Wicked Temptation (Nemesis Unlimited)

by Zoë Archer

  He seemed more distant than ever. “I don’t see how it signifies. If you’re disgusted by them—”

  “I’m a little surprised. But not disgusted.”

  Some of the coolness left his dark eyes, and his jaw loosened.

  “Still,” she continued, “I can’t help feeling that you were testing me. Deliberately holding it back just to see how I’d react.”

  He only gave her one of his maddening Italian shrugs.

  If this had been a test, a way to judge her feelings about Giovanni and Thomas, why should it matter to him how she felt about their hosts? Yet how suspicious that he might care about her reaction to Giovanni and Thomas. As though …

  As though he cared more than he’d admit to her. Or to himself.

  But she couldn’t voice this to him. He’d only disappear inside himself, cool and elusive as a shadow. Instead, she dressed for dinner, with Marco serving as her lady’s maid.

  Then she had the pleasure of watching him undress, then dress. He pulled on a crisp white shirt, and she observed the play of tight muscle beneath the fine cotton. Her hands tingled with the need to feel those muscles, the contrast between the solidness of his flesh and the starched fabric, and then peel off the shirt to touch him skin to skin.

  How could she desire him so much, when he seemed determined to hold his true self at bay? Perhaps all she wanted from him was his body. It had been a long time since she’d made love. Now that the dam had broken—she could still feel his lips on her sex, and the way he’d cupped her breast—she was flooded with need.

  But it was more than that. She’d spoken true when she’d said he fascinated her. There were layers to this man. Levels that went so deep, she suspected even he didn’t know about them. Part of her wanted to tear away those layers and see who he truly was. But it would be an uphill battle, and she had enough battles to contend with now.

  “Marco,” she murmured, pinning up her hair, “I’ve been thinking.” She stared at him in the mirror. “If all you can give me is physical pleasure, I’ve decided I’ll take it. And, when the work here is completed, I’ll take what you offer. Even if it can’t last.”

  “Grazie, fragola,” he said, coming up behind her and pressing a kiss to her neck. “You won’t regret it.”

  Oh, she knew she would. But she couldn’t stop herself.

  Turning, she took in Marco in his evening clothes. “You look dangerous.”

  “Here I thought I looked elegant.”

  “That, too.” The black jacket clung to his shoulders, just as the trousers defined the length of his sinewy legs. His white waistcoat wrapped snug around his lean torso, and the whiteness of his collar and bow tie set off the olive hue of his skin. He’d slicked back his hair, making him appear sleek as a panther, and just as predatory. Certainly a rapacious gleam shone in his eyes as he took in the sight of her in her satin gown.

  Like a possessive caress, she felt his gaze on her, heating the flesh of her exposed chest and the slight curve of her breasts lifted high by the cut of her gown. The gloves that covered her hands and arms were little protection. She felt bare, vulnerable.

  Part of her wanted to turn away and shield herself. But he’d already seen her at her most bare. It seemed too late to hide from him, not when he’d had his mouth on her …

  “We’ll have our dinner brought up,” he rumbled. “To hell with Giovanni and his hospitality.”

  “I’d hate to disappoint Thomas,” she said breathlessly.

  “To hell with Thomas, too.”

  But they did leave their chamber, and journeyed down to the second floor to find the dining room, and their hosts.

  Thomas seemed far more glad to see them than Giovanni, and complimented them both on their smart appearance. They were seated, and a series of dishes served. The food reminded her painfully of her honeymoon in Italy, each bite recalling her lost youth and hopes for the future. It would have helped had the food Giovanni served been inedible. Easier to just push the offerings around on her plate and pretend to eat. But it was, unfortunately, delicious, and while her palate demanded more, every taste only reinforced how much she’d lost, and how the future hadn’t turned out at all as she’d hoped.

  She tried to distract herself with conversation. But it was stilted between Marco and Giovanni, casting a pall even on Thomas, so that there was little to do but eat and remember.

  “Mrs. Parrish, if I may note,” Thomas said, breaking the stillness, “it sounds as though you aren’t without recourse if you fail to get your money back.”

  “I have options for employment waiting for me, yes,” she answered. “But I’ve been thinking of other ways to use my fortune, if I’m lucky enough to retrieve it.”

  “Such as?”

  “A home for widows, perhaps. Somewhere for women like me to go if there is no safe or good option.”

  Giovanni narrowed his eyes. “Easy to speak of such charity when the money is not in your hands. You might change your tale once the denaro is yours again.”

  “Only one way to find out,” she countered.

  Finally, after platters of fresh fruit and small sweetmeats had been served, the dinner came to an end. She attempted to breathe a sigh of relief, but the pain of the meal was still laced tightly around her, like a constricting corset.

  “Shall we go up to the parlor?” Thomas suggested. An attempt, she supposed, to salvage the rituals of polite society. But there wasn’t any such thing as polite society when two spies dined with each other.

  To her surprise, Marco agreed.

  Thomas offered her his arm, and together, they climbed the stairs to the parlor.

  “It isn’t easy, my dear,” he whispered to her. “They tend to keep themselves locked tight as a vault, these intelligence agents. Training, I suppose.”

  “Or perhaps a natural predilection for distance,” she answered in a low voice.

  “Who can say? Some days I consider myself lucky if he reveals the smallest detail about his past. Took me years to learn he grew up in Umbria.”

  “Why bother trying?” she pressed quietly. “If they’re so determined to hold back, why not leave them to their solitude?”

  Thomas gave a melancholy sigh. “I ask myself that many times. But I love him, so I take whatever I can and be grateful for it.”

  They’d reached the parlor, so she couldn’t ask Thomas any more regarding the logistics of caring about a spy. Could she be satisfied with crumbs, as Thomas seemed to be?

  But the topic wasn’t up for debate. It never had been, no matter how much existed between her and Marco. All they could have was this moment. Perhaps the next few moments beyond that. But it was impossible for him to give more.

  The massive Niccolo appeared with a tray bearing glasses of herbal liqueur, as well as dried, sugared fruit and nuts. But for all the food and refreshments, the atmosphere in the parlor was far from convivial. Desperate for a topic of conversation, she noted the piano in the corner.

  “Do either of you play?” she asked her hosts.

  “I was forced to take lessons as a child,” Thomas said, “and promptly, deliberately forgot.”

  “And you?” she pressed Giovanni.

  His lips thinned. “I am not feeling very musical tonight.”

  “I noticed you had a violin case, Mrs. Parrish,” Thomas quickly interjected.

  “My instrument was one of the few possessions I was able to keep,” she answered.

  “Would you favor us by playing?” Thomas requested.

  Her initial impulse was to refuse. With Marco and Giovanni all but sticking knives into each other’s backs, it hardly seemed an appropriate time. But the thought of playing again sent a wave of longing through her, and her fingers twitched as if forming notes on her violin’s neck.

  If neither Marco nor Giovanni could come to an understanding, if the distance she and Marco had traveled had been for nothing, then shouldn’t she get some pleasure out of her time here in Florence? If nothing else, she was learning how to
survive dangers and setbacks.

  “Of course,” she said.

  Marco said nothing.

  “Niccolo can fetch it for you,” Giovanni surprised her by saying.

  “No—I mean, no, thank you. I can retrieve it myself.” She rose from the sofa—the men all standing as she did so—and left the parlor to climb the stairs to their bedchamber. The violin and its case were just where she’d left them, so after a quick check to make sure the instrument was in good condition, she took them downstairs.

  There, the silence was still thick as blood. Standing beside the piano, she pulled the violin from the case and spent several minutes tuning it. Travel across the Channel and the Continent hadn’t done much favors to its sound, and she fought to keep from grimacing as she made the most unmusical noises as she tuned the instrument. Finally, she was satisfied, tucked it beneath her chin. Began to play.

  Bach’s partita, of course.

  The first few notes came out awkwardly. She felt acutely conscious of all eyes upon her. There’d been a time when she used to play after dinner parties, but those times were long past. Over the past few years, when she’d played, she played for herself alone, her dream of performing for a paid crowd nothing but a dissolving mist. But now here she was—playing for an audience.

  She screeched out a wrong note, and lowered the violin. “I’m sorry. I’m not … in form tonight.”

  “Don’t stop,” Thomas begged, at the same time that Giovanni said, “Do go on, signora.”

  But she shook her head, and started to put her violin away.

  “Please,” Marco said quietly.

  Her hands stilled, the violin suspended over its case.

  Then she picked up the instrument again and played.

  This time, the notes came out true. It took her a few moments to sink into the piece, to feel the embrace of the music around her, how she was bathed in the lambent glow of sound. Those beautiful, dark minor notes. The climbing scales and precipitous descents, as if a night-flying bird rose and fell with evening currents, black against a blacker sky.

  In the piece, she rediscovered herself. The young woman she’d been in London, protected, naïve, in contrast to the woman she was now, having immersed herself in a world far more uncompromising and stark than she’d ever experienced or known. She was familiar with death, but now she’d seen its brutal side. With Hugh. And Devere. She’d witnessed the most dire poverty. And she’d made love with a man determined to keep himself a stranger.

  A metamorphosis had occurred. Was occurring, even now. Who she would be when everything was over, she’d no idea. All she could do was hold fast to her strength, and survive.

  All of this she poured into her playing. She forgot everything but the feel of her beloved violin, the bow as it arced back and forth across the strings, the sway of her body as she gave herself over to the music.

  And then, suddenly, it was over. She’d reached the end of the piece.

  Her eyes opened—when had she closed them?—to find three pairs of eyes staring at her. Thomas looked delighted. Giovanni appeared thoughtful. And Marco … Marco looked stunned.

  She lowered the violin as Thomas started clapping. Giovanni and then Marco joined in, at which she gave a small bow.

  “I think I rather missed that,” she said, which was a terrific understatement akin to saying she missed the ability to breathe.

  “Brava,” Giovanni murmured.

  “Yes, brava, indeed,” Thomas added. “Do play some more.”

  Now that the instrument was in her hand, she was loath to part with it. So she played the solo parts of Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 3—lively and bright, full of sunshine and hope. Mozart had been a favorite of hers when she’d been younger, but maturity and experience had brought her to Beethoven and Bach. She hadn’t thought she’d ever return to Mozart again. Now she needed him and his ebullience, his childlike complexity.

  What was Marco to her? And what was she to him? Lovers, operative and client? More, or less? Answers kept themselves scarce. But there was this—music. It never withheld itself from her. And she was the agent that made it happen, pulling notes from the air and giving them form through her bow and fingers.

  The music drew to an end, and she accepted another round of applause. Thomas beamed at her, while Giovanni continued to look pensive.

  But Marco—his gaze was hot upon her, and intent radiated from him like a hunter on the trail of its prey.

  Heat washed over her. Surely she blushed. But she’d never seen such ferocity in Marco’s eyes, as though he would leap across the room, hike up her skirts, and make love to her against the piano—uncaring whether or not they had an audience.

  But that was one public performance she was unwilling to give.

  At Thomas’s cry for more, she politely demurred, and put away her violin with faintly trembling hands.

  “The journey and disappointments of the day have been very fatiguing,” she explained. “It’s time for me to retire.” After bidding her hosts good night, she stepped outside and began to climb the stairs.

  “Marco—” she heard Giovanni say.

  “A tempo,” came the growled response. And then the sounds of Marco’s footsteps. In pursuit.

  Her heart pounded in double time as she hurried up the stairs, trying to keep from being caught. And hoping that she was.

  * * *

  The moment she entered the bedchamber, she set her violin aside. Then stood in the middle of the room and waited, pulse racing, for Marco to catch up. His tread was steady, deliberate. And with each step, her breathing came faster and faster. Until he appeared in the door, and she all but gasped for breath.

  Oh, he was a dangerous one. Without taking his gaze from hers, he stepped into the room and shut and locked the door behind him.

  The moment hung ripe as summer, a suspension of time, where neither of them moved, but savored the possibility of what was to be.

  She wanted this. Needed it. When nothing else was certain, including the future, there was this desire. It felt as though it would rip through her with gilded claws, and she craved that annihilation.

  And he knew what music meant to her—more than anyone else had. He understood what she’d given and gained by her performance tonight. They shared that bond, beyond mere physical need.

  But as she and Marco stared at each other, drawing the moment out, it felt as if bright jeweled threads stretched from her body to his. She wanted more than to be taken by desire. She wanted to own it. She wanted to have him, fully.

  The last time she and Marco had made love, he’d been the one in command. Who’d guided her through the paths of sensation. And she’d been nearly overcome with fear, hiding herself, holding back. Not this time. This time, she would strip away all barriers, so that they were fully themselves.

  “I remember another postcard.” She swayed toward him, feeling power thrum through her. He stayed exactly where he was, standing in front of the closed door. “Can you think which one?”

  “There were many.” His voice was a low rasp.

  “Yes, but this one intrigued me.” She stood before him, close enough to see the darkness of his stubbled cheeks, and the widening of his pupils. Though she didn’t touch him, his heat radiated into her skin. “A man was standing, just as you are. He was almost fully dressed. I say almost because there was one part of him that was bared.”

  “His cock,” Marco rumbled.

  Bold as she felt, the word made her burn.

  “It was in a woman’s mouth as she knelt in front of him,” she said breathlessly.

  “I remember.”

  At last, she reached out to touch him. Ran her hand down his starched shirtfront. Lower. Until she found the hard length of his erection through his black wool trousers. He hissed in a breath as she cupped him. It still amazed her that this part of him had been inside her. Filled her completely.

  “I remember, too,” she whispered. Then sank to her knees.

  He said nothing, but
his body was tense as a primed gun as she worked at his trouser fastenings. She reached in and wrapped her hand around his rigid penis. Then she drew it out. She imagined a photographer taking a picture of the scene, her looking at the picture. Arousal built higher.

  In the lamplight, she got her first real look at him. The thick shaft. The smooth crown. A tiny drop of fluid at the slit. This was part of Marco, too. Mysterious and a little frightening but fascinating, too.

  This was carnal, yes, but deeply intimate. Beyond two bodies striving for pleasure. This was them, literally and figuratively exposed. He allowed himself to be vulnerable. Such a rarity—and he shared it with her.

  She glanced up. His skin had darkened, his nostrils were flared, and his jaw was clenched into a straight, rigid line. He stared at her through lowered lids. But his chest moved up and down quickly, breath soughing in and out. At his sides hung his hands, knotted into fists. Oh, he wanted this—she could tell. He wanted it badly. Yet he managed to hold himself back. To keep from frightening her.

  There was still a thread of fear in her. More than that, however, was the measure of her strength. Pleasure was hers to bestow and take. Being on her knees made her no less powerful. With the most sensitive part of him in her hand, at this moment he belonged to her. And he wanted to belong to her.

  Still, she wasn’t experienced. Not in this.

  “Tell me,” she said. But it wasn’t a request. It was a command. “Tell me how to do this.”

  He swallowed hard. “Grip the shaft … yes … like that. Lick the head.”

  She did, swirling her tongue around it and finding the skin silky, with a bit of salt. He groaned, and heat traveled directly between her legs at the sound. She dallied there like that, licking him all around, even the ridge just beneath the head, which made him rumble like a beast.

  Her breasts pressed tight against the inside of her bodice, and while she cursed the fabric for keeping her from touching them, there was something impossibly erotic about being completely clothed—in evening dress, no less—while performing this most intimate act.

  “Suck … ah, God … suck me,” he growled.