Sweet Temptation novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Her Own Wedding Night

Elisa crosses the hall and demands her wedding night, and Cesare gives it; in the morning her father's note orders her to spy.

I picked up the rabbit and carried it up to the nursery.

Sofia was in bed with the covers over her head, a small shape under a yellow quilt.

I set the rabbit on the pillow beside the lump and said nothing.

A hand shot out, snatched it, and vanished.

Across the room, Tommaso lay on his side with his back to me, awake.

"Goodnight," I said to both of them.

Nobody answered, but nobody told me to leave, either.

I stood in the hall afterward with my back against the wall.

My wrist still remembered his thumb.

I was twenty-one years old, and my father had sold me to a man who said he didn't want me.

I had every reason to go to my room, lock the door, and cry.

Instead I took off my shoes, walked the length of the dark corridor, and knocked on the door at the end.

It opened almost at once.

Cesare had taken off his tie and rolled his sleeves to the elbow.

There was a glass in his hand, and a lamp burning behind him.

He looked at me, at my bare feet, at the wedding dress with half its buttons undone down my spine.

"Go back to your room, Elisa."

"No."

"That wasn't a request."

"I know." I stepped past him into his bedroom. "I'm not asking, either."

The room was large and spare, with a wide bed and no photographs.

I turned to face him.

"You told me I'm your wife on paper," I said. "I'd like to be your wife in the rest of it."

His jaw flexed.

"You don't know what you're asking."

"I know exactly what I'm asking. I've been looking at your hands for ten hours."

I heard how that sounded, and I didn't take it back.

"You're a virgin," he said, low.

My face went hot.

"How can you tell?"

"Because you're shaking."

"I'm shaking," I said, "because I'm furious. And because you took my veil off like you were undressing me, and then you left."

He put the glass on the dresser very carefully.

"If I touch you," he said, "I won't stop at the paper."

"Good."

That was all it took.

He crossed the room in two strides and his hands were in my hair, and his mouth came down on mine.

It was nothing like the church.

It was hard, and hungry, and it tasted of whiskey and the dark.

I made a sound against his lips that I'd never made in my life.

He backed me into the bedpost and I felt the carved wood against my spine.

"Turn around," he said roughly.

I turned.

His fingers worked the rest of the buttons, and the dress opened down my back in a rush of cold air.

He pushed it off my shoulders and it fell to the floor.

I stood in white lace underwear, and I felt his eyes on every inch.

"Look at you," he said, and his voice broke on it.

His mouth came down on the side of my neck.

His hands slid around my waist and up, cupping my breasts through the lace, and my knees nearly went.

"Cesare."

"Say it again."

"Cesare."

He growled low in his throat and turned me, lifted me, and laid me on the bed.

The sheets were cool and smelled like him.

He stood over me and pulled his shirt over his head.

He was broad and hard, with old scars across his ribs and one long one down his side, and I wanted to put my mouth on all of them.

I reached for his belt before I could lose my nerve.

His hand covered mine.

"Slowly," he said. "I'm not going to hurt you."

"I don't want slow."

"You'll get what I give you."

He pinned my wrists above my head with one hand.

With the other he slid my underwear down my legs and tossed it away.

Then he put his mouth between my thighs.

I cried out, and he held my hips down with his free hand while his tongue found my clit and stayed there.

Nobody had ever touched me.

Nobody had ever done this.

Heat built low and fast and sharp, and I twisted against his hold and begged.

"Please. Cesare, please."

He looked up at me, his mouth wet.

"Please what?"

"Fuck me."

His eyes went black.

He rose, unbuckled his belt, pushed his trousers down, and I saw how big he was and my breath stuttered.

"Look at me," he said.

I looked at him.

He settled between my legs and pressed the head of his cock against my entrance.

He pushed in, and it hurt, a stretch and a burn, and I dug my nails into his shoulders.

He stopped, buried halfway, shaking with the effort.

"Breathe."

"Don't stop."

He kissed me hard and thrust the rest of the way in.

I cried out into his mouth.

For a moment I couldn't move, couldn't think, full to the edge of what I could take.

Then the pain smoothed out into something deeper, and my hips rose to meet him on their own.

"That's it," he said against my ear. "Take me."

He moved slowly at first, long deep strokes that dragged against everything.

Then faster, harder, one hand under my thigh holding my leg high.

The bed slammed the wall.

I heard myself saying his name, and some filthy things I'd never said aloud.

"Harder. God, harder, Cesare."

He gave it to me.

His hand slid between us, thumb circling my clit, and the pleasure crested all at once.

I came with a scream, clenching around him, my whole body arching off the sheets.

He groaned and drove in twice more, buried deep, and came with my name on his lips.

He collapsed against me, breathing hard, his face in my neck.

For a long minute neither of us moved.

Then he pulled out, and rolled to his back, and stared at the ceiling.

I lay beside him, sweat cooling on my skin, and put my head on his chest.

His heart was pounding as hard as mine.

He didn't put his arm around me.

But he didn't move away, either.

I fell asleep.

When I woke, the lamp was off and the bed was empty.

I found him at the end of the east corridor in the gray light, with a key in his hand, turning it in the lock of the door I was never to open.

He saw me, and his face closed.

Downstairs, on the silver tray where the housekeeper left the morning post, lay an envelope with my name in my father's handwriting.

Inside was one line.

Tell me what he says in his sleep.

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