Tonight, their wedding night, he would take her to bed and make love to her.
A hot shiver went over her body, and suddenly, she could think of nothing else. All her questions went out the window. All she could think about was the bed that waited for them at the end of the aisle.
What would it feel like when Talos made love to her?
If it was half as wonderful as the kiss had been, she feared she might die of ecstatic joy.
“I hope you’ll be very happy, Eve,” Lia said to her softly, and there were suddenly tears in her eyes. “Marriage turns romance into love that lasts forever. It creates a family.”
A family. Just what Eve wanted more than anything in the world. She nodded, her heart in her throat.
It seemed scant minutes later when, holding freshly cut orange-red roses that matched the blush on her cheeks, she stepped out of the Italian castle into a Tuscan fairyland.
Sunset was falling over the vineyard and green rolling hills. Outside on the covered terrace a million lights drifted from the ceiling, tangled in wisteria. Next to the terrace she saw an old medieval stone wall, overgrown with roses.
The fairy lights sparkled over her head as she stepped onto the stone floor in her simple white sandals. A musician sitting in the back played the first notes on a guitar, accompanied by a flute. All so simple and so magical.
Then she saw Talos.
He was waiting for her at the other end of the terrace. On one side of him stood a friend of Lia’s, the mayor of a nearby town who’d agreed to conduct the hastily arranged civil ceremony. On his other side stood his friend Roark. Eve saw the man’s face light up at the sight of Lia and their little girl walking ahead in a sweet, frothy cotton dress. At her mother’s urging, little Ruby tossed rose petals haphazardly in Eve’s path.
Roark picked up his daughter with delighted praise when she reached the end of the aisle. His smile widened as he met his wife’s eyes. Seeing their love for each other, as Lia held their plump baby son who looked so dapper in his little suit, Eve’s heart stopped in her chest. This was just what she wanted.
A life like this.
A love like this.
But when she looked back at her bridegroom with a joyful smile, his expression stopped her cold.
His gaze was dark. Full of heat and fire. But there was something else. Something she didn’t understand that frightened her.
The guitar music suddenly trailed off, and she realized that she’d stopped walking halfway down the aisle. With a deep breath, telling herself she was being silly, she started walking again.
Stop acting like a scared virgin! she chided herself.
When she reached the waiting men, Talos pulled her veil up over her head. She looked up at him with a shy smile.
He didn’t return it. Instead, his gaze burned through her, incinerating every drop of blood and bone inside her body. As if they were already in bed.
The mayor began to speak, but his accented words faded into the background. The Navarres disappeared. So did Tuscany, along with the fairy lights and poetry of the mists.
There was only Talos.
His heat.
His fire.
She was dimly aware of repeating the mayor’s words, of hearing Talos’s deep voice beside her. He slipped a big diamond ring over her finger, then kissed her softly, brushing his mouth against hers.
And just like that—they were man and wife.
CHAPTER SEVEN
FROM the moment Talos saw her in the wedding dress, so lovely and sweet with her shy, happy smile, an earthquake went through his soul.
Eve wore a simple, modest cream-colored wedding dress, with her dark hair beneath a light veil, and she held flame-colored roses in her unmanicured hands. There was no artifice about her. Just beauty. And innocence.
In the brief kiss he gave her after they were wed, his soul trembled within his body. He knew he was on a razor’s edge of seducing this beautiful woman, whose fire had once burned him so badly, but who now seemed to shine like the first spring sun after a long, gray winter.