Ravelli's Defiant Bride

‘And you’re very…single-minded.’ Belle selected the word shakily because she thought he had a lot in common with a bullet aimed at a target.

‘I’ve had three weeks to think about this moment,’ Cristo growled low in his throat. ‘Three weeks too long…I wanted you the first moment I saw you.’

‘When you thought I was my mother?’ she parried incredulously.

‘You were crossing the lawn with the dog in tow and looking exactly like yourself,’ Cristo contradicted, raising almost reverent hands to the spill of pale breasts he had unveiled, long fingers tracing the underside of the full round swells. ‘You are totally magnificent, cara mia.’

Her breath was feathering in and out of her lungs in insufficient drags while he played with her straining nipples, teasing and plucking the tender crowns and sending trickles of fire flaming down into her pelvis. He smoothed his hands down over her quivering frame.

‘Are you cold?’ he asked in surprise.

‘Just a bit nervous,’ she gasped, her voice strangled at source as he rested his palm on her inner thigh and then hooked a finger below the lace edge of her knickers and stroked so that a current of pure tingling warmth ran through her veins.

He tipped up her face with his other hand and burning golden eyes assailed hers. ‘Why would you be nervous?’

‘I haven’t done this before.’

‘With me,’ he filled in.

‘With anyone!’

Cristo froze in the midst of trailing off her last garment. ‘Are you trying to tell me you’re a virgin?’

The heat of mortification flushed her fair skin like a flaming tide and she couldn’t find her voice and was forced to nod affirmation with a jerk of her head.

‘And this is not a tease?’ Cristo prompted. ‘Not a stupid idea to give me what you think could be a wedding-night fantasy?’

Belle focused on him with disconcerted eyes, striving to imagine how he could even suspect such a thing.

Cristo collided with those clear green eyes and discarded his plans of a wedding-night sex marathon. She wouldn’t be able to handle that. A virgin. He was good at reading people. He was convinced she wasn’t lying and he was shell-shocked because it was not at all what he had expected from her and he did not know whether he liked the idea or not.

‘No, not a tease, cara,’ Cristo said for himself.

‘You’re disappointed, aren’t you?’ Belle guessed.

‘No, I’m not. You’re my wife,’ Cristo pointed out with a sudden sense of satisfaction that she would never be able to compare him to another man in bed, never know anything other than what he showed her. A possessive vibe he didn’t know he had pulsed through him at that awareness.

‘I don’t see what difference that makes. I’m not what you expected,’ Belle protested.

Still taut with arousal, Cristo was tired of talking. He kissed along her delicate jaw bone and then crushed her generous mouth urgently beneath his, shifting over her to lower his mouth to her generous breasts and then string a line of kisses down over her straining midriff to the very heart of her. He eased a finger into her tight channel and she bucked up her hips and he smiled, loving her responsiveness, parting her thighs for a more intimate caress.

‘No…no,’ she began, trying to move away.

Glancing up to meet dismayed green eyes, Cristo made a soothing sound he was sure he had never had to make in the bedroom before. ‘Trust me…I’ll take care of you.’

Belle rested her head back against the pillows and closed her eyes tight, trembling with a crazy mix of mortification laced with tingling sexual awareness and anticipation. He touched her and she gasped out loud because she was so sensitive there and the more he licked and nibbled and tormented her, the more frantically excited she became, all control wrested from her, her body moving in a new feverish rhythm like an instrument being strummed by an expert. Incomprehensible moans and sounds fell from her lips as she writhed and the unbearable ache at her core rose to a crescendo and her whole being was straining towards a climax.

And that was when Cristo lifted over her and eased slowly into the slick, wet welcome of her body. Her eyes flew wide at that shock of sensation, of sudden fullness and stretching inside her.

‘This could hurt,’ he told her gently.

‘I know…’ she said breathlessly. ‘I’m not a baby.’

For the first time in his life Cristo was more concerned about his partner than himself, which felt strangely alien to him. ‘You’re so tight,’ he bit out, flexing his hips, tipping her up to him for a de

eper connection and then sliding home to the very heart of her, causing a stinging, fleeting pain that made her grimace.

‘Not too bad,’ she told him shakily. ‘Just do it.’