Sweet Temptation by Cora Reilly

sheets in thirty minutes. Her nosy reply came immediately.
Won’t you even sleep in after your wedding night?
Stay out of my business was all I wrote back.
I put the phone back down, ignoring Giulia’s appraisal. I’d caught her
watching me last night and now this morning. Her reaction surprised me. Of
course, it was a pleasant surprise that she seemed attracted to my body and not
appalled like Gaia.
“Mia and the others will come by in thirty minutes. Do you want to shower
first? I can shave in the meantime.”
Giulia bit her lip, looking away before she nodded. “All right.” She shoved
the covers off and stood. My eyes took her in, and for a moment I considered
telling Mia that they could wait after all. Giulia was impossibly beautiful, and
the idea to bury myself in her tight pussy once more was far too enticing, but the
bloodstain on the sheets reminded me why that wasn’t going to happen.
Fifteen minutes later Giulia was showered and dressed, and I headed toward
the shower. She’d chosen one of the dresses I’d sent to her parents, an elegant
long-sleeved knee-length red piece that hugged Giulia’s slender body. It still
didn’t make her look close to my age, but at least not quite the teenager she was.
“Should I cover my puffy eyes with makeup or do you want people to know I
cried?”
I paused, one foot inside the shower. Turning back to my wife hovering in
the doorway to the bedroom, I frowned. “I didn’t want you to cry. Why would I
want people to know you did?”
She gave a small shrug, searching my face. “I thought maybe you’d want
people to think you hurt me enough to make me cry.”
I considered it. The men downstairs would draw the wrong conclusions and
fear me for it. It wasn’t a decent thing to consider, but the men downstairs
weren’t decent, and I wasn’t either. “I’m feared as it is… and for good reason. I
don’t want my sisters on my back like they’ll undoubtedly be if they see that you
cried, so cover it up with makeup.”
She regarded me a moment longer, and I couldn’t tell why. It was unnerving.
“Okay. I don’t want to keep you from showering. I know how busy you are
today.”
The hint of disapproval rang in her voice. She hadn’t reacted when I told her
I was going to spend the day in business meetings until we’d head to my
mansion and children in the late afternoon. “I work a lot, Giulia, and I won’t
explain myself to you. As a woman, your only job is to raise my children, but I
can’t afford that luxury.”
Anger flared in her eyes, but she turned and left.
I wasn’t in the mood to consider her teenage antics. She’d better get rid of
them soon.
When I emerged fully dressed in another dark three-piece suit fifteen minutes
later, I found Giulia on the sofa in the living room of our suite, typing on her
phone. She was smiling softly. I stalked over to her. “Who are you talking to?”