“I know I have known Dominic only a short while,” he said in a low voice. “But it feels…”
“Yes,” she agreed. “The minute I laid eyes on him it was as if I had always known him. As if I had been waiting for all my life to meet him, and there he was.”
He would not have found the words to say it in that way. Yet now that she had, it was as if she had unlocked that in him. That sense of recognition that he felt inside him, having only very little to do with how the boylooked.
“I want to thank you,” Antonluca said, stiff and formal and strange, but there was no helping it. “You could have made me fight for this. I am honored.”
She tipped her head slightly to one side, her gaze still on the flames that danced in the grate. “I hope I can always be counted on to do what is best for Dominic.”
At another time, he decided, he would dig into why he found that so…wrong. Why it made his skin seem to shrink against his bones while something dark settled in his chest.
But not tonight.
“Welcome to my castle,” he said instead. “The old men in the village call me their run-down king. I suppose that makes you their queen.”
And it was clear that this was the exact right note to hit, because she smiled. It even seemed like a real smile. When he extended his hand, she came to him and took it immediately, and that was good. He could feel her heat, her grip as he led her out of the living room, and guided her all around the castle itself.
The grand tour, such as it was.
“I’m not trying to sound disparaging,” she said as they climbed the stairs, after walking around the main level, which was mostly the room they’d already been and the kitchens that had been the only thing he’d insisted upon renovating before moving in. And, of course, a handful of rooms that stood empty, all stone and starlight tonight. “But I will say that I was expecting lavish corridors of marble. Galleries filled with priceless works of art. Statues leaping out of every alcove, that sort of thing.”
“I forget you are American,” he said, though he smiled when he said it and she smiled back. “You are thinking of a palace, I think. There are many parts of history in which a stout stone wall could only be the province of self-proclaimed kings and they were used for the express purpose of holding off attackers and would-be replacements. A palace is much prettier, and usually less functional.”
She wrinkled her nose, still smiling. “Marble can be perfectly functional, Antonluca. If you want it badly enough.”
Antonluca found himself gazing at her, as close to a wide grin as he thought he’d ever come. He led her into the tower, climbing up the spiral stair and stopping just before the top, on a gated landing. He opened the door to show her what he’d had his staff do while she was in Florence today.
Hannah peered inside, her eyes wide. “Oh.This is Dominic’s room.” Her voice was laced with wonder. It made him feel like flying. “You’ve replicated it almost exactly.”
“I want him to feel at home,” Antonluca told her. Gruffly.
Then he led her up the last few steps to the expansive suite that took up the top of the tower. There was a sitting area with a separate room on that same level and a stair that led up even farther above. Unlike the rest of the castle, it was modernized and furnished and more, comfortable.
Hannah breathed out audibly when she saw it. “Thisis where you live,” she said softly.
“You can take the room down here, if you wish it,” he told her, because they hadn’t discussed these things. It had seemed too fraught with peril, to Antonluca’s mind. As if talking about what their marriage might look like would make certain it never came to be.
But now they were good and truly married.
He still had hold of her hand, so he led her across the round space, and up the last spiral stair. There, at the very top of the tower, there were windows all around, and a modern sort of floating wall behind the bed that concealed a bathroom suite. And even at night, it was clear that there were views in every direction. As if all of Tuscany was theirs for the taking.
“Or,” he said, not entirely sure why he couldn’t seem to stop sounding so formal and strange, “we can share—”
But then it didn’t matter, because Hannah catapulted herself into his arms.
The force of it surprised him, but he caught her in midair anyway. He held her there against his body as she kissed his face and wrapped her arms around his neck. He held her securely, so that finally—finally—he could really kiss her.
Not the way they had kissed in the chapel. This kiss was carnal. It was seeking, and filled with all of that wildfire that had always been theirs.
It was as hot as New York and as wild as the cottage and better than both.
He swung her up higher in his arms, and this was better than carrying her over some threshold. Because it was only a few steps across the room, and then he was laying her down on the bed and following her there.
Where, for the first time, he let himself settle in beside her and make certain to thoroughly kiss his wife.
Which was all he did.
Over and over and over again, until she began to beg. First softly. Then louder.
