4. The Wedding Night
Chapter 4
The Wedding Night
F or the first time all day, my new wife seemed to have a spark in her eyes. Perhaps it was because the wedding was over, and it would only be she and I in the comfort of our own home. My grandfather owned a luxury hotel next to the Spanish Steps. We would take advantage of a suite for the night, and then I would take Rosaria home to Maranello the next day, before we left for our honeymoon in Monaco. We were taking the family yacht there. I had arranged for us to stay at a family friend’s private beach resort for our month-long stay. After that, we were going to the Maldives for another month.
Rosaria was a hot-blooded woman who enjoyed soaking up the sun with nothing else to do but her makeup, hair, and nails.
I had planned to spoil my new wife with all that her heart desired.
Part of that plan had included me, but after our wedding day, I was hesitant to see myself at the center of her life. It was true, we had an arrangement, but I desired it to become more than that between us. Our families had come together to create the document that would seal our matrimonial fate, mostly when it came to money, but after our families had left, I broached the subject of other lovers .
Tell me, would we be faithful to each other, or would we take other lovers?
Rosaria had been quick to agree to other lovers. “After all, you are a Fausti,” she had said, laughing. “I do not think one woman is enough for any of you. Understandably.”
She had made it seem like the entirety of my male family members were animals who could not control themselves. But if we gave our word, we gave our word, and that was the end of it. We did not entertain other lovers. My grandfather was faithful to my grandmother to her last breath. Even after, he was never the same. He would never love again.
“If we take other lovers, I do not know who or when,” I had said to her. “If I find out, hearts will be mine.”
She nodded. “I would prefer it that way as well.”
A lawyer who had been hired by my family and Rosaria’s had looked between us. He was drawing up the paperwork for the arrangement; since I was a lawyer myself, neither family preferred me to handle it. It was best to have someone on the outside of the agreement do the work.
“How about we leave that particular point of the contract until after the wedding night, ah?” the lawyer had said. “About lovers.”
We both had agreed.
Perhaps if our connection in the bedroom was what gave our marriage a solid foundation, it would be enough for us to forget the rest of the world. But I was not sure if Rosaria would even attempt to allow the world to fade around us. She was convinced I could not be faithful to her, though she did not call out my truth or honor in saying so. I suspected that if she thought we were not enough in the bedroom, and I had agreed to being faithful, I would be unhappy for the rest of my life. I respected her for putting my feelings first, but I did not need her respect when it came to extramarital affairs. I needed her to claw her way out of her thoughts of steel and demand we be faithful to each other.
Testa dura. Her head was hard and stubborn .
Even her voice had haunting barbs that had struck deeper than my skin. Why not, then, her claim on me when it came to pleasures of the flesh? If she had hooked me that deep inside, the physical aspect of our relationship should have been locked in as well. She found me attractive, or her breath wouldn’t have caught whenever she stared into my eyes, or when she gazed at me as if I might disappear when she thought I was not looking.
And to me, Rosaria Caffi was red incarnate.
My color.
The color of blood.
Of passion.
Of love.
I sighed as I loosened my tie and took off my jacket, laying it across a chair, and went straight for the bar on the opposite side of the room, rolling up my sleeves. The room had been done romantically. Rose petals covered all surfaces. Candles provided swaying light, their waxy stems melting into a multitude of ornate candelabras. A sensual scent percolated through the air—something spicy that went straight to my cock.
I inhaled deeper.
Cinnamon. Frankincense. Patchouli. Orange. Ginger. Rose.
All notes I could decipher from each other, but together, they created a sensual melody in the air.
My bride ran a tender hand across my shoulders, and I closed my eyes, already locking out the world.
There would be no performance from her tonight. Only the truth in her voice when she spoke to me.
“Will you help me out of this monstrosity?” she whispered.
My eyes slowly opened, and I turned to face her. I took her in, in a slow perusal, and I was satisfied when her shoulders bowed a little toward me. She refused to move her eyes, but something inside of her had caved. Perhaps to the want in my eyes.
Perhaps to the anger in them.
She considered her wedding gown a monstrosity. A gown that had stolen my breath, as did her voice. As did my beloved Italia whenever its beauty struck me unaware for the umpteenth time in my life.
Both the woman standing in front of me and the rolling hills of Tuscany, or the sea in Sicilia, were breath-stealing reminders that things existed in life that made me a mere man.
A woman.
This woman.
She should have made me a mere man.
The gown she called a monstrosity was art.
Perhaps the body underneath it might steal the breath from my lungs when my fingers, my hands, my mouth, my entire body adored hers, but it was not about the gown at all.
It was about a moment in our lives, breaths sacrificed that we could never get back, when we stood in front of God and our families, repeating vows to one another on sacred ground. It was symbolic.
I was not a man to waste my time, therefore my breaths, on folly. I would have no regrets.
Her hand trembled as she lifted it to my face, but before she could touch me, I snatched her wrist and held it. If anyone could have glanced at us in that moment, it would seem as if she was about to strike me, and I had subdued the blow.
In that second, though, when my hand wrapped around her wrist, a fire lit in her eyes that I had never seen before. It caused her eyelids to lower and her mouth to part.
“Ah,” I breathed out. “I see.”
I saw what this queen wanted. Craved. Ached for. Not a tender king, but a ruthless one, just as she had said the first night we’d met. Even for her first time, she wanted the pain that heightened the pleasure.
She fought against my hold, turning her wrist violently from left to right in my hand, until I gripped hard enough that she couldn’t move unless she wanted her wrist to crack. Her breaths were leaving her in pants, and her pupils were starting to dilate. Her teeth were set into a snarl, like she might try to take a bite out of me.
I wanted her to.
Perhaps my blood would absorb into her flesh, run through her veins, and she would realize that we were not enemies but lovers.
We were one.
Our enemies should face us together.
“Let me go,” she whispered. Her tone was laced with venom and scalding heat.
I did, abruptly, and when I turned her so fast that she hadn’t had a chance to even understand what I’d done until after it was done, she gasped. Instead of delicately undoing the tightness of the dress, I ripped it with my bare hands, crystals, pearls, and silk landing on the floor and scattering into darkened corners like timid mice in the face of a monster.
“You are free from the monstrosity,” I whispered, “ la mia spietata regina —” in English, “my ruthless queen.” I placed a chaste kiss on her bare shoulder. Goosebumps pebbled her flesh, and she shivered. Then a cunning smile came to her face.
It fell, but only for a second, when I turned her to face me again, pressing my lips to hers. It was a kiss that, at first, battled for control. Mine. Hers. Mine. Hers. Until I proved victorious, and she melted into the feel of my tongue teasing hers. She tasted like cinnamon, champagne, and the heat of her fiery temper. Even her palms were warm as she grabbed my shoulders, her temperature seeping into the fabric of my undershirt and touching my bare flesh. Her nails were like sharp daggers that pierced my skin, the punctures burning like small fires as she clawed me.
She set her hands against my chest and shoved me away. “I cannot breathe,” she snapped.
“ Bene ,” I said, our mouths still close enough I could feel her erratic breath dancing across my lips in a frenzy. “We will have to share air, ah? One cannot breathe without the other.”
“You are not my lungs, Rocco Fausti, and I am not your air. ”
I took her hand and started to waltz with her around the room to some slow, romantic song serenading us through the speakers. “You said yes to this arrangement, la mia spietata regina, and yet you expect me not to be romantic. You know my family. You seem to know them better than I do.” I grinned at that. It was clear to see when we met, and she fit in without me having to school her.
She returned the grin. “All part of the research,” she said. “This is a job to me, Rocco Fausti. As your wife, I will help you ascend the throne. Beyond that…” She let her unvoiced thought linger.
Beyond that?
Only time would tell.
Rosaria Caffi had an idea of how this marriage would go, but this marriage was not only on her terms.
I stopped the dance, which I had led, and stared into her eyes.
Was this woman capable of love?
She was capable of loving power, control, fame, and the adoration that came with being the best.
Even without the assurance that this was love, or could turn into it, my cock was hard. I was attracted to her and wanted her beneath the sheets with me. In that way, she would be mine alone, unless something changed after the night, and come morning, the lawyer would add the stipulation that we would take other lovers.
I did not want them.
At least not then.
I wanted this volatile creature to submit to me in ways she had never submitted before. Even if she loved power, control, fame, and the adoration that came with it, those things could be a foundation for our beginning. My life thrived on most of those dark things, and I could deliver them to her, if only she would be willing to take the tender side of my heart in her hands and feed me the passion I craved.
Slowly, carefully, I leaned down and set my lips against hers. It would have been a chaste kiss that built into something…wild. Th e kindling for the flames that would burn down our marital bed.
I hissed out a breath as her teeth sunk into my bottom lip. She released me a second later, a smirk on her face at the damage she’d done. Blood dripped down my chin. She came in close and licked it up, all the way to my damaged lip, and then tried to kiss me again. I pulled my face away, looking down at her.
She gazed up at me with lies in her eyes—she was playing the innocent part. She swiped a smear of blood and, moving slowly, ran it down the length of her gown, stilling over her heart. “Now this will feed my romantic king’s passionate heart, won’t it? Your lifeblood staining the fabric of your queen’s wedding gown—forever.”
“You are a brilliant actress,” I whispered.
“You have no idea,” she whispered back.
I grinned at her, half of my lip already swollen, and she blew me a kiss.
“If my king will allow it, I request a bath now.” She batted her eyelashes at me. It looked as if my blood had stained her lips and smeared on the side of her mouth, but it was her lipstick. She wore a cover that would hide the blood. She was keeping the symbolism my family was known for alive in her own way. “Before I deliver him a gift he will never forget.” She laughed as she held the gown close to her chest and moved toward the bathroom, disappearing behind its doors.
I moved toward the window, feeling as if I was a Roman king who had just married a woman not for love, but for strategic reasons. I wondered if our fucking would only produce heirs, and nothing more. I downed four glasses of cognac and three shots of whiskey before my eyes closed and I lost myself to the sound of her voice.
She was singing while submerged in the tub. Occasionally, the sound of splashing would intervene with her breathtaking aria. I longed to hear her hit that note while I hit something so deep inside of her, it would cause her to react naturally and sing out her truth.
A knock came at the door.
I turned toward it, wondering who the man was who had balls big enough to disturb me on my wedding night. Unless war was on the horizon, and we only had nightfall to move, I should have been left with my new wife undisturbed. I closed the door to the bathroom as I moved toward it.
Donato.
My head soldier stood straighter, his shoulders squared, his face turned into a mask of steel. “Your wife,” he said, “instructed me to bring a gift to your room, Signore Fausti.”
I nodded.
He nodded and took a step back. Out of the darkness, the same woman Rosaria had been laughing with during our reception stepped forward. She was wearing a French maid’s costume. My eyes narrowed on Donato’s. He kept his on mine but did not even blink.
“I am your gift, Signore ,” she whispered in a Swedish accent. She tucked her finger inside of her lip, tilting her head, giving me an innocent look.
“ Entra ,” I said, moving to the side so she could enter. She smelled like cheap perfume, but she was beautiful enough to overlook it. I’d wash the scent off her body, replacing it with a scent far richer than she’d ever known.
Mine.
Donato faced me until I closed the door in his face, the wood shutting with a soft click , and when I turned, the woman in the costume was standing next to my wife. Rosaria’s hair had been pulled up, the black-as-night tendrils curling around her face. She was flushed from the hot bath. The bridal white lingerie glowed against the tan color of her skin. Her eyes shimmered a wicked shade of green in the flames of all the candlelight.
“Your gift, Signore Fausti.” My wife smiled at me. She had reapplied the red lipstick, and her teeth were as white as the silk on her body. “Freja and I.” She pulled Freja in by the hip, and they both stared at me expectantly.
“Is that so,” I murmured, rubbing my chin. “My wife is giving me two women on our wedding night.”
“Enough to fulfill your desires,” she almost purred at me, “especially my Fausti King’s desires. He is insatiable, or so I have heard.”
“You finally got something right, my wife,” I said to her, but I was looking at Freja, who it seemed could not decide if she wanted to run into my arms or out of the room. “I am insatiable.”
Two long strides and I fisted Freja’s long blond locks in my fist, pulling her mouth to mine, and kissing her until her whimpers had turned into moans and her knees were starting to give out. With my free arm, I wrapped it around her, lifting her from her feet, and carrying her to the bed. I gently laid her down, and using my teeth only, undressed her down to her bra and underwear.
My eyes lifted to find my wife’s eyes. She stared at us, her chest rising and falling, her lips parted, her nipples as hard as pebbles underneath the thin material. She had an expectant look on her face. As if she expected me to leave Freja and attend to her needs.
I grinned at her and shook my head. “Have a seat, my wife. Get comfortable. You will only watch the show from the audience.”
“Wha—” she began, but I turned away from her and to the entire show.
This woman.
This Freja.
I kissed her again, and she pulled me in, returning what I was giving her with fervor. Her temperature ran hot, and I melted into her touches, the heat of her desire. When she melted into the thousand-dollar sheets, rose petals scattered around her like a girl in an exotic painting, I ordered her to undress me.
“Yes. Yes. Please yes, ” she moaned. She sat up some, her hair already a mess, her eyes frantic and hungry, her hands starved, her lips swollen, and her lipstick smeared.
Rosaria whimpered from her seat in the audience when we were both naked, and Freja was painting my skin with her warm kisses. If I had been returned to a state of clay, her hands worked over me as if she were sculpting me by her own design. Her own wicked and passionate fantasies come to life.
Freja looked up at me, her eyes feverish bright, her tongue darting out, before she took my length in her mouth and started to suck. I fisted my hands in her hair, pulsing into the push and pull, as she worked all the blood to the head of my cock. I spoke to her in Italian, telling her what a beautiful mouth she had, what a good woman she was to take me deep into her throat, and how I was going to make her feel like the highest woman on earth when I fucked her in front of my wife.
Perhaps she could understand my words. Perhaps she could not.
My wife could.
And she was almost crying out from a need so violent, she was touching herself, imagining it was me who was doing the touching.
Freja was moaning as she was taking my cock deep inside of her mouth, swirling her tongue, sucking even harder, working to taste even more of me.
“Please,” she breathed against my overheated cock when she stopped for a second, tears in her eyes from how deep she was taking me. I was going past her throat. “Please. In my mouth.”
I growled low and lifted her up, setting her back down on the bed.
“In my bed,” I said, staring down at her writhing body. Her breasts were perfection. Her waist was small. And her legs were long enough to wrap around me while we fucked. “A woman’s pleasure come first.” Kissing, licking, sucking down her body, I had to order her to still. She was mad with need. Starved for it .
I kissed her into another world, where only the two of us existed.
“Daughter of a whore,” Rosaria said in Italian.
I did not even bother to look at my wife again. She was incensed that Freja had taken my invitation and locked her out. All that I was doing to Freja could have been done to her, but instead, she chose to invite another woman into our bed, on our wedding night, because she felt I needed two women to satisfy me.
The all-confident Rosaria was lacking in her own mind, and her assumption was punishing her. She thought she knew my thoughts, my feelings, without even asking me. I was a man, and I needed permission for nothing, but I would have respected my wife’s feelings if she only wanted me. I would have only wanted her.
The anger she caused me went straight to my cock, and as I sucked Freja’s nipples, she moaned, low, deep, long, telling me how I felt like no other man who had ever touched her before.
Before I even made it to her thigh, she opened them for me, like my mouth was a key and her fica a gate. I licked her thighs, swirling my tongue, teasing her. She pushed her fica , her sweet little fig , closer to my mouth, her sweet juices almost flooding my face, and when I stuck my tongue inside of her, she cried out and clasped her thighs around my head.
I breathed against her, and she writhed and moaned, her hips jutting up, her breasts jiggling, as she cried out my name in a scream. She kept her eyes closed as I stood, stroking my cock, heated eyes on me from the side.
“Hurt her,” Rosaria ordered in panted Italian. “Let me see that big cock hurt her, and the pleasure you get from it. Lose control.”
“Yes,” Freja purred. “Hurt me with that big cock, Signore Fausti.”
She opened her legs to me, inviting me inside, but instead, I lifted her up and pushed her head down. She took my cock in her mouth again, playing with herself at the same time, and started to suck me like she was a vampire who had a chance to latch on to my neck.
Rosaria whimpered.
Her lingerie had been pulled down around her breasts, and she was twisting her nipple, her hand like a puppeteer to marionette strings as she rubbed her nub, moving her hips against the chair. The motion was violent, almost painful looking, but she was getting off on it. She was getting off on her anger.
The look on Rosaria’s face sent all the blood to the head of my cock, and I pushed Freja’s head forward, her mouth deeper onto my cock, moving her head faster. I pulled out right before I exploded and came on her neck instead.
The look in her eyes told me she was close to finished for the night. But like my good wife said, I was insatiable, and after my scent dripped down her neck, ran down her chest, I went into the bathroom and ran warm water over a rose scented towel. I gently cleaned Freja up, and then laying her down, kissed her slowly, softly, touching her reverently, until she wept.
“I did not know it could be like this,” she whimpered as my hands caressed between her legs, her soft fica lips, and I felt the heat of her against my finger as I pushed it deep inside of her.
“Tell me what you want, Freja.” I kissed her tears, and she held on to me tighter.
“I want your baby inside of me. Please.”
Always this from the women I slept with. Instead of telling her no, I slipped a condom on, then, seizing her mouth, entered her in a slow, deep stroke.
“ Ahhhh ,” she sighed out, opening herself up to me even more.
It was a noise that made Rosaria curse in frustration.
I made love to Freja for hours this way. And after, I carried her to the bathroom, washing her, touching her again, until the morning came. I dressed her, kissed her on the lips, and, as I had done with lovers for years, walked her to the door.
She placed a kiss on her palm, setting it against my lips. “Will I see you again?” she whispered .
“If you wish to,” I replied in Italian.
She walked away slowly, too sore for a rushed pace, nodding, dazed.
I ordered Donato to see her home.
When I turned around, my cock still hard, pointing at my wife, she narrowed her eyes at me, tears slipping down her fiery red cheeks.
“You play unfairly, Signore Fausti,” she whispered.
“I play the game as my wife likes to play,” I said, my voice hoarse.
She took a shuddering breath and, gaining control of herself, undressed, throwing the silk to the floor as if it was a waste. She stood before me naked, allowing me to absorb the impact of her—she was a stunning woman, and mine, but she had not offered herself to me the night before to claim. She had offered me another woman in our marital bed so she could watch and critique for her own fantasies.
Rosaria started to tease her nipple, her other hand moving lower and lower, and when she started to pick up the rhythm, her breaths coming in pants, she stuck her finger inside of herself. She drug her juices back up, and I could smell it in the air.
Blood.
Blood that was supposed to be mine to claim.
A sound tore from my chest as if she had stolen my beating heart straight from it.
Her eyes opened a little, a grin on her face, and she gave out a cry of pleasure—one that reminded me of a sob when it was stuck in a woman’s chest—as she orgasmed around her own hand. She lifted it after, sniffing the finger stained with blood, and carelessly wiped it against the void where my heart should be, marking it with an X.
Grabbing her before she disappeared inside of the bathroom, I flung her on the bed, and using my knee to part her legs, I entered her in a thrust that made her scream out against the bedspread. Her blood coated my cock, and the sight and smell of it made me almost high. I fucked her relentlessly, hurting her as she had desired, and she was so saturated with her desire, it was dripping down her legs, mixing with the blood. Droplets of it landed on the cream marble. When she orgasmed, it was with a ruthless song.
All the times I had fucked and brought Freja pleasure could not compare or compete with this moment. I was inside of my wife. My wife. And she knew how high her power surged in my life, in my lungs. Because when we were done, and I had exploded inside of her with an inhuman growl, my seed dripping out of her, running down her legs, mixing with the droplets on the floor, it was me who could not catch my breath.
She had ripped any hope out my heart and flew it to the burning sun with wings made of gold.