She had won this battle, she thought.
And victory, when it came to the man she had married, was so very sweet.
Chapter Twelve
Consummating his marriage with Catriona had not been Alessandro’s intention when he had decided to spend the night in her bed. After he had aided his drunken bride in slipping into her night rail—all whilst carefully averting his gaze lest he be tempted by the sight of a breast or even a hint of nipple—he had gone to his own chamber to prepare for bed.
It had only been when he had ventured next door once more to check on her and she had complained of being cold that he had reluctantly joined her beneath the bedclothes. He had meant to offer her warmth, but instead he had fallen asleep at her side, oddly comforted by her presence.
Bedding her had not been his initial intention that morning either when he had awoken to her body close to his and her breast in his hand. But as lucidity had gradually restored itself to him, he had been reluctant to stop touching her.
And now, he had to be inside her.
He had almost come in her hand.
That would not do. He could only spend inside her.
To get her with child, he reasoned with himself. But reason had nothing to do with yanking his night shirt over his head and discarding it. Nor did it have anything to do with removing her night rail with equally swift measures. It had precious little to do with lowering his head to her beautifully upturned breasts and sucking a nipple into his mouth.
No, that had everything to do with passion. With the yearning that had been building inside him from the first moment he had crossed paths with her. He could not deny he wanted her. Had to have her.
The lusty sound of satisfaction she made when he suckled her pleased him. So did her hands upon him, soft and small and eager, traveling everywhere and leaving hunger in their wakes. He sucked her other nipple, then flicked his tongue teasingly over it.
Her moan rewarded him. Her nails dug into his shoulders. His cat had claws, and he liked it. He liked it far too much. Slowly, he reminded himself. Go slowly. Cuidado.
She was a virgin, and he must proceed with caution. He had never before taken a woman’s maidenhead, for Maria had lain with others before him out of necessity, and the women he had bedded before her had been well-experienced. He did not know what to expect. That he must take Catriona’s innocence at once filled him with a potent combination of reverence, trepidation, and lust.
His. She would be his. Forever.
Until you return to Spain, taunted a voice inside him.
Here and now, the notion of her ever taking another lover was unthinkable. He cast it from his mind and delivered a gentle kiss to her stiff nipple. She made a throaty sound of feminine pleasure, and it was so unbearably erotic, he could not stop the bolt of lust that shot straight to his ballocks.
It had been so long since he had last been inside a woman.
Too long.
But this woman, being inside her would be different, and it was something he knew instinctively. Not just because she was his wife. Because she was Catriona. Somehow, they had connected in a visceral way. He felt it in the way their bodies moved together, in the urgency rolling through him.
He wanted to make this good for her. As painless as possible. As pleasurable as he could.
Alessandro kissed a path down her belly, marveling at the smoothness of her skin, the heat of it against his lips. Then lower still. He caressed her hips first, then her inner thighs, spreading her legs wider.
He kissed to her mound, and then he parted her with his tongue, running it along her slick folds. When she cried out again, her hips jolting from the bed, he hummed his approval. She tasted sweet and musky, and he wanted more.
He fluttered his tongue over her pearl, then took her into his mouth and sucked. Here, she was as responsive as ever. Her fingers were in his hair now, not gently sifting but grabbing. She was wild in her pleasure. He had not expected that from a gently bred young lady.
But he was grateful for it.
Grateful for the way she pumped her hips against him with unrestrained abandon. For the strangled sound of his name on her lips, along with a plea for more.
“Please.”
She begged so prettily, he could do nothing but attempt to appease her. He licked down her slit, then delved deeper. He sank his tongue inside her wet heat, where he would soon slide his cock. The thought made him even harder.
But first, he wanted to make her come again. This time, on his tongue. As he licked her, he worked his thumb over her clitoris. She thrust against him, making the most delicious sounds, rather like a purring feline.
Sí.
This was good. So very good. Her body tensed beneath him, and he knew she was close. One more gentle surge of his tongue, a swirl of his thumb, and she was gone. She cried out as her release quaked through her. He pleasured her until he could not wait another moment to take her.
He rose, before settling more firmly between her legs. Poised to enter her, he stopped first, drinking in the sight before him. Her eyes were half-closed, her lustrous hair fanned out over the pillow. Her breasts were full and ripe, waist perfectly curved, and even her arms were things of beauty, elegant and pale, her hands clutching the bedclothes at her sides now instead of his hair.
“You are ready, querida?” he asked, rubbing the head of his cock over her.
Dios knew he was ready.
“Ready,” she repeated. “Yes. Oh, yes.”
He guided himself to her entrance. Without another word, he pushed inside her, slowly. Wet heat engulfed him. Sensation flooded him. He could not suppress a groan at the feel of her. She was so tight, almost squeezing him out. So good.
He moved again, a deliberate thrust, sinking deeper. His ability to think fled. He was mindless now, lust roaring through his veins, need holding him in its possessive grip. He had to have more. All of her. Another shallow thrust until he reached the barrier of her maidenhead.
His body took on a life of its own. He pumped deeper, gripping her lush bottom in his hands and angling her to slide all the way home. They both cried out when he was fully seated inside her. Heat flooded him.
But he remembered she was a virgin. He lowered himself over her, leveraging himself so he did not crush her with his weight, but so they were flush against each other, her hard, little nipples poking into his chest. He kissed her cheek.
“Shall I go on, or do you want me to stop, querida?”
Her brilliant eyes burned into his gaze. “There is more?”
A pained laugh emerged from him. Cristo, this woman he had wed…
“Sí, there is more. Much more.” He paused. “Are you in pain? I do not want to hurt you.”
“No pain.” Her hands glided over his forearms before settling on his shoulders once more. “There was a pinch, an ache. Now I feel only…restless.”
Restless.
Her admission burned through him. Not plunging into her over and over again like a savage beast was growing more difficult by the moment.
“You must tell me to stop if it hurts,” he forced out.
And then he moved again, withdrawing almost completely before sinking home. The breath hissed from his lungs. His heart pounded. The relentless ache inside him, the need to empty himself in her, grew. He reached between their enjoined bodies to pleasure her pearl as he thrust in and out of her. His rhythm grew faster. His body was needier.
So, too, was Catriona’s. She was moving, her breath coming in gasps. They found their pace together. Faster. Deeper. Harder. He staved off his climax for as long as he could, savoring the feeling of her silken depths clenching on him.
He rode her harder, relishing the tremors of her pleasure until he could not wait another moment. He came with a roar, filling her with his seed as white-hot desire exploded through him with such tremendous force, his vision went black.
His release was so potent, he collapsed onto her for a moment, burying his face in her throat, breathing in her s
weet scent of jasmine. Feeling her heart pound in tandem with his.
He had not expected bedding his wife to feel so right.
To take his breath and drive every other thought but her from his mind.
As his wits slowly restored themselves, he forced himself to withdraw from Catriona. The undeniable smear of her blood on his cock seemed a recrimination. He had just consummated his marriage. Had taken his wife’s innocence.
And deep inside him, where his love for Maria hid, he felt at once only a grim sense of hollowness. The sooner he got Catriona with child, the sooner he could return to Spain, he reminded himself. This was duty. Obligation.
As natural as breathing.
But it did not feel natural. Instead, it felt like a betrayal.
*
Her husband regretted making love to her.
Catriona understood it the moment he flung himself to his back as if she were a flame that had just burned him. In a way, she probably was. He was still in love with his first wife, and the reminder, in the form of his harsh countenance and the distance he had placed between them, was visceral.
Sobering.
He had made her body come to life.
And then he had withdrawn.
She lay there, acutely aware of her nudity. Should she retrieve the bedclothes? Should she excuse herself? What was the protocol for experiencing the most passionate encounter of her life, only to become the object of her husband’s guilt?
Not bursting into tears, as she longed to do, surely.
Her body still hummed with the pleasure he had given her. They had just become one, engaged in the deepest form of intimacy, and yet he was quiet at her side. Close enough to touch, but emotionally, he may as well have been an ocean away from her. He may as well have already returned to Spain.
Where his heart was.
Misery descended, warring with the bliss that had rendered her body so pleasantly sated. She swallowed against a rush of emotion she did not want. Emotion she could not face. Not yet. Perhaps, not ever.
She longed to say something, anything, to fill the silence with her words. But none would form upon her tongue. At least, not any she ought to speak.
“Are you well?” he asked, breaking the quiet with his question, so oddly stilted for a man who had just displayed a grand capacity for passion.
“No,” she replied, staring at the ceiling. For the first time since her arrival the day before, she took note of the elaborate Grecian plasterwork of the cornice. It was lovely. If only she could truly admire it.
“I am sorry, querida.”
The low rumble of his voice was her undoing. She turned her head toward him, and he looked so torn, so confused. Vulnerable, almost. He undid her, as always.
“What do you apologize for?” she asked.
“Hurting you.” He reached toward her in a gesture of surprising tenderness, cupping her jaw.
He had hurt her, but not in the way he supposed. The discomfort she had experienced—a pinch, then a dull throb, some soreness as he had stretched and filled her with his length—had been soon replaced by pleasure. The sensation of him lodged deep within her, sliding inside, then withdrawing, only to thrust home once more, had been nothing short of exquisite.
What hurt the most was the distance he created. The way he kept himself from her. His true self—his heart and soul—not just his physical body.
“Do you regret it?” she asked.
The moment she posed the question, she wished she could rescind it. For it was not an answer she wanted, she feared.
“Hurting you?” He frowned. “Of course. If there was some other way, I would have gladly… It is not my intention to cause you pain. Nor has it ever been.”
How strange it was, she realized, for the two of them to be alone, in a bed, engaging in a conversation. No chaperone. No trappings of civility. They were only woman and man, husband and wife, alone. Stripped of every artifice.
Her newfound freedom made her suddenly bold. More daring than she had ever been. She met his deep, brown gaze, unflinching. “I did not refer to hurting me physically. I referred to the consummation. Do you regret that?”
He clenched his jaw, staring at her with his customary intensity. “No, querida. It needed to be done if you are to bear my heir. There is no escaping that.”
Ah, yes. Necessity. His heir.
All the reasons why he had married her.
Catriona did not know why his lack of emotions for her left her so aggrieved.
“Of course,” she said, feigning a smile.
For his benefit. And for hers—for her pride, that was.
“Are you in much pain?” Still frowning, he ran his thumb over her cheek in soothing strokes.
She wondered how he could show her such tenderness and yet eviscerate her at the same time? The question she had been tamping down within her, withholding at all costs, rose, strident and demanding. She could not hold it in another minute more.
“Yes,” she answered him honestly. “It pains me to believe you were thinking of her before. That you are thinking of her now.”
He tensed, a muscle in his jaw beginning to twitch. “The heart wants what it wants.”
Dear heavens. That confirmed it. The pleasure her husband had seemed to take in bedding her had belonged to another. Just as his heart did.
She swallowed. “Of course.”
Catriona understood he had loved his first wife. He had suffered her loss. And she could not fault him for either his grief or the circumstances in which she now found herself. He had entered their marriage with brutal honesty; he had no use for her but one. It was only her own failing that made her heart ache.
Without another word to her, he rolled from the bed. Without a care for his own nudity, he stalked across the chamber. She watched his progression, her stare undeniably drawn to him. He was lean and spare and powerful. Every part of him, from the thick, wavy dark locks atop his head, to the chiseled muscles of his buttocks, was perfect. His back was strong, a plane of sinews and strength. His stomach was lean. His calves, never a part of a gentleman which had previously attracted her interest, captured her attention now.
And his feet.
Heavens, even his feet—large and masculine—seemed regrettably perfect.
Perfection as he left her. He did not bother to close the door, however. Exhaling on a deep sigh filled with her own regrets, she reached for the discarded bedclothes at last, drawing them to her chin. Never in her life had she been entirely nude, lying in her bed.
It seemed blasphemous.
Dangerous.
Wicked.
Wonderful.
She could not deny the way her newfound freedom left her feeling. If she were not so confused by her reaction to her husband and his reaction to her, she was sure she would be pleased by the state in which she currently found herself. Thoroughly wedded, and even more thoroughly bedded.
But before she had too long to dwell upon her tumultuous thoughts, he reappeared at the threshold, bearing a cloth and a basin.
Still naked.
And even though she had so recently experienced every part of his tall, masculine form pressed against her body, she could not help but to allow her gaze to travel over every inch of him. He made her heart beat faster, and he made an ache begin between her thighs anew.
Even as she recalled he did not want her. That he had been pretending she was someone else as he had made her body come to life.
The heart wants what it wants.
If only his heart wanted her.
She struck the thought away at once. For it was foolish. Unworthy. And she was doomed for disappointment if she continued in such a reckless vein.
He joined her on the bed, his expression solemn as ever. He looked like a man who had just received his sentence rather than a man who was newly married. And though it was small of her, and though she was ashamed of her instinctive reaction, Catriona knew a burst of fierce jealousy toward the woman who had come before her.
<
br /> “Will you allow me to tend you?” he asked.
She stared at him, uncertain. “What do you mean, my lord?”
His nostrils flared, his expression hardening, almost as if her formality had caused him a great offense. “Alessandro.”
“What do you mean, Alessandro?” she asked, emphasizing his name.
Irritated with him. He had taken her to the heights of ecstasy, and then he had allowed her to plummet, like a star burning through the night sky.
“You are bleeding,” he bit out, looking distinctively uncomfortable. “I have never before taken a virgin, and I am trying to aid your discomfort as best as I know how.”
Little did he know, her discomfort was not caused by what he had done to her physically.
Not at all.
And then the rest of what he had said occurred to her. He had revealed much in his simple statement, perhaps more than he had realized. His first wife had not been a virgin. Had she been a widow? Something else? Questions multiplied within her, clamoring to be answered.
Catriona was reminded, once more, of how little she knew of her husband. And of how little he knew of her in return.
“Catriona,” he said again. “Will you let me?”
Ah, yes. He had claimed she was bleeding, and perhaps she was. A different sort of blood than her monthly courses. Her mother had been informative, but not descriptive. Indeed, her mother had led her to believe her sharing the marriage bed with her husband would be a chore, when it had been nothing of the sort.
But she did not want any more of her husband’s attentions today. She was confused, her heart a hodgepodge of emotion, her mind stubborn as ever.
Catriona sat up in bed, careful to keep the bedclothes pinned to her chest, resting just beneath her chin, held there firmly by a clenched fist. With her free hand, she reached for the cloth and basin. “I can tend to myself, my lord. You need not concern yourself with me.”
He allowed her to take both from his hands. But still, he made no move to leave. And still, he showed no evidence of recalling his nudity.
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