“You do look like a princess, darling.”
Glory looked at her mother in the Andalusian-style full-length mirror before shifting her gaze to stare at her reflection. She had to admit her mother was right.
So clothes did make the woman. This dress made her feel like a different person. The person a dozen designers had turned her into as she’d stood for endless hours for them to mold this creation on her.
During the stages of its creation, she hadn’t imagined how it would look finished. She’d last seen it when it had yet to be embroidered. The end product was astounding.
In sweeping gradations of brilliant blues on a base of crisp white, it looked like something made in another realm, from materials and colors that defied the laws of nature. Its fitted, off-the-shoulder bodice with a heart-shaped plunging neckline accentuated her curves and swells to beyond perfection, nipping her waist to a size she hadn’t believed achievable—and without a breath-stealing corset.
Her one request had been that the dress not have a mushrooming skirt. But it was only when Clarissa had backed up her request that the designers had backed down. On hearing that they hadn’t taken her request as a command, Vincenzo had fired them and gotten new ones who’d been doing everything she said before she finished saying it.
Now the dress had a skirt that molded to her hips before flaring gently in layers of chiffon, tulle and lace overlaying a base of silk. The whole dress was adorned in thousands of sequins and diamonds that echoed the colors of her jewelry, in patterns that swept around her body and down the dress and formed the crest of Vincenzo’s province, where he was the lord.
Alonzo finished adjusting the layered veil from the back of her high chignon, then the tiara just behind her coiffed bangs, while Amelia hooked her twenty-foot train.
As they all pulled back to exclaim over her perfection, her mother neared, tears running down her thin cheeks. “Oh, darling, I can’t tell you how happy…how happy…”
A surge of poignancy threatened to fill Glory’s eyes, too, as her mother choked. She blinked it back. The last thing she wanted was to go to Vincenzo with swollen eyes and reddened nose. But there was something in her mother’s eyes that gripped her heart in anxiety. Something dark and regretful.
Gathering herself, her mother continued, “I’m so happy I lived to see this day, to see you with the man who loves you and who will protect you for the rest of your life.”
Alarm detonated in Glory’s chest. Had her mother had a relapse and not told her? She’d always said the worst thing about having cancer was how it pained Glory and disrupted her life as she’d dropped everything and rushed to her side.
Before she could blurt out her worries, a burst of music shook the chamber.
“Ferruccio has brought out the whole royal brass orchestra to your door, Glory.” Clarissa chuckled at her astonishment. “It’s a royal tradition in all huge occasions, playing the anthem to herald the beginning of ceremonies. And Vincenzo getting married is certainly huge.”
Another wave of anxiety drenched her. This was really happening. She had to walk out now and marry Vincenzo in a legendary ceremony in front of thousands of people.
She turned away from everyone, inhaling a steadying breath as she faced herself in the mirror one last time. She wondered if everyone saw what she saw. A woman lost in love but resigned that love would remain lost to her forever?
No, they didn’t. Everyone behaved as if they had no doubt this was a match made in heaven, and made forever.
Alonzo touched her shoulder gently. “Are you ready for your groom?”
She wasn’t ready. For anything. Yet she was ready for nothing else, ready for everything. She nodded.
Alonzo rushed to the table where he’d arranged the blown-glass bottles filled with the aromatic oils he’d rubbed on her pulse points as Castaldinian custom dictated. He picked up one of the oils and also took the crystal pitcher filled with the rose water he’d given her earlier to drink as another part of the ritual before rushing to open the door.
Her heart clanged, expecting to see Vincenzo. The father giving the bride away wasn’t done in Vincenzo’s province, thankfully. Instead, the groom came to take his bride from among her family and friends, to claim her as his, and take her from her old life to the new one with him.
Everything inside her stilled as she stared at the empty doorway. Vincenzo wasn’t there, and Alonzo was pouring water in his hand and sprinkling it across her doorstep carefully, once, twice, three times.
“That’s to ward away evil spirits that might try to enter with your groom and conspire to come between you later,” Gabrielle explained, a red-haired beauty whom the matron-of-honor dress suited best, with her eyes reflecting its sapphire and cerulean colors. She grinned sheepishly at Glory’s wide-eyed stare. “I’ve been investigating the myriad provincial traditions around here. I’m thinking of writing a book.”
“You should,” Clarissa exclaimed. “You’d be even more of a national treasure if you do!”
Amelia, who was having the time of her life rubbing shoulders with a posse of princesses, chuckled. “Make it a royal decree that she must, Clarissa. With all the fascinating stuff Alonzo introduced us to during the preparations, I can’t wait to read that book. I want to adopt all of those traditions in my own wedding!”
Glory barely heard their banter, all her senses focused on the threshold as Alonzo stood to one side, pumping his chest in deference and pride and called out,
“Avanti, Principe.”
And Vincenzo appeared.
His gaze slammed into hers, compacting the dozens of feet between them, making her feel him against her, his breath hovering a gasp away from her inflamed flesh.
Air vanished from the world. Fire flooded her limbs.
And that was before she really looked at him.
Her heart emptied its beats in a mad rush.
This was Vincenzo as he was born to be. As she’d never seen him before. The prince whose blood ran thick with nobility and entitlement. The man who inhabited a realm she should have never seen, let alone entered. But she had entered it once, tangentially. Now she was stumbling all the way in, even if for only a year.
Her ravenous gaze devoured his every detail. His lavish costume complemented her dress, magnifying his height, breadth and bulk, worshipping his coloring and lines. A mid-thigh jacket in royal-blue silk, embroidered with Castaldinian designs, opened over a crisp white satin shirt and golden sash. His black fitted pants disappeared into knee-high shining black leather boots. A gold cape embroidered in blues and white flowed at his back down to his calf and completed the image of an otherworldly prince.
She’d always thought no description did him justice. Seemed there were always new heights to the injustice. Of his beauty. Of his escalating effect on her.
And he was hers. Tonight. And for a whole year.
Alonzo gave him the same water he’d given her to drink, and Gabrielle whispered that now the evil spirits couldn’t come between them from the inside.
Vincenzo strode in, a predator who had his prey standing before him. His eyes swept her before returning to her face with a promise that turned her into a mass of tremors.
And that was before he stopped before her and said, “I’ll kick these helpful ladies out and take the edge off so I can survive the torturous festivities ahead.”
The wild gleam in his eyes told her he wasn’t joking. He wanted to take her now, hard and fast.
Her lungs emptied on a ragged gasp. “Vincenzo…”
“Don’t stand there devouring your bride with looks and intentions.” That was Clarissa, her voice merry. She must have guessed what Vincenzo was saying. “The sooner you’re done with the ceremony, the sooner you can devour her for real.”
Unable to blush any deeper, she watched Vincenzo turn to his queen with a glare, felt him vibrating with control as he offered her his arm.
She clung to it as if to a raft in a stormy sea, felt his power moving her legs and his support holding her up as they exited the chamber after another water-sprinkling ritual.
It felt as if she was outside her body watching the whole spectacle unfold as they passed through the castle’s torch-lit corridors to the courtyard where the ceremony would be held. Her dazed gaze swept the magical setting that had become even more so with extensive decorations and ingenious lighting. Alonzo had turned the main building, its satellites and the grounds into a setting for a dream.
They passed through hundreds, maybe thousands, of smiling faces, only a few registering a spark of recognition in her stalled mind. Princes Durante and Eduardo, Gio, Alonzo’s partner, and other relatives of Vincenzo’s whom she’d met in the past week. Her gaze hiccupped and lingered only once, on her father and brother. They looked so dashing in their fineries, so moved, looking at her so lovingly. Her resentment crumbled and her heart trembled with that affection that had and would always defy logic.
Then Vincenzo swept her away and to the stage that now blocked the doors of the central tower, facing the courtyard where guests milled in concentric semicircles of tables.
As soon as they took the last step up the royal-blue satin-covered stairs, where a sumptuously dressed minister awaited them between King Ferruccio and Crown Prince Leandro, who would be their witnesses, the live medley of regal music stopped. Silence and sea breeze lamented in her ears as Vincenzo handed her down so she could kneel on the velvet cushion before the minister, then he followed her, keeping her molded to his side.
The minister of the province’s main church—a jovial man who’d told her how delighted he was to be finally marrying the confirmed bachelor lord of his province—gave a little speech then recited the marriage vows, in Italian then in English, for the bride’s guests’ benefit. As per Vincenzo’s province and family traditions, bride and groom didn’t repeat those vows or exchange ones of their own.
She welcomed that. She had nothing to say to Vincenzo. Nothing but the truth of her feelings. And those should not and would never leave her heart to pass through her lips.
Ferruccio came forward with their rings, blessing them and their union as their king, accepting their bows with that still-pondering smile. This guy was just too astute.
His assessing eyes spiked her agitation so much it made her keep missing Vincenzo’s finger as she tried to slip his wedding band on. Vincenzo took hold of her hands and branded them with a kiss that rendered them useless before guiding them through the achingly symbolic ritual. The imaginary pins holding up her smile started to pierce into her flesh.
Then it was Leandro’s turn as the second witness to perform the last ritual, coming forward with a crystal goblet. Vincenzo clasped her to his side as he leaned down, plastering his cheek against hers as Leandro held the goblet to their lips for them to simultaneously sip the bloodred liquid that tasted and smelled of an elusive amalgam of spices, fruits and flowers. He recited the words that would “bind their blood” so that they’d never be complete without the other.
Then Vincenzo turned her to face the crowd, who were now on their feet in a standing ovation, holding up their similarly filled glasses and toasting the couple in unison.
This was really happening. She was standing with the man she’d thought she’d lost forever, before his family, friends and followers, before the world, as his bride and princess.
Acting
as his bride and princess.
Never forget that, and you might yet survive this.
Just when she thought the worst was over, Vincenzo made everything infinitely worse.
His magnificent voice rose, carrying on the deepening night’s breeze. “My people, my family and friends, everyone blessed to call Castaldini home. I give you your new princess. The glory of my life. Gloria D’Agostino.”
If he hadn’t had her firmly tucked into his side, she would have folded to the ground.
The canopy of moonlit sky at his back blurred as he looked down at her with an intensity that flayed her already inflamed senses. He brought her back into her body, crushing it to his, and swooped down to claim her lips, reclaiming her wasteland of a soul, feeling like bliss, tasting like life.
The crowd roared its approval accompanied with a storm of clinking glasses as the orchestra played a joyful tune this time, with the majority of the crowd joining in, a song celebrating the newlyweds’ future happiness.
As the festivities escalated into the night, she lost herself in the creativity of Alonzo’s efforts and the enthusiasm of everyone present. The fantasy of it all deepened until she felt she’d never resurface, until her ordinary, solitary life blipped out from her memory.
Everything became replaced by the wonder of Vincenzo’s nearness, by that of his world, and all the wonderful people who populated his life.
And her resolve was resurrected.
Nothing mattered but having this time with Vincenzo. And she would drain every single second of it dry.
Nine
“T
he ordeal is finally over.”
Tremors drenched Glory at Vincenzo’s deep purr.
It came from the darkness that enveloped the doorway of her hideaway.
At midnight, as per tradition, Vincenzo’s friends had held him back while she’d been “spirited” away by hers. It was supposed to whet the groom’s appetites even further, searching for his bride in the castle, until he caught her and carried her back to their marital quarters.
The ladies had deserted her somewhere she’d never been in the castle what felt like an hour ago.
She’d felt like someone in a movie who’d been suddenly left behind somewhere mysterious and otherworldly, filled with whispers of temptation beckoning to an unknown fate.
She’d felt his approach long before she’d heard his voice. She now felt his eyes on her as she stood in the dancing light of a flame-lit brass lantern. Her heart no longer had distinct beats, buzzing like a hummingbird’s wings, failing to pump blood to her vitals. The world started to blotch crimson….
His voice brought her jackknifing back to focus. “While being forced to share you with every single person I’ve known in my life, I’ve been pretending sanity and civilization for the crowd and the cameras. Now the wait is over.”
He appeared as if separating from the darkness, a piece of its endlessness taking the form of the epitome of manhood. The need radiating from him violently strummed her, the reverberations deepening her paralysis.
She could only hurl herself at him, climb him, tear him out of his clothes and devour him in her mind.
Then he was there, against her, pressing her into the wall. Her cry echoed in the almost empty chamber as he ground himself against her. Moans and groans filled her head, high and deep, the sounds of suffering. He was in agony, too. His flesh burned her with his torment.
“Ti voglio tanto…tanto, Gloriosa mia.”
Her nod was frantic. “I want you too much, too…. Take me to our room….” She didn’t know where that was. Another tradition of the nobility around here. The groom picked the quarters for his bride and prepared them for pampering and pleasuring her. Just imagining it made her plead, “
Please,
Vincenzo…
now.
”
He roared as she sank her teeth in his neck to stress her plea. He snatched her off her feet, hurtled with her through the now-deserted winding corridors of his fairy-tale domain.
Doors opened into a place set up like an erotic dream. The vast chamber opened onto a semicircular balcony with wide-open ten-foot doors. The balmy sea breeze wafted in with the scent of jasmine and sandalwood incense, making sheer white curtains dance like gossamer spirits. The flames of a hundred candles undulated like fiery beings. A bed bigger than any she’d thought possible occupied the far end of the room. It was spread in satin the color of her eyes and covered in white and gold rose petals.
But instead of taking her there and putting an end to the torment, he only put her down on her feet.
She stood swaying with the loss of his support and watched him move to stand framed against the moonlit balcony door, her Roman god come to life.
Before she could ask why he’d walked away, his voice cascaded over her, intertwining with the music of the night. “Though I’m dying to end our suffering, there’s one thing I want to do first. A wedding night ritual that used to be done here before modernism took over and people started taking too many shortcuts, even in passion. Something I never thought I’d have the chance to do, but always wished I could.”
She groaned, louder inwardly. Not another thing to prolong her waiting! “What’s that ritual?”
“A striptease. Of sorts.”
Okay. Sounded good. Exactly what she wanted to do. Though she wasn’t sure her system could withstand watching him strip at this point.
“It has rules, though.”
Not
so good. He expected her to follow rules, or do anything that required coherence now?
“Would you hurry up and say what those rules are before I liquefy completely?”
His chuckle was pure male pride. “We play a game. The winner gets to dictate the intimacies we share, until the other wins a next one.”
“And the rules of the game, dammit?”
His laughter deepened. He loved watching her come apart. “Each says the most audacious thing that has ever crossed their mind about the other, confessing every uninhibited fantasy. According to the enormity of each confession, we shed one or more pieces of clothing.”
Now, that wasn’t good
at all.
She wasn’t ready to expose her most private yearnings.
Which was stupid, when she was begging him to expose
her
to every intimacy he could think of.
But it was one thing for him to do it, for her to revel in having it done to her, another to put her needs into words. She’d been hoping he’d give her what she needed with nothing but surrender on her part, as he’d always done.
But that was exactly what this was about. Making her own her needs heard. Taking pride in them and responsibility for them. An opportunity to be on equal footing with him, at least in this.
And that wasn’t bad. Also, she could see he believed he’d win without breaking a sweat, that he would have her writhing in submission before he was through.
He probably would. Didn’t mean she’d make it easy for him, or that she would go down without a fight. Dictating intimacies was a hefty prize. Just the idea of having him doing her sensual bidding was worth any risk.
She took the first one. “The first time I saw you, before you ushered me into your office for my interview, you were in your meeting room among all those stuffy suits. All I could think as I shook your hand was whether you tasted as incredible as you smelled. I wanted to know if you looked even more heart-stopping in the throes of pleasure. I wanted to tell the others to get out so I could find out, right there and then. My fantasy went even further, that if they didn’t leave, I wouldn’t stop, even if it meant giving them a show.”
His eyes had darkened with her every word, becoming obsidian pools. His lips belied his eyes’ ferocity, spreading wider with approval as he clapped, lazily, sensuously. “I thought you’d balk. Well done.”
He took off his sash and slid his cape off his shoulders in an arc, aborting its momentum with a tug that spooled it around his forearm before he let it pool to the ground.
“Taking off pieces of clothing should be simultaneous.”
She jerked from her mesmerized gawking, fumbling with her train, almost tearing it off in her haste.
Then it was his turn. “The moment you walked into the room that first day and looked at me with those incredible eyes, I wanted to push you back on my desk, whether anyone remained in my office or not, spread your silky legs and devour you to a screaming orgasm before I even knew who you were.”
The fire in her loins was spreading, consuming her, flowing down her thighs. And all he’d done was expose her to his visual and verbal desire and make her confess hers.
He prowled toward her, giving her a hormone-roaring show of contained power and inbred poise as he slipped off his jacket. By the time it thudded to the ground in his wake, she’d torn off her veil, tumbling her chignon in disarray.
“When you showed up on my doorstep that night,” she panted, “I thought it would be the first and last time I had you alone. I fantasized about seizing the opportunity, dragging you in, tearing you out of your clothes and losing my mind all over you, even if you fired me for it.”
He unbuttoned his shirt, exposing his Herculean torso and abdomen, shrugged the shirt off then yanked off his boots and socks. “All those licentious thoughts when you were a virgin, too.”
As she bent to take off her stilettos, a warning finger stopped her. She straightened, swaying in place. “Being a virgin made my fantasies even more licentious. I had no expectations or experience to water them down.”
His zipper slid down with a smooth hiss that made her start to shake in earnest.
He let his pants fall then kicked them aside. “Whatever happened to the fantasies after you experienced me?”
Her zipper was undone in a far less assured fashion. Her dress peeled off her swollen breasts under its own weight, sighing in a rustling mass around her ankles. She struggled not to stumble as she stepped out of it.
She stood facing him, in her white lace thong, jewelry and four-inch stilettos, her gaze glued to the erection stretching his boxers.
“They ended.” At his frown, she elaborated, “I realized they were actually modest, almost pathetic. You surpassed any fantasy I was creative enough to have.”
A shock wave of lust blasted off of him.
Her lips trembled in triumph. “Do I win?”
His chest was heaving now. “All those years, I fantasized about going back for you, dragging you away wherever I found you, taking you somewhere where there was only us, only ever us. I would be in my lab, or in a board meeting or at a summit and I’d sit and plan everything I’d do to you touch by touch. I planned whole nights of arousing you and taking you to the edge again and again until you were begging me to take you over it, to do anything and everything to you, with you. I mapped out the number of orgasms I’d give you, their variations and method before I had mercy on you, took you, rode you until I drained your magnificent body of every spark of sensation it was capable of. Then I planned how to keep you in my power, how to have you beg to be my pleasure slave, and a slave to my pleasure.”
“Vincenzo,
pietà…
have mercy now…you win.” She stumbled the last steps between them, crushed her breasts against his hard chest, assuaging the pain, accumulating more. “Now dictate. Any intimacy. And just
do
it.”
He grabbed her head in both hands. “I always started our intimacies as the hunter, the seeker. Even when you did anything to me, it was at my request, my prodding. But I always fantasized that you’d take the initiative, do anything you want to me. This is what I dictate. That you show me
your
desire,
Gloria mia.
” His hands stabbed into her hair, pulling her away by its tether, demand vehement in his eyes. “Do it.”
*
Vincenzo watched Glory as she pulled away. Her eyes were eclipsed with hunger as she started demonstrating her fantasies.
She touched him all over, explored and owned and worshipped him, in strokes and caresses, in suckles and kisses, in nips and kneads—his chest and abdomen, his arms and hands, his neck and face—telling him how she’d always wanted to do that, every second of every day, how she’d thought nothing, real or imagined, touched him in beauty, in wonder.
He reveled in feeling his mind unravel with her every touch and confession, in feeling her craving cocooning him, claiming him. Then, without warning, she dropped before him, wrapping her arms around his thighs, burrowing her face into his erection.
His eyes glazed over at the sight of her as she knelt before him. The ripe swell of her buttocks, the graceful curve of her back, the gleaming luxury of her hair, her unbridled expression as she drew deep of his feel and scent, as she pulled his boxers down. His engorgement rebounded against his belly, throbbing, straining.
Then she was showing him in glorious sight and sound and touch. And words. Feverish, explicit, uncensored words, confessing all. Exposing the true extent of her desire.
His body hovered on the edge of detonation with every touch, yet plateaued in the most agonizing arousal he’d ever experienced. He felt his life depended on, and was threatened by, prolonging this. His groans merged as her hands owned and explored him, her breath on his flesh a furnace blast, her tongue as it swirled and lapped the flow of his desire a sweep of insanity. Then she engulfed all she could of him, poured delight and delirium all over him. And his mind snapped.
“Enough.”
Then she was hauled over his shoulders, gasping and moaning as he hurtled across the room. Her teeth sank into his shoulder blade, unleashing a roar from his depths as he swung her over and down on the bed. He stood back for one more fractured heartbeat, looking down at her, a goddess of abandon and decadence lying open and maddened with need among the petals, her satiny firmness sparkling in his kingdom’s treasures, trembling arms outstretched, bidding him come lose his mind. He first rid her of jewels, leaving only the ring, then he lost the last shred of the civilized man and let the beast claw its way out of his skin.
He came down on top of her, yanked her thighs apart and crushed her beneath him. She surged back into him, grinding herself against him, her legs spreading wider, her fingers and nails digging into him, her litany of “don’t wait, don’t wait, fill me, fill me” completing his descent into oblivion.
Incoherent, he gripped her buttocks, tilted her, bore down on her, then, in one forceful stroke, he plunged inside her, invading her to her recesses. She engulfed him back on a piercing scream, consuming him in her vise of pure molten pleasure.
His bellow rocked him, and her beneath him
. “Glory…at last.”
Her head thrashed, tossing her hair among the petals, her back a steep arch, her voice a pulse of fever. “Yes, Vincenzo, yes…take me, take me back, take all of me…”
But before he did, he rested his forehead on hers, overcome by the enormity of being inside her again. She arched beneath him, taking him all the way to her womb, her eyes streaming, making him feel she’d taken him all the way to her heart like he’d once believed she had.
On a fervent prayer that it was true, he withdrew all the way out of her then thrust back, fierce and full.
Then he rode her. And rode her. To the escalating rhythm of her satin screams, his frenzied rumbles echoing them. It could have been a minute or an hour as the pleasure, the intimacy, rose and deepened. Then, with relief and regret, both of them extreme, he felt his body hurtling to completion. Needing her pleasure first, he held back until her almost unbearable tightness clamped down on his length, pouring a surplus of red-hot welcome over his flesh as she convulsed beneath him, her orgasm tearing through her, wrenching her core around him.