Alex’s hands had started to move over her shoulders and back in a manner that was less comforting than seductive. “Don’t worry,” he whispered. “I’m your husband and you are my wife. You may feel a moment or two of pain, but believe me, Charlotte, after that the pain will be gone forever. And there may not be any pain at all. We’ll make love tonight, and tomorrow, and the next night, and every night for thirty years, and we will get better and better together.” Alex’s lips were trailing down her neck now, burning her skin. Charlotte forced herself to relax. She lay passively in Alex’s arms rather than flinching away from him. His mouth trailed up her throat and pushed up her chin. She looked up at him.

Alex’s heart missed a step. She was incredibly beautiful, his bride. Soft black curls framed a face so delicate that it looked like a Botticelli painting. Alex took Charlotte’s face in his hands and covered it with passionate kisses, kissing her dark, questioning eyes, her winged eyebrows, the petal-soft curve of her cheeks, her small determined chin. She seemed quieter, he thought, less like a bird struggling to escape from his hand. He lowered his mouth gently onto hers, teasing her, begging her to open her mouth the way he had taught her.

Charlotte was having an internal battle. Alex’s soft kisses were awakening all those trembling, stabbing feelings that made her sleep so restlessly in the last two months. She would awake gasping from a dream in which she begged for something … she wasn’t sure what. Something only Alex could give her.

But some part of her also held back. Don’t do it, a small voice advised. It will hurt; he will find out that there’s something wrong with you; it will ruin everything! Yet even as Charlotte’s mind struggled, her body responded. Alex was kissing her so sweetly, so tenderly. Almost unnoticed, her mouth slid open and she drew in his tongue. A corresponding stab of fiery desire mounted in her stomach. Charlotte’s hands crept up to Alex’s neck, and her fingers entwined with his thick curls. The kiss was deceptively innocent, like all the kisses they shared in the last two months. Fear flew from Charlotte’s mind along with the memory of pain. This was nothing terrifying, simply one of the feverish kisses Alex often gave her. He would finally tear himself away, gasping out loud. Momentarily she forgot that there was more expected this night.

So when Alex pulled back, looking down at his bride speculatively, he was happy to see her cheeks delicately flushed, her eyes dreamy. This was his Charlotte.

“I think we should have some champagne,” he said. “I didn’t get to toast the bride, after all.”