She flashed him a look filled with gratitude.
“Yes. I did. It was an accident, of course. I was there with my art tutor and I lifted my hand to scratch my nose.”
More laughter. Nicolo leaned toward her. “Brava, cara,” he whispered, and she wanted to grab his head and kiss him.
The dessert course, at last.
Tiramisu. Tiny chestnut cakes. Antique gold-rimmed liqueur glasses of strega and frangelico. Espresso, in a coffee service as old as the villa. Laughter. Chatter.
And Nicolo, who had taken pity on her and had his hand on her thigh, but kept it still.
She could, at least, think.
What she thought about was him.
That she’d been prepared to despise him. That she’d been certain he would be rough and uncultured. That he would not be able to hold his own among truly civilized, worldly people.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
He was wonderful. And sophisticated. And very much at ease in this sophisticated setting.
The women in the room couldn’t take their eyes off him, and who could blame them? He was, without question, gorgeous. He’d have laughed at the word but it was accurate. The men hung on his every word. The mayor, the art dealer and another man, a wealthy eccentric, discreetly handed him their business cards.
He was charming to them all but she knew who really held his attention.
She did.
And when all these people finally left, when she and Nicolo would, at last, be alone…
The coffee cup shook in Alessia’s hand. Carefully, she set it on the table.
She thought of what he had done all evening. How he had touched her. How his caresses had excited her.
She thought of how it would be, when everyone was gone and there was nothing to keep him from touching her more intimately, nothing to keep her from parting her legs, giving him deeper access to her body…
Dio.
Her pulse was thundering. She was wet and hot and she thought how readily she could give him that access now. She had only to place her hand under the table linen, place her fingers over his. Ease her thighs apart, guide his hand up and up and—
A little sound burst from her throat. Conversation stopped and she realized, to her horror, that every eye in the room was on her.
She told herself to say something. Anything. Her mind was blank. In desperation, she looked at Nicolo and saw that he knew what was happening to her.
Triumph blazed in his eyes.
Then, slowly, he moved his hand from her leg, made a fist of it and brought it to his mouth, smothering a polite but audible yawn. It was a good approximation of the sound she had made and everyone looked from her to him.
“I’m sorry,” he said, with a charming smile. “Mi dispiace. I assure you, it isn’t the company. This has been a wonderful evening. It’s just that I’ve been on the go ever since early yesterday morning.”
Everyone murmured their agreement. The guests tossed their napkins onto plates. Pushed back their chairs. Said buona sera and arrivederci, good-night and goodbye, and said it had been a delightful evening.
Nicolo politely helped her to her feet, held her elbow as they both accompanied everyone to the door. Car doors slammed. Headlights came on. A procession of elegant cars crawled down the long driveway.
And Alessia stood in the open front doorway, Nicolo beside her, smiling and waving as if she were simply a polite hostess seeing her guests off when, in truth, she was facing a moment of stark reality.
She and Nicolo were alone.
It was what she had longed for.
Now, it was what she feared.
The game they’d been playing had suddenly taken on a new dimension.
And it scared the hell out of her.
She didn’t fear him. Never that. What she feared was herself. If he was not quite the man she’d thought, she was most certainly not the woman he thought, either.
Her behavior this afternoon, then this evening, surely would make him assume she was experienced in the ways of sex. Sophisticated. Worldly. A woman who was accustomed to pleasuring a man and being pleasured by him in return.
Nothing could have been further from the truth.
All of this was new to her. Everything she’d done, everything she’d initiated and responded to… She had never done anything even remotely like this before.
No, she wasn’t a virgin. She was a modern woman. But what she knew about sex compared to what Nicolo must think she knew…
It was laughable.
She’d slept with a boy at school. He’d been as naive as she and, after a couple of weeks, they’d drifted back to being friends instead of lovers. Then, three years ago, there’d been an older man. A graphics artist. That had lasted all of a tepid month before he’d admitted he’d finally realized he preferred men.
Not much of a recommendation for a woman who’d spent the last hours playing games with a man who, without question, had been with many, many women.
Beautiful women. Experienced women. He would expect things from her, with her, and she would surely disappoint him….
The taillights of the last departing vehicle vanished into the dark night. Nicolo’s arms closed around her. He lowered his head to hers, pressed his lips to her ear.
“Princess,” he said softly. “Whatever’s going on in that lovely head?”
She could feel the heat of his body, the strength of it against her. She wanted to lean back into him. She wanted to turn and bring his mouth down to hers.
She wanted to run away before he discovered what a fraud she really was. Instead, she swallowed dryly. Forced a smile, even if he couldn’t see it.
“Nothing,” she said with false gaiety. “I’m just—you know, it’s been a long day and—”
“Alessia.” His hands cupped her shoulders and he turned her toward him. “I know something’s wrong. What is it?”
She looked up at him, at that hard, handsome face, and then she dipped her head and lowered her lashes. “Nicolo. I think—I think we must talk.”
He put his hand under her chin. Raised it until their eyes met.
“What I think,” he said, his voice rough, “is that we’ve talked too much.”
“We have not talked at all, Nicolo. We have—we have done other things—”
He framed her face. Lowered his mouth to hers. Kissed her tenderly, his lips moving on hers with growing hunger. He tasted of wine and coffee, of passion and of himself.
Alessia could feel her heart racing.
He tasted like every dream she’d ever had, every dream she’d been afraid to dream. She held back, but only for a few seconds. Then she sighed and gave herself up to his kiss.
After a very long time, she put her hands against his chest.
“Nicolo,” she whispered, and he lifted his head and looked down into her eyes.
“What is it, sweetheart?”
“I need to tell you… You must know…” She licked her lips. “What happened today was—it was—”
“It was the last thing either of us expected.”
“Yes. That is true. My father… Your father…”
“They haven’t got a thing to do with this.”
“No. They do not. But—but you need to know… I must make something clear, Nicolo.” Dio, she felt so foolish! Why was it so difficult to tell him that his expectations of her had little to do with reality? “What I’m trying to say is that you—you may have certain expectations of me—”
Nicolo swept his hands into her hair. She felt the pins that had secured it in a loose knot at the crown of her head come loose; golden strands cascaded over his fingers as he lifted her face to his and kissed her. Hard. Passionately. As if there had not been hours between those kisses under the tree on the hilltop and this one, as if they had never stopped tasting each other at all.
“The only expectation I have, princess, is that you’ll let me make love to you until you tell me nothing else matters.”
“Nothing does,�
� she whispered. “Nothing could. I just—I do not want to disappoint you.”
Disappoint him? What had happened tonight—Alessia’s whisper just before they’d gone in to dinner, the way she’d looked at him throughout the meal, her increasing loss of control because of him, only him…
It had been more exciting than anything he’d ever experienced, and he was a man who had pretty much experienced everything.
“Truly, Nicolo, you must understand… I am not—I am not…” She drew a ragged breath. “When you touched me tonight, when you put your hand on me…” Her voice broke. “I almost—I almost—”
Jesus, she was going to kill him! Nick leaned his forehead against hers and gave a soft, ragged laugh.
“I know, sweetheart. Me, too.”
She looked up at him, her cheeks flaming. “Truly?”
“Yeah.” Another ragged laugh. “And wouldn’t your old man’s fancy friends have loved that?”
“Because—because all I could think of was what would happen if—if you touched me more. If you moved your hand, only a little—”
“Enough,” Nick growled, and drew her hard against his side, silencing her with a kiss as he hurried her down the wide marble steps to a gleaming red Ferrari.
“Mine,” he said, in answer to her unspoken question. “Delivered here an hour ago.” He opened the passenger door, one arm curved around her as he did, with such blatant masculine possessiveness that she felt her knees go weak.
“Your seat belt,” he said, once he was behind the wheel, the words an imperious command.
Alessia complied, though her hands trembled. The car gave a throaty roar as he turned the key.
“Where are we going?”
“To a place where we can be alone without the ghosts of your father or mine looking on.”
Then he leaned toward her, gave her one last, deep kiss before he stepped hard on the gas and the Ferrari leaped into the night.
CHAPTER NINE
NICK drove fast, his hands light and sure on the steering wheel.
He let the Ferrari take the winding roads into the dark hills like the thoroughbred it was.
They weren’t going very far. Twenty miles. Fifteen minutes, the Realtor had said, twenty at the most.
The road ahead climbed higher. Nick downshifted and thought fifteen minutes would be about all he could manage.
He’d wanted women before. Why not? He was a man in the prime of life. But he’d never wanted a woman like this, with a need so strong, so powerful, that having her was all he could think about.
It had taken him most of the afternoon, making calls on his cell phone to make arrangements for tonight. He rarely thought about the fact that he had, to put it bluntly, an almost unfathomable amount of money and the connections that went with it, but there were times having money and those connections could change everything.
First, he’d phoned a Ferrari dealer in New York, who had phoned a Ferrari dealer in Florence. Then he’d called a banker pal in London who’d called a Realtor in Siena who’d called a Realtor in Florence…
It had all been time-consuming, but he’d finished with an hour to kill before a dinner party he wanted to attend about as much as a vampire would want to have a vegetarian lunch.
Taillights winked just ahead. Nick checked his mirror, swung out and passed the vehicle as the speedometer neared ninety.
That final hour had been an eternity.
A voice inside had kept saying, What are you waiting for? Find her. Push her against the wall. Ruck up her skirt, unzip your fly, hold her wrists high over her head and drive into her while she sobs your name and comes and comes and comes….
Crazy, he’d told himself, even to have thought that way.
Life was all about self-control.
He’d learned that growing up, when being a son of Cesare Orsini had made him fair game for every TV newshound in New York. He’d perfected it in combat, especially in clandestine ops where self-discipline could be the difference between life and death. It was the single most important factor that had made him the kind of gambler who won far more often than he lost, at cards and then as a financial decision-maker at Orsini Investments.
And, of course, relationships with women, in bed and out, were all about a man exercising self-control.
And why he’d been thinking about relationships when a minute earlier he’d been thinking about Sex, Sex with a capital S, had been beyond him to comprehend.
So he’d taken an endless shower, let the cold water beat down until he could think straight. Then he’d dressed in the tux he’d thought to bring with him, looked in the mirror at the image of a civilized man about to deal with a woman in a civilized way…
Until he got downstairs and saw Alessia.
The beautiful face. The gorgeous body. The gown that was an invitation to sin, the take-me stiletto heels.
How am I going to keep my hands off you? he’d said.
Her sexy-as-hell response had sent the civilized man inside him packing.
Somehow, they’d made it through dinner, playing a game so hot he was amazed they hadn’t set the place on fire. That he’d been forced to carry on intelligent conversation while he touched her had added to it.
And then that last moment, when he’d brought her to the brink…
A muscle knotted in his jaw.
He glanced at Alessia. She hadn’t spoken since she’d asked him where he was taking her. She sat very straight, hands folded in her lap, gaze straight ahead. Was she imagining what would happen next? Was her body softening as she pictured him touching her?
Or was she worried that she wouldn’t—how had she put it? That she wouldn’t live up to his expectations?
Was she really that naive? Or simply clever?
He told himself it didn’t matter.
Hell. Why lie to himself? It mattered. A lot. When they were finally alone, what if what he did to her, did with her, was new to her? What if he was the first man to teach her things that would make her moan and beg him to end the exquisite torment, as she had today on the hilltop?
Dammit!
Nick shifted his weight in the seat. If he kept this up, they might never make it to the villa he’d rented…. And, thank God, there it was, just ahead and exactly as the Realtor had described. A narrow gravel road, leading through an open iron gate. A stand of gnarled olive trees. And in the distance, the lights of a stone house.
Villa Riposante.
And not a minute too soon.
Alessia trembled as she stepped from the car.
“Here,” Nicolo said, shrugging off his jacket and wrapping it around her shoulders. “This should keep you warm until we’re inside.”
She nodded, though he was wrong.
She was not cold, she was terrified. Not of him. That fear was long since gone. She was terrified of herself, of the awful knowledge that no matter what he’d said, she knew she was going to disappoint him.
She had no idea where they were, only that they were in the hills high above Villa Antoninni and that this place, this beautiful stone villa, could only have been found on such short notice by a man who could ask whatever he wished of the world and get it.
He put his arm around her, led her up the stone steps to the door. The key—big, brass, old—was under a thick rush doormat. Nicolo inserted it in the lock, turned it, the heavy wood and brass door swung open…
“Nicolo.” She sounded breathless and she was. This was a mistake. A mistake. To have led him on, to have let him think… “Nicolo,” she said again, this time with urgency. “Listen to me—”
All at once, she was being swept up in his arms.
“Stop thinking,” he said in a rough voice. “Stop worrying. Just let the night happen.”
He elbowed the door shut behind him as he carried her into the villa. Alessia wound her arms around his neck and buried her face against his throat. She could feel his heart thudding against hers.
The villa was softly lit. And beautiful, what she sa
w of it over his shoulder. A frescoed ceiling. A floor of pale gray stone. A steep wooden staircase and at the top, a stream of ivory moonlight that led into a room lit by tapers in tall silver candlesticks. A fire glowed on a slate hearth; orchids rose like graceful ballerinas from crystal vases on the dresser and the night tables….
The night tables that framed the bed.
The bed.
A canopied bed, draped in endless, drifting layers of pale pink silk.
Nicolo let her slide down the length of his body to stand on her feet. She caught her breath at the feel of his erection. He took her hand; she thought he was going to put it against his fly. Instead, he brought her fingers to his lips and kissed them.
There was something so sweet, so touching, in the simple gesture that it made her throat constrict.
He turned away. Closed the door. When he looked at her again, his expression was unreadable. She waited for him to reach for her, to touch her, but he did nothing, he only stood still, watching her through narrowed eyes. She understood.
He had done his part.
The car. The villa. The flowers. The fire on the hearth. It was all very romantic, but now it was her turn. She wasn’t ready but that wasn’t his problem, she thought, and she took a deep breath, raised her arms, reached for the tiny loops and hooks that were at the back of her gown’s halter neck.
“No.”
Her eyes flew to his. He moved toward her, caught her wrists, brought her hands to her sides.
“I want to undress you,” he said in a husky whisper.
Could a man say anything more wonderful to his lover? Alessia’s heart lifted. Her lips curved in a smile.
“It is what I want, too,” she said softly, and Nick drew her to him and kissed her, his mouth moving slowly against hers, very slowly. Going slowly was what he wanted for her. Still, he might be pushing too hard, too fast… And then she groaned, rose to him, opened her mouth to his…
And he stopped thinking.
How could a man think when a woman’s taste was so sweet? When she felt so soft, so right? The press of her breasts against his chest. The warmth of her arms around his neck. And those sexy high heels meant that her hips were against his.
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