Page 25 of On His Bride's Terms

Faye didn’t have time to scowl, or react, or tell Primo that actually she’d changed her mind. Because the glass of wine was taken out of her hand and she was in his arms and he was kissing her. She felt a sigh of relief mixed with pure base pleasure move through her in a shudder of longing.

He pulled back and she felt herself become weightless as Primo lifted her into his arms so that he could carry her through the apartment. Faye caught glimpses of an outdoor terrace. A gleaming kitchen. A dining room. And then they were in a corridor and Primo had kicked open a door that led into a huge bedroom with possibly the biggest bed she’d ever seen in her life.

She had an impression of dark muted colours in a simply decorated space.

He put her down and she slipped off her shoes. Hunger propelled her to start pushing Primo’s jacket off his wide shoulders until he shucked it off and it fell to the ground. Then she was undoing his bow-tie and the buttons on his shirt.

He was slipping the garlanded strap of the dress down her shoulder and bending to press kisses against her skin. Faye gave up trying to take his shirt off and let him take over.

He found the zip at the back of the dress and pulled it down. He pulled the tie out of her hair so that it fell down around her shoulders and back. Then he straightened up and looked at her.

‘Undress me.’

Faye needed no encouragement. She pushed aside his shirt and marvelled at the expanse of his muscular chest. She’d wondered in the last few days if maybe she’d imagined his beauty. But no. He was even more beautiful.

She pushed the shirt down over his shoulders and arms, coming close again. But Primo didn’t touch her. He let her take her time, her gaze roving over his form. Hands splaying across his chest. Fingers trapping a blunt nipple.

She heard his indrawn breath and looked up, and she couldn’t help smiling as she leant forward and flicked her tongue over the nub of flesh. Primo hissed. A sensitive spot. Faye made a mental note. She had a sense in that moment that a hundred years wouldn’t be long enough to learn all of this man’s sensitive spots, and she felt the most acute and peculiar pang of loss.

Faye pushed the notion aside, telling herself she was drunk on Primo—he was addling her brain. She put her hands to his belt and trousers, undoing them with an efficiency born of growing desperation. And then she was pushing trousers and underwear down over his hips. They fell to the floor and Primo stepped aside gracefully.

Her dress was loose around her chest, and she tugged it down until it too fell to the floor. She wasn’t wearing a bra. Now all she wore was her underwear. Primo cupped her breasts in his hands and Faye shivered delicately. He rubbed her nipples with his thumbs and she had to bite her lip to stop moaning or begging.

‘What do you want, Faye?’

She moved closer, dislodging his hands, pressing her body against his, moving against him, relishing the feel of his hard body against the softness of her belly and between her legs, where she ached.

‘Touch me, Primo.’

He put his hands on her waist and together they tumbled onto the bed in a tangle of limbs, hard against soft. He moulded every curve with his hands, kissed, licked and sucked every erogenous point until she was incoherent with need.

And then he pushed her legs apart and hooked them over his shoulders. He put his mouth on her and Faye could no more keep it together than stop breathing. She cried out as wave after wave tore through her body, and then Primo entered her still clasping body with one smooth, devastating thrust and Faye was torn apart all over again.

When Faye woke, she was the one alone in the bed. She couldn’t move for long moments, her limbs heavy with a kind of satisfaction she’d never experienced before.

Before Primo.

Once again, the intensity of the physicality between them stunned her. She’d heard about sex like this, but had always believed it to be a kind of myth. People boasting.

He was obviously an experienced lover, and not remotely shy—she blushed when she thought of how he stood before her unashamedly naked—so was it uniquely him? Did all his lovers feel the same as Faye?

That thought sent a tendril of something dark through her. Jealousy. She denied it. Jealousy had no place here. In six months she would be walking away, and she would have no hold over Primo. Their time was finite. A means to an end. And if she felt bad about it then she must reassure herself that she was no less ruthless than him for marrying her solely because he’d deemed her suitable. And because he was acquiring their family business.

To that end, her father was a transformed man. He was actually getting to enjoy a retirement of sorts, now that the burden of heavy decision-making had been lifted from his shoulders.

And the burden of worrying about you, whispered a voice.

Faye groaned a little and rolled over. She buried her face in Primo’s exquisite bedlinen. All four hundred million thread count, or whatever it was.

When she could move, she sat up and pulled back the covers. She had no idea when they’d finally fallen asleep. And now he was on a plane somewhere over the Atlantic.

Faye got up and washed herself in the luxurious en suite bathroom and found a robe, pulling it on and belting it.

Back in the bedroom, she studiously ignored the fact that Primo had obviously picked up the detritus of her clothes and underwear and draped them over a chair. She was tempted to look in Primo’s drawers for something to wear but hesitated, feeling it was too intimate.

After a night spent in your husband’s bed?mocked a voice.

She ignored it.

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