Temporarily His Princess (Married by Royal Decree 1)

Everything snapped inside her like a high-voltage cable, writhing and lashing out and wreaking devastation. He drove the deepest he’d ever been inside her, roaring as he rested against her womb and razed her in the ecstasy of his release.

But feeling his seed splashing her intimate walls, filling her, branding her, spread regret along with the pleasure. Regret that his seed wouldn’t take root. She’d made sure it wouldn’t.

He collapsed on top of her, his breathing as harsh as hers. She wrapped herself tighter around him, relishing his weight. Without him covering her like this, anchoring her in the aftermath of devastation, she felt she might dissipate….

He drew up, supporting his weight on one elbow, fusing them in the evidence of their mutual satisfaction, his other hand securing her head for a deep, luxurious kiss.

The moment he felt her quickening beneath him again, he rumbled a self-deprecating laugh, then groaned as he separated their bodies. “Have mercy, bellissima. Now it’s I who needs to refuel. I’m not a spry teenager anymore.”

Her gaze clung to his undiminished manhood. “Are you kidding me? I’ve been wondering if you’ve hooked yourself to your inexhaustible energy source.”

“I am hooked, all right, on a perpetually renewable source of passionate madness whose name is but a description of her.” Before she could lunge at him, he jumped up, stuffing himself with difficulty into his pants. “We’re refueling. Then I’m taking you sailing. We’ll continue this session on board. Ever made love rocking to the undulations of a tranquil sea?”

Before she said no, since he hadn’t taken her sailing before, jealousy sank into her gut.

He grinned. “Neither have I. Another fantasy I’ll fulfill. I wrote a list of one hundred and ten items while you slept. I intend to make serious headway into all of them during the next week.”

Her tension deflated. He hadn’t done it before. He hadn’t done so many things, but he wanted to do them all with her. Because she was the only one who made him want them. Just like he was the only one who made her want everything and anything.

She arched sensuously, smoothing her hands down her breasts, her tummy, delighting in the soreness inside and out. “I thought we were going to take turns playing out fantasies.”

He tugged her up by the hand, this time making sure not to come too close and be snared back. “Incantatrice mia, I just played one of yours now. Taking you with no foreplay, just rough domination and explosive satisfaction.”

So he could read her like a hundred-foot billboard.

He brought back the tray, placed it across her thighs and bent for one last kiss before he withdrew quickly, making her bite him in her effort to cling.

He laved her bite with a wince of enjoyment. “Eat something else for now, amore mio. I have to go prepare the rest of the day, then the week. I promise your fantasies are going to be heavily featured and meticulously taken care of.”

With one last wink, he turned and strode out.

She watched him go, everything on pause.

Had he said amore mio?

My love?

Ten

Amore mio.

The words rang in a loop inside Glory’s head as she stood staring around her condo. Amore mio, amore mio—crooned in Vincenzo’s voice, soaked in his passion.

He’d been calling her that constantly, among all the other endearments he kept lavishing on her. At least he had for the first six weeks after their wedding. It had been over a week now that he hadn’t been around to call her much of anything.

They’d been back to New York after their honeymoon ended. Vincenzo had extended their time away to two weeks at a hefty cost to all the people who’d arranged their schedules counting on his presence a week earlier.

A wave of oppression descended over her as images from those two weeks in paradise bombarded her. At their end, she’d thought that if she died then, she would have certainly died the most fulfilled, pleasured and pampered woman on earth.

Then they’d gone back to New York. He’d started his position and she’d gone back to work, and instead of everything slowing and cooling down, it had gotten better, hotter. He’d kept his promises and more, making time for her, for them, always, but even better, making a place for her in his working life, and asking for and taking a place in hers.

He’d taken her with him to every function, showing her off as if she was his most vital asset. He’d come to her like he used to with his work issues, taking her opinion and following her advice. He’d thrown his full weight into making difficulties in her work disappear and making far-fetched hopes achievable, without her even asking.

And through it all he’d been saying amore mio. My love.

He’d called her that in the past. She’d believed he’d meant it. Then everything had happened, and she’d known the name had just been an empty endearment. Now, she no longer knew what to believe. After he’d confessed he’d lied about his reasons for leaving her. After the past weeks in his arms, in his life.

So what had it meant to him then? What did it mean now?

The need to ask, to understand everything that had happened in the past, mushroomed daily. She’d tried more than once to broach the subject, but he’d always diverted her, unwilling to talk about it, as if he hated to bring up the past, fearing it would taint the present.

She could understand that. He appeared to have decided to live in the moment, without consideration for the past or the future. And she tried to do that, too, succeeding most of the time. At least, when he was with her. The moment she was out of his orbit, obsessions attacked her, and questions that had never been answered preyed on her. And it was all because she’d done an unforgivable thing.

She’d let herself hope. That this wouldn’t be temporary, that it couldn’t be, not when it was so incredible.

At least it had been incredible until last week when he’d suddenly started becoming unavailable. Even though he’d apologized, blamed work problems, swore it would only be temporary, his absence had plunged her into a nightmarish déjà vu. Though he still came home, still made love to her—not like before when he’d cut her off suddenly—it still made her feel this was the beginning of the end. She tried to tell herself that the “honeymoon” was over, that it happened with everyone, that there was no way he could have sustained that level of intensity. It didn’t mean anything was wrong.

Tell that to her glued-back-together heart.

But all her upheaval had one origin. The missing piece that could explain how the noble man she was now certain Vincenzo was could have been so cruel to her.