He reached out and wound her hair around his hand then bent to kiss her.
She tried to balance the bitter with sweetness in her own kiss, but her desire was too potent. It was all lust. He pulled back to yank his pants open then stripped, checking for a moment with one hand and reaching toward the night table.
“I can’t get pregnant,” she reminded.
He snorted and found a condom anyway, tearing it open with his teeth.
It shouldn’t have made her want to cry, but it did.
“Bella,” he chided as he pressed her flat and used a knee to part her legs, “I’m protecting you.”
It didn’t feel like it. But when he stroked his tip against her, hot and beguiling, he seemed to send electric lines of pleasure radiating through her. She forgot to be outraged or hurt. She set her hands on either side of his head and kissed him. Extravagantly. Invitingly.
And when he sank into her, it was her turn to bite his lip and groan.
“I’m going to make it last,” he said into her mouth. “All night.”
“Yes, please...”
* * *
Mario met them as they entered the palace. He smiled benignly at Tyrol, who was fussy after the travel, and said to Xavier, “The Queen expects you. She’d like to hear about Australia.”
Completely attuned to her husband after their night of lovemaking, Trella felt his surreptitious sigh.
“Of course.” He glanced at Trella from eyes bruised by their sleepless night. “Eat. Get some rest.”
She nodded and followed his retreat with her gaze, feeling as though he took her heart and spun it out like twine behind him.
All of her felt undone and achy. They’d had one conversation in the dawn light, bodies still damp with exertion, while her nerve endings had still been singing with joy.
“You know this doesn’t change what has to happen.” His voice had been grave, his body steely against hers.
She had shifted her head on his shoulder. “I know. But I’m not sorry. Are you?”
“I’m trying to be.”
She had turned her lips in to his throat and they had started all over again.
“Gerta can take the Prince up to the nursery, Ms. Sauveterre,” Mario said as they arrived on the second floor.
Signora Deunoro, Trella longed to say, but it had been agreed from the outset that she would not change her name. After Tyrol’s christening, she was to receive an honorific title of Dama, the lowest of Elazar’s ranks. A future monarch could not have a parent who was common.
“I’ll keep him. He’s having an off day.” And she was feeling neglectful after leaving him in Gerta’s care during the wedding last night. “You go settle in,” she said, since Gerta hadn’t actually seen where she would be living in the palace. “I’ll bring him when he’s ready for a long nap.”
With a curtsy, Gerta followed Mario’s direction to the nursery level while Trella turned toward the room she’d occupied before she’d gone into the hospital, the ones adjoined to Xavier’s.
Mario cleared his throat. “You’re in the dowager’s wing now, Ms. Sauveterre.”
This doesn’t change what has to happen.
Speechless, composure fraying, she let Mario escort her across the gallery, through a pair of doors, down a long hall where paintings of Xavier’s ancestors watched her progress in silent judgment, and through another set of doors.
The temperature grew cooler as they walked. Tyrol’s fussy cries echoed off the high ceiling with the sounds of their footsteps. She didn’t try to soothe him, just let him express exactly what she was feeling, and was viciously pleased to see Mario’s obsequious expression grow more and more strained.
She understood that the dowager’s wing had been deliberately placed to provide as much distance as possible between former queens and new ones. It wasn’t a horrible place. It had been prepared for her occupancy with cheerful floral arrangements, a new sofa and her very own lady’s maid, Adona, who was eager to prepare her some soup.
Mario offered a quick tour, pointing to a bright, empty room as a potential studio, if she wanted to provide a list of items she would like placed there.
“A crib and a change table,” Trella said, growing as fractious as her son. “Tyrol needs a nursery.”
Mario tilted his head in a way that was unbearably condescending. “Royalty inhabits the royal wing.”
“I see.” She sat on the sofa and dug in her shoulder bag for the receiving blanket she carried. She shook it out with a snap then tucked a corner into her collar as she met Mario’s gaze with a challenging one of her own. “And do I go on safari to the nursery to feed him? Or does he exercise his lungs through the palace every two hours as he is brought to me?”