The Queen's Baby Scandal Read online

  “I am a queen,” she repeated. “And I bow to no man. I never have. But for you... For you I will get on my knees.”

  And without warning she did just that, her red hair sliding over her shoulders as she went down. And then, she looked back up at him as she raised her hand, wrapping it around his hardened length.

  And he knew he was lost. Knew that there was no way he could fight this. Not now.

  He was finished. His control was at an end. And when that slick, pink tongue darted out over his arousal, when she closed her lips over him and took him in deep, there was no more thought.

  She clung to him as she lavished attention on his body with that imperious mouth.

  He had heard it issued demands, had heard it whisper lies. And now that same, traitorous tongue slid effortlessly over him and stoked the flame of desire in his stomach.

  Women had done this for him many times. It was not an unusual act, but there was something in the way she did it that made it something entirely new. Because she was queen. Because she was Astrid.

  Because she made him feel the way no woman ever had before.

  Because. Because many things he didn’t want to think about. Didn’t want to acknowledge.

  He was at the verge of being able to hold back no more. And he didn’t want that. Didn’t want it to end that way. Not now.

  “Enough,” he growled, pulling her away from him.

  “I haven’t finished,” she said, a small smile tilting her lips upward.

  “If you wish to truly bow before me, my Queen, if you truly wish to make amends, and allow me use of your royal body, then I have a decidedly better way for you to kneel.”

  He swept her up off the floor and into his arms, carrying her over to the bed and positioning her there, on her hands and knees, her deliciously shaped ass on full display for his enjoyment.

  He stroked himself, looking at her, at the image that she created there.

  He was a fool. An absolute fool. He should have turned away from this long ago, but now it was too late. Now, he had to have her. Now, there was no going back.

  If she wanted to apologize for her treachery, then he would take it out on her body. It would be no hardship. She was giving herself to him freely, and it was because of the ruthless seduction he had subjected her to only moments before.

  This was control.

  He still had control.

  He pressed his fingers between her legs, pushing inside her tight, wet body as he tested her readiness.

  She was ready. So very ready, and so desirous of him that it nearly made him lose his control then and there.

  He joined her on the bed, positioning himself at her entrance and pushing inside slowly. She was so tight, so impossibly perfect.

  She moaned, slow and long as he withdrew and thrust back home. And as he pounded inside her, he watched. The way that her elegant spine arched as she felt her pleasure build, the way she curled her fingers around the bedspread.

  He couldn’t see her face, but there was no denying it was her. His queen.

  On her knees for him.

  He held on to her hips, showing no mercy as he pushed them both toward a release he knew would consume them both.

  And as his pleasure roared through his blood, screamed through his system like a freight train, there was one last thought before his release burned each and every one away like stubble and hay beneath the flame.

  She was on her knees for him.

  But he was on his knees too.

  And then there was nothing. Oblivion. Sweet, desperate need being satisfied as he poured himself inside her.

  His queen. His wife.

  When it was through, she collapsed onto her stomach on the bed, then rolled to her side, curling up into a ball, her expression sleepy and satisfied.

  And he remembered the way she had run out on him the first night.

  How he had tried to run out on her not long ago.

  It would be better to keep her with him. To keep her here.

  He had tried it the other way, and he didn’t like it.

  If this was to be about him staking his claim and finding his place, then he was free to make that decision.

  And so he wrapped his arm around her waist and drew her up against him, holding her tight.

  He was on the verge of deciding on an entirely new plan.

  One where Astrid being his wife meant her spending her nights in his bed. And only his.

  For there was no way he would ever allow another man to touch her, he realized that now.

  She was his woman. And she was carrying his child.

  And the decision to hold her all night seemed to make everything clear.

  His.

  Only his.

  CHAPTER NINE

  OF ALL THE things Astrid expected to wake to the morning after her wedding, a scandal wasn’t one of them.

  After all, there had been ample opportunity for a scandal to break over the past couple of weeks, and yet none had.

  But then, Bjornland being isolated as it was, it was often cloistered from the rest of the world, with news filtering out slowly. But, given that Mauro was arguably more famous than she the world over, she would have expected something like this to break sooner.

  The breakfast table was covered in newspapers. And she didn’t have to be terribly insightful to figure out that someone from her father’s council was responsible for the delivery of the day’s tidings.

  “What is this?” Mauro asked, taking his seat at the table with utter confidence.

  He did everything with supreme confidence. As he had shown her last night. Repeatedly. Until he had made her shake. Made her scream. Until she could no longer tell where her body ended and his began.

  Something had changed between them last night. What had started in anger had ended with something else. It wasn’t absent anger. It was imbued with an intensity that spoke of nearly every emotion.

  All she knew was that by the time it was all over, the most natural thing in the world had been to curl up against him.

  In many ways, she felt like a lamb choosing to sleep nestled up against the side of a lion. Mostly, she just had to trust that he wasn’t going to eat her.

  She had the feeling that Mauro was undecided as yet.

  “Our reckoning,” Astrid said, lifting one of the papers up. “At least, that’s what it appears to be.”

  “I see my past has caught up with me.”

  Astrid began to read past the inflammatory headline.

  The brand-new consort to the queen of Bjornland used to work as a rent boy.

  There was no real escaping from the truth inherent in the headline. There were some seedy details included. Though, it didn’t sound as if Mauro had been working the street so much as being passed around among bored older women.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked. “More interestingly, why has this not been in the press before?”

  “Because, one of the women would have had to be willing to admit the fact that they paid me for sex. And apparently Lady Catherine is just close enough to death’s door to do such a thing now.” Astrid continued to stare at him, trying to figure out what he was feeling. He didn’t look upset, nor did he look ashamed.

  Being connected to such a scandal was the stuff of nightmares for her, and it made her skin feel like it was too tight for her body. Mauro was simply... He didn’t seem to feel a thing at all.

  “Also,” he continued. “I make my living from scandal, Astrid. My clubs are all about debauchery. At what point do you suppose this would have been an interesting headline for a man famous for immoral acts? No, it’s only interesting now.”

  She pressed her fingers to the center of her forehead. “This is a fantastic look to show the world,” she said.

  “You chose me as the father of your
child.”

  “And now these are things our child will see. It’s printed in black-and-white...”

  “Do you have regrets, my Queen?”

  The words were so cold and hard, and they hit her square in the chest. “No. Not in the way that you mean. But there are consequences for this. For our son or daughter. That’s what I care about.”

  “Not about your own pristine reputation?”

  She took in a labored breath. “I would be lying to you if I said I didn’t care at all for the reputation of my country, and myself. But I can’t deny my own involvement in bringing myself here. Is there anything else that you need to tell me?”

  “I came from the gutter, Astrid. You do not ascend to success in the amount of time I did without crossing a few barriers between one side of the law and the other. Without making bargains with morality. You simply don’t. I regret nothing of what I did, because it brought me to where I am. Once I figured out that I could control my fate, I took every opportunity to do so. At a certain age I discovered that women quite enjoyed me. And if it was something I was going to go out and do anyway for recreation, why not get a place to stay for the night, a hot meal. And some cash in my pocket. I have no moral qualms about what I did.”

  For the first time, she saw a spark in his face. In his eyes. “The rest of the world does,” he continued, stabbing a headline with his forefinger. “The rest of the world that leaves people behind, blames them for accidents of birth that see them thrust into a guaranteed lifetime of poverty. And believe me, we will be able to overcome this. Were I a woman in the same position... I fear my reputation would be beyond salvation. Fortunately, I’m a man, and one that now has money.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  “It’s what I know. My mother was nothing but a whore in the eyes of the world until the day she died. No one ever admitted her to their parties. Not even with me as her son. Of course, by the time of her death I wasn’t quite as well-known as I am now. I imagine at a certain point any amount of money can erase a life of harlotry. My mother did what she had to. For us. Because my father, though he possessed the ability to support us, decided to pretend we didn’t exist. No, don’t ask me to apologize for selling what I had. Anymore than she should apologize for it. People with money are willing to buy it, and they’re willing to pay quite a bit. They would rather buy sex than buy dinner for anyone in the slums, so you tell me what’s to be done.”

  “I didn’t say I was judging you,” she said, but at the same time, she felt like something had shifted. Because what had happened between them last night was not a simple transaction. Then she wondered if it was for him.

  It was deep and elemental and intimate. Had been from the first time. She couldn’t imagine simply handing her body over for a few dollars and a place to sleep.

  Because you’ve never been asked to do it. You’ve never had to. You were protected and you were insulated, and the most despicable thing you ever had to put up with was your father not believing in you.

  She gritted her teeth. “How long did you do that?”

  “Truthfully? Not even quite a year. Just something I did to save up money and move myself on to the next thing. I did that. I also worked as a bouncer at a club. That’s where I got familiar with that sort of environment.”

  “Did you... Did it bother you? To be with women you didn’t want?”

  “I could make myself want them all. And if I didn’t want them specifically, I could make myself do it for the money. A soft bed is quite arousing when the alternative is the streets.”

  She blinked, ignoring the scratchy feeling behind her eyes. “What did your mother think?”

  “We never discussed it,” he said, chuckling darkly. “Clearly. But then, she always behaved as if I might not know what she did with men coming through the house at all hours.”

  “So, you had a house?”

  “Yes. For a time. I left when I was sixteen, because I couldn’t bear it anymore. To watch her submit herself to that. Neither could I tolerate the ones who came to my room after, seeing if I would give for free what my mother had charged for. Don’t worry. No one ever did anything to me. I was lucky. And that’s the other thing, in the grand scheme of things, given my background, I was quite lucky. What I did, I did with a certain amount of choice involved. It’s more than I can say for many like me. Don’t waste any sympathy on me.”

  “I have sympathy for the headlines.”

  “They don’t bother me. Though, I wonder if I should be concerned about you.”

  “There need be no concern,” she said, pushing herself into a standing position.

  She despised the weakness that had settled into her limbs. Hated that the press had been able to make her feel this way. That her father’s councilmen were succeeding in trying to sabotage them so soon after the wedding.

  This idea that bad press should be avoided at all cost, that being scandal free was an essential, was old thinking. Old thinking that was part of the Astrid she’d been before. Before she’d decided to take control of her own life by having her own child.

  That Astrid could not care so much for scandal.

  That Astrid would do things differently.

  She took a breath. “I will be damned if anyone is allowed to write the story but us. We have done our best to control it from the beginning, and I don’t see why we can’t continue on as we began. We should go. We should go to Italy, visit your clubs. Show that I am in absolute support of you and all that you are.”

  He arched a brow. “Are you sure you don’t just want to have a press release where you stand behind me looking regretful while I confess my many sins?”

  She waved a hand. “No. I have no interest in that. None at all.”

  “Reputation is of no concern to me,” he said.

  “Well, it is of a concern to me,” she said. “And I will not allow the press to decide what that reputation is. I’m clearing my schedule.”

  “Shall we take your private plane or mine?” he asked.

  “We both have private planes?”

  “Yes indeed,” he said.

  “Well, that just borders on absurd.”

  “It might, but I think it would be difficult for us to consolidate, given our busy schedules.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Mine, then,” he said. “It has the whiskey I like on board.”

  “That isn’t fair. I can’t drink any.”

  “I never said any of this was going to be fair.”

  Astrid frowned. “I don’t suppose you did.”

  The doors to the dining room burst open, and in charged one of the men from the council, his face red. “Do you see the censure you have opened us up to?” he railed against Astrid. “If your father were alive to see the disgrace that you have brought on his country...”

  Mauro stood, slowly and decisively, his manner intimidating, his body radiating with a dark energy. “If your father were alive, he would see a woman standing strong in the face of embarrassingly tiny adversaries. And that is what you will continue to see in the coming days. I never met the old king, so I cannot speak confidently of what would give him pride. But he would at least not be able to deny the strength and sense of honor that Queen Astrid exudes.”

  Astrid said nothing, she simply watched as the councilman turned and walked out of the room, clearly not at all mollified by Mauro’s interference, but likely gone off to lick his wounds, as he clearly didn’t possess the wherewithal to stand against a man of Mauro’s presence.

  She could have defended herself. She had done it for years now. This was hardly going to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. But she was tired, and she was reeling from the revelations in the paper in front of her.

  And for all that Mauro was tangled up in the challenges she was dealing with now, she was grateful to have had him there to stand with her. It w
asn’t always about needing to be rescued or defended. But sometimes it was good to know that someone was there to stand with you. To be the first to speak in defense.

  To know that someone else was on your side.

  She didn’t know when that switch had occurred. Mauro had felt like yet another in a line of adversaries, and suddenly now she felt as if they had melded into a team. If nothing else, Mauro would want a stable environment for their child.

  She took a breath. “I think we have a plane to catch.”

  * * *

  By the time the plane touched down in Italy, yet another scandal had broken.

  Mauro was ready to track down journalists and cockroaches from his past and present alike and create some real scandal.

  He minded the rumors about his life as a prostitute less than the stories that greeted them the moment they touched down in his homeland.

  His father had come forward.

  Dominic Farenzi, titled old duke and part of one of Italy’s oldest aristocratic families, had finally claimed his son.

  Oh, not for a happy reunion, no, the duke would never do such a thing. He wanted his name in the press. To attach himself to the scandal by dragging Mauro’s name down further.

  And, of course, it made perfect sense. Mauro had taken a different last name as he had ascended the ranks, partly because he didn’t want every old relative of his mother’s coming out of the woodwork to demand endless paydays. He had wanted to avoid situations that involved blackmail.

  His former clients—the women he slept with—would have most certainly recognized him, but Dominic would have no reason to recognize him on sight. They had met only once, and Mauro had been young.

  He had looked up at the old man with all of the hope only a boy could still possess after such a miserable upbringing—and the old man had gazed back with a sneer. And told Mauro exactly what he was. Not a part of that lineage, but a mistake. A mistake that should have been nothing more than a stain on his sheets.