“Beg me to take you, mi’angela bella.”
“Take me, Marco. Make me yours.”
He did want to make her his, in this moment with the night sky around them, the Southern Cross shining in the sky, he was away from Italy and the curse that had dogged the Moretti men for too long.
He was going to claim Virginia as his…even if only for this one night.
He gave her another inch, thrusting his hips up into her sweet, tight body. Her eyes were closed, her hips moving subtly against him, and when he blew on her nipples he saw gooseflesh spread down her body.
He loved the way she reacted to his mouth on her. He sucked on the skin at the base of her neck as he thrust all the way home, sheathing his entire length in her body. He knew he was leaving a mark with his mouth and that pleased him. He wanted her to remember this moment and what they had done when she was alone later.
He kept kissing and rubbing, pinching her nipples until her hands clenched in his hair and she rocked her hips harder against him. He lifted his hips, thrusting up against her.
“Come with me,” he whispered to her in Italian.
She nodded and he realized she understood his native tongue. Her eyes widened with each inch he gave her. She clutched at his hips, holding him to her, eyes half-closed and her head tipped back.
He caught one of her nipples in his teeth, scraping very gently. She started to tighten around him. Her hips moving faster, demanding more, but he kept the pace slow, steady, building the pleasure between them.
He varied his thrusts, finding a rhythm that would draw out the tension at the base of his spine. Something that would make his time in her body, wrapped in her silky limbs, seem to last forever.
“Hold on to me tightly.”
She did as he asked and he rolled them over so that she was beneath him. He pushed her legs up against her body so that he could thrust deeper, so that she was open and vulnerable to him.
“Now, Virginia,” he said.
She nodded and he felt her body tighten. Then she scraped her nails down his back, clutching his buttocks and drawing him in. Blood roared in his ears as he felt everything in his world center on this one woman.
He called her name as he came. He saw her eyes widen and felt the minute contractions of her body around his as she was consumed by her orgasm.
He rotated his hips against her until she stopped rocking against him. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and kissed the underside of his chin.
“Oh, Marco,” she said. “Thank you for making love to me.”
“You’re very welcome, Virginia.”
She wrapped her arms around him and held him close. “I never thought it would be like this.”
“Like what?”
“So incredible. Being with you is just…well, I had no idea it would be so raw and intense.”
He laughed. “That’s because you hadn’t made love with me before.”
She tipped her head back and in her eyes he saw a vulnerability that he didn’t understand.
“I think you are right.”
Marco stretched and rolled over as the morning sunlight spread across the floor of his bedroom. The pillow next to his was rumpled and the sheets still smelled faintly of sex and Virginia’s perfume.
“Cara mia?”
There was no answer as he stood up and stretched. There was a glass of juice on his nightstand. He smiled as he reached for it. Maybe Virginia was making breakfast for them.
He walked slowly through his penthouse. All of Melbourne was spread out before him, and he thought for a moment about his life and the fact that he seemed to have it all. He wondered about the curse of Nonno’s that had doomed their family. He’d never put too much stock in it, preferring to believe that he had control over his own destiny, but Dom had loved and lost badly, so perhaps there was something to the Moretti curse.
He scrubbed a hand over his face. Why was he thinking about that damned curse this morning?
He didn’t want to admit it was because he liked Virginia. He was tempted to postpone his travel plans today. Stay in Melbourne with her as long as he could before commitments would demand he leave.
And that was the true measure of why she really did need to leave. He’d find her, eat whatever it was she’d fixed for him and then send her on her way.
“Virginia?”
Still no answer. The kitchen was empty. Maybe she was on the balcony. He remembered that last night she’d really enjoyed being outside. He stopped in his office, noticing that the papers on his desk were askew, as if someone had riffled through them. Knowing how important it was to keep the Moretti Motors secrets, Marco started to grow concerned. Had Virginia been in his penthouse just to find out what Moretti Motors was doing?
Hell, now he was getting paranoid like Dom. She hadn’t asked a single question about the company and hadn’t really seemed interested in it.
He finally got to the balcony and it was empty, as well. He realized she was gone. He knew it wasn’t hard to leave. The keypad at the elevator only prevented people from entering.
Marco clenched his fists, angry that Virginia had left before he’d had a chance to…hell, he wasn’t ready for her to leave yet. He’d thought about changing his entire day for her, and she was gone.
Four
The race in Barcelona, Spain, wasn’t any different from the two previous races for Marco. He did press conferences, attended Moretti Motors functions and as far as his brothers and his teammate Keke were concerned, he was the same ambitious winning driver he’d always been.
But inside Marco seethed. At first, when he’d discovered he was alone in Melbourne, he’d been concerned about Virginia, worried that their night of passion had overwhelmed her. But as time had gone on he’d realized that she’d been after just that one night with him.
He also realized that she didn’t want to be found. And that shouldn’t have been a big deal. He was aware that if she’d stayed, he would have hustled her out of the penthouse and then gone on with his life. He wasn’t looking to settle down. He had made a promise to his brothers that he wouldn’t break, and he had no time in his life for romantic complications.
So why, then, was he still so angry when he thought about the way she’d left him?
“Marco?”
“Sì?”
“We have to meet with the officials in a few minutes…are you okay?” Keke asked.
“Fine. Just going through the race in my head.”
“Are you free for dinner tonight? Elena’s family is in town and we’re going out with them.”
Keke and Elena were getting more serious with each month that passed, and he appreciated his friend always including him, but Marco was starting to feel like a third wheel with them.
“My parents are coming to the race, so I’m going to spend the evening with them.”
“You can invite them, as well.”
“What’s up? Don’t you want to be alone with Elena’s parents?”
Keke flushed. “It’s not that. I’m going to ask her to marry me and I would like to have you there. I don’t have any real family, you know?”
Marco understood. “I’d be honored to join you. In fact, Dom has reserved a restaurant for our evening so that we would have privacy…would you like to use that location?”
“I made reservations at Stella Luna,” Keke said.
“Then we will join you there. What time?”
“Nine.”
Marco looked at the German, wondering what this would mean for their friendship. He knew no matter how much a man wanted his relationships to remain intact, once a man got married, his life changed. “Congratulations, amico mio.”
“Thanks. I…if she says yes, will you be my best man?”
“She will say yes, and I will be your best man.”
Keke left a few minutes later and Marco called his parents and brothers to invite them to join Keke’s dinner celebration.
Marco had a moment’s pause, as he always did
when he thought of marriage. The plan that he and Dom and Tony had concocted when they were young boys meant that they’d probably never marry for love. And he envied his friend that relationship.
He left the garage and found a group of fans waiting for autographs. He stopped, smiled for photos and signed hats and shirts, all the while scanning the crowd for Virginia’s face. He was a sap and an idiot to keep looking for her. She was gone. And he needed to move past that one night in Melbourne.
But he couldn’t. She was the one who left. A part of him acknowledged that it was wounded pride that made him want to see her again. Another part, the baser part, wanted to see her again for purely sexual reasons. He wanted to take her and enslave her with the passion that ran between them. Bind her to him and then when she was well and truly his…leave her so that she could experience what he’d been going through.
He was lucky his racing hadn’t suffered, but at this point in his career he knew how to shut out everything except the race when he got behind the wheel.
“Marco, wait up,” Dom called as he walked across the field toward him.
“What is it?”
“I got your message about tonight and I’ll try to be there. But I may not be available.”
“Is something going on?”
“I think we have a spy in our company. I might have to return to Milan to take care of the matter.”
Marco’s eyes narrowed. The ruffled papers on my desk…. “Why do you think that?”
“I ran into Dirk Buchard today in the owner’s lounge, and he mentioned rumors of a new car design from ESP,” Dom said.
ESP Motors had been formed by Nonno’s archrival on the Grand Prix track. Moretti Motors had outshone ESP at the time. One thing that had been in Lorenzo’s favor was the fact that he had the Midas touch when it came to business. “What about the design?”
“I might be paranoid—”
Marco snorted. His brother wrote the book on paranoid when it came to guarding business secrets. “Might be?”
“Whatever. But he mentioned something that is on the new Vallerio model. And no one outside of you, me, Antonio and our R & D team has seen that.”
“You don’t have to stay for the race if you want to go back to Milan and do some more research,” Marco said.
“I want to. I think you race better when Tony and I are here.”
“I agree. I like to remind you both that I’m faster than either of you can ever hope to be.”
Dom punched him in the arm. “Speed isn’t the only thing that matters.”
“In our world it is.”
“True enough. Speaking of speed, did you get the e-mail I sent about the new marketing campaign?”
“Yes. I like it. I think it’ll be just what we need to launch the new Vallerio.”
“I agree.”
Marco thought for a moment. “Is it possible that someone could have figured out what we were doing by studying the cars? I’m using similar technology in my race car this season.”
“I’ll know more after I go back to the Milan office.”
Marco looked at his brother and thought of how hard they’d all worked to distance themselves from the fiasco that had been Moretti Motors under his father’s management. At times like this, Marco felt like no matter what they did, they were always going to be struggling.
The only times he didn’t feel that way were when he was on the track…and when he’d slept with Virginia. That night, he’d realized he could find peace in a woman’s arms.
Virginia landed in Barcelona on Saturday morning. Last week, when her period had started, she’d had a genuine excuse to return to Marco. Clearly their one night of passion hadn’t born fruit. She had been happy, because she’d missed Marco. And she knew that was a problem. What if her actions just perpetuated the curse on both families?
The truth was, she didn’t care. Every night she’d been away from Marco, she’d dreamed of him, rich and vivid images of the two of them together.
And not just making love.
She’d had strong visions of her and Marco with children dancing around them.
She collected her luggage and found the car she’d hired to take her to the hotel. She wished her grandmother was still alive so she could ask her about the curse she’d put on Lorenzo.
But she had no one. There had been a bit of sadness laced in the knowledge that she wasn’t pregnant. For the first time, she understood why her mother had been so happy to have her. A child meant the end to the loneliness that seemed to haunt each generation of Festa women.
She meant to end that loneliness.
“Welcome to Barcelona,” the liveried doorman at the Duquesa de Cardona Hotel said.
She’d chosen a luxury boutique hotel in the heart of Barcelona’s Gothic district. She smiled at the doorman as she exited the cab and walked into the hotel. It was odd to be traveling so much, yet at the same time, she felt like she was finally alive.
All those solitary years of staying at home on Long Island, going to school as a child and young woman and then teaching—it had been a life of nothing but routines; and now she had a mission. Something to fill her days. She felt alive for the very first time.
She had no idea how to contact Marco and knew she’d have to spend the day by herself until the race tomorrow. She wasn’t even sure if she’d be able to get close enough to see him and had no idea what she’d say to him when she did get there.
She checked into her room and changed her clothes. She thought about hanging out in her room, but she didn’t like the thought of waiting around for Sunday.
She knew that changing her life this year was about more than breaking the curse. She needed to find a way to be the woman she’d always dreamed of being. If she was going to be a mother, she didn’t want to be like her own mother had been, that solitary figure who rarely smiled and never left their small house. She needed to get out and experience life.
She went to the F1 track and watched the practice session, making sure to stay out of Marco’s sight, but getting as close as she could to him.
He looked thinner than he had been in Melbourne, but he smiled for his fans and signed autographs. She started to approach, but there was no way to get through the throng of people. And then Marco waved to the crowd and turned away.
She watched him until he disappeared into the garage area, and then she left the track. In her year of figuring out how to get close to Marco, she’d gone online to the F1 message boards and made friends with a lot of people. Using those contacts, she’d been able to get into the exclusive parties after the racing events. Even the VIP areas.
She took a cab to the Picasso Museum, because the thought of going back to her hotel room was unbearable. She strolled through the museum and lingered in front of a Picasso painting titled The Embrace, which the artist had completed in 1900. It struck Virginia how little couples had changed over time. Nothing was more soothing than standing together wrapped in each other’s arms.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
She glanced at the woman who’d spoken. She was tall and slender and very beautiful.
“Very.”
“I love Picasso’s work, before he started doing the abstract stuff.”
“Me, too. He reminds me a little of Pissaro in some of his early work.”
“I’m not that familiar with Pissaro. Just Picasso. Are you in town for the race?”
“Yes. How did you know?”
“I saw you at the party in Melbourne. My boyfriend is Keke Heckler.”
“He’s on the same team as Marco Moretti.” Virginia didn’t know if Marco had mentioned her after their night together. She realized that she hoped he hadn’t. She didn’t really want anyone to know about what had happened between them, especially since she had no idea how he’d felt the next morning.
She’d left while he was sleeping, afraid that if she stayed there in his arms, she’d forget her plans and resolve and just stay with Marco until he tired of her. Leavi
ng like that was something that she suspected her own mother had done with Virginia’s father.
“Yes, he is. We didn’t meet at the party, but I saw you dancing with Marco. I’m Elena Hamilton.”
“I’m Virginia,” she said.
“I have a confession,” Elena said. “I followed you here because I was curious about you.”
Virginia tensed. “Why?”
“Because Marco has been asking about you. Questioning everyone, to see if they know your last name or where you went. Keke said he’s never seen Marco so angry when he thinks no one is looking.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Marco’s like a brother to Keke. And I’ve come to know Marco, as well. He means a lot to me, and I don’t want to see him being used.”
Virginia was glad to hear that. Glad that Marco had good friends who looked out for him. “I’m not using him.”
Elena glared at her. “I don’t believe you. Just know that I’m watching you.”
Virginia nodded as the other woman walked away. It might be harder than she’d thought to have a second night with Marco.
Marco finished the Catalonia Grand Prix in second place, but he didn’t mind not winning this week. Keke had been unstoppable on the track. His friend and teammate had a string of good luck going that stemmed in part from his recent engagement to Elena.
Marco smiled along with everyone else. Dominic was happy, because a win for the Moretti team kept them ahead of Ferrari and Audi, which was really all Dom cared about.
Marco rubbed the back of his neck, realizing he wasn’t as joy-filled as he should be. He needed to get away from Keke and the rest of the crowd.
He started to leave when he saw the familiar brown hair that he’d been searching for at each race since Melbourne. Virginia.
She was here. And he was going to get some damned answers about where she’d been and who she really was.
Fans swarmed around him as he made his way over to her. He didn’t have time for smiles or photos, but he made himself take the time. His popularity was one of the things that was important to the success of Moretti Motors. He signaled Carlos, his security guard.
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