Chapter Seven
HE WAS waiting for her when she rounded the corner.
At first she thought he was some kind of hallucination—the same one she had been having to some degree or another all afternoon, to her great irritation. She’d seen the side of his head in the crowded rooms of the Uffizi Gallery, startling her as she gazed at Botticelli’s famous painting of Venus rising from the water, all lush curves and flowing hair. But it had only been a dark-haired father bending to whisper to his two wriggling children, not Nikos at all. She’d glimpsed his unmistakable saunter from a distance on the Ponte Vecchio, the ancient bridge crowded full of shops and arches and tourists that stretched across the Arno—but then she had blinked and seen the figure approaching her was nothing so special after all, just a local man crossing a bridge.
So Tristanne did not immediately react when she saw him this time, expecting the figure lounging in the archway that led into Nikos’s old building to turn to vapor, fade into shadow, or step forward and reveal himself to be an ordinary resident of the city, simply going about his business in the wet summer evening.
But as she drew closer, her footsteps echoing off the ancient cobblestones, the image before her only intensified. The jet-black hair. The dark, tea-steeped eyes, swimming with gold and fire. The dragon in him infused his very skin, making him seem almost to glow with all the power he held carefully leashed in that lean, muscled torso, so wide through the shoulders and narrow at his hips. He leaned against the stone wall, protected from the rain, his long arms crossed and his gaze intent upon her as she approached.
“Where have you been?”
The question seemed to echo even louder than her shoes against the stones, and her heart beat like a drum in her chest. Tristanne told herself that it was simply a trick of the fading light and the effect of the rain, as the old city settled into evening all around her. This section, hidden in a series of twisted age-old streets that seemed to double back and forth on top of each other, was so very quiet in comparison to the high traffic areas she’d walked earlier. He only sounded dangerous and on edge because there were not seas of tourists to dull the sound of his voice.
And even if he was on edge, for some no doubt inscrutable reason he would not bother to share with her, why should she act as if that cowed her? She did not understand why this man made her forget herself so easily, but she could not let it continue. It did not matter how she felt, she reminded herself—a key point she had returned to again and again as she wandered through centuries of art all afternoon—it only mattered how she acted.
“My apologies,” she said, curving her mouth into an approximation of meek smile. “I had so hoped to beat you here, so that I might arrange myself on your sofa like a still-life painting. Prettily, of course. As directed.”
He only watched her as she closed the distance between them and stepped under the archway with him. She knew she was soaked through, but she could not bring herself to care as she no doubt should. The rain was warm, and had seemed to her like some kind of necessary cleansing as she’d walked through Florence’s famous piazzas. As if she had needed to bathe in all the sights and centuries arrayed before her, and if the price of that was her bedraggled appearance now, well, so be it.
“You look half-drowned,” he said after a long moment. His eyes were too hot on hers, too unsettling. “What could possibly be so important that it lured you out in this weather without so much as an umbrella?”
“I cannot imagine,” she said dryly, pushing her damp hair back from her face. “Surely there is nothing in the whole of the city of Florence that could possibly interest an artist.”
“Art?” He pronounced the word as if it was an epithet in some foreign language he did not know. His head tilted to the side as he looked down at her, arrogant and imperious. “Are you certain it was art that drew you into the streets, Tristanne? And not something significantly more prosaic?”
“Perhaps a man of your stature does not notice art until you purchase it to grace your walls, or to appear as a coveted view outside your windows,” Tristanne said tartly, before she could think better of it. “But there are people in the world—and I realize this may surprise you—who find art just as moving when it is displayed in a public square as when it is hidden away in private collections for the amusement of the very rich.”
“You will have to forgive me if I cannot live up to your rarified expectations,” Nikos said coolly, though his eyes narrowed. “There were not many opportunities for art appreciation classes in my childhood, in public or private. I was more concerned with living through the week. But do not let me keep you from feeling superior because you can tell the difference between medieval sculptors at a glance. I am sure that is but one among many useful skills you possess.”
“You will not make me feel badly about something that has nothing to do with me!” Tristanne threw at him, her cheeks hot with sudden embarrassment and a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach that she refused to acknowledge. “You loom here, oozing your power from every pore, dripping luxury items like yachts and cars and sprawling flats, and yet I am supposed to feel badly because of your past? When you have obviously overcome it in every conceivable way and now flaunt it across Europe?”
His dark eyes glittered, and his mouth pulled to one side. Tristanne knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she did not want to hear whatever cutting thing he was about to say—that he would shred her without a second thought, just to assuage whatever mood this was that had him in its grip.
“I am not the one with expectations,” she hissed, hoping to stave him off. “You are.”
“You expect me to believe you wandered around looking at art in the rain?” he asked after a long, brooding moment. There was an urgency in his tone, a certain intensity, that she didn’t understand. That she didn’t want to understand, because she didn’t want to feel the urge to comfort him, to soothe him, however unlikely it was that he might let her do such a thing. She wanted only to complete this task, to gain her trust fund. That was the only thing she could allow herself to want.
“I do not care if you believe it or not,” she said instead, confused by the direction of her thoughts. She raised her shoulders only to let them fall again. “It is what I did.”
“And why would you do this?” His dark gaze moved over her face, and she was afraid, suddenly, of the things he might see, the urges he might notice and use against her. She looked away, back toward the street, letting her gaze follow the shadows and graze the cobblestones. She crossed her arms over her chest, half to appear defiant, but half to hold herself still as well.
“I suppose you will tell me a mistress does not do such a thing,” she said softly, shaking her head slightly at the water coursing down the street. “I imagine the perfect mistress…what? Shops for outfits she does not need? Sits in a room and contemplates the state of her hair?”
He almost smiled. She could sense it more than see it, in the closeness of that archway, hidden away together from the falling rain and coming dark.
“Something like that,” Nikos said. “She certainly does not roam the streets in a wild state, dripping wet and looking primitive.”
She looked at him then, and something flashed between them, hot and intimate. Dangerous. Uncontrollable. Tristanne felt her breath catch, and released it, deliberately. Count to ten, she cautioned herself. Do not fan this fire—it will burn you alive. It will ruin everything.
“I only said I wanted to be your mistress,” she said slowly, her voice lower and huskier than she’d intended, as if it had plans of its own. “I never said anything about being perfect.”
Something about her undid him. Her wide brown eyes, perhaps, so clever and yet so wary. The tilt of that chin, so pugilistic, as if she wanted to fight him, hold him off, defy him at all costs when her very presence here as his supposed mistress should have ensured the opposite. That lush, wide mouth that he wanted to taste again, every time he looked at it. And the way that green dress clung,
wet and heavy, to curves that he was beginning to believe might haunt him for the rest of his days.
It did not matter that he had deep suspicions about her activities this afternoon. Had she met with her pig of a brother? Had she received further orders, whatever those might be? He could not seem to get a hold of the searing anger he felt when he thought about such a meeting—and he had been unable to think of anything else since he’d arrived back at the flat to find her out, whereabouts unknown. He knew it made no sense. It was not logical, or rational. She had never pretended to owe him any allegiance, and he had known she must have ulterior motives the moment she’d walked up to him on his yacht. He knew why he was using her—why should he think she was not using him equally?
“No,” he said slowly, pushing away from the wall. “We cannot call you perfect, certainly.”
She blinked. “That sounds significantly more insulting when you say it.”
He wanted to demand that she tell him what her game was, that she admit whatever nefarious scheme she’d cooked up with her vile brother. As if it would mean something, such a confession. As if it would somehow excuse the need for her that itched in him, that he was beginning to worry was not, as it ought to be, purely physical.
The urge to take her, to lose himself in her lush body, to drown in her sweet and spicy scent, in her soft skin, in her scalding heat—all of that was completely understandable. Expected, even. Part and parcel of his ultimate revenge. It was…this other thing that was driving him insane. The odd and novel urge to leave her untouched at the door to her stateroom the night before, with only a gruff demand that she meet him for breakfast. Why had he done that? That had not been the way he’d planned the night at all.
But he had lost his purpose, somehow, between the oddly quiet moment after her outburst on the streets of Portofino and the stunned, hurt look in her eyes after he had ripped into her about her exalted standards. If he was someone else, he might have wondered if he’d been loathe to hurt her feelings—which was impossible as well as ridiculous, for how did he expect to enact a fitting revenge on her family without doing exactly that? In spades? It was as if she bewitched him somehow, with her frowns and her challenges, her sharp tongue and her unexpected naps—all things that should have made him dismiss her entirely.
And would have, he told himself fiercely, if she was anyone else.
“And now you are scowling at me,” Tristanne said, her eyes scanning his face as she frowned back at him. “I don’t know what it is you think I did—”
“What haven’t you done?” he asked, almost as an aside. Almost as if he asked himself, not her. Perhaps he did, though he had little hope of an answer.
“I haven’t done anything at all!” she protested.
“That, too,” he said, and sighed. And then gave up.
He reached over and hooked his hand around her crossed arms, tugging her toward him with very little effort. She came without a fight, her expressive face registering a series of emotions—confusion, worry, and what he wanted to see most of all. Desire.
He pulled her off balance, deliberately, so that she sprawled across the wall of his chest and he could feel, finally, her soft breasts pressed into him, her body sodden and warm against his. Her head tipped back so she could look at him, her brown eyes wide and grave but with that heat within.
“Nikos,” she began, that slight frown appearing again between her brows.
He did not know what he meant to do until he did it. He leaned down and pressed his lips to that serious wrinkle, smoothing it away, hearing her gasp even as he felt it against the skin at his neck.
“I think—” she started again.
“You think too much,” he muttered, and then he kissed her.
He wanted lust, fire, passion, and those things were there, underneath. She tasted of the rain, and something else. Something sweet. He could not seem to get enough of it. Of her. He cradled her face between his hands, and kissed her again and again, until they were both gasping for breath.
He pulled away, and, giving in to an urge he didn’t understand and didn’t care to examine, tucked her beneath his chin. Her arms were folded still, her fists against his chest, and he held her there, listening to their hearts pound out their need together.
Mine, he thought, and knew he should thrust her away immediately. Put distance between himself and whatever spell this was, that made him feel things he could not allow himself to feel. It wasn’t simply that he should only want her for a very specific reason—he knew better. Hadn’t he paid this price already? Hadn’t he vowed that he would never put himself in a position like this again? That he would not want what he could not have? He did not believe in the things that would make such moments as this possible. Redemption. Forgiveness. Those were for other men. Never for him. He knew better.
But he did not move.
“I don’t understand you at all,” she whispered. Her hands uncurled against him, and spread open, as if to hold him. As if she could heal him with her touch. As if she knew he was broken in the first place.
He did not believe in any of that, either. He knew exactly who she was and why she was here. What he must do, and would. Still, he did not push her away.
“Neither do I,” he said.
And then stood there, holding her, much longer than he should.
Any leftover feelings Tristanne might have had from their interaction in the rain—and his devastatingly tender kisses—were obliterated the moment she saw herself in the dress.
“I brought you something to wear tonight,” he had said when they entered the flat. His distance and cool tone should have alerted her, but did not. “I will leave it for you when you are finished with your shower.”
“Tonight?” she had asked, her emotions still in a nearpainful jumble. She’d told herself that was why his suddenly brusque tone seemed to rub her the wrong way, after those unexpected moments in the archway. Or perhaps it was just her impatience with herself, for being so emotional when she could so little afford it.
“It is a small business function,” he had said with a dismissive shrug, and she had thought no more about it until it came time to pull the dress from the hanger where he had left it, suspended from the door inside the guest suite he had indicated she should use to get ready.
Now, her hair dried and blown out to hang in a straight, gleaming curtain, cosmetics carefully applied to accent and emphasize her eyes, she stared at herself in the full-length mirror that stood at an angle in the corner of the richly furnished room. But she could not see the royal blue and gold accents that graced the walls and brocaded the commanding, four-poster bed. She could hardly catch her breath. She could only stare at her reflection, literally struck dumb.
She felt herself flush, deep and red and panicked, so red she nearly matched the scarlet fabric that barely made up the dress she wore. He could not mean that he wanted her to wear what little there was of this dress, could he? She could not go out in public dressed like this! She could not leave the room dressed like this!
She tried to take a deep breath, and made a sound like a sob instead. She squeezed her eyes shut, and her hands into fists. Then, slowly, she opened her eyes and forced her hands to open, too.
The dress was obscene. There was no other word for it.
It clung to her body like paint, leaving nothing to the imagination. There was not a single curve that was not outlined by the tight, clinging garment that slicked its way from tiny capped sleeves to her midthighs. If she tried to cover a decent amount of her breasts, the hem rose to a scandalous height, and if she tugged the hem lower, she risked having her breasts fall out of the tiny bodice. There was no happy medium. It required that she remove her undergarments entirely, or risk calling more attention to them, so clearly outlined were they by the tight, too-tight, material.
There was only one kind of woman who wore a dress like this, Tristanne thought, humiliation thick in the back of her throat, and she was pretending to be one of them. Was this Nikos
’s goal? Did he want her to feel this way? Did he take pleasure in imagining Tristanne walking into a public event like this? So scandalously, tackily, barely attired?
Or, she thought, fighting back the angry tears that flooded her eyes, that she refused to shed, perhaps she was missing the point entirely. Perhaps he was not trying to embarrass her, necessarily—perhaps this was how he preferred to see his women dressed. Perhaps he liked to make his mistress’s position perfectly clear to everyone he encountered. It need not be personal at all. It should not have felt like such a slap.
She glanced at the clock and saw that she had wasted far too much time, and was once again late. She bit at her lower lip as she looked at herself again, but she knew she had no choice but to brazen it out. She had to do what he wanted for just a little bit longer. Her mother had made it sound as if Peter was already in a much better frame of mind, which made Tristanne hopeful that her plan was working and this mad scheme of hers could end. Because she was not at all sure that she could take too much more of this…exposure, in all senses of the term.
But whatever might happen in the days to come, she still had to walk out of this room in this scandalous, appalling dress. She closed her eyes for a brief moment, a breath, and then turned on her heel and forced herself to leave the room before she could think better of it.
She found him in the living room, swirling whiskey in a crystal tumbler and staring out at the glorious Dome before him. He turned slowly, and Tristanne came to a stop in the center of the room to let him look his fill. Surely that was his intention—the point of this whole exercise?
Desert Jewels & Rising Stars Page 301