The Ranieri Bride

‘Next time someone asks you how good a lover I am, what do you tell them?’ he prompted on a low, lazy slur.

‘Amazing,’ she answered obediently. ‘A real stallion.’

He grinned. A sudden spark of new-found energy gave him the strength to lever himself up on his forearms. ‘That good, hmm?’

‘A positive tomcat with a stallion’s equipment,’ she tossed up at him. ‘A grand master in the art of sex. Would you like me to relay your performance to the Press?’

He laughed, even though he knew she’d not been joking. ‘You,’ he responded, ‘are a jealous little cat with a very bad temper.’ Then—‘Dio, it’s good to get the wedding night over with,’ he sighed. ‘Now we can have some fun instead of pretending we cannot stand to sleep with each other.’

He suddenly rolled away from her, then stood up and bent to scoop her up off the bed.

‘What are you doing?’ she protested.

‘Continuing our premature wedding night.’ Straddling her legs either side of his hips, he carried her towards the bathroom. ‘You owe me for a week of sexual frustration, and one night in particular when you let me indulge you in totally selfish sex.’

‘I was asleep,’ she insisted primly, ‘so it counts for nothing.’

‘Oh, how very British,’ he mocked. ‘I was asleep, Your Honour, so I am therefore completely innocent.’

Freya couldn’t resist it—she laughed. Enrico stilled in the bathroom doorway. Her slender arms were resting on his wide shoulders and her hair swung down her back. His eyes were steadily darkening as he took in the way the laughter highlighted every perfect feature in her beautiful face.

‘You’re so incredibly sexy when you laugh like that,’ he growled sensuously.

Freya instantly changed the look for a scowl and he laughed, one of those deep-throated, husky sounds that vibrated pleasurably against her breasts.

‘That look doesn’t faze me—your eyes are still laughing.’

‘So are yours,’ she countered then kissed him on the mouth.

Freya didn’t know which of them was more shocked. It had been purely an impulse reaction, one which came directly out of the few moments of relaxed banter

they’d been indulging in. But it was the first time that she had taken the initiative and kissed him without being seduced into doing it.

Dangerous, she told herself even as she stared at him and he stared back, the tension between them tight. Don’t let yourself fall back into the old love-trap you used to share with him once. Enrico is the enemy. He believes you can be like this with any man. It’s your son he really wants. He’s going to hurt you badly again if you don’t watch out.

She went to pull away from him when his arms banded her closer. She sucked in her breath as her breasts crushed into his chest and with a throaty growl he recaptured her mouth. Dangerous or not she was right there with him, pleasure and excitement singing in her blood. Turning back the way they had come, he tumbled her back down on the bed then followed.

‘I don’t know how you do this to me but you do,’ he muttered as he arrived on top of her, a seething-hot mass of satin-tight muscle and tensely aroused male.

His mouth arrived back on hers and her arms still clung to his neck. It took less than ten seconds for Freya to accept that she was lost, her common sense sunk without a trace in the dizzying knowledge that he couldn’t help himself any more than she could.

They made love until the early hours and slept late the next morning while their son enjoyed running rings round his new nanny and Fredo.

The premature honeymoon to follow the premature wedding night, Freya likened a week later as she stood still while the designer Enrico had commissioned to make her wedding gown stepped back to view his creation along with Sonny, who went everywhere that she went, and Cindy, who was to be her bridesmaid.

They were discussing her but she didn’t hear much of what they said.

She was too busy trying to work out how she had allowed herself to be so completely taken over by everyone—especially by the will of one very, very passionate man.

Was she being a fool for letting it happen?

Of course she was behaving like a fool, she admitted. Hostilities might have been halted for the time being, but the issues had not gone away and she needed to keep on reminding herself of that.

But it was just too easy to dismiss how this had all started out when everything else was going so right.

And Nicky was happy.

As the tension between her and Enrico had eased, the whole household had relaxed and her son was flourishing in the new atmosphere. He was close to hero-worshipping Enrico. Fredo had become his very best friend. Sonny was his stomach’s best friend and Lissa was like a big sister who was never too busy to play with him. The nanny was proving to be the ideal substitute to Hannard’s crèche, which had played such a major part in the little boy’s life. By the time they made the move to Milan in a few days Freya predicted that her son would barely notice the loss.