured herself it was.
That, too, was comforting. In its way. Since for all his talk of broodmares, Gianluca did not touch her that way again. She tried to tell herself it was a welcome reprieve, but she knew that was exactly the kind of lie he had already accused her of telling him.
Because every night, her usual staff would walk her back to her bedroom from the King’s private dining room and then assist her in undressing herself, as if walking and undressing were activities that suddenly required a team effort now that she had married a king. She supposed it was to remind her that everything she did could be scrutinized, and thus she had better act the part.
As if she had ever not acted appropriately in the whole of her life—but then, that was his contention, wasn’t it?
What it meant was that it was only when Helene crawled into the Queen’s stout and imposing four-poster bed and lay there, staring at the elegantly embellished paneled ceiling, that she could really replay their wedding night.