Page 9 of Wedding Night In The King's Bed

Helene was no ice queen, no cardboard cutout. She was not yet another exquisitely blue-blooded heiress whose looks vaguely resembled that of an Afghan hound no matter what her coloring might have been. Her father had all the charisma of a pillar of salt, but Helene herself had been something of a revelation.

What shocked him was that, all these months later, she still was.

Her mouth was wide and generous and if she were the sort of woman to paint her lips crimson and wear a dress that made love to her curves, he had no doubt that she could bring whole populations of men to their knees. That she could, but did not, only added to her mystique.

Helene’s eyes were wide and large and a deep, velvety shade of brown ringed in gold. Her hair was thick and dark and waved languorously down her back tonight, half of it twisted into something breathtakingly elegant at the back of her head to better accentuate the tiara he had presented her from the family collection.

Gianluca had not known until he’d seen her in that garden, all curves and that mouth, how deeply he had longed, the whole of his life, to get his hands on a figure like hers.

It made everything feel...fraught.

He had always thought of his wedding night as one more simple expression of his duty to the crown. Gianluca had always hoped to find a suitable bride with whom that duty would not be a chore, but that was as far as his thinking on the matter had ever gone. Mostly he had been focused on making sure any queen of his had not only a spotless reputation, but was self-possessed enough that he need not fear she would follow in his mother’s footsteps.

And yet tonight, he found that all he could think about when he let himself consider the fact of his marriage was the marital bed.

It was unseemly.

He knew too well where feelings led.

But no matter what might have surged about within him, Gianluca was a king, not some callow youth, so he pulled her into his arms as the party arranged itself around them to create space on the dance floor.

The orchestra immediately shifted to accommodate him, as was only right and proper, but Gianluca lost all interest in what was going on around them. Because she was his wife. His queen. And she was lush and she was curvy, and yet she was as light in his arms as if she had trained in ballet all these years when he knew full well she had not.

“Are you enjoying the party?” he asked, as if he was a lesser man with no conversational skills whatever.

And he watched, captivated despite himself, as her eyes lit up with laughter. All she did was incline her head, ever so slightly. “I can hardly say that I don’t like it, can I?” That gleam seemed to intensify, as if it was inside him, too. “It would be churlish. After all, this is meant to be my party as well, isn’t it?”

Gianluca had wanted to like his wife. He had not planned to find her quite so fascinating. It was making it difficult to be kind, but distant, as intended.

Because he would not litter his rule with the personal explosions that had so marked his father’s.

“You can feel anything you like,” he said, with perhaps more severity than necessary when they were waltzing about the royal ballroom. On their wedding night.

But she did not react the way another woman might have. He had the sense of her laughter all around him, yet the only place it appeared was her gaze. “As long as I am not so ill-mannered as to say it out loud, which, of course, no daughter of my father would ever dream of doing. I understand, Your Majesty.”

“We are married now, Helene.” He was not sure he could remember if he’d actually tasted her name on his mouth before. Had he? Certainly not when she was his. He found himself pulling her closer than was strictly encouraged, if one’s manners were as scrupulous and above reproach as his had always been before now. “Surely you can call me by my name. When we are alone.”

Another wave of laughter, yet she did not laugh. But the gold in her eyes seemed to get brighter by the moment. “Does this count as alone? Here in the middle of the crowded ballroom?” But then she smiled as she relented. “Gianluca.”

And it took Gianluca a few moments to realize that what moved in him then was pure satisfaction. For what else could it be, this stampeding glory of a feeling that washed through him, head to toe?

He had done it.

Despite everything, he had made certain that the sins of his parents would stop with them. He had drawn a line under their nonsense at last—and there was no point dragging old nightmares into the light. No questioning if it was really nonsense, not all these years after his father’s death. It was easier to think of the soap opera aspect and make sure he did not succumb to such behavior himself. And it was not that he had doubted that he would succeed, because of course he’d expected he would. Nonetheless, that this particular task had been dealt with at last pleased him.

That she was such a delight pleased him more.

And it was also possible that simply holding this new queen in his arms pleased him most of all—because he had succeeded, he assured himself. That was the only thing that mattered to him.

He had spent a series of not unpleasant hours with her in Provence, watched from varying distances by his people and hers, and they had talked of all the things strangers talk about—weather and small things, anecdotes and reminiscences, all in service of taking the measure of each other.

It had been far more entertaining than he’d expected.

Once he’d proposed, naturally, there had been little time or need for private moments. The presentation of a potential new queen to his people had required a focused strategy, the better to get the sort of photo opportunities that would allow every citizen of his kingdom to feel as if they knew Helene in the short few months they had to get used to her.

Gianluca knew that it was the fashion these days for royal men such as himself to date out in the open whenever possible, thus allowing the public to speculate about the worthiness of each and every woman seen on his arm. And then to offer unsolicited opinions about whether or not the woman in question was prepared to take on the job, as if he was not perfectly capable of judging such things himself.

But Gianluca was not modern. Not like that. The old ways were what had kept his family on the throne of Fiammetta for many centuries. What was good enough for the first of his name was good enough for him, as he always liked to say. He would have had the words tattooed into his skin, but that felt redundant. Those words were who he was.