Read Online The Veils of the Budapest Palace (Darke of Night Book 3) by Marie Treanor - Free Book Online

least.”
    “What idea?” I asked, confused, not least by the novel sensation of making love with him behind me.
    His hand swept down over my stomach and between my legs, holding me as he eased into me and pulled back. I closed my eyes in bliss. His breath tickled my ear, arousing me further.
    “That you should marry me,” he said.
    I would have lost the rhythm if he hadn’t been holding me between his body and his hand. “M-marry you?” I stammered. “Are you joking?”
    “No, I’m serious.”
    “But...but I don’t know you. We don’t love each other.”
    “I’m loving you right now.”
    Laughter caught at my already shortened breath. “That’s lust, remember? No basis for a marriage.”
    “Oh, I don’t know. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think you’ve already had the marriage with love but no lust. We could try it the other way around and see if love doesn’t grow from it.”
    I found it very hard to marshal arguments when his hand and his shaft were pleasuring me to this extent. I pushed back into him hard, in an effort to still him and let me think. But he only gave an excited groan and thrust harder.
    “Wh-what if it doesn’t?” I demanded. “What if we’re stuck with each other and you want to marry someone else?”
    “Right now, I can’t imagine it, but if it happens, there are ways to deal with any problem.” His tongue flickered over my ear. Again and again, he stroked the special place inside me that he’d discovered last night. That we’d both discovered last night. “Come on, Caroline, say yes. It will be fun. You can have this whenever you like, whenever I like, which will certainly be oftener.”
    “That’s a silly reason to marry,” I gasped.
    “No sillier than many. You could fall in love with me.”
    God knew I was most of the way there. “If I bound you,” I said desperately, “you’d grow to resent me, hate me.”
    “No, I wouldn’t. I’m asking for the bonds. Please. Say yes, quickly.”
    “Why are you in such a hurry for me to decide?”
    His open mouth dragged along the line of my jaw to my mouth. “Because I really, really want to empty myself inside you, and if you’ll agree to marry me, I will.”
    I wanted to laugh. I wanted to slap him. Instead, my twisting pushed me over the edge. My cry of “Yes!” might have been assent or triumph. Even I wasn’t sure.
    “I’ll take that as agreement,” Zsigmund said fervently, and shoved me hard into his hand, once, twice more. Lost in my own joy, I felt the heat of his spurting seed inside me and wanted to weep with happiness.

Chapter Five
    Z sigmund had promised me fun. And now that I’d thrown caution to the winds, there was plenty. Zsigmund and his Hungarian friends rode off with the intention of more or less kidnapping a travelling bishop of their own country, though they were all faintly surprised when the bishop cooperated and they carried him off to Lescloches in triumph.
    We were married in the hotel coffee room before a select number of the Hungarian friends, the hotel manager, and several guests who happened to be there at the time. Béla and the hotel manager acted as witnesses.
    And so, in a quiet ceremony, followed by a boisterous celebration, I became Countess Andrassy. There was an instant, as I said the words, “I will,” when a sense of unreality hit me so hard, I felt dizzy. What am I doing? I thought in panic. I’ve just given myself to a stranger three months after the death of my beloved husband...
    And then Zsigmund’s fingers curled strongly around mine. His ring—his mother’s wedding ring, a rather beautiful band of gold with tiny diamonds winking all the way round—slid over my finger, and a sense of excitement drove the panic away. I was on a new course I had never imagined. When he kissed me, my happiness was complete.
    “Congratulations, Count Andrassy,” the bishop wheezed, and Zsigmund turned back to shake hands with him, almost as if he was some comrade in