The Future King's Bride (The Royal House of Cacciatore 3)

He shook his head. ‘Nothing.’

Millie pulled a face. ‘Oh, that’s not fair, Gianferro! You can’t use your fluency in other languages to exclude me.’

‘Can’t I?’ he challenged softly, his words light and teasing, but she recognised that he meant them. ‘Perhaps what I said was not suitable for a woman to hear.’

This was even worse. ‘I may have been innocent,’ she protested, ‘but I’m not any more! I want to learn—and how better can I learn the secrets of the bedroom than from my husband?’ Her mouth curved into a smile. ‘I want to please you.’

‘But you do.’

‘And I want to enlarge my knowledge,’ she added firmly.

He gave her a rueful look and pulled her into his arms. ‘I was voicing my surprise and my pleasure because it is exactly as other men say it is.’

Millie frowned, not understanding at all.

‘To make love without protection,’ he elaborated. ‘To ride bareback, as I believe the Americans call it.’ He saw her colour heighten. ‘You see!’

But Millie was shaking her head, trying to make sense of what he was saying. ‘You mean…you mean you’ve never made love to a woman without…’ She hesitated over the word—new to her, like so much else. ‘Protection before?’

He seemed astonished that she should have asked. ‘But, no! Never!’

‘Because…because of the risk of disease?’ she ventured.

‘Of course.’ He nodded, picking up her fingers and kissing them, his breath warm and his smile full of satisfaction. ‘And there are no such risks with you, cara

mia. But it is far more than that…you see, my seed carries within it the bloodline of Mardivino, and it cannot be spilled carelessly!’

On the one hand it was a very old-fashioned and poetic way of putting it, and yet it was mechanical, too—as if she was nothing other than a very clean vessel. Millie bit her lip.

‘I told you you would not like it,’ he said softly as he observed her reaction.

But it wasn’t that. It was the way his voice had grown so stern when he had mentioned his bloodline. She realised that they still hadn’t got around to discussing contraception. He must have just assumed that she would get herself sorted out before the wedding, as everyone had advised her to do.

She snuggled up against him. ‘Don’t you think that there are a few things we ought to talk about?’

‘Before or after I make love to you again?’ he questioned, his voice silky with erotic promise, and Millie shivered in anticipation as she felt the hardening and tensing of his body.

She closed her eyes as he began to touch her breasts. ‘I guess…I guess it can wait,’ she said shakily.

This time there was a sense of urgency, but there was a question burning inside her, too, as Millie wondered if it could possibly be as good again.

She was still a novice, but already she had learnt. Already she was comfortable with his body, and this time she was not afraid to touch him as freely as he did her. She saw his fleeting look of surprise, quickly followed by one of pleasure as their cries shuddered out in unison.

Oh, yes, she thought happily. Just as good. She stretched luxuriously. No. Better.

He turned to face her, a flush highlighting the aristocratic cheekbones and the hectic glitter of satisfaction in his black eyes giving no indication of the bombshell he was about to drop.

‘So, cara,’ he drawled softly, ‘do you think we have made you pregnant?’

CHAPTER SIX

FOR a moment, Millie froze—her body as motionless as a stone—yet her mind raced with a speed which was frightening.

She played for time. ‘Wh-what did you say?’

He smiled, but his voice was edged with a kind of territorial anticipation. ‘I was thinking aloud, cara,’ he murmured. ‘Wondering whether even now my child begins to grow within your belly.’

She forced herself not to be swayed by the—again—poetic delivery of his words, but to concentrate instead on the implication which lay behind them.