He wanted more.
He went after it.
“You’re right. It’s a joke thinking I can wait a few days. We’ll have the wedding today.”
It was exhilarating. Teasing her, soaking up her reactions, opening himself wide for her retaliations, every barb targeting his humor triggers.
She obliged him with another bull’s-eye. “This is worse than anything I feared. That humor program had a virus that scrambled you up. We’ll have to uninstall everything in your brain and reformat you.”
He pulled her into him, groaning at the electric thrill that arced between their bodies. “I like me all scrambled up like that. So shall I rush the delivery of the catering, minister and guests? I can have everything ready by eight tonight.”
She arched to look up, pressing her lushness closer to him. He’d never remained that hard, that long. And he loved it.
“So he first hits his opponents with a ludicrous offer, then, as they gasp in disbelief, he follows up with an insane one, making them grab for the ludicrous lesser evil.”
“You’re not an opponent.”
At her raised eyebrow, though it was mocking and not cynical, he felt that nip of regret again. One that made him wish he could erase the past, both distant and recent. What he’d give to restart everything from this point, with them who they were today, with no yesterdays to muddy their enjoyment of each other, and no tomorrows to cast shadows over it.
He caressed that elegant, dense eyebrow. “Put that down before someone gets hurt. Namely me. At least more than I’m already hurting.” He ground his beyond-pain hardness into her, showing her she should have mercy on him. The eyes that rivaled Castaldini’s skies darkened, her body yielding, shaping itself to his seeking. Her response, as always, heightened his distress, his delight. He groaned with them both. “So you want to postpone the wedding till next week.”
A choppy laugh shook those globes of perfection against his chest. How he didn’t have them free of their restraints and in his hands and mouth already, he had no idea. “And then he makes it all sound like his opponent’s decision.”
“‘He’ has no opponents here. He’s just negotiating.”
“I can sniff out the faintest scent of negotiating a mile away. I can’t even detect a trace now.”
“It must be because I learned the undetectable negotiation method at the hands of a mistress of the art.”
“Seems I didn’t teach you but transferred it to you. That skill has been nowhere to be found when I most needed it.”
He tugged a loose glossy lock from the satin hair that shone in his homeland’s sun like burnished copper. “But ‘your’ decision to postpone is well-advised. Next week’s forecast says it will be a perfect day for a wedding.”
She curled that dewy, edible lip. “Every day is a perfect day on Castaldini. But…” Something like panic spurted in her eyes. “You’re serious, aren’t you?” At his nod, she grabbed his lapels. “And what do you mean wedding?”
It was his eyebrows’ turn to shoot up. “The word has more meanings than the one agreed on since the dawn of humanity?”
She shook her head, something frantic creeping into her eyes. “I thought we were just going to get a ring, sign a marriage certificate and report to the king so he can officially send you to your UN post.”
It pained him that she expected only a cold ritual to befit the barren deal he’d proposed forty-eight hours ago.
Sorrow filled him for what should have been with this woman his heart and body had chosen, but wasn’t and wouldn’t be.
Suddenly, all levity drained from him, loosening his embrace.
Unable to remain in such intimate contact with her anymore, he stepped away. And saw it. A quiver of insecurity. A crack in the veneer of confidence and cheek.
He should have felt that was the least she deserved. To suffer some uncertainty and trepidation. But he didn’t. It hurt him to see her looking so…bereft. He hated to see vulnerability in those indomitable eyes.
He forced himself to smile at her, to reach a soothing hand to her cheek. “If you didn’t think I was talking about a wedding with all the trimmings, why were you surprised at all when I said next week? Or today? The ceremony you describe could have been concluded in a couple of hours.”
“Forgive me if I’m boggled by the idea of any brand of ceremony. I was never married before, you know, for real or for pretense, and a date, let alone one so soon, makes me feel this is actually happening.”
He watched her lips shaking, attempting a smile of bravado and failing, and could no longer deny it.
His gut was having a fit, sanctioning no evidence but what it sensed. It insisted she wasn’t the hardened manipulator he’d once thought her. That person would have grabbed his deal, would now be working his evident eagerness to milk more from him. But she wasn’t. She was really shaken.
And for the first time, he put himself in her place. Taken away from everything she knew to a strange land, her choice stripped away, her family not only unable to come to her aid, but the reason for her predicament. Her only company and precarious support was the man behind it all. And he kept blowing hot and cold, to boot. She must be feeling lost, helpless. And to a woman who’d been mistress of her own fate for so long, that must be the scariest thing she’d ever experienced.
His gut finally communicated with his brain, reaching a decision.
If he took out the terrible blot of her betrayal from their lives, he could connect the woman he’d once loved with this woman he laughed so easily with, the woman he now wanted more than he’d known he was capable of wanting. And he didn’t want that woman to be under any form of compulsion.
Taking another step back, severing any intimacy, he exhaled. “It doesn’t have to happen.”
More uncertainty flooded her eyes. “What do you mean?”
“I mean you don’t have to marry me.”
*
Glory wondered if the sun had overheated her brain.
That would explain feeling and hearing things that couldn’t be real. When Vincenzo had stepped away, she’d felt as if she was teetering on a cliff without his support. Then, because of the distance that had come over him, she’d felt she’d fallen into the abyss of the past, discarded all over again.
That remoteness couldn’t have been real. Not after all his pursuit and passion. And he couldn’t have just said…
“I don’t have to marry you?” There she went, parroting him again. She swallowed the knot of anxiety that rose in her throat. “Just a minute ago you wanted me to marry you in seven hours or seven days, and now… Just what are you playing at?”