I dropped my bag at my feet and turned to look at him.
He was standing proud and tall a few feet away from me with his hands casually by his sides, giving me a respectful amount of personal space. The man was clearly a gentleman, which heartened me. Everything I’d heard about him had pointed towards this, but it was comforting to have it confirmed. Especially as I was now alone in a closed room with him.
‘So, what can I do for you, Juno?’ he prompted when I failed to say anything. I’d been so busy psyching myself up I’d left an uncomfortably long pause hanging in the air.
Clearing my raw throat, I pushed back my shoulders in an attempt to project confidence.
But no words would come. I began to panic. How the heck were you supposed to seduce someone—someone you barely knew anything about? I had absolutely no experience in these matters.
In desperation I thought back to the sex scenes I’d seen on TV, where women who want to initiate sex simply strip off in front of the guy and he seems to know exactly what she wants without her having to say a word.
My blood was thumping so hard in my head by this point, I was afraid Sandro would be able to hear it in the quiet of the room. He was certainly looking at me as if he was concerned about something.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked, his brows knitted together.
‘Mmm-hmm,’ I murmured, sucking in a steadying breath then grasping the bottom of my crepe top in my shaking fingers. Knowing I had to act fast before I lost my nerve, I attempted to slip it over my head seductively. Unfortunately, I managed to get the neck caught round my hair bun and ended up struggling to get it past my chin. The zip at the top of my skirt, which was already loose, decided to choose this moment to undo fully and the whole thing slithered down my legs and pooled at my feet, leaving me flashing my underwear-clad body at him while my head was still trapped in my top.
Needless to say, it wasn’t the elegant disrobing I’d been aiming for.
Finally, I managed to get myself untangled and dropped the offending article onto the floor, my face now flaming with embarrassment.
‘What are you doing?’ There was amusement in his voice, but I ignored it, desperate to get past this humiliating preamble and on to what I’d come here for.
Unfortunately, it seemed I was actually going to have to say the words.
I swallowed hard, my throat now as arid as my sex life. ‘I want you to...to...have s-sex with me.’
He stared at me for a moment, then the corner of his mouth kicked up into a bemused smile.
‘Just like that? No getting to know each other first?’ He folded his arms. ‘Why the rush?’
‘Because I’m a virgin and I don’t want to be any more,’ I blurted, taking a shaky step closer to him and managing to kick my bag in the process. My small silver hip flask slipped out of it and slid onto the floor between us.
He looked down at it, then back up at me with one dark eyebrow raised.
‘Are you drunk?’ he murmured darkly.
‘No,’ I lied, kicking the hip flask back under my bag and taking a couple more sauntering steps towards him, hoping to distract his attention away from it.
‘I’ve heard you’re amazing in bed and I thought you’d be the perfect person to help me out. I want to learn from the best,’ I said in as confident a tone as I could muster, desperately hoping that appealing to his vanity would yield results.
He leaned one shoulder against the wall, his arms still folded. The insouciant slouch he affected only made him look more intimidatingly sexy.
‘So you’ve come here tonight because you want me to get rid of your virginity for you? Is that what you’re saying?’ he asked, his eyes assessing me so thoroughly now a delicious sort of shiver shimmied across my bare skin.
I screwed up all my courage and forced myself to meet his gaze. ‘Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.’
He let out a low, baffled breath. ‘Why me? We don’t even know each other.’
‘Because when you looked at me at the party on Wednesday it seemed like you found me attractive. And I find you attractive, in a physical way, so I thought it might be mutually agreeable...’
There was an awkward pause before he spoke again. ‘Agreeable?’
‘Yes. Um, fun. And...er...sexy.’ I could barely believe I’d just let those awful words out of my mouth. And I was supposed to be the genius of the family.
‘Well, if you find me attractive in a physical way, how could I possibly refuse?’ he asked, deadpan.
Once again I cursed my lack of confidence in these matters. Get me on my subject and I could talk with utter self-assurance for hours, but here I was just steadily digging myself into a deep, dark hole with no idea how to pull myself out.
I decided being honest was the only way forward from here.
‘No. Look, sorry, this is coming out all wrong.’ I pulled my arms around my body, intensely aware of how exposed I was. ‘As I’m sure you’re painfully aware, I’m really not experienced at negotiating this kind of thing.’
‘You don’t say.’ The drawl of his words made his amusement very clear.
I tried to shake off my frustration. Getting het up was unhelpful. I needed to be cool, like my sister Maya would have been if she’d been in this situation. I attempted to channel her as I forced myself to stand a little taller and saunter up to him, looking him right in the eye.
‘I feel like there’s a connection between us. Chemistry,’ I murmured, trying not to sway on the spot.
He frowned, looking confused, and opened his mouth as if he was going to refute what I’d just said but then closed it again. There was a tense pause while he stared hard at me, his dark brows drawn together tightly.
My blood was pumping so hard through my veins, I could hear the swoosh of it in my ears.
‘Look, Juno, you seem like a lovely woman, and I take it as a huge compliment that I’m at the top of your list, but it’s a no,’ he said finally. ‘I don’t sleep with virgins. Especially not drunk virgins. I prefer to go to bed with women who know what they want and can handle having sex just for fun.’
Disappointment made my eyes sting with held-back tears. ‘It could be fun with me,’ I fired back, desperation straining my voice.
He just shot me a look that clearly said desperation was exactly what he was trying to avoid getting entangled in.
Frustration surged through me. I’d made a total fool of myself tonight and for what? A big, fat negative result.
‘God! What is it with me and men? How am I supposed to get experience if no one will sleep with me?’
I took one last stumbling step towards him, pressing my hand against the wall next to him to steady myself. His wonderful, spicy scent flooded my senses, making my mouth water and my head swim.
‘Please, I’ll do whatever you say. Whatever you want. Just name it. Is there a favour I could do for you? Or would money help? Or—er—something else?’ I asked hurriedly, agonisingly aware that offering him money was a stupid and offensive thing to do. ‘L-l-like a promise to help you out when you next need it?’ I rushed on, hoping he wouldn’t take umbrage at my slip.
‘You’re offering me money?’ His eyes were narrowed now in distaste.
‘No, not money. Ignore that. I didn’t mean it the way it came out—’
‘You didn’t mean it to sound like you were hoping to pay me to have sex with you?’ His voice was filled with reproach.
Shame crawled up my spine. In that horrible moment I imagined I could actually sense his male pride putting up its fists.
‘I’m sorry...’
He waved away my apology with a dismissive sweep of his hand before I was even able to finish it. ‘Even if I do find you attractive, I wouldn’t stoop to sleeping with someone who thinks so little of me,’ he said, his voice dangerously low. ‘I think you should go home before you say somethin
g stupid to someone else here. They might not be as forgiving of your crassness.’
Before I could utter another word, he’d marched out of the room, leaving the sound of his disgust ringing in my head.
I was so humiliated I wanted to cry. I couldn’t believe I’d handled that so badly. Made such an utter mess of it. Because I had. A total mess. In fact, I don’t think I could have done a worse job at persuading him to help me.
Which was why I was absolutely astounded when I picked up a voicemail message from him the next afternoon asking me out for a drink.
CHAPTER TWO
Sandro
IT HADN’T BEEN the best of weeks.
First I lost out on buying an old dilapidated building in Shoreditch, that my friend Jon and I had intended to turn into affordable studio space for artists, to a grubby property developer. Then the pretty redhead from Maxim’s party treated me like some brainless piece of ass. That had been especially irritating, because when I’d first realised it was her at Harry’s place in Chelsea I’d actually been pleased to see her. The evening had been a bust up till that point. I’d found myself surrounded by the same familiar faces and boring conversations, so the sight of her had lit something inside me.
I’ve always been a sucker for redheads and when I’d spotted her at Maxim’s party—an event I’d been attending in my father’s place while he was away in Rome on important family business—I’d been intrigued by her air of sweetness. I could tell by the way she held herself that she wasn’t confident and worldly like the majority of the women there and it had made me want to take her away somewhere safe to protect her. And perhaps do other things too, if she’d been willing. She’s an attractive woman, after all. I’d particularly enjoyed the way her porcelain-pale cheeks had flamed with colour when I’d smiled at her.
I love making women blush. It gives me a real kick of pleasure. In fact, any instinctive physical reaction I can tease out of them gets me hot: accelerated breathing, a damp sheen of sweat on an upper lip, dilated pupils, a coquettish eyelash flutter. I love it all. Because I love women.
All women.
They’re such fascinating, exotic creatures.
And they usually love me right back.
So when she’d made it clear she thought I was just some man whore, it had really pissed me off. It had been obvious she wasn’t interested in me as a person when she’d asked me to take her virginity. I was just a throwaway cock she’d be using to fix a problem and I hadn’t been prepared to be treated like that. Her disrespectful approach had actually made me fucking furious, though I’d tried not to show it. I never show my real feelings to a woman, not any more—not when I know how it can strip you of your power and control—which is probably why, after I’d left her in that room, I’d gone downstairs, drunk half a bottle of whisky and ended up getting into a pointless fist fight with one of Harry’s friends over some stupid fucking comment he’d made about a woman I’d been talking to. I can’t even remember what it was now.
Normally I’d laugh off any kind of provocation, putting it down to jealousy or crossing someone’s path at the wrong moment, but added to Juno’s suggestion that I wasn’t the brightest spark in the fire, it had blown something inside me and I’d lashed out.
The moment I woke up this morning with a thumping head and a horrible sense that I’d overstepped a mark, I regretted the whole thing.
I regretted it even more when my father summoned me to his Knightsbridge house later that day and showed me just how far the consequences of my actions had reached.
‘This,’ he said, gesturing angrily towards his open laptop, ‘is unacceptable.’
The screen had a gossip article from one of the popular society pages on it. There was a picture of me with an ugly sneer on my face caught right after I’d punched Harry’s friend in the face. It made the whole incident look much more brutal than it had actually been—I’d been too drunk to do more than glance my knuckles off his chin—but the look on the guy’s face told another story. He looked afraid of me.
Shame sunk through my chest to nestle heavily in my gut. That wasn’t me. I’m not a violent person—quite the opposite, in fact. I’m a lover, not a fighter. But this picture said differently.
‘Well? What have you got to say for yourself? I thought you’d stopped fighting when you were a teenager,’ my father barked. ‘Your mother is distraught and the last thing she needs right now is more stress when she’s so busy helping to organise your brother’s wedding. The press has been calling me for a comment about it. I told them in no uncertain terms that that wasn’t going to happen.’
The good reputation of the family name is everything to my father. He lives and breathes it. And he expects me and my brothers to do the same. My oldest brother took this so seriously he’s now on the path to marrying into the highest echelons of Italian nobility—of which we are currently only lowly-ranking members—and my father is adamant that none of us does anything to jeopardise it. Our inclusion in his close family circle and all that comes with it depends on it.
‘It wasn’t as bad as it looks...’ I began to argue, but my father clearly wasn’t in the mood to hear excuses.
‘I want you to go back to Italy until this blows over. And I don’t want to see anything about you in the papers there either. Unless it’s a positive article. In fact—’ He moved to his laptop and scrolled down the page until he came to another photo. This one also had me in it, but this time I was smiling and brushing hair out of the eyes of a pretty redhead who was gazing up at me as if totally entranced by the intimate moment we’re sharing.
Juno.
My heart sank.
‘This one’s suggesting you’re having a relationship with the youngest Darlington-Hume girl,’ my father said, flashing me a questioning look.
My whole world started to tumble past my ears. She was one of Maxim’s daughters. I hadn’t realised. She’d looked so different from her sisters and she certainly hadn’t acted like a Darlington-Hume—a family my father holds in very high regard indeed. In his estimation, they’re the fucking essence of English high society.
And I’d basically told her to take a running jump when she’d asked me for help.
‘I wouldn’t call it a relationship,’ I replied carefully. I wasn’t entirely sure where he was going with this so I was treading carefully. I really didn’t want to be banished to Italy for long. I have important plans here in England and I need to be around to put them in motion. Plus, this is where all my friends live now. Italy will be a social desert.
‘You could do a lot worse than having a Darlington-Hume in your bed. The family has an excellent if mercenary reputation, but you can’t get more inner-circle than Maxim.’ He nodded, seeming to make up his mind about something, and my gut knotted as I predicted what he was about to demand of me.
‘Take her to Florence. Stay in Maria’s apartment. She’s going to be in Sweden for the next few weeks, and she’s worried it might be broken into again, so it would be good to have you there looking after the place. Let the press know you’re there and make sure you’re seen out and about in the right places. Get your reputation publicly back on even ground. Then you can come back.’
‘I’m not sure she’ll want to go to Florence with me.’
‘I don’t give a shit what she wants. Just make it happen. Prove to me, for once, that you’re worthy of the Ricci family name, like your brothers.’
There was no point in arguing with him. I knew from experience that, when my father demands something, there’s no way of getting out of it. He’s hard-hearted enough to cut me out of the family if I don’t play ball, and won’t hesitate to stop me from seeing my nephews and my mother. That’s the last thing I want. It would devastate her. I’ve disappointed her enough for a lifetime.
So a trip to Florence it was.
With Juno Darlington-Hume.
Assuming I could c
onvince her I’ve changed my mind about helping her out after the contemptuous rejection I threw down at her feet the night before. I suspected it was going to take a monumental amount of charm and a shit-ton of good fucking grace to talk her round. Luckily, those are qualities I have in abundance.
So when I got home I swallowed my pride, sourced her number from a friend of a friend and called her, leaving a message on her voicemail, inviting her out for a drink.
* * *
‘So in your message you said you had something you wanted to talk to me about,’ Juno says warily, once we’re seated in a booth in a chi-chi little cocktail bar in a backstreet of Soho that I’d chosen for its seclusion from the bustle of central London, and hopefully prying eyes. I don’t want word going round about us until Juno’s agreed to the proposal I’m about to lay out for her.
She’s pointedly ordered a virgin cocktail and I’ve had to bite my lip so as not to make a joke about the car-crash conversation we had last night in case it upsets her.
This whole situation needs to be handled very carefully.
I give her my secret-weapon smile and lean forward, spreading my hands on the table and locking my gaze with hers. ‘I want to apologise for the way I spoke to you last night. Your request took me by surprise and I didn’t handle it well.’
She stares back at me as if I’m speaking a foreign language and I panic for a second that I’ve slipped into Italian.
Seeming to snap out of her trance, she shakes her head. ‘You really don’t need to apologise. I’m the one that should be apologising. I don’t know what I was thinking, demanding...what I did...like that.’ She looks down at the table as if she can’t bear to maintain eye contact with me. ‘You were right. I was drunk and totally out of line.’
Her shame-faced confession sends a wave of relief through me and I sit back against the red velvet banquette, feeling a little more in control of things now. I can’t help but forgive her. It’s pretty clear the Juno of last night wasn’t the real her. It was just a glitch. A drunken mistake.
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