Temporarily His Princess (Married by Royal Decree 1)

Giggling at his boyish playfulness, she glanced around embarrassedly at the dozens of people coming and going, no doubt the caretakers of his castle, all with their gazes and grins glued on her and Vincenzo.

He climbed the ancient stone steps with her protesting that she was too heavy all the way. By the time they arrived at a stone terrace at the top, he’d proved she wasn’t, for him. He was barely breathing faster. He’d always been fit. But he must have upped his exercise regimen. She couldn’t wait to test his boosted stamina….

The moment he put her down on her feet, she rushed across the terrace and came up against the three-foot-high balustrade looking over the incredible vista that sprawled to the horizon. Well-being surged through her in crashing waves, making her stand on tiptoe, arch her back and open her arms wide as if to encompass the beauty around her.

Vincenzo came up behind her, stopping less than a whisper away, creating a field of screaming sensuality between them, his lips blazing a path of destruction from her temple to the swell of her breasts. By the time he took the same path back up, she was ready to beg for his touch.

She didn’t have to. He finally pulled her against him, arms crisscrossing beneath breasts that felt swollen and heavy. His murmur thrummed inside her in a path that connected her heart and core, melting both. “Dea divina mia, my divine goddess, now I know what this place lacked in my eyes. Your beauty gracing it. I won’t be able to think of this place again except as a backdrop to showcase and worship you.”

That was…extravagant. When had he learned to talk like that? With the women who flowed in and out of his bed?

A fist squeezed her heart dry of beats.

Steady. She had no right to feel despondent or disillusioned. Vincenzo wasn’t hers. He never had been.

But the thought still didn’t sit right. Those women had always seemed as if they’d been there to serve his purpose. She couldn’t see him serenading them. So where did the poetry come from? Why was he so free with it? She’d already promised him the pretense and the passion.

So was he only going all-out to make her feel better about both?

Yeah. That had to be it.

But he’d said his passion had always been real. Whatever his reasons for his past cruelty, it didn’t matter. For now, she could have heaven.

“If you think I add to the scenery that much, I’ll pose for a photo shoot if you ever need to put the place up for sale. I can see the ad with the title ‘Property in Paradise.’” She turned in his arms. “But seriously, now I’ve seen it up close, I’m wondering how you don’t live here most of the time.”

“Maybe now I will.” His tone remained that tempting burr. But she felt it. An earnestness. A query. One he couldn’t be asking. This was a fake marriage, with a nonexistent future. He wouldn’t be considering her or soliciting her endorsement before he made plans for his own future.

Ignoring a pang of regret, she pretended she didn’t hear the subtext in his comment. There was probably none, anyway.

“So, what now?”

“We start preparing for next week.”

“What’s next week?

He pressed her against the balustrade and spanned her rib cage with his large hands, the translucence of his eyes bottomless reflections of the vivid sky. Then he said, “Our wedding.”

Seven

“Our wedding?”

Vincenzo’s heart dipped in his chest at the frown on Glory’s face as she echoed his words.

Was she angry again? After the magical flight here, when she’d gradually relaxed, seeming to accept their situation and then enjoy being with him, he’d almost forgotten how resistant she’d been. But what if her acquiescence had been a lull, and now she’d come to her senses and would start antagonizing him again? He couldn’t stomach a return to friction, would give anything for their newly forged harmony to continue. Even if it meant letting her make the decisions from now on.

She threw her hands in the air. “God, I was determined to stop repeating your words like an incredulous parrot. Then you go and say something that forces me into being one!”

She had sounded and looked deliciously startled frequently in the past couple of days. Was that all? She was annoyed at herself for parroting his declarations?

He watched her intently, considering his response so he wouldn’t trigger a relapse into hostilities. “Why is what I just said worthy of incredulous parroting?”

“When you talk you don’t hear yourself? Or was it one of the other Vincenzos who said our wedding is next week?”

Her smirk blanked out his mind with the memory of having those sassy lips beneath his, soft and pliant, burning with urgency, spilling moans of pleasure. He needed to devour them again. But he had to settle this first.

He backed her up against the balustrade, his gaze sweeping her from her piled-up hair to her turquoise stilettos, hunger an ever-expanding tide inside him. “That was the one and only Vincenzo talking. So is a week too long? I can make it sooner. I probably should. We probably wouldn’t survive a week.”

She picked up her dropping jaw and replaced it with a more bedeviling smirk. “It’s okay, this happens with a newly installed sense of humor. Sometimes you can’t turn it off. Or you’re such a new user, you don’t know how to. Let’s hope you get the hang of it soon.”

This wasn’t the first time she’d made comments to that effect. Had he been that much of a humorless boor before?

He guessed so. He’d been too focused on what he’d thought paramount he’d forgotten to lighten up.

But back then he’d thought his behavior suited her, the driven, dead-serious woman he’d thought her to be. Serious about work and passion. A delightful, challenging wit hadn’t been among the things he’d thought she possessed, what he’d told himself he’d have to live without, with so many qualities to make up for the deficiency. Now he realized being a sourpuss had made her turn her humor off, making him miss knowing this side of her.

How much more had he missed? Was it possible other things he’d believed about her would turn out to be as totally wrong? How, when he’d had proof of them?

No. He was leaving this alone. This bomb had already detonated once and destroyed his world around him. He wasn’t lighting its fuse again.

What mattered now was that she seemed to relish his new lightheartedness. He’d never dreamed they could have anything like the time they’d spent on the flight, filled with not only mounting hunger, but escalating fun, too.