And then it was time for Pascal to lift her veil and smooth it back from her face.
He felt something like rage pound through him, thick and nearly mad, and it took him a moment to realize it wasn’t rage at all. It was triumph.
As if this was about her, not the boy.
But he refused to let himself consider that.
He kissed her instead, with all the pent-up passion of the years she had kept his child from him and the days she’d forced him to sit in that clinic as penance. He kissed her deep, and thorough, and he didn’t care if he made the watching nuns uncomfortable.
He kissed her until there was no doubt whatsoever that he was claiming what was his.
And when he lifted his head, she looked stunned. Thrown.
That, too, felt like a victory.
Dante ran before them down the aisle toward the door. Pascal took Cecilia’s hand and led her after their son, something primitive working its way through him as they moved. His son. His woman.
His family, at last.
“I want you to be very clear about something,” his brand-new wife said when they stepped outside into the December morning. It was clear, but very cold.
Cecilia didn’t shiver. She kept her gaze on his while Dante ran in a big, looping circle around Pascal’s waiting car.
“I am not certain things have ever been more clear,cara,” he told her. Truthfully.
Her violet eyes met his, then held. She tipped up her chin.
“You forced me to do this,” she said, “and I did it. For Dante. But you should know right now that it doesn’t matter if you kiss me like that. This marriage will never, ever be consummated.”
Pascal laughed.
Then he slid his hand along her pretty face and held her cheek in the palm of his hand. He met that outraged violet glare and he smiled at her, because he knew this part. He knew how to get what he wanted, and he would. It was what he did.
“My darling wife,” he said, enjoying the words as much as the way she trembled—in fury, he was sure, and he liked that, too. He couldn’t wait to taste it. “You will beg me.”