A Scandal in the Headlines - By Caitlin Crews Page 0,56

and website in Europe. Since he’d shocked her with his proposal. He’d been distant. Controlled. He hadn’t laid a finger on her, and there’d been nothing but winter in his dark green eyes.

She preferred this Alessandro. She knew this Alessandro.

No matter how tight and close it felt suddenly, in such a small room, with him blocking the only exit.

“I suggest you drop this subject,” he advised her, hoarse with the force of his temper. There was that glitter of high passion, furious desire, in his too-dark eyes, and she exulted in it. She needed it.

“Oh,” she said brightly, unable to help herself. “Were you thinking an annulment would work better?”

He laughed. It was a hard, male sound, primitive and stirring. It coursed through her, made her shiver with the heat of it. Made her ache. And the look he turned on her then melted her bones.

“I did warn you,” he said.

He reached behind him and locked the door, and Elena felt it like a bullet. Hard and true, straight into her core. He crossed the room in a single stride, hauled her to him and then pulled her down with him as he sat on the sad, old sofa. Then he simply lifted her over his lap.

He hiked her dress up over her hips, ripped her panties out of his way with a casual ferocity that made her deliciously weak, then stroked two long fingers into the melting furnace of her core. Elena gasped his name. He laughed again at the evidence of how much she wanted him, all of her molten desire in his hand. She braced her hands on the smooth lapels of his wedding suit, another stunning work of art in black, and not half as beautiful as that mad hunger that changed his face, made him that much starker. Fiercer.

Hers.

Alessandro didn’t look away from her as he reached between them and freed himself. He didn’t look away as he ripped open a foil packet with his teeth and rolled protection on with one hand. And he didn’t look away as he thrust hard into her, pulling her knees astride him, gripping her bottom in his hard hands to move her as he liked.

“An annulment is out of the question,” he told her, his voice like fire, roaring through her. “And in case you’re confused, this is called consummation.”

Elena’s head fell back as she met his thrusts, rode him, met his passion with every roll of her hips. She felt taken and glorious and his.

Completely his.

He changed the angle of her hips, moving her against him in a wicked rhythm, and she felt herself start to slip toward that edge. That easily. That quickly. Still fully dressed. Still wearing her wedding shoes and the pearls he’d presented her this morning. Still madly in love with this hard, dangerous man who was deep inside of her and knew exactly how to make her blind with desire. This man who was somehow her husband.

Whatever that meant. However long it lasted. Right then, she didn’t care.

“You are mine, Elena,” he whispered fiercely, his voice dark and sinful, lighting her up like a new blaze. “You are my wife.”

It was that word that hurled her over, sent her flying apart in his arms, forced to muffle her cries with her own hand as he muttered something hot and dark and then followed right behind her.

When she came back to herself, he was watching her face, and she wondered in a surge of panic what he might have seen there. What she might have revealed.

“Don’t talk to me about divorce,” he said in a low voice, his dark green eyes hot. “Not today.”

He shifted forward, setting her on her feet before him. She felt unsteady. Utterly wrecked, yet a glance in the mirror showed he hadn’t disturbed a single hair on her perfectly coiffed head. She smoothed her dress back down into place, her hands trembling slightly. Alessandro tucked himself back into his trousers and then reached down to scoop up the lace panties he’d torn off her.

Because he’d been too desperate, too determined to get inside her, to wait another instant. She didn’t know why that should make her feel more cherished, more precious to him, than all twenty strange minutes of their wedding ceremony.

She held out her hand to take the panties back. His hard mouth curved, his dark eyes a sensual challenge and something far more intense, and then he tucked them in his pocket.

“A memento of our wedding