by Ella Brooke
"Despite thinking that you know a great deal of women, I find your conclusions are weak and flawed. I think we have nothing else to say to one another, sir."
Marco started to protest, but she stalked off into the night, her skirts trailing behind her.
Well, that could have gone better, he thought.
He might have been a rich man and a handsome one, but he certainly didn't expect every woman who walked past to fall into his arms. If this one disagreed, there were a dozen more at the party who might not, and his first instinct was to return and find one of them.
Why then did it feel as if his heart had been pulled out of his chest by a woman dressed in green?
Chapter Three
One more thing I could have said about magic, Briony thought, is that it never lasts.
There was a tiny, childish part of her that wondered why he’d had to say all those horrible things about women just then. Why couldn't he have kept his mouth shut, let her have the magic of a beautiful night in Florence?
Another part of her was savagely grateful. It was always better to find out about people before you got to know them, before they let you down. Christ, what would have happened if she’d found he thought those things after she had spent a lot of time with him?
Briony was so lost in thought that she wasn't watching where she was going, and though she thought she was headed back to the mansion, she soon realized she was in another part of the gardens entirely. There was still some lighting along the path, but it had changed from the gaily-colored lanterns she had seen before. These lights were dimmed, more to provide illumination on a regular basis than for a party, and there was something menacing about them.
Briony would have turned back the way she’d come, but it occurred to her that if she followed the path, she was bound to return to the mansion, and if she entered through one of the servants' entrances, she wouldn't have to worry about cutting her way through the crowd.
Be honest, you just don't want to run into that man again, she thought, and that was true enough.
She lifted her skirts to keep them free of the entangling brush on either side of the path and pressed forward.
It seemed like such a good idea, and almost fifteen minutes passed before she realized she might have made a miscalculation. The lights had remained the same, suggesting she was still on the producer's property, but there was no sign of the mansion. Just when she was thinking of swallowing her pride and simply tracing her way back, she turned a sharp bend and found herself in the middle of a party of another sort.
There were three rough looking men seated around a small fire, and she could see they were passing around a dark bottle of something unlabeled. There was a moment of frozen surprise on all parts, and then one man rose up, bottle in his hand. He grinned at her, and there was something unsavory in his smile that made her take a step back. He waved the bottle at her, obviously wanting her to take a sip, but Briony took another step back. This seemed to make him angry, and he spat something in Italian.
I'm sure it's fine, I'm just being a dumb foreigner, Briony thought, but then her instincts came to her rescue.
When the man with the bottle took another step towards her, she spun on her heel and ran, pelting back along the path she had come from. She expected to hear laughter at her foolishness, but instead, a cry went up and there were three men crashing through the underbrush behind her.
Oh god, oh god, oh god, her mind chanted. Unbidden in her mind came the mysterious man's words that women couldn't protect themselves, that they lacked the power to do so. Well, she was going to show him wrong. She had to.
Briony would never have said that she was particularly in shape, but adrenaline gave her a burst of speed and desperation. She ran along the path, skirts hiked up past her knees, and with every step she took, she could hear her pursuers behind her. It felt as if any moment, they might simply fall upon her, but every moment that they didn't gave her an extra burst of hope.
The air burned her lungs as she gasped. As hard as she was breathing, there was no hope that they would overlook her, and that meant she simply had to keep running.
God, how far did I walk? Am I ever going to get back?
The idea of being trapped in the hell of crashing underbrush followed by men intent on catching her made her ill, but it only redoubled her desperation to get away. One foot in front of the other would get her out of this.
Briony was concentrating so hard on running that she managed to run right into someone without seeing. One moment she was flying headlong through the darkness, and the next she was ploughing face first into the arms of a man who wrapped his arms around her.
"No! No, I will not let you...!" she cried out, ready to squirm and fight, but then she realized it wasn't one of her pursuers. Instead, it was the man who she had walked away from before.
"What's the matter, what's wrong?" he asked, not releasing her, but then he glanced into the grove behind her. She could feel his body tense like a bowstring being pulled taut. To her surprise, he caught her in his arms and then with a gasp, he boosted her up onto a tree branch close by. One moment, she was on the ground, and the next she was seated in the branches of an olive tree, looking down at him.
"Stay still and quiet," he ordered. "I will deal with this."
She wanted to argue, but now that she was not running, her limbs were starting to shake. She had to hang onto the trunk of the tree to keep her balance, but she nodded, her teeth chattering.
Her rescuer stalked out of view, and after a few moments, she heard shouting of a different kind going up. There was some more shouting, and then some yelps of pain, followed by a silence that felt more than a little ominous to her.
What happened to him, she wondered. There were three of them and only one of him. Did he find that he bit off more than he could chew?
As the silence stretched on and on, she grew more certain that she was right.
I can't leave him there like this, she thought. I have to get help, I have to help him.
One plan after another presented itself, of her sneaking around to club one of his attackers, of tripping them and letting her rescuer get away. She knew they were ridiculous, but Briony could no more stay in the tree than she could forget how to swim or ride a bike. He needed help, obviously, and she had to go to him.
With a muttered curse that sounded far braver than she felt, Briony slipped and slithered her way down the tree. She could hear the beautiful velvet ripping as she went, but all that mattered was she get on the ground. She made it down soon enough, and she was just trying to decide which direction to go in when a dark form stepped out from behind another tree.
"If you think I'm going to let you hurt him, you're wrong," she spat, aware that he likely had no English.
The figure paused, and when he laughed, relief flooded through her. She knew that voice.
"Do you have any idea how fierce you look, standing there and ready to take on the world?"
"I know that I look like a shredded pincushion," she retorted. "But are you all right?"
Her rescuer laughed again, shaking his head. "Seriously, that's the first thing you ask me?"
She looked at him, and to her relief, though he looked a little rumpled, he was otherwise unhurt.
"Why wouldn't I?" she retorted. "You stuck me up in a tree and then went looking for trouble."
He shrugged. "Less trouble than you might think. After I taught the one in the lead a lesson in manners, the other two caved. I got a hold of Baldassare fairly quickly, and he was shocked by everything. He might be a bit of a blowhard, but he'll do the right thing, and he'll do it discreetly. I have a feeling that most people at the party won't even notice there's something amiss."
The thought of the party summoned up an entirely new fear in Briony's mind.
"It's a launch party!" she gasped. "They—they can't have any scandal, or maybe it'll hurt the market..."
Her rescuer cut off her panic by drawing her into his arms. It s
hould have been condescending, but instead it simply felt right. She tilted her head against his chest, sighing a little as she felt a great deal of the stress and strain simply melt out of her.
"Hush. I promise you, I'm an old hand at this sort of thing, and Baldassare is too. Nothing unflattering or damaging will get into the papers, and those men will still be punished for their crimes."
Briony breathed a little easier, and she was finally able to glance up at the man who held her in his arms.
"What's your name?" she asked softly.
Under his dark mask, he grinned at her. "Marco. What's yours?"
She hesitated, torn. She wanted to tell him her name, but right now, she didn't even know who he was. What if this night's events got out, what if it somehow hurt Seanan's career?
Marco looked as if he understood her reluctance, and he reached out to touch the collar of her dress.
"Shall I call you Velvet? It suits you, as lovely as you are."
"I think I'm far less lovely than this dress," she said with a giggle. "But I suppose that works as well as anything else does."
"Well, that's something I would want to judge fairly," Marco said gravely. "I would have to have the two of you side-by-side so that I could make a proper assessment."
When Briony realized he meant to compare her dress with her own naked form, she couldn't stop herself from giggling again.
"You're awful," she said finally, and he grinned as if she had paid him a compliment.
"Very. Come, let me bring you indoors by the back route."
She followed him gratefully, and it occurred to her that he never once said he had told her so.
Chapter Four
Marco escorted her to the guest wing, but when they arrived, Briony felt a strange sense of apprehension looking down the long, dim hallway. She thought of the dimness of the grove and the men crashing behind her, and she shivered.
I can't be a baby about this, he's done more than enough, she scolded herself.
When she started down the passageway towards her room, however, Marco touched her elbow with a gentle hand.
"Are you sure you are ready to be alone?" he murmured. "If I were in your position, I think I would still be quite shaken."
"I want to be brave about it," she admitted. "But I don't think I'm quite there. Maybe I should go back and join the party..."
It wasn't even midnight yet, and the party was still in full swing. As much as she might want to go find Seanan, she knew her sister was making those contacts and networking like mad. Though Seanan would drop it all for Briony, she didn't want to do that to her sister when her star had finally started to shine.
The idea of going back to a loud party made her flinch, however, and Marco nodded.
"I will certainly not stop you from going back to the crowd if you like, little Velvet, but perhaps I can offer you another solution. Come with me."
Marco's solution ended up being Baldassare's library. He marched through the producer's house with ease, casually unhooking the velvet rope that closed the private part off from party guests.
"Should we really be doing this?" Briony asked. "Wouldn't Signore Baldassare mind?"
"He would mind very much if it weren't me," Marco said, tipping her a wink. "Since it's me, he'll mind and pretend not to."
"You must be very important," Briony said, and then she shook her head. "No, don't tell me. I...I want this magic to last a little longer."
The moment the words were out of her mouth, she could have slapped herself. She must be incredibly stressed out if she was saying such daft things.
However, Marco only laughed kindly. "After the night that you've had, I think you should be given all the magic you like. In here."
The library was an elegant room of dark wood and high ceilings, the books tall leather sentinels that lined their shelves like the best soldiers. There were a desk and a few chairs, of course, but Marco led her to a small alcove that was slightly hidden from view. There was a large, antique couch nestled in the alcove, nearly as large as a double bed, and Briony noticed that all of the books in this section were far humbler. She could see adventures and romances, paperbacks jumbled in with best-selling hardbacks.
"Ah, what people actually read," she said with a giggle, and Marco grinned at her.
"Very much so. I think it's my favorite part of Baldassare's collection."
As she reclined on the couch, her mask somehow still on, Briony watched through lowered lashes as Marco lit two of the dim-burning lamps and dropped a gauzy curtain over the mouth of the alcove. It turned the cozy space into something perfectly intimate and safe, a small bubble in time and space where nothing could interrupt them.
"Oh, it's so beautiful here," she said, and Marco came to rest next to her.
It seemed like the simplest thing in the world to lay her head on his shoulder, their legs stretched out to the other end of the couch. She kicked off her light slippers, and giggling, she tapped at his shoes until he removed them as well.
"Tell me how you feel, Velvet. You are so very lovely, but you have had a rough night, to say the least."
Briony thought about the question because it deserved an honest answer.
"I feel free," she said finally. "Is that strange? I feel pulled away from who I really am and as if I'm floating above it all. I can see how scared I usually am, how nervous and anxious, and I don't even know why I felt like that when I could just feel like this."
"It sounds as if you have found out who you really are," Marco suggested. "You are brave and fast and compassionate. It is only your nervousness and your anxiety, as you say, that stops you from seeing it."
"That would be very wonderful if it were true," she said softly, turning over on her side towards him.
"I want to keep my mask on," she said huskily. "But...can I remove yours?"
He hesitated for long enough that she wondered if she had made some sort of error, but then he nodded once.
"You would see sooner or later anyway," he said tersely, and she wondered if he was scarred somehow, or if there was some kind of blemish that made him so reluctant.
Her hands shaking a little, she tugged the mask from his face, and she blinked at what she saw underneath.
Instead of being disfigured, he was as handsome as a Greek statue. She had known that he had dark, slightly curly hair, but now she could see that it crowned a nearly beautiful face. Marco had large, dark eyes and features that were sensual enough to make a saint blush. His mouth had a slightly mocking smile to it, but for some reason, it made her smile instead of frown.
"Whatever in the world were you worried about?" Briony exclaimed. "You're simply beautiful."
He stared at her for a moment, quirking an eyebrow at her.
"Is...that all?" he asked, and she touched his cheek with a slight smile.
"Are you so very vain that you want to hear more? I could tell you about how beautiful your eyes are, and how you have the profile of a Roman emperor, if you like..."
"I might want to hear that at some point, I suppose, but not now. You are truly an extraordinary woman, you know that, Velvet?"
She laughed because it was so untrue, and then his hand came up to cup her cheek, turning her towards him. There was something solemn about the gesture, and her laughter drained out of her as she gazed into his eyes.
"I want to kiss you, Velvet," he said solemnly. "I want to do so much more with you. Tell me if you do not want this, because if you don't say it, nothing in the world will stop me from claiming your lips."
She could see he was ready to hear her say no, to have her leap and run, but right now, that was the furthest thing from her mind.
"I want you," she whispered, and then in case it was unclear, "I want you to kiss me. I want more than that."
Before the breath from her words was quite off of her lips, she found herself wrapped in his arms, his lips coming down to claim hers more thoroughly than she had ever been claimed. His tongue danced along the seam of her l
ips until they parted helplessly, and then his tongue was in her mouth, claiming her without reservation.
The heat from that kiss alone could have immolated her, burned her alive, but she refused to be a passive spectator for something like this. She threw one leg over Marco's hip, dragging him closer. God, but why was there so much fabric between them? Why on earth would people voluntarily wear so much damned clothing?
She wanted to get as close to Marco as she could, and as he kissed her, she clung to him. When he finally lifted his head from her lips, her mouth felt swollen with passion, but he was far from done. His hand came up to grasp a fistful of her chestnut hair, holding her still as he kissed his way down her pale throat. She swallowed hard, making him laugh, and then she groaned as she felt the sharp scrape of his teeth at the base of her neck.
"You are so delicious, Velvet," he groaned. "Do you have any idea how much I want you?"
His hand came up to the round swell of her white breasts, touching skin that was so seldom bared let alone fondled. She was showing a shocking expanse of flesh above her gown's neckline, but then he lifted each one from the dress entirely, freeing them from the velvet.
"Oh God," Briony murmured, and then Marco's dark head dropped to her chest, mouthing first at one nipple, then the other. She groaned at how hard they became under his fingers and the heat of his mouth rousing her in a way she barely understood. She could lose herself in the haze of pleasure he gave her, but then he drew back.
"This isn't enough for me," he said, his voice nearly a growl. "This could never be enough for me..."
She started to ask him what he meant, but then he pulled away, rolling her onto her back. God, he was strong. She could suddenly see how very easily he had taught her pursuers a lesson, and the thought brought a guilty rise of heat between her legs.
For a moment, she could feel him tugging at the laces at the back of her dress, and then she heard him fumbling for something in his pockets. She started to ask him what he intended to do, and then he split the laces with a single, sliding cut of a small knife. Briony gasped, struggling to roll over, but Marco was there, helping her.
