Ranieri forced himself to sit back. He rearranged her skirts, and found himself smiling as he pulled her up from where she’d gone limp against the seat, arranging her so that she looked a proper bride and not the debauched creature he’d made her.
That she was both of those things, and both were his, pleased him deeply.
It took her some time to open her eyes and when she did, the green of her eyes seemed to pierce him straight through.
“But... Don’t you want to...?”
“Amore,”he said with a certain intensity, and did not choose to ask himself why he was using that particular endearment when there was no one but her to hear it, “you are a Furlan now. And I am taking you to my ancestral home, such as it is. Where I will sample you as is only good and proper and civilized, in an actual bed. Not in the back of a car as if we are nothing but overwrought teenagers.”
If she didn’t matter to you, you wouldn’t bother to wait, a voice inside him whispered.
He ignored it.
Annika stared at him for a long moment. Then a smile took over her face. And this was not the kind of smile he’d grown used to from her. This one seemed to crack her wide open, until all he could see was sunlight, and no matter that outside the car the October night was dark and deep.
“Yes, dear,” she said, almost diffidently, and then her smile widened. “Isn’t that the appropriate, subservient mode of address? Is that what we’re looking for here?”
And Ranieri had to shift on the seat before he forgot his good intentions and had her here and now—
But he was taking her home. And he would wait until he got her there, or really, he could count himself no better than animal. Something he was certain he would have to remind himself of during the flight ahead of them.
If she didn’t matter to you...
Ranieri took her hand and played with his grandmother’s ring, sitting so snugly on her finger. “I’m glad you’re taking your wifely duties so seriously, Annika,” he said, and found himself smiling again at her laughter. “See that it continues.”
Then he allowed himself one more kiss.
But only the one.
CHAPTER SEVEN
TOANNIKA’STREMENDOUSDISAPPOINTMENT, Ranieri meant what he said.
And he could not be moved.
There was that lovely interlude in the car, and that was it. They boarded the jet waiting for them and he ushered her to one of the rooms on the plane, gruffly suggesting that she take the opportunity to change out of her wedding gown. She might have wanted to argue about that, or suggest he stay with her in the stateroom, but Marissa appeared and bustled into the room with her. Because, it occurred to her only after Ranieri left her there, she could not get out of her wedding gown on her own. It had taken a handful of attendants to get her into it earlier.
And when she was finally changed and comfortably ensconced in the sort of lounging clothing that Marissa approved of—all cashmere and merino wool, which were not exactly a hardship to wear, though she hated to admit it—she wandered out into the main part of the plane to see if she could find Ranieri again.
He wasn’t hard to locate. He was in his own stateroom but he was seated at a desk with his laptop open and his briefcase beside him, talking gruffly in what sounded like German. Annika supposed she could have disrupted whatever meeting he was conducting on his wedding day, but she didn’t. She was still floating on the remains of the day they’d had—and what had gone on in the back of that limousine.
She was still flashing too hot, thinking abouthis hand.
How had she let it happen?
But she knew the answer to that. They had been alone as they had not been since that kiss up on his roof. And all the kisses in between, parceled out to the paparazzi as little punishments for her attempts to shame him, had stoked a greedy, breathless fire within her. The wedding had made it worse. Walking down that aisle to him. Dancing with him.
Being swept up in his arms and carried off.
There with Schuyler House looking on like the benevolent relatives she missed so dearly.
She had lost herself. There was no other way to describe it. And she should have been barricading herself away from him now, but she couldn’t quite get there. She didn’twantto get there.
Because there was that fire in her and there had been hishand, and now she no longer wanted to deny it. To fight it with dahlias and unicorns and nicknames. Now she wanted to know where it went.
She wanted to chase that fire, not run away from it.
He had talked about needs. It turned out she had some, too. Why shouldn’t they both get what they wanted out of this situation? She felt wildly sophisticated as she thought that—like the woman she looked like in the mirror now, the woman he dressed her to be these days. Theirs was a temporary arrangement, so why not enjoy it?