To his great relief, she responded, widening hers in reply, her tongue reaching for his as they deepened the kiss, and Luca pulled her back so that she was on top of him now as he cupped her face to his, their breaths coming fast, his heart beating powerfully in his chest as it pressed to hers.
Luca took advantage of the position to skim his hands along her soft body, exploring her hidden curves, before resting them on Larkin’s hips, pressing his hard length to her pelvis. She moaned, which he took as a green light to slip his hands beneath that ridiculously oversized sweater, reaching behind to unhook her bra. It was his turn to moan as he felt her generous breasts spill from their confines against his chest, and he reached around, filling his hands with them, his thumbs stroking her nipples as she pressed her hips to his, indicating her approval.
For what seemed hours but was no doubt only minutes, they were lost in each other, eyes closed, concentrating on the taste, the sounds, the feel of this unexpected fusion of their bodies to one another. Luca reached for the hem of her sweater and skimmed it over her head, taking her bra with it, and with a dexterity that surprised even him, rolled her over so he had the upper hand. Against his better judgment, he broke their kiss. He drew his tongue along her whisker-roughened lips. “You okay with this still?” he asked, his eyes fixed on her own, so bright they shone like sapphires.
She nodded and reached around his neck, pulling him toward her. Which was as good a cue as any for him to advance the troops. He trailed his tongue to her ear, tracing the shell of it while softly whispering words of encouragement.
“Why do I think you underestimated your skill set?” he said as his mouth continued to explore with a trail of kisses along the column of her neck to the sexy little hollow at the base of her throat where he swirled his tongue. She just moaned in response and moaned even louder as his tongue followed down her breast, where he licked a path toward her nipple.
“Luca,” she said between fast breaths. “More.”
Never one to ignore a desperate woman’s pleas, Luca obliged, fastening his lips around her areola, his tongue playing with the tip of her nipple as he sucked gently, then harder. But it was Larkin’s turn to take control, and she did so as if she did this in her sleep, settling her hands on Luca’s ass while pressing the cradle of her pelvis into his erection. Luca groaned and nipped her playfully.
“Oh, you think so, do you?” he said, sitting up so that he could pull his sweater and shirt over his head and unbutton his pants to relieve the pressure that was threatening to bring things to a premature conclusion... even though he didn’t know for certain what the conclusion would be since she was so good at keeping him guessing.
Larkin reached out and cupped her hand over his hard length through his jeans and squeezed. Luca gasped with the pleasure of it, pressing against her to deepen her hold while his hands roamed her torso, stopping to play with her nipples, and finally daring to slip his fingers beneath the waistband of her leggings. Thank God for easy-access pants, he thought as he groaned aloud, sliding his hands farther in, sliding beneath the edge of her panties as he reached the Promised Land. He shifted to his side so that he was now next to Larkin, who was laid out on the sofa. For that matter, he thought, thank God for large sofas. He didn’t want anything to happen that would cause them to skip a beat, to interrupt this bubble of pleasure they were enclosed in.
Luca’s hands skated over her flesh, trailing goose bumps in their wake. He leaned forward, first licking, then blowing on a nipple. She responded by breathing even harder and pulled his head toward her, reaching her tongue for his as her hands roamed over the smooth planes of his muscled chest. She made her way lower to that inviting little trail of hair, slipping her hand beneath his jeans just as he worked his own beneath her leggings. Luca found her center wet and swollen and he began to swirl his fingers in a circular motion. He could barely concentrate once she gripped her small fingers around his hardness and gently began a rhythmic pull, causing him to grow even harder.
The two of them were lost in their own pleasure, caught between moans and whispers of pleading.
“Don’t stop,” Larkin said, her voice desperate.
“Ahhh,” he groaned in response.
“More,” she practically begged, pressing her hips to encourage his perfectly placed fingers.
“Mamma mia,” a voice shouted so loud that Larkin screamed just as Luca found the wherewithal to roll on top of her to cover her exposed breasts.
Luca looked up to see his cousin Sandro towering above them, looking super confused.
Mamma fucking mia, indeed.
Chapter Twelve
“Sandro!” Luca shouted. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Sandro held his hands up and backed away from the scene. “Mi dispiace, mio amico,” he said, apologizing profusely. “I thought you were conducting an interview in here, and instead I find you making love to the reporter. How was I to know?”
“Jesus, Sandro, don’t you ever knock? The door was closed for a reason.”
Sandro apologized again and again then nodded at a half-naked and wholly embarrassed Larkin, who was at least partially “clothed” by Luca’s warm chest. He raised a sheepish hand up to wave to her. “Ciao, bella,” he said.
Larkin wondered if he was saying hello or reminding her that they’d encountered one another already at the nightclub of the same name. Either way, this bella needed to say ciao, right on out the door and pretend this event never even happened. Christ on a cracker, what kind of reporter was she? She had been mere minutes away from having all-out sex with this guy she’d come to interview not have intercourse with! But oh what intercourse that would have been, she thought, mentally replaying his warm fingers sliding through her slick center, reaching just that perfect spot inside of her as his mouth worked her nipple. She pressed her legs together against the memories. She needed to vamoose. And fast.
“Sandro, go.” Luca, stern faced, pointed toward the door as his cousin scurried out of the office backward.
“Now, where were we?” he said with a laudable effort to pick up where they left off; but it was too late—the spell had been broken. Larkin was pushing him away from her even as he settled himself between her legs, where she could feel the press of his hardness against her soft center, still there despite the rude interruption.
Luca reached for her face, pulling her near him, swiping his tongue to pressed lips. “Larkin,” he said on a plea.
But she only shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I clearly lost my head for a minute there. This was a really bad idea. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“Bellissima,” he said. Most beautiful. “Per favore.” Please.
“No, really,” she said, reaching for her bra, which, thank goodness, was within arm’s reach. In case any other marauding strangers popped in unannounced, she could at least get herself together without being completely exposed any more than she’d already been.
She shimmied into her bra and quickly slipped on her sweater. The handy thing about oversized sweaters was they went on like nothing. Of course, as she’d experienced not too many moments earlier, they came off just as quickly, if not more so. She replayed that moment in her mind when she’d made the unfortunate executive decision to let go, to just leave caution to the wind, to not worry about anything or suspect motives and just go with how she felt. Because how she felt was actually pretty damned spectacular.
Larkin hadn’t been with many men in her life. There had been one or two mediocre relationships during college that included missionary-style, drunken-fumbling-in-the-dark, perfunctory sex. After that, she’d moved overseas, and she was so busy learning a new country, focusing on her job, figuring out her life and, frankly, who she was and where she fit into the world, that dating hadn’t been high on her priority list.
Plus, who was she gonna date? This was Italy. The men were usually an undesirable combination of both mamma’s boys and players, neither of which were characteristics t
hat appealed to her. It always made her wonder: do they pick up women and bring them back to their childhood home, which in Rome was usually an apartment? Or do they just do it straddled across the back of the guy’s Vespa down some ancient alleyway? Which seemed both tawdry and alluring when she thought about it. That was not on her agenda, though, and no men were pounding down her door to have Vespa sex with her anyhow.
But this, this, well, whatever it was that just happened. Wow. She licked her lips, her swollen, abraded lips, wiping them dry with the back of her hand, trying to pretend she could feel his mouth on hers with just the memory of it still fresh in her head. God, he could kiss. And she wasn’t going to even think about where he learned that. Practice does, after all, make perfect. And the way his warm, hard body moved and shifted over hers told her he was a man who knew his way around a woman’s body, where to touch, where to lick, where to taste, and just how far to press.
She tried to imagine if she was someone else, someone who could let go after what just happened, who could ignore the fact that she’d come here on official business—God, she’d been just minutes away from unbridled sex with her interview subject, of all people—and pick up where they’d left off when they were so rudely interrupted. She’d have to be crazy to not wish for that. After all, Luca, well, he was the whole package. With a perfect package, she thought, thinking about the hard length of him in her hand. She put her hand to her mouth, aghast at her complete lack of self-control. Oh, but then again...
She looked at her watch. “Oh, goodness, how time flies,” she said, painfully aware of what a completely stupid statement that was, under the circumstances. How time flies when you’ve got your hand down a gorgeous man’s boxer briefs!
But Luca stopped her, resting his hands on her shoulders.
“Please, Larkin,” he said. “I know you’re flustered. I get that. To be truthful, I’m a little taken aback by what just happened myself, though pleasantly so.” He smiled at her, and she blushed. “But please, don’t leave. I owe you a tour of the place. I promise you’ll be duly impressed. We don’t have to end on a bad note here. We’ve come so far.”
I actually haven’t come far enough, she thought. A few more impassioned minutes and she would have, though. Dammit.
She held up her hands. “I’m good,” she said. “No hard feelings.” Though that also meant no hard Luca, which had been in the offing and wasn’t any longer, thanks to her latent principles, which was causing her hard feelings, actually. It was her own stupid fault. She could choose the direction they’d go and she was taking the coward’s way out. Damned principles.
Chapter Thirteen
Luca couldn’t take no for an answer. They’d made too much progress for him to just give in without a fight. His kitten had turned skittish and he knew the best way to coax a scared creature was to gentle it. That’s how he planned to keep the mercurial Larkin from lapsing back to her guarded ways and walking away from whatever it was they’d just started here. He wasn’t ready to give up on trying to understand what it was and where they could be headed. Well, aside from the obvious, more immediate end point, erroneously thwarted by his damned cousin.
“So, yeah, I understand that sort of freaked you out,” he said. “But I hope you’ll not use your fear as an excuse to run away.”
“I’m not running away,” she said. “I just hadn’t realized how late it had gotten.”
He cocked an eyebrow, disbelieving her. “Look, Larkin. I promise this will be hands-off, just the two of us being civil with one another. Friends, even. No hands, no mouths, no lips, no tongues, no—”
Christ, he was getting hard just thinking about that. He knew it was foolish to even utter those words for fear of putting her off even more. But maybe it would make her think about what they were doing with those body parts only twenty minutes ago and how good it felt. Man, he hadn’t realized how dry a dry spell he’d been having until the spigot got turned on. Or nearly opened to full blast, at least.
And if he had been in this state, he could only imagine her: she didn’t seem like one to dabble with the opposite sex in any casual manner, which probably explained how she was so instantly hot and bothered once she let her guard down. Though he’d like to believe it was he who’d inspired her passion and not just lack of having been to the well for a good, long while.
Speaking for himself, he knew it was Larkin who’d brought this on; otherwise, he’d have gladly slept with Inga or whatever her name was during Fashion Week. No, it wasn’t lack of sex that found him here, feeling these feelings. Rather, it was lack of Larkin. And he had to figure out how to rectify that. Letting her flee was not going to work toward furthering his cause.
“Please,” he said, wrinkling his brow and pouting in an appeal for pity. “Don’t leave yet. After all, I promised you a tour of the place. Surely you’d still like to get a firsthand look at this opulent estate.”
She crossed her arms and pursed her lips as she gazed out a window overlooking the vineyards below. She heaved a sigh. “I guess it would be useful to tour the place.”
Useful wasn’t exactly the first adjective that came to mind when he thought about any of this, but the word would work if it would keep her here a little longer.
“I suppose ‘useful’ is one way to consider it,” he said, taking her hand, relishing the press of her warm flesh to his. “Come with me and let me show you this magical place.”
~*~
Assured that cooler heads (not to mention other body parts) could prevail (and after texting Sandro to stay the hell away from them), he began his tour of the palazzo, which took a while, what with five grand halls, a wine cellar, a barrel cellar, a sprawling library, that panoramic veranda, and even a graffiti room.
“A graffiti room?” she said. “What, did they hire Keith Haring to come in here and scrawl his masterpieces on the wall?”
“The term is actually sgraffito, which is a wall décor technique produced by applying layers of plaster tinted in contrasting colors to a moistened surface. It’s pretty impressive. You’ll see,” he said, as they entered the room. “The effect is almost like a pen-and-ink rendering. The process was to paint the walls with lime plaster colored with burnt herbs or other dark pigments, then a layer of white plaster, then stencils traced onto the wall with powdered charcoal, and the artist then used an awl—nowadays they’d use the simpler palate knife to trace the pattern into the wall—carving through the layer of white plaster to reveal the darker underlying layer. It’s rather beautiful, isn’t it?”
“I’ve never seen anything quite like it,” she said, examining the handiwork close up. “It’s extraordinary.”
“They don’t make things the way they used to, do they?”
She shook her head in agreement. Finally, something we can see eye to eye on. Well, besides the obvious, he thought. He decided not to bother pointing that out to her, for fear of riling her up. Didn’t want to spook this racehorse.
He led her through the grand gallery, pointing out works by artists she might have heard of, including Caravaggio.
“After all, who doesn’t own their very own Caravaggio, hidden somewhere about their humble home?” she said with perhaps a little bit of smarm in her voice.
“It’s what happens when you have old families who have passed down treasures through many hundreds of years,” he said. “I can hardly deny it as my home is also filled with amazing works of art.”
“By home, you mean your palace in Monaforte?”
He nodded. “I know it seems weird, not growing up and moving away from home like young adults usually do, but the palace is enormous, and we all now have our own apartments so we can choose if and when we are together as a family. It’s just easier that way. It enables us to conduct our family business more easily as well.”
“No need to be defensive,” she said, holding up her hands. “I wasn’t passing judgment on you.”
Could’ve fooled him. He repeatedly had the impression she was passing judgment
on him. Or something like that. Though how weird was that? Wasn’t often that someone did so with members of his family. More often than not he was used to people sucking up to him too much, which he totally loathed. Hopefully, now that they were on more even footing, she won’t be so inclined to dismiss him so readily.
Luca continued the tour outside, past the private chapel on the premises and the keeper’s lodges.
“And this is the limonaia,” he said, pointing to the glass-enclosed lemon tree conservatory, a sort of greenhouse for wintering citrus trees.
“It’s stunning,” she said as they stepped inside to see the interior grotto and central aviary where tiny blue-and-yellow parakeets flittered about. “It reminds me of where Maria and Captain Von Trapp fell in love in the gazebo.”
Luca shot her an inquisitive glance.
“Please don’t tell me you’re unfamiliar with the most romantic scene in The Sound of Music or I’ll have to leave now,” she said.
He gave himself a tiny smack to the forehead, remembering. “Of course I know it. I just hadn’t committed it all quite to memory. But clearly, a hopeless romantic like you...”
She glared at him.
Sheesh, with the glaring. Talk about being on the defensive. “So you’re not a hopeless romantic?”
“Yes, I am,” she said. “I mean no, I’m not. I mean, well, I’m neither!”
“Sorry, didn’t mean to befuddle you,” Luca said.
“It’s just that I never considered myself romantic or not,” she said. “I’m just me. But then when I think about them, standing there, having no chance but to finally admit they loved each other—” her breathing grew harder as she grew more impassioned about the scene in the film.
A Court Gesture Page 6
