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Climbing the stairs to his quarters, it felt as if the weight that had attached itself to his heart had a pendulum attached to it.
Elsbeth hugged his pillow tightly to her chest but there were no tears.
Amadeo had stayed the whole night with her. He’d kissed her goodbye. And she’d seen it in his eyes. He hadn’t wanted to leave.
Dare she hope...dare she...that his feelings were changing in the same way that hers were?
CHAPTER TWELVE
ELSBETHDIDNOTthink she’d ever been as excited as she was when getting ready the following Saturday. She hadn’t been this excited on her wedding day—there had been too much fear of the unknown mixed in with the excitement back then to compare.
They were going to a party. A proper party, not a royal engagement, hosted by a billionaire friend of Amadeo’s who’d recently bought a street in one of the most affluent parts of Ceres’ capital and knocked it into one big home for himself, and now wanted to show it off. A proper, social party. Even better, Clara and Marcelo, and Alessia and Gabriel were going too. It was rare for Amadeo’s sister and brother-in-law to be in Ceres over weekends, preferring to spend their free time at Gabriel’s Madrid home, but for this occasion they’d decided to stay at the castle and party with the rest of them.
Elsbeth knew Alessia and Clara had been friends for many years. Their history and closeness could easily make Elsbeth the spare wheel but the few times the three of them had spent time together, they’d gone out of their way to make her feel that she was one of them. That she belonged. It was a wonderful feeling. Acceptance. They’d been like that on Tuesday evening at the family dinner the King and Queen had hosted. Clara had downloaded an app that translated everything spoken into the phone and had insisted Elsbeth and Alessia do the same, then spent the rest of the evening narrating dirty jokes in English and cackling with glee as it was translated by monotone voices in their own languages. Elsbeth had laughed so hard that in the morning her ribs had felt bruised.
The best part about Tuesday evening though, had been Amadeo. She’d never seen her stiff-necked husband so relaxed, not outside the privacy of their bedroom. Her bedroom. When, after the meal, they’d returned to their shared reception room and they’d turned to each other to say goodnight...
To remember the look that had been in his eyes was enough to make her bones go weak.
To remember the groan of disappointment he hadn’t been quick enough to stifle in its entirety when she’d had to tell him her period hadn’t finished and the last, rueful look he’d given her as he’d trudged up the stairs to his quarters was enough to make her heart sing.
He’d been on the verge of breaking the rules. She knew it as clearly as she knew her own name.
The next morning, he’d casually asked if she would like to accompany him for a meal with the Italian ambassador and her husband on Friday evening. Equally casually, she’d said yes. They’d returned to the castle at midnight. They’d barely made it through the door before he’d started ripping her clothes off. She’d woken with the rising sun to the most beautiful climax then fallen back asleep in his arms. He’d left her bed two hours ago.
The beautician who’d now finished drying her hair carefully gathered it together, a finger lightly touching Elsbeth’s neck. She shivered, her mind racing ahead to their return from the party, when Amadeo would return to her bed.
God, she was starting to live for his lovemaking. She simply couldn’t get enough of it.
She thought back to the shy bride who’d been so desperate to leave her home country she would have agreed to live in a pigsty. She remembered the naive virgin who’d believed she had to lie on her back and think of Monte Cleure. How apprehensive she’d been. How rigidly she’d held herself, believing her mother’s advice not to touch him unless told. Believing that his pleasure was the only thing that counted, her own reactions to his touch and the climax he always brought her to a delightful bonus.
That shy, innocent bride would never have believed she would wake in the night aching so badly for him that she would bring herself to a climax with images of the time Amadeo had taught herhowto bring herself pleasure behind her closed eyes. But as satisfactory as the solo climax had been, it hadn’t been enough. It wasn’t the same without him. Not even close.
That shy bride had gone. The rules her mother had drilled into her had no place here, and it was with this thought that she saw the dress she’d earmarked to wear that night hanging up, ready to be slipped over her head. A pretty, modest dress. As pretty and modest as everything she’d ever worn her entire life.
Not all the shackles of her past had been broken yet. Tonight it was time to smash another one.
Amadeo paced Elsbeth’s day room, the glass in his hand filled with scotch from the bottle that had sat in her bar since the last time he’d drunk from it all those weeks ago. The night his loathing of his wife had first softened.
He would never have believed then that a time would come when he’d pace her quarters to stop himself marching down the corridor to her bedroom so he could throw her on the bed. If she were alone he wouldn’t think twice, but she had an army of beauticians working on her—unnecessarily in his opinion. Elsbeth’s beauty was innate. She didn’t need any help. But, as he was a stickler for rules himself, he had to allow when others had rules they abided by, and for the women of the Berruti family that meant spending hours being pampered and beautified before an evening out. In this case though, he considered it a waste of valuable sex time.
Pouring himself another drink, he thought moodily back to Tuesday evening, when he’d come within a whisker of sweeping her into his arms. All that had stopped him was her rueful explanation that her period hadn’t finished. Unlike that day in the press secretary’s office, he knew he wouldn’t have stopped himself.
That was what came of spending an evening sitting next to his wife with the scent of her perfume arousing his senses and the heat from her hot body so close to his, arousing his loins. It got to the stage where a man would throw aside every rule invented just for one taste of his wife’s sweetness.
Mother Nature had had other ideas though. A cold shower had done nothing to ease his ardour and so he’d resorted to masturbation, Elsbeth’s face as she climaxed and the soft mews she made vivid in his memories as he’d brought himself to orgasm. But it hadn’t been enough. As satisfactory as masturbation was, it didn’t compare. Nothing could compare with the rapture of climaxing buried deep in Elsbeth’s velvet tightness.
Dio, when would this fever for her be spent?
Maybe he should arrange a week away for them. That wouldn’t be against the rules. The rules of their sleeping arrangements only applied in the castle. He could whisk her away to the Berrutis’ villa in the Seychelles and make love until neither of them could walk and the fever had broken.
There were no spaces in his schedule for a week away until the New Year.
This fever had to be spent by then. It had to.
He’d just tipped half his refilled glass into his mouth when there was movement at the door. His heart thumped so hard its kicking beat rippled into every part of him.
Unable to speak, he could only stare and strive for breath.
