The Illegitimate King (Castaldini Crown 3)

“How could you love someone who scarred you like that?”

She cast her filled eyes downward. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Because I didn’t have a loving mother who made all my nightmares come true, you mean? Now I’m really thankful I didn’t. At least my nightmares were inflicted by strangers.”

“I know it’s inexplicable, the unbreakable bond a child forms with the first one who holds and cares for her. And she did care for me, in her way. There were good times, like you said, before and after the abusive period. And on the whole, I am far luckier than most women I know, too. I have amazing brothers, I’m healthy, I achieve good things, I live in a fairy-tale palace and I’m the daughter of the best king and father in the world. I bet any woman on earth would switch places with me in a second.”

He caught his lip in vicious, white teeth, as if holding back something even he thought he shouldn’t say. Then he said, “What I don’t get is, after they found out your mother had been abusing you, how did they still turn you over to that Antonia battle-axe?”

A laugh burst out of her. His lips thinned. He thought she was going to make light of it, wasn’t allowing it. “Sorry. It’s just I always mentally, and very fondly, refer to her as a battleship! And here you are, coming up with something very close. But let me tell you, between my father’s gentleness, Durante’s protectiveness, Paolo’s companionship and Antonia’s discipline—which was as invaluable as her name proclaims her to be, and which was never in any way excessive and nothing but constructive—they probably saved my sanity. I think I turned out okay.”

“As I said before, you turned out far beyond okay.”

“Yeah, yeah, a merciless, shameless siren.”

“As accurate an assessment as I ever made. One I can’t be more thankful for. In case you’re thinking of contesting my verdict, remember what you did to me all through the night. When you were fresh out of your box, too.” He tugged on her, plastered her against him, showing her what she was doing to him now. “Which brings us back to our original discussion. Say yes, Clarissa.”

How could she? And how could she tell him that the discussion they’d just had was why she was resisting?

She’d been running scared because she knew she’d fall for him all the way to no return. She’d been right. She now felt him mixed with her very blood and breath. He was more than she ever thought could be found in one man.

But he was incapable of intimacy. He had friends, allies, employees who worshipped the ground he walked on, but so did her father. Her father loved his children, his people, but hadn’t been able to love the woman who’d literally lost her mind over him. Her mother had accused him of loving another, but Clarissa believed she’d been looking for reasons that he hadn’t been able to love her. Her father and Ferruccio both seemed to have a glitch in their makeup. They were great men, but when it came to women it seemed they were incapable of loving one, or really loving any.

And just as her father was into leading, inspiring, Ferruccio was into vanquishing, acquiring. Sure, he made his acquisitions eternally grateful to be his. As he’d made her. But could she live with it, if that was all he could give her?

He was choosing her, using the same cerebral premeditation with which her father had chosen her mother. But it was even worse in their situation. Her mother didn’t start out loving her father, and she was almost certain her father didn’t set out to enslave her mother physically, like Ferruccio was doing to her.

Which meant it would be even worse for her.

But he was right, as he invariably was. If she was pregnant, her own life and emotions had to give way to her baby’s. Just like her mother again. Not that she was like her mother in that she would follow the same path of psychological degeneration. Even if her heart was destroyed, she’d never take it out on her child. She’d do all she could to be the best mother she could be.

But she still had to try one final attempt to save herself.

She pushed out of his arms. “If I become pregnant, I’ll marry you. If not, you become crown prince without me in the equation.”

Would he ever learn?

Ferruccio wrestled with the tsunami of fury and offense that threatened to burst his arteries.

She made marrying him sound like an amputation, a drastic measure to be resorted to only if all efforts to save the limb—in this case her life, from his infection—failed.

He struggled to summon the unfathomable facade that had been one of his major weapons as he considered her conditions.

If he agreed to them, she’d either end up married to him for the baby, or he’d find himself king of Castaldini without her by his side. Neither situation was acceptable.

So he countered her bargain. “We’ll marry, now. I will wait until we’re married to take you again. Give you time to heal.” He gave her a taunting smile. “And to…miss me so much the wedding night will make last night pale into nothing.” He saw her nipples jut against her top, conquer the thickness of both bra and top, knew her body was readying itself for his, needing him to ride it, pound it, satisfy it. But he wouldn’t take her again until she begged. Again. And he would make her reach the begging point. “If you wish, I’ll use protection, or you can protect yourself. If you are already pregnant, our immediate marriage will prevent speculation about the timing of our baby’s conception. If you aren’t, and in say, six months’ time, we consider marriage between us not a viable endeavor, I’ll let you leave my bed and we’ll quietly separate. We can go on living in the palace without ever crossing each other’s path. And if, one day, either of us wants an end to the marriage, to marry another perhaps, we’ll work out something civil.”

As she gaped at him, he congratulated himself for making it sound as if he wasn’t desperate for her to say yes, as if she had a way out, if she wanted it, along the road, so she wouldn’t panic and still say no.

But he would make her say yes. And keep on saying it. Forever.

This was his life’s main objective now.

And he always got what he set his mind on.

Chapter Eight

“So now we know the exact time the world will come to an end.”

Clarissa winced. Her friend’s taunt, combined with looking at Ferruccio across the ballroom, made her feel as if she was wading in déjà vu.

Which was a misleading sensation. Apart from the same setting and faces, this occasion was poles apart from that first one.