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In the medieval period, there had even been bloodstained sheets to wave about when the deed was done.

She somehow doubted that was what Saviero had in mind.

When they reached his bedroom, she saw that the doors were still open between their bedrooms, and she turned to him.

“I don’t know what you have planned,” she began.

“Nothing at all,” he replied, in the tone she was most familiar with from him. His work voice. “In fact, I think we should take this opportunity to sit down and hammer out our launch strategy for the next little while. No one will expect another appearance before New Year’s, but after that, I think it’s best that we hit the ground running, having fully solidified our image and message.”

Cesca sighed. “You really do insist on being unbearably boring, don’t you?”

She kept her eyes on him as he stood there, not far at all from the vast bed against the back wall. It was obvious that he intended to keep moving, to keep going into his sitting room, but he stopped when she said that.

And as she moved toward him instead. His blue eyes sparked, though he looked otherwise impassive. Until she saw his brows rise.

That was a full crash out from any other man, so she kept going, tilting her head back to look up at him and not stopping until she was so close to him that she could slide her palms onto his abdomen.

She kept her gaze on his as she unbuttoned the ceremonial coat he wore, all of it covered in medals and epaulets, a visual representation of all the various orders and awards he’d been given over the years for his service to the kingdom.

Soon enough there was only the soft fabric of his shirt between her hands and his skin.

And the crown on her head was heavy, so she let it tip her head back even more, and didn’t mind at all when that meant she ended up pressing her breasts against him.

“What are you doing?” he asked, almost conversationally.

“Seducing you,” she told him brightly. Then she laughed. “I figure we might as well get it out of the way. Don’t you think?”

Then Cesca surged up on her tiptoes, hooked one hand around the back of his neck, and kissed him.

And this time, it wasn’t in public. There was no congregation watching their every move. There were no cameras and no one to monitor what sort of reaction she had so they could speculate about her in a tabloid or over dinner with their snide friends.

So she kissed him with everything she had at her disposal. She tilted her head to the side and deepened the kiss, feeling the whole of him against her. All of him, and in a way she hadn’t yet.

That wide chest. That big body that he clearly kept under strict control, the way he did everything else.

She felt him go stiff and she thought he would push her away.

Either way, she thought, she won.

But Saviero didn’t push her away. Instead, those strong arms went around her and pulled her even closer against him, even lifting her slightly off the ground.

Then she felt…everything.

He took control of the kiss, plundering her mouth with his, dousing her in a fire she’d never felt before.

Everything was that blast of heat and that intoxicating scent of his, sage and leather and something that was simply him. Everything was the scrape of his tongue against hers and the way that reverberated all the way through her, winding around and around, tightening, and catapulting straight down between her legs.

And all that was before he shifted yet again so she could feel the hard, hot heat of his cock pressed tight against her belly.

He was more than merely proportional, she realized then, which would have been something. But God help her—he was huge.

She wound her other arm around his neck and hung on tight, and the kiss got wilder and wilder.

Maybe Cesca couldn’t believe any of this was happening, on some level. Because she wasn’t sure that she had ever been so surely, commandingly kissed before in her life.

Everything about Saviero was different. Hotter, deeper, wilder.

Better, something in her dared to whisper.