Gianna is leaving the dining room with my sister when I go in search of her. Victoria winks at me as we pass in the corridor, and for the first time in my life, I’m left standing in front of a beautiful woman not knowing what to say.
Gianna isn’t like any other woman I’ve ever met. She gives a whole new meaning to the idiom ‘beauty is only skin deep’ because she is beautiful inside and out. When I look at her, I want to collect all the stars in the night sky and present them to her as a gift fastened with a silver bow. If I could bottle how she makes me feel, I could kiss goodbye to this way of life and live like a king off the proceeds.
“I…” My stomach churns, and my palms are slick with sweat. This isn’t me, but then again, perhaps this is more me than I’ve ever been. “I missed you last night.”
Her smile sets her face aglow. “I missed you too.”
I don’t know what Victoria said to her in private, but I make a mental note to thank her later. When I grip Gianna’s hair and pull her to me, her body melds with mine. Our lips meet, and my erection grows inside my pants, rock solid between us.
“Don’t ever leave me again, printzessa,” I murmur against her demanding lips.
Reaching behind me, I push open the door to the drinks room and, in one fluid movement, we slip inside where we can be away from the security cameras and patrolling guards.
I came to ask if she’d reached a decision on my proposal, but it’s forgotten now. At the moment, all I can think about is claiming her, making her mine because I can’t imagine a world in which our bodies never get to do this again.
I can’t imagine a world in which her smile isn’t all for me.
I can’t imagine a world in which my heart doesn’t know who to beat for.
Gianna instinctively raises her arms, and I drag her thin sweater over her head. I lower my mouth to her breasts, squeezing them together so that I can tease both nipples at the same time, and Gianna arches her back, pushing them into my mouth.
“We have a lot of catching up to do.” I slide my hand inside her pants and find her warm, moist sex. Collecting her juices on my finger, I slide my hand back out again and suck my finger. “Were you saving this up for me, printzessa?”
“Yes.”
She wraps her hand around mine and sucks her taste off my finger, curling her tongue around my skin and licking me slowly, mimicking her performance at our first meeting over breakfast. If only I’d known how impossibly sexy she was beneath that bravado, I would never have wasted so much time.
“What do you want me to do to you?” I tug her hair backwards, exposing the smooth creamy flesh of her neck. I dip my head and suck on the skin below her left ear, branding her as mine.
“Lick me, Leo.” It’s barely more than a whisper.
I lift her hair from the back of her neck and brand her again, just below her hairline. “I need more than that, printzessa or I’ll keep going.”
Gianna’s hand fumbles with the waistband of my pants, but I grip it with my free hand and hold it behind her back, trapping her against me, my erection throbbing. My lips move lower down her neck, and I keep sucking.
“Lick my pussy.” The words come out breathy and desperate.
“Are you sure that’s what you want?” I lean over her, my eyebrows raised questioningly.
“I’m sure.”
I release her and tug her pants down over her hips, pressing my tongue gently between her legs. She immediately groans with pleasure, and my cock bobs in response to the siren call. Gripping her hips, I pick her up and set her down on top of the grand piano, and she lays back, legs spread wide for me.
I smile. “This is what you get for abandoning me last night.”
Holding her open, I insert two fingers, curling them inside her and rubbing them against the spot. Harder and faster, her juices dripping down my fingers.
“You still want me to lick you?”
She’s panting, spine arched, legs already quivering with pleasure. “Yes.”
“Say it like you mean it, Gianna.”
“Yes, I want you to lick me, Leo!” She sits forward, grabs my head with both hands, and pulls my face onto her pussy, and it’s the sexiest thing that has ever happened to me.
“I’m going in.” I make my eyebrows dance independently before I lick her slowly, dragging my tongue the length of her sex.
Gianna lies back on top of the piano, her arms stretched out behind her head.
“You taste so fucking good.” I raise my head just long enough to see her contented smile as the door opens behind me, and Olga lets out a squeal of horror before dragging it shut again.
“Oh my God, Leo.” Gianna tries to close her legs and sit up, but I keep them open with my shoulders. “We should—”
“Lie back and close your eyes. That’s an order.”
She does as she’s told, but I can tell that the moment is lost. I trail kisses along her inner thighs, teasing her pussy with the tip of my tongue. I open her up and lick her clit, gently, luring her back to me, until I feel her relax against me.
“Good girl. You’re going to come for me now. Come all over my face, Gianna. Show me how much you want me.”
I suck on her clit, nibbling it between my front teeth until her body is writhing and wriggling in my grip. Still, I keep sucking, drinking her up, imprinting the taste of her in my mind, a reminder of what I’m missing when I’m not touching her.
While her sex is still clenching and unclenching from her orgasm, I free my cock and slide it all the way in, feeling her constrict around it.
I pull her into a sitting position on the piano and suck on her breasts while I pound into her wet pussy. Gianna wraps her arms around my neck and pulls me to her, arching her back, thrusting her breasts into my mouth.
“Fuck me, Leo,” she breathes huskily. “I need you to fuck me.”
I don’t need to be told twice. Folding my arms around her, I feel her heart beating in synch with mine as I explode inside her.
I don’t know how long we stay like that, Gianna’s legs and arms wrapped protectively around me, holding me inside for as long as possible, her head resting on my shoulder. But when her pussy eventually pushes me out, it still hasn’t been long enough.
Her face close to mine, Gianna murmurs, “Maybe I’ll sleep in the guest room again tonight if that’s how you repay me.”
“Next time I won’t be so gentle.”
“Is that a promise?”
Something has altered between us. The first time I made Gianna come, she was shy, innocent, naturally curious about what was happening to her body. But now… Now she knows what she wants and isn’t afraid to go for it.
And what she wants is me.
“Did you—”
“Yes.” She cuts me off and rubs her nose against mine. “I thought about it, and the answer is yes, Leo.”
My blood is gushing through my veins, and I can hardly believe I heard her correctly. “Yes, to which part?”
“To all of it. Yes, I want to open the refuge with you, and yes, I’ll marry you.”
Nothing else exists right now. I pick her up and swing her around until she giggles and complains that I’m making her dizzy.
By the time I set her down onto her feet, the implications of her decision are already crawling inside my head and battling with euphoria for prime position.
“You know what this means.”
My tone is semi-serious; this is Gianna’s moment too, and I don’t want to drag her back down to earth with a bump. This is a once-in-a-lifetime moment, and she should be able to savor it without the pressures of outside influences. Like family.
She cups my face in both hands. “It means that I get to spend the rest of my life with you.”
I smile. “Your family—”
“—isn’t here. This is what I want, Leo.”
“Are you sure? It’s going to make a bizarre anecdote in the future when people ask us how we met.”
“I’ll tell them that we met over breakfast, scrambled eggs, bacon, and maple syrup, and that you were so serious, it was days before I saw you smile.”
“Serious?”
“Yes, serious.” On tiptoes, she reaches up and smooths out the lines creasing my forehead. “And grumpy.”
I wrinkle my nose. “I am not grumpy.”
“Maybe not right now.”
We drift into comfortable silence. “We’ll tell your family together, Gianna.” I’m not letting her handle this alone. “Once this … feud with Xander has been resolved.”
Now, it’s her turn to be serious. “How are you going to do that?”
“He tried to set me up, but it’s going to backfire on him.”
Her expression crumples, and she pulls away. This is why I must protect her from what I do, or it will always be this way. If she ever catches a whisper of what it means to be an Ivanov, it will ram home to her that her husband flirts with danger every day of his life.
“He’s my sister’s husband.” Her voice has shrunk. “Will he… Is he going to be … killed?”
“Gianna.” Deep breath. “I promise that I will do everything in my power to end this amicably. I don’t want you to worry about it, okay?”
I could tell her that the plans to open a women’s refuge should work in my favor and bring the feud to its natural conclusion, but I want to erase this fear from her eyes, and the only way to do this is to make sure that she remains oblivious. The refuge will be hers. That’s all that matters, and if Xander Amory continues to systematically dismantle my operation, he will bring about his own fate.
“Promise me that Mel and Lucian won’t be hurt.”
“I promise.”
“Leo I never wanted…” She sucks on her bottom lip, and I roll it out from under her top teeth and kiss it gently. “…this way of life, I’ve seen how it destroys families.”
“I know, but I won’t let anything happen to you.”
“My father, I don’t know how he’ll react when he finds out that we’re getting married.”
“He won’t.” I kiss the tip of her nose. “By the time he finds out, it’ll be too late. We’ll already be married.”
“But…” She blinks hard while she processes this latest revelation. “I can’t go home and tell him?”
I know what she’s thinking. She’s been held captive since she arrived, and even though she agreed to marry me, she still isn’t free to come and go as she pleases.
“It’s too dangerous right now, and I can’t risk you never coming back to me.”
“I’ll always come back to you.”
I know that she means it, and this makes my chest swell with affection for her. I’m even more determined to keep her close and never let her out of my sight because she doesn’t understand the lengths that Xander will go to, to win this war.
Suddenly, she stiffens in my arms, and I stroke between her shoulder blades with my thumb to try and smooth out the tension.
“Xander wants to kill you, doesn’t he?” Her voice sends a chill down my spine because it’s true.
“I’ll handle it.”
“Let me speak to him, Leo.” She wriggles out of my arms to look at me. “Let me speak to him and Mel. I know I can convince them to end this stupid vendetta against you. Once they know that we’re getting married, Xander will see things differently, and we can all get along the way families should.”
In fairy tales maybe. But in the real world, men like me and Xander rarely shake hands and put the past behind us.
“No.” I fold her hand between mine and raise it to my lips. “You must trust me on this one. If Xander finds out, he’ll do whatever it takes to stop the wedding from going ahead, and I want to make you my wife, Gianna. I want to know that you’re waiting for me when I come home. I want to know that you’re mine.”
She sniffs back tears, but she doesn’t argue. “I am yours.”
“Even without a ring on your finger?”
She smiles although I still see the concern in her eyes. “Do you need me to prove it to you again?” She slides a hand inside my pants and wraps it around my semi-solid erection.
“I think we should maybe go somewhere more private so that we don’t give Olga a heart attack.”
She tips her head back and laughs, and it’s the most beautiful sound in the whole world. “I’ll never be able to look her in the eye again.”
“Trust me, Olga will be too embarrassed to initiate eye contact. But she’ll never breathe a word to anyone in case they ask her for details.”
“They wouldn’t.” Her eyes widen. “Would they?”
“So long as Olga believes they would, it works in our favor.” I slide my hand inside my pocket. “I almost forgot.” It’s a lie; I was waiting for the right moment.
I go down on one knee in front of Gianna and take her left hand in mine, slipping a ring onto her finger. Proposing to her like this after fucking her on the grand piano in one of the many rooms that rarely get used in my house, isn’t exactly a red roses and candlelight moment. But then we’re not exactly a red roses and candlelight kind of couple.
“Gianna Sedric, will you marry me?”
She stares at the ring, open-mouthed, and then back at me. “It’s … beautiful.”
“It was my grandmama’s. I went to see her this morning while you were still snoring peacefully in my guest room.”
“I do not snore.”
I shrug and smile. “My grandmama is in her eighties and is still an early riser. She was already in her garden when I arrived, on her knees pulling straggly weeds from the flowerbeds. She always said that the ring would be mine to give to my future wife, and, well, now I finally have a reason to claim it.”
Her eyes tell me all that I need to know.
The platinum band holds a 10-carat, old mine-cut diamond surrounded by antique Russian sapphires that pick out the darker spikes of blue in Gianna’s eyes. I wasn’t certain if she would like it, but I needn’t have worried.
“My grandmama claimed that it belonged to the Romanovs. I believed her when I was a boy, but now I realize that she’s a storyteller.”
“I would love to meet her one day so that I can thank her personally.”
“You will.”
“It’s so beautiful, Leo. It’s… I never imagined…”
“That you would one day be wearing a Romanov ring?”
Her smile lights up her face. “That I would one day be marrying you.”
