His mouth was at her throat, his lips measuring the race of her pulse in its hollow, savoring the salty sweetness of her sun-warmed skin. Every muscle in his body had hardened; he could feel his erection swelling, swelling, swelling until it was almost painful.
His lips angled over hers. Tasting. Teasing. Her lips parted, letting him in. The taste of her made him groan. She was making little sounds, moans, whispers, and now she was arching against him, fingers digging into the hard muscles of his shoulders as her legs rose and closed around his hips. She rocked against him, her pelvis grinding against his swollen flesh, and he practically tore open her jacket, pushed up her T-shirt, found her braless, her breasts waiting for his lips, his teeth, and she gave a sharp cry, flung her head back, and his heart swelled with pleasure when he realized that she had come from that, just that, his mouth on her nipples.
“Nicolo.” Her voice broke. She reached for him, cupped her hand over the denim that covered his straining flesh. Nick closed his eyes, let the feel of her touch send a shock wave through him and then, with his last bit of sanity, he took her hand from him, caught her other hand and held both between them, against his chest.
“No,” she said in a fierce whisper, “no, don’t stop! Nicolo, per favore, io voglio—io voglio—”
He kissed her. Swallowed her cries when what she wanted was what he had wanted all along, to bury himself deep, deep inside her.
But not here.
He wanted to be with her in a high-ceilinged room. To undress her as slowly as he could manage and still survive. To carry her to a bed covered in ivory linen, lay her down on it, see her golden hair loose against the pillow.
He wanted to watch her face as he touched her, explored her, all of her with his lips, his tongue, his hands.
He told her those things and watched her eyes blur.
“Tonight,” she said brokenly, and he smiled.
“Yes, sweetheart. Tonight, we’ll be lost in each other’s arms.”
“But not here. Not at the villa…”
“No.” He kissed her again, softly, his mouth lingering against hers. “Not the villa, princess. I’ll get us a place. The right place. I promise.”
He rose to his feet, held out his hand. She took it and he drew her up beside him.
“We’ll drive to Florence. Right now. And…” He looked at her. She was shaking her head. “What?”
“I forgot, Nicolo. The dinner.”
“To hell with…” One glance at her face and he knew that was the wrong answer. “There’s no way out of it, huh?”
“I planned it.” She blushed. “It is what I do, you see? I represent people, bring them together, determine who will enjoy the company of whom. I know it is not an important occupation but—”
Nick silenced her with a kiss.
“If you do it, it’s important.” He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed her fingertips. “We can wait, sweetheart. Didn’t some wag once say that anticipation makes the heart grow fonder?”
Alessia wrinkled her brow. “Wag? You mean, as a dog moves its tail?”
He smiled. “That, too.”
“I do not understand. Besides, it is absence that makes the heart grow fonder, not anticipation.”
Nick drew her closer, cupped her bottom, heard her sweet gasp as she felt his hardness against her.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice roughening, “but anticipation has its uses.”
Alessia rose to him, her arms around his neck. She kissed him, touched the velvet tip of her tongue to his.
“Sì,” she whispered, and by the time they broke apart, it struck him as a minor miracle they hadn’t turned into a column of flame.
CHAPTER EIGHT
ALESSIA had been to endless dinner parties, first as the daughter of a wealthy Florentine prince and in the last several years, as an up-and-coming associate at a publicity firm.
Some parties were dull. Some were interesting. The ones that involved her sometimes egotistically-challenged clients, a polite way of thinking of ones who were unsophisticated, were the most difficult.
She had to seem to be having fun even as she kept a sharp eye on everything.
Whatever kind of party it was, she’d long ago perfected the art of wearing a polite mask. She smiled, moved from group to group, carried on conversations about anything from art to Antarctica and did it all on autopilot.
And she was never nervous.
None of that applied tonight.
She was not just nervous, she was—there was no other word for it—a wreck.
Dressed and ready an hour early, staring at the clock in her bedroom, watching the minute hand drag around the dial didn’t help and finally she gave up and headed downstairs.
Surely, there were things she could find in the drawing room, the dining room, to keep her busy.
But she couldn’t.
Her father’s household staff was well-trained, and she had arranged for her own coordinator to supervise things.
The drawing room was filled with light from half a dozen magnificent chandeliers; gold-rimmed champagne flutes and wine goblets that had been in the family for almost two centuries glittered on the enormous sideboard alongside an array of bottles that ranged from Cristal champagne to vintage Brunello di Montalcino, the incredibly expensive red wine for which the area was known.
The dining room table, set for twelve, was a masterwork of floral centerpieces, antique silver candelabra, her great-great-grandmother’s china and sterling flatware that dated to the eighteenth century.
Alessia straightened a plate here, moved a fork there but the truth was, there was nothing for her to do….
Nothing except finally admit that her nerves had nothing to do with this dinner party and everything to do with Nicolo.
She had not seen him for hours.
They’d driven back to the villa from the hillside in silence. She hadn’t known what to expect. Would he try to take her in his arms again? She was not ready for that. In fact, by the time they’d returned, she was stunned at what she’d said to him about wanting to be with him tonight and convinced she was not ready for anything to happen between them, now or ever.
The drive back had given her time to think.
What am I doing? she had thought.
Nothing sensible, that was certain.
Why would a logical woman even consider getting involved with a man she didn’t know or want to know? Nicolo Orsini wore the right clothes and said the right things but that didn’t change what he was.
Or what she became in his arms.
She had turned into someone else on that hillside, losing her sense of self, of decorum, of—of morality. To have kissed him with wild abandon, to have begged him, Dio, begged him to take her…
All those thoughts had whirled through her head as they drove to the villa, but when they reached it, Nicolo had been the perfect gentleman. He’d helped her from the Massif, brought her hand to his mouth and lightly brushed a kiss over her knuckles.
Then he’d gone to his rooms and she had gone to hers. She had not seen him since, which was not what she’d anticipated. Despite their agreement that he would not make love to her in the Antoninni villa, she’d expected him to want to take her to his rooms, or to hers.
In fact, for the next couple of hours, each time she’d heard a footstep in the hall she’d felt her heart race, her mouth go dry because that footstep might be his, because she’d thought he might have been coming to her, coming for her to complete what they had started under that tree.
Just the thought had been enough to start her trembling….
As she was trembling now.
Alessia went to the mahogany bar in the drawing room and poured herself a glass of wine.
The porcelain mantel clock softly ticked away the minutes. Soon, Nicolo would come through the doorway. She had learned enough about him to know that he was a man who understood the unwritten rules of business, and this was a business dinner. She had to remember that.
/> There was nothing of a social nature to it.
He would be on time. And she would tell him that what had almost happened today had been a mistake.
Her hand shook. Carefully, she set the glass on a small table. It would not do for the Princess Antoninni to greet her guests with wine stains on her gown.
Her gown.
Another mistake. Why had she let her friend, Gina, convince her to wear it? It was beautiful, yes, the most beautiful gown her friend, an up-and-coming young designer, had ever made.
But it was wrong for this occasion.
Last week, over a pick-up meal of cheese and salad in Gina’s Roman atelier, she’d told her friend about the dinner party she had to preside over in honor of an American investor of her father’s acquaintance.
“An American investor,” Gina had said brightly. “Is he young and good-looking?”
“For all I know, he looks like an ape,” Alessia had said glumly.
“But he’s filthy rich?”
“Filthy, anyway.”
Gina had laughed, hurried to a rack filled with clothes and yanked a gown from it.
“Ta-da,” she’d said dramatically. “I have the perfect creation for you to wear. Take a look at this.”
“This” was a stunning column of gold, embellished with tiny crystal paillettes.
“This man doesn’t deserve anything so elegant,” Alessia had said, but Gina had insisted she try it on.
“I told you,” she’d said triumphantly, once Alessia had it on. “It is absolutely perfect.”
Perfectly spectacular, Alessia had thought, looking at herself in the mirror. The cut of the halter-necked gown was deceptively simple—but the back of it dipped to the base of her spine and when she took a step, a slit in the skirt revealed a glimpse of leg from ankle to thigh.
Alessia had laughed.
“My job is to convince this man to give my father a lot of money, not seduce him.”
“You’ll dazzle him! He’ll agree to anything. Between your title, that villa and this gown, you’ll have him at your feet.” Gina had wrinkled her nose. “Look, you don’t like this guy and you haven’t even met him. Think of what it’ll be like to have him groveling.”
It would be wonderful, Alessia had thought with sudden clarity.
She had taken the gown. And the stiletto-heeled gold sandals that went with it.
“The only thing you’ll have to add is attitude,” Gina had said with a wink, “but, hey, if you think like a princess, you won’t have any trouble.”
They’d both laughed, though Alessia could not imagine laughing now.
She picked up the glass again.
Very well.
She could, indeed, conjure up that regal attitude Gina had joked about. She would be polite but distant, pleasant but cool. And when the evening ended, she would tell this arrogant man that she had made a mistake on that hillside….
“Good evening, princess.”
Alessia spun toward that slightly rough voice and her heart leaped into her throat.
“Nicolo,” she said…and knew instantly that everything she’d just told herself was a lie.
She had not made a mistake this afternoon.
She wanted Nicolo Orsini to make love to her, and to hell with right and wrong.
She’d wanted him since he’d taken her in his arms as she wept so foolishly by the side of the road, she wanted him now, and nothing else mattered. He was everything she had ever let herself dream of in the darkest recesses of the night, and she was not going to walk away from what would surely never come into her life again.
“You are,” he said softly, “incredibly beautiful.”
She smiled. So was he. The leanly muscled body. The wide shoulders and long legs. The hard, angel-of-darkness face. The way he was looking at her.
“Thank you.” She touched the tip of her tongue to her suddenly dry lips. “You look—you look very elegant in that tux.”
It was an understatement of amazing proportions. He looked as if he’d just stepped out of a Ralph Lauren advertisement.
He smiled back at her. “I’m glad I packed it. A man could wear nothing else for an evening with a woman who looks the way you do tonight.”
“It’s the gown.” Deliberately, as aware of him as if he were a lion and she were the female he was stalking, she turned in a little circle, just slowly enough to be sure he saw the low dip of the gown at her spine and the long, exposed length of her leg. “Do you like it?”
She watched his eyes narrow under his dark lashes, saw the tic of muscle in his jaw. Her entire body responded, pulse rocketing, skin flushing, bones threatening to turn to water. And when he started toward her, it was all she could do not to fly into his arms.
Kiss me, she thought, kiss me now!
Forget the carefully planned dinner, the guests, the cars even now pulling into the driveway, their headlights illuminating the drawing room.
But he didn’t kiss her. He didn’t touch her. He spoke to her, instead, and his words were more intimate than any caress.
“You’re killing me,” he said in a rough whisper.
Her heartbeat stuttered. “Am I?”
“You know damned well you are.” He came even closer, so close she could feel the heat emanating from him, and ran a fingertip over her lips. “How am I going to keep my hands off you tonight?”
Alessia took a long breath.
“Don’t keep them off me,” she said, her voice trembling.
And then the butler entered the room and announced the arrival of the first guest.
The evening was never going to end.
Either that, or she was going to go up in flames before it did.
Her guests—her father’s guests—were a polished, sophisticated group. Alessia knew he’d invited them to impress a potential investor. When he’d shown the guest list to her, she, who never gave a damn about impressing anyone, had coolly hoped for the same thing.
Better still, she’d hoped the American would be intimidated.
That was before she’d met Nicolo.
She knew now that no one and nothing would ever impress or intimidate him. Just as at the meeting earlier in the day, he was completely at ease, comfortable carrying on conversations about theater and travel and politics in English and in passable Italian.
Actually, it was he who directed conversations because, by the second course, her father’s aristocratic and powerful cronies, and especially their ladies, were transfixed by the handsome, intelligent, interesting stranger seated to her right.
A good thing, too, because Alessia had virtually lost her ability to speak.
The reason?
Even as the guest of honor talked pleasantly with the others, even as he ate the elegant meal she had carefully organized, sipped the vintage Antoninni wines she had selected—
Even as he behaved with impeccable decorum—
Even then, he was touching her.
Nobody knew. Nobody saw. It was a hot, hidden secret shared only by the two of them—and it was the most exciting experience she could ever have imagined.
It had started back in the drawing room, after drinks were poured and hors d’oeuvres nibbled. A brush of his shoulder. A slide of his hand on her bare arm.
His hand placed on her back when dinner was announced.
It was a simple gesture, typical of most men escorting a woman to the table.
“Princess,” Nicolo had said politely.
And spread his palm over her back.
Over her naked skin.
His warm, slightly calloused hand.
She’d caught her breath, looked up at him, saw his polite smile…saw the flame burning bright in his eyes.
In the dining room, he’d drawn her chair back from the table, his hand still on her. But as she took her seat, his fingers had dipped beneath the gold silk at the base of her spine in a swift, hot caress.
“Thank you,” she’d said and he’d said, “You’re very welcome, principessa,”
and she’d known, without question, that if he’d chosen that moment to lift her into his arms and carry her away, she’d have welcomed him doing it.
By now, he had touched her a dozen times.
His arm brushing hers when he turned his attention to another guest. His fingers, slipping against hers when she passed him the salt cellar.
But the game changed.
As the third course was served, she felt his hand on her leg.
A moan rose in her throat. She bit it back and did what she could to smile brightly at the mayor, seated at the other end of the table, to pretend she knew what he was saying, but how could she? How could she when all she could think of was Nicolo’s touch, his caress, the heat of his palm on her knee? Her thigh.
He was driving her wild.
And she loved it.
Dio, what was happening to her? She, the soul of propriety, the woman so steeped in the rules of etiquette that her employer always turned to her if questions arose.
She was hanging on to her sanity by a thread, and doing even that was becoming increasingly difficult. The room was spinning, and she knew it was not the wine. She had limited herself to the one glass before dinner and she had hardly touched the one that stood by her plate now.
Still, the room was spinning. She was breathing faster. She was hot, even though she knew the room itself was not.
Nicolo’s hand moved. Caressed. His touch was… It was wicked magic. Rough. Silken. Warm.
She put her hand in her lap. Closed it over his. To stop him. Of course, to stop him… Or perhaps just so he would do this, yes, trace his thumb across her palm, fold his fingers through hers, move his hand and hers higher on her thigh…
“Is that not right, my dear?” a man two seats away said, smiling at her.
She stared at him. She could not put a name to the aristocratic face. He was—yes. He was an art dealer. She’d met him possibly a dozen times but his name had flown from her head. As for answering his question… How could she, when she had no idea what it meant?
I am, she thought with great clarity, brain dead.
The thought made her laugh. Apparently, it was the right thing to do because the others laughed, too.
“It’s true, then,” Nicolo said smoothly. “You really did bid on a Renoir at an auction at Signore Russo’s gallery when you were seven years old?”
Nicolo: The Powerful Sicilian Page 9