Chapter Six #3
‘No, that came from my family. Not from me. In fact, not once did you or any of my family ask what I wanted from our wedding day.’
‘And what did you want?’
‘It’s a bit late to ask me that now, isn’t it?
’ she suddenly shouted, before kneading the back of her neck and making a visible effort to calm herself.
‘I apologise. You were upfront about your conditions and the only thing that really bothered me about them at the time was your refusal to attend Amadeo’s wedding and other family events the press will be at, but I didn’t really think about our wedding in emotional terms until I put my dress on this morning.
I chose this dress because it fitted the simple wedding we were having but my dream was always to wear an elaborate fairy-tale dress with a twelve-foot train and to have a dozen bridesmaids.
I always envisaged my entire family and all my friends being there, and a truckload of confetti being tipped over my and the groom’s heads, and a huge party afterwards that went on until the sun came up, but I didn’t have any of that.
So many people I love forbidden to be here, and now I’m not even allowed one photo as a reminder of my wedding day. ’
Gabriel stared at the hurt on her face, the same hurt that had sounded in her husky voice, and wondered if she’d been given lessons on how to make a man feel like a heel.
He had nothing to feel bad about, he knew that.
He’d been upfront and open, unlike his bride, who’d clearly festered about the wedding day she believed her due and which she felt had been denied her.
But she’d agreed to this. As she would say, he hadn’t put a gun to her head.
She’d agreed to this marriage of her own free will and agreed to his conditions, so it was a bit rich to start complaining once the deed was done.
Closing her eyes, she kneaded the back of her neck again and breathed deeply. Then her eyes fluttered open and fixed back on his. ‘Ignore me. I’m just feeling a little more emotional than I expected and it’s making me unreasonable.’
With an apologetic smile, she set off back down the path.
Gabriel watched her. The sun high above her seemed to cast her in a golden glow. For a moment he could believe she’d been conjured by an enchantment.
‘You’re not being unreasonable,’ he called out, speaking through a boulder that had lodged in his throat.
She turned her head.
He breached the distance between them and gazed down at the pretty heart-shaped face and those sultry velvet eyes.
A wave of desire sliced through him. Whether they could ever find common ground to build a successful marriage or not, she was now his wife, and she was breathtaking.
There was not a man alive who wouldn’t ache to share a bed with her.
Her chest rose, lifting those perfect, pert breasts. The desire tightened, making his skin tauten.
Colour rose on her cheeks. The tips of her breasts strained through the silk of her dress. He leaned his face closer. Her lips parted and her breath quickened. Whatever his wife’s personal feelings about him, she wanted him. He could practically smell the desire radiating from her.
‘And you’re right,’ he finally added. ‘This is our wedding day. We should have photos to remember it by.’ Then he placed his lips to a pretty, delicate ear and whispered thickly, ‘And then, tonight, I will give you something else to remember this day by.’
The wedding banquet was as sorry an affair as the wedding itself but Alessia dragged it out as long as she could, eating at the same pace she’d done as a child when she’d wanted to annoy her brothers, who’d been forbidden from leaving the table until everyone had finished.
She’d perfected the art of nibbling then and she brought those skills back out now.
However, if Gabriel was annoyed at this, he hid it well, eating and drinking and conversing as if it were any meal for any occasion while she was filled with so many emotions that she didn’t know how her knotted stomach was admitting food into it.
All she could think was that once this banquet was done, the ‘celebrations’ would be over, and then she and Gabriel would go to her quarters. Their quarters.
As much as she tried to block them, his seductive words before he’d called Clara over to take photos of them kept ringing in her head.
Every time she recalled them, heat flushed through her, a powerful throb deep in her pelvis sucking the air from her lungs.
The same things happened every time she met his eye and caught the anticipatory gleam in them.
Frightened at the strength of her desire for him, she tried hard not to look at him, but it was like Gabriel were a magnet her eyes were drawn to.
There were so many knots forming inside her that she couldn’t work out if it was dread or excitement causing them.
Or a mixture of both. Their night together had been so wonderful that the thought of experiencing it all again was almost too tantalising to bear, but the way Gabriel had left her the next morning and then ghosted her.
.. Her new husband had hurt her badly, and if she didn’t protect herself, she feared he would hurt her again.
She hated that her body and her head, the woman and the princess, were at such odds. Until she found a way to marry the two, she didn’t know how she could dare risk letting him touch her and risk losing her head like she’d done the first time with him.
‘Have you decided when you’re going on honeymoon?’ Clara asked from across the table.
Alessia had a drink of her water, wishing it was wine. ‘We’re not having one.’
Clara looked like she had something to say about this but Marcelo whispered in her ear and she clamped her lips together.
A honeymoon was something else Alessia would miss out on. And being carried across a threshold... She’d fantasised about that many times, being swept into her hunky husband’s arms and carried through the door and laid lovingly on their marital bed...
She grabbed her spoon and stabbed it into her ricotta and cinnamon trifle, and gritted her teeth. She needed to stop these foolish thoughts. It was done. She’d married him.
As her old headmistress had loved to espouse, she’d made her bed and now she had to lie in it. What her old headmistress had not espoused was how this was supposed to be achieved when one had to share that bed with a man it was imperative she protect her heart against.