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But it didn’t occur to her not to obey him.
Youwantto obey him,that voice inside her accused her.
She sat forward in her seat. She let go of his hand and indulged that part of her she’d been denying all this time, sliding her hands over that marvelous, ever-roughened jaw of his to cup his beautiful face between her hands.
Her breath caught. She saw nothing but fire in his hot, sweet gaze, this stunning man whom she should never have met. Whom she should never have touched. Whose kiss weeks ago still worked in her like a fire she couldn’t stamp out and whose gorgeous male body, sculpted to impossible perfection, had beenright there within reachon all those little holiday jaunts they’d taken, in all those rooms and tents they’d shared without ever sharing a bed.
She hadn’t touched him. She hadn’t dared. She didn’t know what would become of her if she followed that flame. She couldn’t imagine what waited for her on the other side—and she hadn’t known how to handle the fact she’dwantedthings she’d never, ever wanted before, from anyone.
But tonight, she’d agreed to marry him. Tonight, they were in public, where it was safe. Where they could both wear the masks they preferred. Where there could be no real surrender to lick and scrape of all that fire inside of her.
Tonight, she felt as if she could dare anything. Even this. Even him.
Even the terrifying things she felt inside.
So Brittany slid forward and pressed her mouth to his.
It was better than she’d remembered—better than she’d dreamed. She tested the shape of his lips, shuddering at the warmth, the contact. He tilted his head to change the angle and took the kiss deeper, hotter.
His taste exploded through her, fine wine and devilishly perfect man.
God help her, but he was perfect.
Brittany kissed him as if fairy tales were real, and as if the two of them were, too. She kissed him as if they were nothing more than a man and a woman, and this kiss was all that mattered.
No kings, no strippers. No tabloid personas. No calculation whatsoever.
She couldn’t seem to do anything but pour herself into him, no ice and nothing hidden or left back. No self-preservation at all.
Brittany kissed him as if she was falling in love with him, raw and wild and heedless, and her heart flipped over in her chest at the very thought.
And as if he knew it, Cairo pulled away. He brushed her hair back from her cheek, handling her as if she was infinitely precious to him. Something bloomed within her, warm and bright. Because she wanted that. She wanted to be precious.
To him.
“I promise you,” he said, his voice husky with what she might have called a kind of pain, or maybe it was the honesty she’d asked for earlier, “you won’t regret this.”
“Neither will you,” Brittany heard herself say, her voice as swollen as her lips, but a solemn vow even so.
It hung like that between them, shimmering and real.
And that was when the first paparazzo reached their table.
* * *
Six frantic and over-photographed weeks later, Brittany stood in a tiny stone chamber high in an ancient castle built into the side of the Italian coast, letting a set of smiling attendants lace her into her wedding gown. She kept her eyes trained on the tapestries that adorned the walls, all showing this or that medieval battle or glorified feast.
She tried to remind herself that this day, like all the conflicts and celebrations on display before her, would fade into blessed obscurity soon enough.
In five years, ten, a hundred, no one would care that Cairo Santa Domini was the first of his bloodline in three hundred years to marry outside the iconic cathedral that had stood for centuries in the Santa Dominian capital city, not far from the grand palace where his family once ruled. No one would care that he was—as a particularly vicious reporter had said to Brittany’s face with obvious relish—polluting himself and the Santa Dominian line of ascension by consorting with her at all.
Time would pass. They would be messily and extravagantly divorced, as planned. They would make sure to drag it all out across the tabloids, the better to ensure the entire planet was heartily sick of them both. And then Brittany would fade off into obscurity and be remembered as nothing more than a tiny little footnote in the long, celebrated tale of Cairo’s family that would end, ignominiously, with him.
It was too bad this particular footnote was fighting off a panic attack.
“Are you well, my lady?” one of the attendants asked in heavily accented English as they finished the lacing. “You look pale.”
“I’m fine,” Brittany said, though her tongue felt strange in her mouth. She made herself smile. “I’m excited, that’s all.”
