The Illegitimate King (Castaldini Crown 3)

“Take your fill of me, regina mia.” Gritting his teeth, he began to invade her, the beauty open before him, her constant pleas a current fusing his insides.

He went blind with the burst of pleasure, at the heat and slickness and tightness of the velvet vise enveloping him. He stilled in her depths as she arched off the bed at his invasion.

“Perdonami, amore mio,” he rasped in his agitation.

She panted. “Forgive you? For what?”

“For not taking you with more restraint the first time.”

She thrust her hips up. “I didn’t want you to be restrained. That’s why it didn’t occur to me to tell you you were my first.”

“And only.” He thrust, stamping his claim deeper. She swooned beneath him, opening wider, accepting anything he’d do to her. “You’re mine and mine alone. But it didn’t matter that you didn’t tell me. I should have noticed, should have felt your pain. Damn me, I thought it was extreme pleasure.”

“It was. The pain merged into pleasure and was…incredible.”

“Whatever pain I caused you, I’ll make it up to you, in a lifetime of pure and intensifying pleasures.”

“I don’t know if I can survive more pleasure than that.” Her fingers dug into his chest, his shoulders, bringing him down to her, forcing him to stroke deeper into her. She cried out, a hot sharp sound of exultation that tore a growl of pride out of him.

She thrashed her head, never taking her eyes off his, letting him see every sensation rip through her, the thousand shades of gold in her hair, her golden paleness brightening with her rising pleasure, burning up the darkness she lay on, an image the old masters would have paid in blood to capture unto eternity.

“You feel…magnificent…inside me…” Her voice was smoky, exhilaration thickening it, sending another tidal wave of arousal crashing through him. “I never imagined so much pleasure existed. Give me all of you, as you promised, amore, take all of me.”

The word amore gasped with such conviction, burst in his mind, in his heart, with such acute surprise, such pleasure that he almost keeled over.

He rose on extended arms, surveyed her feverishly. She looked every inch a woman in a tumult of…love? Or had it just been an endearment fueled by pleasure and the maddening need for release?

He’d take anything. Need could become love.

He fed her hunger for more of him, struggling as the slide inside her gripping heat sliced through him. He wanted this to last.

He watched in awe as she accepted all of him, wild, abandoned. Then she was weeping as she sought his lips, her core throbbing around him, demanding him harder, faster. He had to obey her.

His plunging rhythm became pounding, until her cries rose to a shriek that ripped through him. She arched up, convulsed in a full-body fit that shredded her cries, wrenched at his shaft. The knowledge that he was fulfilling her tore his own climax from depths he’d never known existed.

With a prayer that his seed would take root in her womb, he jetted inside her, causing her paroxysm to spike. Detonations of ecstasy rocked him, and her, locked them in a closed circuit of overstimulation, dissolved them into each other.

When it felt his heart would never restart, the tumult gave way to the warmth and weakness of satiation. He felt her melt beneath him, awe and fulfillment glowing on her face.

“Moglie mia, regina mia,” he rumbled against her lips as he twisted, bringing her on top of him, maintaining their connection.

She pressed her lips to his heart. “Marito mio, re mio.”

Her answering proclamation confirming him her husband and king, roared through his blood with pride and relief. Resurging desire, too, since she spoke in that new voice of hers, the one she now used only with him, awareness-laden, smug, overcome.

She raised her head, her hair draping over his chest. She gave him such a smile, no inhibitions, awakened, gaining in confidence. She would be annihilating when she realized her full power. He couldn’t wait to be devastated. “You’re always right, aren’t you? I thought our first time was magic. Now I’ve given up trying to come up with descriptions. No language can do justice to what you do to me, what you give me.”

He stroked her, moved, grateful, bursting with pride and joy. “It’s the same with me.”

Her gaze faltered. “You don’t have to say that. Your experience—”

He cut her off, needing her to know, to never doubt. “Is obscenely overrated. And irrelevant. You would understand, if you had any. You would realize that what you knew as sex is nothing when you can experience this.” He crushed her whole length to him. “Raging, blinding, transfiguring passion.”

She cried out at his intensity, her face blazing with emotion at his confession, her body blossoming under his hunger, undulating in a renewed dance of sinuous demand and submission.

He rose, swung her up in his arms. She clung to him as if she was a part of him as he took her to the next phase he had prepared in her seduction and sensual enslavement. And his.

He’d given her that ride he’d promised her, under a canopy by the lapping waves. Then he’d stripped her of her torture device of a dress and taken her into the warm waters, driven her over many edges there. Then he’d wrapped her in silk and carried her back to their mansion. He’d taken her again in the swimming pool. Then she’d taken him, dissolved him in her hands and mouth. It had been another first for him, surrendering control to that extent.

Now she was curled into him, replete and depleted, a smile painting her face even in sleep, taking her beauty to a new level.

If their first night had been earthshaking, their wedding night had been life-changing.

She had changed his life in the past ten days. Changed him. Beyond recognition. And he liked the man she’d changed him into. He could finally be at peace with that man.

And that man couldn’t wait to experience every second of their deepening passion, to surrender to the magic that bound them.

Clarissa watched Ferruccio answer one phone call and put two on hold as he signed the papers that Alfredo flipped over for him.

It was a financial treaty with a neighboring kingdom. He hadn’t had time to read the fine print, and she’d stepped in, in her role as financial advisor and analyst, gone over it with a fine-toothed comb and recommended that he sign. He refused the very idea of her double-checking her verdict. She’d fallen in love with him a bit more over that. If that was humanly possible.

For the past six weeks Ferruccio had been embroiled in the duties of his new status, putting right so many things that had gone wrong long before her father had fallen ill. He’d told her he’d been able to do so much in that time frame because he’d had her help and counsel. He seemed to revel in their interaction as much as she did, their synergy, in matters of state. And on every other level.