Temporarily His Princess - By Olivia Gates Page 0,48

from the world. Fire flooded her limbs.

And that was before she really looked at him.

Her heart emptied its beats in a mad rush.

This was Vincenzo as he was born to be. As she’d never seen him before. The prince whose blood ran thick with nobility and entitlement. The man who inhabited a realm she should have never seen, let alone entered. But she had entered it once, tangentially. Now she was stumbling all the way in, even if for only a year.

Her ravenous gaze devoured his every detail. His lavish costume complemented her dress, magnifying his height, breadth and bulk, worshipping his coloring and lines. A mid-thigh jacket in royal-blue silk, embroidered with Castaldinian designs, opened over a crisp white satin shirt and golden sash. His black fitted pants disappeared into knee-high shining black leather boots. A gold cape embroidered in blues and white flowed at his back down to his calf and completed the image of an otherworldly prince.

She’d always thought no description did him justice. Seemed there were always new heights to the injustice. Of his beauty. Of his escalating effect on her.

And he was hers. Tonight. And for a whole year.

Alonzo gave him the same water he’d given her to drink, and Gabrielle whispered that now the evil spirits couldn’t come between them from the inside.

Vincenzo strode in, a predator who had his prey standing before him. His eyes swept her before returning to her face with a promise that turned her into a mass of tremors.

And that was before he stopped before her and said, “I’ll kick these helpful ladies out and take the edge off so I can survive the torturous festivities ahead.”

The wild gleam in his eyes told her he wasn’t joking. He wanted to take her now, hard and fast.

Her lungs emptied on a ragged gasp. “Vincenzo…”

“Don’t stand there devouring your bride with looks and intentions.” That was Clarissa, her voice merry. She must have guessed what Vincenzo was saying. “The sooner you’re done with the ceremony, the sooner you can devour her for real.”

Unable to blush any deeper, she watched Vincenzo turn to his queen with a glare, felt him vibrating with control as he offered her his arm.

She clung to it as if to a raft in a stormy sea, felt his power moving her legs and his support holding her up as they exited the chamber after another water-sprinkling ritual.

It felt as if she was outside her body watching the whole spectacle unfold as they passed through the castle’s torch-lit corridors to the courtyard where the ceremony would be held. Her dazed gaze swept the magical setting that had become even more so with extensive decorations and ingenious lighting. Alonzo had turned the main building, its satellites and the grounds into a setting for a dream.

They passed through hundreds, maybe thousands, of smiling faces, only a few registering a spark of recognition in her stalled mind. Princes Durante and Eduardo, Gio, Alonzo’s partner, and other relatives of Vincenzo’s whom she’d met in the past week. Her gaze hiccupped and lingered only once, on her father and brother. They looked so dashing in their fineries, so moved, looking at her so lovingly. Her resentment crumbled and her heart trembled with that affection that had and would always defy logic.

Then Vincenzo swept her away and to the stage that now blocked the doors of the central tower, facing the courtyard where guests milled in concentric semicircles of tables.

As soon as they took the last step up the royal-blue satin-covered stairs, where a sumptuously dressed minister awaited them between King Ferruccio and Crown Prince Leandro, who would be their witnesses, the live medley of regal music stopped. Silence and sea breeze lamented in her ears as Vincenzo handed her down so she could kneel on the velvet cushion before the minister, then he followed her, keeping her molded to his side.

The minister of the province’s main church—a jovial man who’d told her how delighted he was to be finally marrying the confirmed bachelor lord of his province—gave a little speech then recited the marriage vows, in Italian then in English, for the bride’s guests’ benefit. As per Vincenzo’s province and family traditions, bride and groom didn’t repeat those vows or exchange ones of their own.

She welcomed that. She had nothing to say to Vincenzo. Nothing but the truth of her feelings. And those should not and would never leave her heart to pass through her lips.

Ferruccio came forward with their rings, blessing them