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
“The 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.