The Royal Wedding Collection. Robyn Donald

that they might simply go away again.

      ‘I think it is time that we took your dress off, don’t you, Millie?’

      With a practised, almost careless touch, he peeled the voile gown from her body and threw it aside, and then he stood back to look at her, appraising her scantily clad body as a connoisseur might appraise a painting.

      Standing before him in just her underwear, Millie should have felt shy, but something in the increased darkening of his eyes filled her with a new and strange kind of power. For, yes, Gianferro was the expert, the seasoned lover, but she had something that he wanted as badly as she did.

      Instinct, as well as skill, had made her a fearless and accomplished horsewoman, and instinct took over now to instruct her in the lessons of love. She raked her fingers up by her ears, lifting great handfuls of shiny gold hair, as if she were gathering sheaves of wheat, and the movement made her hips jut out slightly and emphasised the thrust of her breasts.

      He sucked in a breath. ‘Beautiful.’ He slowly ran the tip of his finger down over his shirt. ‘Come and unbutton this for me.’

      It was the simplest task imaginable, but never had a task seemed so impossible. Gianferro smiled as she fumbled at the buttons.

      ‘No need to ask whether you’ve done this before,’ he teased.

      ‘Don’t make fun of me,’ she begged.

      ‘But I’m not. I never would.’ His voice was serious because inexplicably he was moved. ‘It’s wonderful. Your innocence is all that a man could dream of.’

      She pushed away the thought that it was what she represented, rather than the person she was, which made his black eyes gleam with such a soft, territorial pride, and concentrated instead on the newness and the excitement of the moment.

      She’d never seen his chest before. It was olive-brown and silken satin in texture, crisp with dark hair, the faint line of rib barely visible. She touched a wondering finger to each nipple, then looked up at him to see his face a study of fierce concentration, as if he was holding himself back. His eyes opened again and he gave a little shake of his head, a smile which was almost rueful.

      ‘Come,’ he said huskily. ‘For I cannot wait much longer.’ And he scooped her up into his arms and carried her to the vast bed, which both taunted and tempted her as he laid her down on it and slid the shirt from his powerful shoulders.

      He kicked off his shoes and, enraptured, Millie watched as he unbuckled his belt and slid the zip down. But she closed her eyes when the trousers came off, for she could see the proud, hard ridge through the silk of his boxer shorts.

      ‘Open them, Millie,’ he instructed quietly. ‘Do not be afraid of what you see, for a man and a woman were made for each other. You know that.’

      Yes, she did—and she had spent a lifetime of watching this most basic of acts in the stables, and in the farms surrounding her home in England. But animals were different from humans. Animals just got on and did it—you didn’t get a mare standing there and hoping against hope that she would please her stallion!

      ‘It will be fine,’ he said sternly, but there was a mocking and teasing note to his next words. ‘It will be fine—for I command it and you must obey all my commands!’ She laughed then, and he pulled her against him. ‘That is better. We will not rush. We have all the time in the world, cara mia.’

      He had never known what it was to use restraint in the bedroom, for he had been spoiled by women all his life—women eager for his hard, beautiful body and for the cachet of having slept with a prince.

      But Millie was different. His wife and his virgin. He must be gentle with her, but above all he must show her just how good it could be.

      She had thought that it would be happening by now. She had thought…But then he began to kiss her again, and she just slipped into the beauty of that kiss, all her doubts and questions dissolving away.

      He touched her skin with fingertips which whispered over the surface, and where he touched he set her on fire with need, like a painter, bringing to life a blank canvas with the stroke of his brush. Yet he touched her everywhere except where the books had told her she could expect to be touched, and this had the curious effect of both relaxing her and yet making the tension grow and grow.

      Tentatively she stroked him back, tiptoeing her way over the landscape of his body, exploring and charting all the lines and contours. But there was an area which was out of bounds, for she didn’t dare…

      Against her lips she felt him smile, and he pulled his head away. ‘That’s okay, Millie—I actually do not want you to touch me there.’

      The fact that he had guessed mortified her, but her confusion increased. ‘You don’t?’

      ‘If you play with me, I will not do you justice.’

      ‘I’m not a meal, to be eaten!’ she protested.

      ‘Oh, but you are,’ he demurred, tempted to show her—but experience told him not to swamp her with too much, too soon. The first time should be unadorned—the myriad of variation on that one simple act should be revealed slowly, in time.

      Soon she was aching, melting, longing—and when she thought she might die with it he took her bra off and peeled down her panties, touching the searing heat between her legs until she cried out.

      Wild and hungry for him, her fears and doubts fell by the wayside and she boldly touched him back, feeling him start as she encountered the steely column.

      He nodded, as if she had pressed some invisible button, and peeled off his boxer shorts. She felt the naked power of him butting against her, dimly aware that he was moving on top of her. She laid her hands on his buttocks and felt him shudder as he shifted position slightly and then…then…

      ‘Millie!’ he gasped, as he eased his way inside her. So tight! So perfect!

      And Millie gasped, too. The newness of the sensation felt so strange and yet so right, as her body adjusted to accommodate him. Her skin felt flushed. All her senses felt as though they were newly sensitised. And her heart felt as though it wanted to burst from her chest as he sealed the union with a kiss which felt far more intimate than any previous kiss had done.

      He began to move, slowly at first, dragging his mouth away to look down at her, his eyes narrowing—for he realised that just as this was new for her, in some ways it was the same for him. ‘I am hurting you?’

      She shook her head, and a laugh bubbled up from the back of her throat. It was so easy. ‘No! Oh, no, not at all! It’s…perfect…’

      He shook his head. ‘Not yet. Be patient, and you will see how perfect it can be.’

      And then there were no more words or questions as their bodies melded and moulded and began to move in sweet harmony. Sometimes he teased her, and sometimes he thrust so deep that her heart felt as though it had been impaled by him, and all the time there was something tantalising, sweet and intangible, which was building and building inside. Over and over she felt that she was almost there, and her body reached for it greedily, but Gianferro did speak then, bending his mouth to whisper into her ear.

      ‘Relax. Let go. Let it happen.’

      When it did, she was unprepared for the power of it. And the beauty.

      ‘G-Gianferro!’ she gasped in astonishment as it took her up, lifted her in its nebulous arms like a whirlwind, and then rocked her, again and again, sucking all the air from her lungs until she fell at last, laughing and crying with the sheer wonder of it.

      He stilled for a moment as he watched her—the genuine joy of her fulfilment touching him in a way he had not expected—and then he started to move again, and her eyes flew open. She read something in his eyes and she put her hands around his buttocks, pulling him in closer, deeper.

      And when it happened for him she watched him too—drinking in his face greedily as she imprinted each reaction on her memory. She saw