“I know,” she breathed. “It’s okay.”
“Look at me.”
She did. Cristiano smiled at her, and she felt as if she’d suddenly swallowed the sun whole. It was both a frightening and exhilarating feeling.
“Thank you for trusting me,” he said. “I hope you will not regret this moment.”
“Kiss me…”
He did, so gently her heart turned inside out. A second later, he pushed forward, sliding into her so far that she knew she was no longer a virgin. The pain was less than she’d expected, but startling enough that she cried out. He drank in her cry, then lifted himself on his elbows and gazed down at her.
“You are okay?”
She tilted her hips, getting used to the size and feel of him. Sensation blazed through her with each small movement.
“I—” She swallowed, tried again. “It’s amazing, Cristiano. I had no idea.”
His laugh was rusty. “Dio santo, it is a crime. And yet I am thankful I am the first.”
Slowly, he retreated—and then he slid forward again, filling her more fully than before. Her scalp tingled. Her toes. Everywhere, there was heat. Heat and awareness that she’d never known existed.
Yet he was so careful she wanted to scream. Innately, she knew she could take more. Wanted more. Antonella tilted her hips up to meet him and Cristiano growled low in his throat. The sound thrilled her.
He began to move faster, though he took his time to do so. She knew he was being careful with her, trying to make sure he didn’t hurt her, and her heart soared with the knowledge.
Soon, he anchored an arm behind her back, tilted her hips even higher—and Antonella gasped. How could it possibly get any better?
“Yes, Antonella,” Cristiano purred, his voice like a sizzling brand in her psyche, “like that. Move like that. Dio, yes.”
“Kiss me again,” she pleaded, surprised at how badly she wanted him to, and at how fast she was spiraling toward a culmination that she sensed would be bigger than the last.
Cristiano’s lips fused with hers, his tongue mingling with hers. He tasted of sweat and of her—earthy, sensual, and so overwhelmingly male she wondered how she’d ever thought she’d been kissed before he’d first kissed her.
Her climax hit her with a force that stole her breath away. She wrenched her mouth from Cristiano’s, shocked at the speed and intensity with which her release hit her. She’d had warning the last time, a gathering of tension into a tighter and tighter knot—yet this time, the tension imploded in a flash, rocketing outward again in a blinding burst of sensation that had her crying his name in wonder and surprise.
“Antonella, mia bellisima Principessa,” he said between wet kisses to her throat, her jaw, her lips. “You amaze me. So beautiful, so sensual.”
She couldn’t speak. It took too much effort just to breathe, to recover.
Cristiano’s hips moved, and she realized he was still hard. Still ready. They weren’t finished yet. The thought made her shiver in anticipation.
“Please,” she whispered when she had the power of speech again. “Please…”
His gaze was raw—tormented?—but his eyes were suddenly hooded, as if he realized he’d shown too much emotion.
“Anything you desire, cara mia,” he said. And then he began to move.
It didn’t take long before she was gasping at the top of another peak. Cristiano’s climax followed hard on the heels of her own as he gripped her hips and ground his body into her one last time.
Her name on his lips at the moment of his release was the sweetest thing she’d ever heard.
She’d thoroughly destroyed him. Cristiano lifted his head, once he had the energy, and gazed down at her. Her eyes were closed, and though a tear leaked from one corner, slipping down her silky skin into her hair, her half-smile of contentment told him she was not in pain.
He was still inside her, and more than anything he wanted to repeat what had just happened. But he couldn’t. She would be sore, even if she was not at the moment.
Dio, a virgin. If his body didn’t know the truth, his mind would insist it wasn’t possible. She was hot and tight, and so naturally sensual it amazed him she’d not been with a man before.
Guilt snapped against the surface of his conscience. He’d had no right to take her like this. No matter she’d given herself willingly, she’d done so under false pretenses. Not only because she believed their lives in mortal danger, but also because she believed he truly meant to marry her.
It was wrong…
And yet nothing had ever felt so right—
No.
Guilt of a different kind speared him. Since the moment he’d awakened and looked into Antonella’s frightened eyes earlier, he’d not thought of his dead wife once. He’d spent seven months with Julianne, married her, thought she was the woman he would fall in love with. How could he possibly forget her? She’d died because of him, because of who he was. Because he’d failed to protect her.
How could he lose himself so completely in the body of a Monteverdian princess?
He let his gaze slip down Antonella’s form, over the perfect rounds of her breasts, the pink nipples so stiff and straight, the tiny waist, the apex of her thighs where he still joined his body to hers. A pleasurable shudder went through him.
He was just a man. How could any man look at this woman and not do as he’d done?
No excuse. He was a bad, bad man.
She must have felt him shudder because her eyes opened. She smiled and arched her back beneath him like a cat. One hand drifted up, smoothed over his jaw, tickled his ear before threading into his hair. “Thank you,” she said.
Another pang of guilt stabbed into him. “For what, cara mia? The pleasure was all mine.”
She yawned. “I could get very used to this.”
“Yes, I imagine you could.”
Her brows drew down at his tone, but she seemed to shrug it off easily enough. He cursed himself inwardly. What was wrong with him? She was a virgin—was—not a wanton woman with a whole platoon of lovers. She didn’t deserve his sarcasm. She deserved far better. It wasn’t fair to take his disgust with himself out on her.
“You deserved a bed,” he told her. “Silk sheets, a bubble bath, champagne. You deserved to be treated like a princess.”
She frowned. “In my experience, being a princess doesn’t mean much when it comes to how I have been treated. I’m glad it happened this way.”
Because he didn’t want to think too deeply about her meaning, he focused on a red mark that marred her creamy skin where her neck and shoulder joined. And realized it hadn’t been there earlier. “I have hurt you.”
“What? No.”
“Your skin. I’m sorry if I was too rough.”
She touched the area in question. “It was nothing like that, Cristiano. Nothing at all.” She yawned again, finished with a smile. “You were very patient with me.”
Patient wasn’t quite how he would have described it, but he was glad she thought so.
He rolled to the side, withdrawing from her body and gathering her against him. For tonight, he would hold her close. If they survived—and he expected they would—he would deal with his tangled feelings about this in the morning. He pulled the blanket over them, yawning.