“That I…?” Her head jerked up. “I have no idea what you mean.”
But she did. He could see it in her eyes as he reached out and drew a slow finger down her face, down her throat, pausing just at the demure V-neck of her silk blouse.
“Those kisses. The little moans—”
“There have been no moans, little or otherwise,” she snapped, slapping his hand away.
Nick said nothing. How come he hadn’t thought of it sooner? The idea had come to him while the accountant and the attorney were doing their little dance, trying to convince him the prince wasn’t as desperate for money as Nick already knew he was, thanks to what his father had told him and thanks, too, to some quiet checking he’d done on his own.
“But there have been kisses, princess. You won’t deny that.”
“Kisses you instigated.”
“Kisses you responded to.”
“Only because I did not expect them!”
He raised one dark eyebrow. “You always kiss a man back when he unexpectedly kisses you?”
“I did not mean that at all!”
No, he thought, he was pretty sure she hadn’t meant that, pretty sure that the Ice Princess wouldn’t return a man’s kiss unless her hormones had taken over for her head.
She’d set this meeting here so she could remind him of who he was as compared to who she was. He was onto all that and it certainly didn’t improve his attitude toward her.
So why, despite those things, did she melt when he kissed her? Hell, why did he react the same way, losing sight of everything except the urgent need to get her into bed?
None of it made sense…unless the touch me, don’t touch me routine was part of the scheme, part of making him crazy enough to go along with whatever she and her old man wanted.
He could kiss her again, right now, and try to unravel the mystery….
Instead, he took a quick step back.
“Okay,” he said briskly. “Okay, if you don’t have a second part to this presentation, I do.”
She looked up at him. “I told you, there is a second part. Tonight’s dinner.”
“Is your closet only an adjunct to the local Armani shop?”
She blinked. “Scusi?”
“Do you own anything except those suits?”
Alessia looked down at herself, then back at him.
“Sì. Yes. But I don’t under—”
“You grew up on those acres of grapes, didn’t you?”
“Well, yes, of course, but—”
“I want a tour. With you as my guide, not the viniculturist or the vintner or anybody else. Put on jeans or whatever it is you wear when you’re being a real person.”
“I beg your pardon, signore! I am a real—”
“A real person,” he said firmly, and he laughed at the indignant expression on her lovely face and then he stopped laughing and did exactly what he’d told himself he would not do—reached for her, gathered her against him, kissed her—and it took less than a second before she moaned, rose to him and parted her lips to his.
It wasn’t enough.
Nick cursed, slid his hands under her skirt, bunched it at her thighs and felt her shudder. She whispered something in soft, frantic Italian and she wrapped her arms around him, dug her hands into his hair as he slid his hands down into her panties, cupped her bottom, brought her tightly against him and she moaned again at the feel of his erection—
A knock sounded at the door.
“Principessa?”
The chauffeur. Alessia shoved her hands against Nick’s chest. He drew her even closer.
“Send him away.”
“Principessa? You said two hours. I have told that to the carabiniere but he threatens me with uno biglietto.”
“You’re a princess,” Nick whispered. “How can you get a parking ticket?”
Alessia gave a soft laugh. It made him smile. That he could make her laugh seemed almost as important as that he could make her melt in his arms.
“I understand, Guillermo,” she said loudly. “Go down and wait for us, please. We’ll be there in a moment.”
“Alessia…”
She shook her head, pressed her hands lightly against Nick’s chest and he gave in to the inevitable and let her step free of his embrace. She smoothed her hair, her jacket, her skirt. Then she opened the door and Nick followed her into the elevator. Just before the doors opened, he gave in to instinct, pulled her against him and gave her a hard, deep kiss.
“This isn’t over,” he said against her mouth.
“Yes,” she said in a tone that didn’t match the race of her heart against his, “it is. I shall see you tonight. Seven o’clock, in the—”
“You’re taking me on a guided tour of the vineyard.”
“Listen to me, Nicolo…”
“I am listening,” he said roughly, “not to your words but to what you tell me when you kiss me.” And when her lips parted in protest, he used it as a chance to kiss her one last time before he let her go.
CHAPTER SEVEN
BACK in the guest suite, Nick tried to get a handle on what in hell was happening.
He was in a baffling situation, one he didn’t entirely control, and it made him angry.
Angry at the prince for creating a financial disaster that had opened the door to Cesare’s intervention. At Cesare for dumping the problem on him. At Alessia, who behaved as if she were as confused by her reaction to him as he was by his reaction to her.
Or was she?
Maybe that second of insight he’d had during the meeting a little while ago was right on the money. Maybe she was playing a game as old as time and as dangerous as anything he’d ever faced, even in combat.
He tore off his jacket and the rest of his Wall Street attire because a man this enraged shouldn’t be wearing the trappings of civilization.
Damn them all. His father. Her father. The Ice Princess.
“Hell,” Nick swore, and, naked, he stalked into the bathroom, slapped his hands on the marble vanity and glared at his reflection in the mirror.
Why lie about it?
The person he was furious with was himself.
He was letting a woman make a fool of him.
Yes, he’d let his father use a despicable trick to get him to come here. If his mother really wanted a bit of Tuscany, why would Cesare have waited all these years to buy it for her? And why this place, this vineyard owned by a family whose roots were probably entwined not just with the Medicis but with the double-dealing and conspiracy of the Borgias?
Nick didn’t give a damn. Not about Cesare’s real motives or the prince screwing up an enterprise his family had owned for five hundred years. What mattered was that he was being used. By his old man, whose entire life was given over to conspiracy. By a prince who didn’t know the meaning of honor.
And by a woman.
A woman who was manipulating him.
And he—dammit, he had allowed it to happen. He’d let her draw him deeper and deeper into a dark whirlpool of desire more intense than any he’d ever known.
There could only be two explanations for her behavior.
Either she was willing to do anything to make sure he invested in the vineyard.
Or she was taking a walk on the wild side.
Not that it mattered.
He’d had enough of her games, one minute treating him as if he were lower than a snake and the next going crazy in his arms. If it was deliberate, if it was real…
The Ice Princess had perfected teasing to an art. And he’d been performing like a trained seal.
A trite metaphor but there it was.
Okay. Enough was enough. He was tired of being played with. It was time to put an end to it and he knew exactly how he’d do it.
Take her to his bed. Nothing soft and gentle. He’d take her with brutal force, again and again, until she sobbed his name, until she clung to him, until whatever she’d really wanted was meaningless because by then, all she would want was him
and everything he could do to her.
And when she finally lay spent beneath him, he’d get up, dress, toss a note for ten million euros on the dresser as if she were the world’s most expensive whore because it was what she deserved for reducing him to this…
“Merda!”
Nick punched the mirror.
The glass shattered; drops of blood bloomed like tiny flowers on his knuckles. He cursed again, grabbed a towel, wrapped his hand in it.
And laughed.
Was this what it had come to? Was he so far gone he’d punch a mirror, indulge in a sexual fantasy that was not just bizarre but unreal, all because he’d somehow let a woman work her way under his skin?
He turned on the cold water, unwrapped his hand. The bleeding was minor. He could staunch it in the shower, which was exactly what he did.
“No more,” he said grimly, raising his face to the spray.
He would meet Alessia this afternoon, but touring the vineyard wasn’t on the agenda. Neither was the decorous dinner party she’d planned for tonight, no doubt to show her father’s cronies what a tame Siciliano looked like.
To hell with being tame.
By evening, he’d have put an end to this thing. He’d be headed home. And the Ice Princess would have learned the consequences of taunting a man who carried the Orsini name.
He dressed casually. Black leather windbreaker, black T-shirt, faded jeans and sneakers.
At two minutes before one, he headed down the stairs. It occurred to him that she might not be waiting for him, that maybe she’d figure she’d pushed the game too far.
Not that that would stop him.
He knew her rooms were in the same wing as his. It would only be a matter of slapping open doors until he found her.
But there she was, standing outside the villa, dressed as he was in a jacket, jeans, T-shirt and sneakers. Her hair was pulled back in the kind of ponytail it had been after her morning run. Had that been today? It seemed impossible.
He felt as if he had been here forever.
“Signore.”
She looked up at him as he descended the last few marble steps. It was as if somebody had knocked the wind out of him. She was exquisite. How could he have ever thought her no more beautiful than other women who’d passed through his life? She didn’t just have a lovely face, it was a face alive with intelligence. And the rest of her. The wide eyes a man could drown in. A long, lush body he had explored all too briefly…
Stop it, Nick told himself coldly. She couldn’t go on with the game if he refused to participate, and it was time she got that message.
“Princess.”
She looked him over from head to foot and gave a forced smile.
“I see you understand that touring the vineyard will not be, how do you say, a white-collar enterprise.”
Nick’s smile never reached his eyes. “Nothing about this afternoon will be white-collar, princess. I promise you that.”
“I don’t understand.”
“What happened to calling me Nicolo?”
He saw her throat constrict. “I—I… Nothing happened. I just think, since this is all about business, we might wish to maintain a—”
“Never mind.” He looked past her, toward the Jeep-like vehicle parked by the foot of the steps, and held out his hand. “The keys.”
“Scusi?”
“I want your car keys.”
“My car… Oh.” Pink tinged her cheeks. “We shall be using a Massif, not the Mercedes, and I assure you, I will not have a driving problem on the vineyard’s private ro—”
“The keys, Alessia.”
She blinked. Then, slowly, she dropped the keys into his outstretched hand. Nick walked to the Massif, opened the door and motioned her inside. He didn’t give a damn what they were using as long as she got the message.
He was in charge.
She gave him directions.
Take the dirt road behind the villa. Make a right at the top of the hill. A left at the crossroads. She babbled, too. Nervously, as if she sensed something was wrong, stuff about rootstock and slips and scions, about how, in ancient times, viniculturists didn’t realize that cutting back a grapevine rather than letting it grow unrestrained would produce the best, the biggest crop of grapes.
Another time, he’d have found it fascinating. The only thing he knew about wine was either red or white and he liked drinking it with dinner; all these details, even now, piqued his curiosity.
But not enough to deter him from what would happen next, he told himself coldly. No way.
Eventually, Alessia fell silent.
He glanced at her. She sat rigid in her seat, hands tightly clasped in her lap.
“What’s the matter?” he said brusquely. “Have you run out of information you think even I might be capable of understanding?”
That made her jerk toward him.
“All right,” she said, “all right, Mr. Orsini. Why not tell me the problem?”
Nick’s mouth twisted. He pulled to a stop under a tree that stood at the end of a row of grapevines and shut off the engine.
“Why would there be a problem, principessa? You’re the perfect tour guide.”
Alessia looked at the man beside her. His tone was silky, his voice soft… And she was terrified. Something about him had changed. Where was the astute businessman of this morning’s meeting? The acerbic guest who seemed no happier to be here than she was to be stuck with him?
Her throat constricted.
Where was the man who could not keep his hands off her, even though she didn’t want him to touch her, to kiss her, to make her feel things she didn’t understand?
Was this the man she had accused him of being, all along? The cold, heartless head of a crime syndicate, the kind of export her country had sent to America that made decent Italians cringe?
All at once, she didn’t want to be alone with him in this isolated place.
She reached for the door handle. His hand closed hard on hers.
“Where are you going?”
“Outside. To—to see the vines. To make sure they’ve been properly prepared to endure over the winter.”
Nick gave a harsh laugh. “Fascinating. The princess is also a farmer.”
“I grew up here,” she said stiffly. “When I was a child, I helped tend these vines. I helped pick the grapes. Besides, I thought you wanted to see things close-up. To walk among the vines and ask me about them.”
“Is that what you thought, princess? That a man like me would bring you all the way out here to talk about grapes?”
She stared at him. “Yes. Yes, I did.”
He started to tell her just how wrong she was. Then he took a long look at her. Her face was pale, her eyes deep and dark. Her lips trembled. Her hand, still locked under his on the door handle, was like ice.
Nick’s jaw tightened.
She was frightened. Hell, that was what he’d wanted, wasn’t it?
Wasn’t it? he thought, and then he muttered an oath, lifted his hand from hers and flung his door open.
“What are you doing?”
“Exactly what you said I should be doing,” he growled as he got out of the Massif. “I’m going to take a walk and ask you a lot of dumb questions.”
“Questions are never dumb,” she said in a small, girlish voice, and he knew then that whatever he’d intended to happen this afternoon was not going to happen.
She knew everything about grapes and wine.
She knew as much about them as he knew about investments and stocks.
What it came down to was that she knew a lot. And the more she talked, the more animated she grew. Her face took on color, her voice gained strength, even her eyes brightened.
Would another princess get down on her knees in the dirt with such enthusiasm, to brush away leaf litter and exclaim over the presence of a bud so small he had to get down on his knees with her to see it? Would another princess get a smear of dirt on her cheek and not give a damn? Would she t
alk with excitement and enthusiasm about cover crops, fall plantings of clover and peas, to minimize soil erosion during the winter?
Hell, Nick thought, watching her as she gently moved a bug aside, forget about princesses, would another woman do these things?
His sister, Izzy, maybe, because Iz was into plants and flowers and organic stuff, but a woman he dated?
No way.
He thought about the Sunday he’d taken the redhead he’d been seeing last summer to Central Park, after he’d grown weary of hearing her insist she wanted to watch him play football in the same kind of pick-up game he and his brothers had been part of for years.
What a disaster that had been.
Eeww, Nick, there are ants under this tree! Eeww, Nick, something just bit me! Eeww, Nick, there’s a big thing with long legs crawling through the grass….
“She doesn’t shut up, that big thing’s gonna be me,” Falco had growled.
The next Friday night, when they got together for beer and burgers at The Bar in Soho, Dante had exchanged glances with Rafe and Falco.
“So, how’s the ‘eeww’ lady?” he’d said with a look of complete innocence.
“Eewt of the picture,” Nick had replied, and Rafe had rewarded him with an ungentlemanly snort of beer.
Nobody would laugh, watching Alessia. She poked and prodded, sifted through decaying plant litter and when she was in the middle of earnestly explaining how, come spring, the cover crops would be plowed under and would help fertilize the earth, Nick told himself, the hell with it, and he reached for her, pulled her into his arms and kissed her.
She never so much as hesitated. Her arms went around his neck and she pulled him down to her.
She tasted of sun and soil, of the grapes and the seasons. She tasted of herself, warm and sweet, and of an impossible innocence.
Nick rolled her beneath him, cradled her face in his hands, kissed her again and again, each kiss deeper than the last. He could hear his blood roaring in his ears, could feel his heart pounding against hers.
“Nicolo,” she whispered, all a woman could ever ask of a man in that one, softly spoken word, and he groaned and gathered her closer still, his hands in her hair, his body in the V of her legs, everything forgotten but this woman, this moment, this need.
Nicolo: The Powerful Sicilian Page 8
