Page 43 of Awakened On Her Royal Wedding Night
He couldn’t look away from her. She seemed to hold his gaze the whole way down the aisle, escorted by her mother’s slow gait. When she arrived before him, there were questions in her eyes.
He imagined she was wondering if she was doing the right thing. This was the final moment when she could back out, when he should have released her.
They both stayed exactly where they were, held as though by an invisible dome that formed around them, holding them in this moment.
He wanted her, he acknowledged. It had nothing to do with the crown or the future ruler or even the lust that had been simmering in his blood from the first time he clapped eyes on her.
This woman, whose hands settled on his open palms, filled him with more than pride. It was a force. Strength? Possessiveness? Reverence? It was a mix of all of those as well as an intense protectiveness that poured out of him to surround her. No one understood how truly remarkable she was, not the way he did. That was why he had to make her his.
Was it a rationalization to get what he wanted? Perhaps. But nothing in this world could have stopped him from claiming her right now.
So he did.
CHAPTER TEN
CLAUDINEHADFALLENinto bed on arrival last night, exhausted by their long day. She woke as she often did these days, with the weight of Felipe’s arm across her waist and the heat of his body spooned behind hers.
Her own arm was draped across his. Her seeking finger found the gold band she had placed on his hand yesterday. It was done. She was married to him.
Misgivings had chased her throughout the morning of her wedding, when her mother had asked her more than once, “Are you sure?”
The ceremony itself had been beautiful and lavish. She had truly felt like a princess in her gown and tiara. She had been emotional and, for a few moments during the ceremony, had felt bound to him. United. One.
After that, however, it began to feel like a play that was performed for an audience. Felipe had been contained and watchful. Triumphant even, when they had danced and Francois circled past with Astrid. Claudine had been forced to recognize their marriage was not a happily-ever-after. It was an expedient move by a determined man.
With time in such short supply in Felipe’s schedule, they were only taking a short week for their honeymoon. They had arrived very late last night in Stockholm after stopping in Switzerland, where Claudine had seen her mother checked into a world-renowned clinic. There, a cutting-edge specialist had met with them and reassured her mother that she would get the help she desperately needed before she went home to New York.
For that, Claudine would marry Felipe a dozen times, but despite waking in a five-star presidential-suite bed, she was worried for her future. She had bound her life to a man she barely knew beyond the fact his family was as broken as they were blue-blooded. Felipe was powerful and driven and had done something invaluable for her mother, but only to achieve his own ends. He didn’t love her. He didn’t even believe in the emotion.
She did. Worse, she suspected, that was the reason she was here. She was falling for him despite his wall of cynicism. That scared her, because he was not a man who could be moved by anything but logic. Her heart could reach and stretch, but it would never touch his.
What had she done?
“You know I’m awake,” he said in his morning-gruff voice, breath stirring her hair against her ear. “Do you want to make love?”
“Do you?” She realized she’d been tracing the bump of his wedding band all this time.
His scoffing noise chided her for having to ask when his erection was pressing the lace hem of her satin nightgown where it had ridden up against her buttocks. He shifted to loom over her and scrape his teeth against her bare shoulder.
She shivered and the yearning in her coiled toward arousal. This was why she had married him, because she only had to lie against him to become saturated with desire. When his body moved with light friction against hers, the flames caught. He opened his mouth against her nape and a delicate thrill ran down her spine, making her hips arch back in flagrant invitation.
With a growl of gratification, he reached up and over her to drag a pillow down, then used his lazy strength to roll her onto her stomach over it.
The covers fell away, sending cool air swirling around her, but she didn’t care. She was already burning up.
“Bellissima.”His thighs parted hers and his hands scraped up her hips, pushing the edge of the nightgown higher, baring her to his gaze.
She moaned, aware how shameless she was, but it didn’t stop her from setting her hands against the headboard and offering herself to the hard flesh that stroked along her slick lips, strumming her flesh into vivid life before he sought entry.
They both released ragged groans as he drove into her. He was on his knees behind her, holding her hips steady for his powerful thrusts. It was raw and animalistic and she gloried in it.
Thiswas why she had married him. This passion coupled with the sense that when they were like this, she gave him exactly what he gave her—utter pleasure. It was a potent aphrodisiac to meet his thrusts and reach to where they were joined and hear his breath change when her fingers brushed his flesh.
She loved most when they reached the pinnacle together. She could tell he was nearly there. So was she. It only took a light touch of her fingers against her most sensitized place and her inner flesh clamped onto his. Orgasm tumbled through her, sending her soaring and floating and...
He slowed his thrusts, moving strong and deep to prolong the convulsive waves that had her in thrall. When she was shaking and weak and still trying to catch her breath, he withdrew and rolled her off the pillow.
“Always so quick,” he teased with lusty approval rasping his voice. “I love how greedy you are.”
