Page 25 of His Royal Bride Replacement
‘Proud that you had more loyalty and respect for her than she had for you?’ Rosy queried. ‘There really is no excuse for what she did or how she’s behaving now, trying to pose as the innocent party.’
An almost luminescent glow had lit Alessio’s jewelled eyes as he looked at her and listened to her. ‘You’re on my side,’ he said in apparent wonderment.
‘Of course, I am…’ Rosy frowned. ‘You’re my husband and you’ve defended me, so naturally I see the situation from your point of view. Sit down. Do you want tea or coffee?’
‘Not right now.’ Alessio threw back his dark head and suddenly laughed with wicked amusement before his hand closed over hers to almost lift her out of her seat to stand before him. ‘Right now,piccola volpe, I want my wife…and I want her more in this moment than I haveeverwanted a woman before!’
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘It’s the middleof the day!’ Rosy gasped as Alessio urged her back upstairs by a narrow staircase she had not even realised acted as a shortcut.
‘No, symbolically speaking, it’s the first day of our marriage…as it should’ve been,’ Alessio countered levelly. ‘We didn’t have this understanding then butnowwe do.’
‘What understanding?’ she queried as she stumbled in the entrance to their bedroom and he swept her off her feet.
‘You are here for me and I am here for you. Not to put too fine a point on it, I’ve been waiting to hear thatallmy life,’ Alessio spelt out in a raw undertone as he dropped her down on the bed and then went to work on the zip of her shorts. ‘Someone who is with me and only me, even if she doesn’t always agree with me, even if she has doubts.’
‘That’s a pretty tall order, Alessio.’
‘But one that you’re more than able to meet,’ he told her, discarding her shorts on the floor and embarking on her top.
‘Even if I’m not quite up to burning the sheets off the bed?’ Rosy pressed a little desperately, her voice strangling in her dry throat at his haste.
Alessio looked down at her and laughed. ‘What are you trying to say?’
‘I haven’t had sex before,’ she admitted in a driven undertone. ‘And no, I don’t want to talk about it.’
Alessio dealt her a stunned appraisal that fully conveyed his astonishment and whipped his hands off her. ‘I appreciate you telling me beforehand,’ he breathed tautly. ‘I am so sorry that I didn’t even consider that possibility. Ithought you were simply shy.’
Rosy sat up and hugged her knees in the centre of the bed. ‘It’s okay. Don’t make a big deal of it.’
Alessio vaulted off the bed. ‘I need a shower,’ he told her, disconcerting her because she knew he had showered before he even came downstairs.
‘A cold one,’ he specified, interpreting her look of bewilderment.
Rosy sat frozen on the bed and then regained her wits. She slid off the bed, removed her remaining garments and scrambled back in again. Alessio returned to her, hair still damp and tousled and, if anything, even more breathtakingly gorgeous. A line divided his ebony brows as he looked at her. ‘I forgot to kiss you,’ he husked, mounting the steps to the bed to come down beside her. ‘Stupid oversight. Write it off as an excess of enthusiasm.’
‘I will,’ she said breathlessly, his firm hard mouth ravishing hers with the kind of intensity she had only met before in him. As though nothing mattered but that particular moment, as though he would pour all of himself and everything he was into the endeavour. It unleashed a flock of butterflies in her tummy and made her heart race so fast it pounded at the base of her throat.
‘It’s like unwrapping a present,’ Alessio growled as he wrestled her free of the sheet and curved possessive hands over the pouting thrust of her breasts, his thumbs teasing at her swollen nipples.
Her spine arched, delight and anticipation snapping together in a wondrous connection. Glittering green eyes, luminous as jewels in sunlight, gazed down at her searchingly. ‘Are you quite sure about this? I can wait—’
‘I wouldn’t be in this bed if I wasn’t sure,’ Rosy declared.
And in the end the truth wasn’t what she had once assumed it would be in any way. It wasn’t because they were married. It wasn’t because she had some silly thought of ensuring that the marriage was fully consummated. No, her motivation was much more basic in nature. She wantedhim, she wanted him more than she had ever believed she could want any man and she craved that closer physical bond.
He caught a ripe pink peak in his mouth and laved it with his tongue and her hips squirmed, red-hot reactions snapping through her lower body and bringing it alive. She felt the surge of damp between her thighs and instinctively rubbed against a hair-roughened thigh to ease the desire he was stoking. He settled her back against the pillows and worked his way down her slender length, kissing, nibbling, touching gently, exploring until all of her skin surface felt as sensitive as if she were perched on a knife edge of expectation. She could already feel the surge of quivering heat building in her pelvis and tightening every muscle.
He slid her thighs apart and concentrated on the most sensitive place of all. Her hips jerked up and her lips parted on a moan, pleasure darting through her in shocking waves. Her fingers speared into his black hair and lodged there, tugging as her hips exercised a rhythm of their own and the growing tightening inside her became almost unbearable. And when that sexual tension broke, her climax roared through her like fireworks shot off inside her. Her whole body jolted and she cried out as the blissful waves of release crashed across her and she slumped.
‘That was even better than the cave,’ she mumbled in a helpless compliment.
And Alessio lifted his head and gazed down at her with unholy amusement. ‘Are you planning to rate me now?’
‘Eleven out of ten. I’m impressed to death. You were worth waiting for,’ she told him shyly. ‘And I only waited because I was convinced that the right guy would eventually show up.’
‘And you think I’m therightguy?’ Alessio asked.
