Page 26 of His Royal Bride Replacement

Her blue eyes shimmered. ‘I hope so but you’re definitely the hottest contender. I’ve never wanted anyone as much as I wanted you.’

‘Nobody would ever have suspected that on our actual wedding night when you called me a stranger,’ he reminded her.

‘I’ve got to know you since then and I’ve liked what I’ve learned about you. I’ve moved on…as have you,’ she pointed out as he pulled her close and planted a kiss on her lips that turned into a more explosive kiss than she had expected. She wrapped her arms round him as if he were the only stable place in a shifting world. And now, she finally felt free to touch him, to work her fingers through his luxuriant hair, run her hands across his wide muscular shoulders and his smooth back and feather down his lean sides.

As he quivered, she laughed. ‘Gosh, you’re ticklish!’

He rolled over, gripping her with a sexy growl that curled her toes, and ravaged her parted lips with a slow, erotic intensity, and that curl in her lower body spread wings and fluttered with renewed arousal. He was a fabulous kisser. But when Alessio pinned her under him and she felt his erection hard as an iron bar against her, it sent wild thrills of excitement through her. With other men that awareness of her partner’s arousal had turned her off because she had known that she had no plans to go further. With Alessio, however, it turned her on so hard and fast it made her head spin.

He spread her out like a starfish and teased and toyed with every sensitive inch of her squirming body and when the pleasure began to surge up again, only then did he move over her. As he eased into her with a care she could feel, she gasped, ‘I’m not breakable!’

‘Shush. I’m trying to make this as painless as possible for you,’ Alessio ground out thickly. ‘We can swing from the chandeliers next week.’

Even in the tense grip of more pleasure than she had ever dreamt of experiencing, Rosy grinned up at him, enchanted by that promise. He tipped her back and shifted his lithe hips, guiding himself into her slick opening. She felt him, strong, forceful, alien and the strange satisfaction of it, the feeling of rightness, made her close her eyes and seek to lose herself in that very private moment. He pushed and a sting of discomfort pulled a gasp from her and he stilled.

In frustration, Rosy angled her hips up to him and gravity sank him deeper until the feat of possession had been achieved and she smiled, revelling in that sense of fullness, of friction as he lifted and began to move. And then, the warm nucleus of liquid fire coiled up inside her started to heat up and the excitement grew and finally burst free. All of a sudden she couldn’t stop her own body from rearing up to join with his. The intensity of it all engulfed her and she discovered that it drove her on.

‘I want you so much. I’ve craved this from the moment I met you,’ Alessio groaned, thrusting into her welcoming body with lethal power, igniting little hotspots of response all over her, her body leaping and buzzing with renewed energy.

Response to his intensity bloomed with their every movement. Suddenly she was on a runaway train heading towards the ultimate objective, her body out of her control, flaming and burning with hunger. She was inflamed by the knowledge that Alessio had always hungered for her. That raised her way above the level of being a replacement bride and she loved that idea. He pushed her thighs back even further and rose over her like a conquering god intent on domination, and her excitement rose accordingly, her heart hammering, her pulses racing as she surged to the peak and another orgasm swept her off in its tight grip.

Alessio shuddered and growled his satisfaction above her.

‘You are so hot,’ he breathed jerkily in her ear while he flattened her with his weight.

Rosy was floating, quite unconcerned by such bodily necessities as having to breathe. ‘Only to you.’

‘Absolutely to me,’ Alessio growled, dropping a kiss on her brow, his arms tightening round her as he rolled over to release her from his weight. ‘My bride, my lover…when I first noticed you on your bike months ago and I realised you must work at the palace, I wouldn’t let myself find out who you were and what you did. All I had seen then was your incredible legs and behind and then, because of the accident, I saw your face and your hair and I was transfixed.’

‘But you were engaged,’ she reminded him doggedly. ‘You weren’t about to do anything about it.’

‘Do you judge me for that?’ Angry green eyes assailed her sleepy ones.

‘No, but it’s not something I can forget,’ she muttered drowsily.

Alessio climbed out of the bed once she was asleep. He wondered how he had fared. Rosy had been his first and, if he had anything to do with it, hisonlyvirgin. She had enjoyed herself, hadn’t she? But still it worried him that his wife was so inexperienced. At some stage, might she be likely to be curious about what sex would be like with someone else? He would talk to her about that, he decided. But would it be wise to put such an idea in her head? She wasn’t a cheater; she wasn’t disloyal. She had even listened to him partially excusing Graziana’s indefensible behaviour without striking him dead. Fortunately, his intelligence had kicked in. Rather belatedly, he had appreciated that his wife had first call on his allegiance and that Graziana was now pretty much the enemy, particularly if she intended to take any more shots in the direction of his wife.

As he showered, he couldn’t get Rosy out of his thoughts. Her passion, her fearless honesty, her tenderness with that dog, her unquestioning loyalty and support. He had played a blinder exchanging Graziana’s cold-fish personality for a woman who burned with moral strength and attraction. And if he had anything to do with it, she would burn exclusively forhim.

* * *

Late the following morning, after a lengthy breakfast, Alessio took Rosy outside to show her the extensive grounds. They strolled through shaded walks in the woods behind the ancient house, laid out in the eighteenth century to resemble the then fashionable English country garden. When they reached the waterfall, built to resemble a natural one in a giant stone-edged pond but somewhat undermined by the provision of a shell grotto and shrine nearby, Rosy kicked off her shoes and waded into the crystal-clear basin to cool her hot feet.

‘Oh, that’s blissful,’ she moaned, perching on the edge of a stone outcrop and dipping her toes back into the water.

Alessio copied her because for the first time in recent memory he too had chosen to dress down in shorts. He had become accustomed, he conceded, to the company of constantly groomed and polished women, who would not have yielded an inch in their formal dress code even in a hurricane. Once again, Rosy was a breath of fresh air and, taking in her playful smile, he pulled his phone out and keyed in an agreed code with their protection team. Now they had total privacy.

Shedding his sandals, he joined her in the shallow basin, moving forward to nudge her legs apart and step between them and bend down to claim her ripe, pink lips eagerly with his, prying them apart to delve deep into the moist interior of her mouth. And that fast, Rosy’s bones and muscles liquefied beneath the heated surge of molten honey rising in her pelvis. It was as if he had pushed a button and hunger gripped her instantaneously.

Her brain couldn’t quite handle that sudden change in her own behaviour. She panicked and all she could think about as he tugged off her shorts and knickers and tossed them onto the dry ground was that they would be seen and that he couldn’t be thinking of what he was doing and where they were. ‘Alessio…we could be seen. Gardeners…oh, my word, your protection team!’

‘All elsewhere. We are, in a very rare event, alone,totallyalone,’ he stressed huskily as he whipped off her top and went for the catch on her bra. ‘It is our honeymoon, after all. Let’s be young and reckless just this one time.’

‘Having sex in daylight was a big enough stretch for me!’ Rosy protested but he was smiling that wickedly sexy smile down at her and his glorious green eyes were gleaming and vibrant. Her own body was already humming beneath the exploration of his skilled hands. She fell, abruptly, silent. ‘I just can’t say no to you right now,’ she whispered guiltily.

‘And shouldn’t we rejoice in that?’ Alessio chided as he stripped off in front of her, revealing his lithe, lean, bronzed length already primed for action.

Rosy poked his bare chest with a forefinger. ‘And you absolutely swear that nobody’s going to see us?’ she checked.

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