“Tony,” Angelina gasped when he drew on one hard peak with his lips, turning the tip into a pearl.
He wanted more of her and moved lower, his hands caressing every inch of her. He licked her skin, sweeping over her abdomen, navel, and the gentle curve of her hip.
She was a smorgasbord of textures and flavors, soft to the touch, velvety in some areas, feathery silk in others, warm vanilla here, sweet butter there.
He could feel her trembling underneath him, but he wasn’t close enough to her skin yet.
He pulled off his T-shirt.
Angelina sat up to watch him, running her hand along the skin he bared. There was no fear in her eyes. This felt as right to her as it did to him.
The jeans came off and he covered her.
“Yes-sss…” Her content sigh said all that was needed. Skin on skin … how he wanted it, too.
He moved between her legs. When she opened for him, he could only groan his pleasure at the feel of her wet warmth against him.
This time when he lifted up, she protested and held his shoulders. She thought he was leaving her but he only shifted lower to cup her buttocks in his hands.
He held her up to kiss the curls between her legs. Probing the slick petals with his tongue, he gently coaxed her legs apart to settle right there in the heart of her.
Angelina gasped, and tried to close her legs, but he’d already begun to feast, delving ever deeper into her with each stroke of his tongue.
Angelina relaxed her legs and her hands came up to stroke his hair. “Tony, I want…”
She couldn’t lay still while he brought her sweet body to life. She instinctively met every thrust of his tongue. When she came, her legs trembled. He continued his assault with his lips pressed against her until her legs went limp.
“Better now?” He stroked her thighs as he moved up her body. He couldn’t stop touching her.
Her eyes were glazed, her face flushed warm against his lips, as her hand traveled down his abdomen. “Come…”
He could feel her blood humming from the powerful orgasm as he moved over her.
Angelina opened for him and he slid into her until he met her maidenhead. He felt her tight sheath grab him and bit his lip over the painful need to impale her.
“Tony…” she moaned, and he had to give her what she wanted.
With one swift thrust, he rendered the barrier keeping them apart. He was finally where he needed to be.
Angelina gasped, digging her nails into his shoulders.
“I’m sorry, cara.” Pulsing inside of her, he rested on his elbows with teeth clenched, waiting for her to adjust to this intrusion on her tender flesh.
“I’m not.” Angelina relaxed her grip on his shoulders and opened her eyes. She lifted her hips against him. “Is something wrong?”
“No, tesoro. You feel so good. Did I frighten you?”
“You have a determined look, very much like a conqueror. Will you devour me?”
His lips brushed hers. “I thought you’d never ask.”
She licked his lips and his body responded to the invitation. He slid out, teasing her with the tip of him, and he didn’t know how he would leave her.
He wouldn’t think about it now, not when he moved slowly into her, sinking in deep, again and again. Not now, when he was home. Each time he met her womb, he entered an oasis, full of the kind of life he’d never given a second thought to before.
Now it was a mystery he wanted to discover, because it was her mystery. But he would never be satisfied with the answer; this thirst would never be quenched.
He buried his face in the midnight gloss of her hair and surged on, his strokes long and sure, full of greed and every kind of want he’d ever imagined.
When she wrapped her legs around him, he cradled her in his arms and picked up the pace, ramming into her sweetness. He couldn’t get enough of her, just kept driving himself into her, mindless in his need while she writhed underneath him.
She was whimpering with need once more, crying out his name. Her muscles contracted around him, pulling him in and triggering his own release.
“Ah-h, Angel…” He pumped into her until he was spent.
They lay locked together, nuzzling each other’s lips for a time before he moved away from her sleek warmth.
He returned with a warm wet cloth. They stared at each other as he wiped away her virgin’s blood in the silence charged with possibilities. There was not a shred of shyness in her eyes, but a peaceful satisfaction that he wished to always see there.
“We should have done this long ago, mon cher,” Angelina whispered in French.
“Angel?”
But she’d fallen into a sated sleep. Tonight, the fine lines between her alleged crime, and what they had become to one another were irreparably blurred.
* * * *
He woke first, underneath her.
Pushing hair back off her face, he just picked up where he had left off last night and started kissing her.
“Um-mm, we’re late, right?” Her husky whisper made him want to do things to her that they didn’t have time for. She propped her arms up against his chest and gave him a sleepy smile.
“Very late, ma petite.” He pulled the sheet down and lifted an eyebrow at the beautiful fullness pressing against his chest. She was a creamy contrast to his sun-warmed olive skin.
“I didn’t know that you speak French.”
“Almost as well as you do.”
She quirked her lips. So damn sexy. “And how do you know what my French sounds like?”
“Last night you said, ‘We should have done this long ago, mon cher.’ I think you were talking in your sleep. You do that often?”
“No.”
“Good.”
She jabbed him in the chest. “I usually chat in French with my mum. I guess I really miss her.” She bent to his lips.
When she lifted up and saw the alarm clock on the night table, she sighed. “We definitely missed the nine o’clock class.”
He held her by the waist and she settled into what was apparently one of her favorite positions among those he’d taught her last night.
“And it feels like we’re going to miss the next one.” Her tiger’s eyes tilted up at the ends, shining through the dark shadows of her hair draped around them.
“It feels like it,” he sighed, as her hips rocked in hypnotic motion.
Chapter Six
From his bedroom window, Falcon watched as Angelina got into a taxi.
She was on the way to lunch with friends, and promised to be back before he returned home from the dental appointment that he didn’t have. That gave him some time to look around her apartment.
What he found under Angelina’s bed kept him busy for a while. There was a box labeled ‘Giovanni Buono.’ Inside were scrapbooks and memorabilia of the violinist’s career.
He found a clipping from a London newspaper dated two years ago detailing the virtuoso’s career. A picture of him with piercing black eyes showed a performance with the Stradivarius. One of the older scrapbooks contained pictures of the maestro’s much younger days, touring Italy under the name Giovanni Natale.
Angelina told him the maestro was her teacher, but he was really her father. She had lied to him, and that meant she had something to hide.
Did she know the kind of trouble she was in?
The Stradivarius was stolen here in Italy ten years ago. Why would Angelina bring the violin back here to play in the symphony? It didn’t make sense. She would have been too young to have anything to do with the violin’s theft.
Maybe she didn’t know how her father had acquired it? And why had the maestro changed his name to Natale after moving to England?
Falcon had a feeling that Giovanni had been involved in much more than composing and touring in symphonies. The Organization wasn’t the only group tracking the Strad. There were people unknown to him who were after it, and Angelina was in danger.
Falcon called Rome. “She do
esn’t know anything about the violin. She isn’t a thief, Granger. It was her teacher, Giovanni Natale.”
“You have an address?”
“He died in June, but he had a flat in London.” He gave Granger the address in Piccadilly. “I want to know everything about him. How long he was in England, if he had any family. And check the name Giovanni Buono while you’re at it.”
Angelina was already under suspicion and the fact that she bore the surname of Natale would bring Darien, the Organization’s legal gavel, down on her swift and sure, with almost immediate sentencing. He wanted to know everything about her before he gave up her name.
“I’ll have it for you by tomorrow night.”
“And there’s a blue Fiat that’s been following us around.” After he gave Granger the license plate number, he disconnected the call.
He never saw the driver’s face through the tinted windows. He was hoping whoever it was would try to gain entrance to Angelina’s apartment. But since the football game last month when the mute tried to take her, no one had come for her or the violin. They knew he was with her and kept their distance.
They would never enter the apartment unannounced. The sensors he had placed on the doors and windows would trigger an alarm. But he wished they would come so he could at least catch them on camera, if he couldn’t get his hands on them first.
I’m done.
The usually cool, calm Falcon was no more. There was an unfathomable rage simmering in him now, the dangerous kind that had potential to cause costly mistakes, the kind he had always avoided with clear calculation.
He was thirty years old and had never been in love, but sweet Angelina had him down for the count. They needed answers on the Strad but if anyone tried to hurt her, he would kill them now.
And damn the consequences.
* * * *
The end of September did not bring a change in forecast to Naples. It was as hot as Tony and as beautiful as he made her feel.
Angelina was on her way to her aunt and uncle’s restaurant il Ducato. Zio and Aunt Maria were concerned that she wasn’t having any fun in Italy, but she could not tell them about the tall, dark Italian warrior who had made her summer.
There was a thrill in keeping Tony a secret from her family. He was something that was truly hers and no one else’s. She would tell Zio and Aunt Maria about all the wonderful places she and Tony visited and just say she had met some friends at the Conservatory. From the look of her, they would know she’d been having the time of her life. She paid the cab driver and got out in front of il Ducato.
“Signorina Natale?”
The man was clean-shaven and yet looked no tamer than a grizzly bear. His eyes were as black and shiny as his hair, which was clubbed back on the nape of his neck. Pierced earlobes were empty, an interesting touch to the professional dark suit.
“Yes?”
“I am Detective Luciano Biagi.” The man flashed a badge at her. “I would like to talk to you.”
She could understand him well enough, but his Italian was so thick that the guttural inflections in his tone sounded obscene. “What about?”
“Your recent troubles.”
Oh yes, the ongoing investigation on my attacker. In Tony’s arms, she had almost forgotten that the police said they would alert them to any developments in the case. But she didn’t recognize this brawny detective.
“Please, may we talk in here?” The detective was looking over her shoulder.
They were standing in front of the glass doors of il Ducato and there were people trying to get past them.
“Of course,” Angelina led the way, walking over to a small table with two chairs by the unoccupied headwaiter’s desk in the quiet waiting area. They would be able to talk in here. It was early afternoon and the crowd was light. However, in several hours the hostess would be juggling ringing phones for dinner reservations.
Detective Biagi held her chair out and she sat down. He slid her and the chair up to the table as if tucking her in for a nap. His hand brushed her shoulder when he came around to take the chair opposite hers.
Angelina drew her eyes away from the hairy hand. His gold cufflinks had a design etched on them. She glimpsed a bit of red on the gold that seemed familiar before he took his hands off the table. His next words startled the thought right out of her mind.
“Signorina Natale, I would like to ask you some questions about a friend of yours. You know him as Antonio Russo.”
She caught her jaw before it dropped onto the table. That was not what she’d expected to discuss with him. “Go on.”
“He is a thief, Signorina, and I believe you are in danger.”
Angelina opened her mouth to speak, but coherent thought fled.
“Artifacts, antiques and gems are his specialty, though more recently he has taken an interest in priceless instruments. In fact, there are several very valuable pieces of equipment missing from the Naples Music Conservatory. We believe it is his work.”
“You are wrong,” Angelina whispered. “Not Tony. He would not do these things.”
The detective leaned across the table, almost in her face, his obsidian gaze piercing the fog of her brain like two pinpoints of light. “You do know that Antonio Russo is not his real name, don’t you?”
“He would not lie to me.”
“How long have you known him?”
She fingered the gold bangle her father had created for her. A birthday gift studded with canary yellow diamonds that usually made her feel special every time she wore it. Except this time.
“I see.” The detective sat back in his chair and sighed with a sympathetic smile. “I regret that I am too late. Of course, so young and beautiful, you are just as tempting to him as the Stradivarius.”
Angelina stood. “No! He saved it! Someone tried to take it from me and he scared them away. Where were you when I needed the polizia?”
Detective Biagi inclined his head in apology. “Signorina Natale, please lower your voice, and sit. Please.”
She almost turned and walked away, but the glint of determination in the detective’s eyes made her sit down. He had more to say, and despite herself, she wanted to hear it. She perched on the edge of the chair to let him know his time was limited.
His voice lowered to a conspiratorial tone. “I can protect you. But first, you must tell me everything you know about him.”
She folded her arms across her chest in answer.
He nodded. “So, he saved your violin. And now he is never very far from it. How convenient to happen upon a beautiful woman in distress just in the nick of time. And where is this thief now, the one he saved you from? Maybe his partner, never seen again because he is no longer needed?”
She remembered how Tony took the earring she had wrenched out of her attacker’s ear. Was it possible that he took the evidence to shield his accomplice? She shook her head, pushing away her doubt.
“If he were a thief, why did he bring me to the station to speak with the police?” When the detective regarded her in silence, she added, “I do not remember seeing you there that day.”
“I was unavailable at the time, but it is so significant to discover him in our midst that I had to take over the investigation. He is wanted in several countries, Signorina.”
The detective’s words stunned her into silence, but he wasn’t finished.
“When your father gave you that violin, did he tell you that someone was after it? Giovanni knew this.”
He thinks the Maestro is my father?
“The man you know as Antonio Russo has been searching for a violin just like that to add to his—how shall I say it—collection?”
When she didn’t answer, the detective stood. “Forgive me,” he said, then took her hand and effortlessly lifted her out of the chair.
For a moment, she expected him to lift her across his shoulder and storm off to his cave. Although she would have described someone like him as a big oaf, he wasn’t. For such a large man, his movements wer
e too quiet, too controlled, and she felt the danger of him.
“Forgive my blunt words. I would hate for you to become another statistic. I see you have opened your heart to him, Signorina Natale.” His lips brushed her hand before she could pull it away. “But for your own sake keep your eyes open as well.”
They played tug of war with her hand as he held her gaze. “You have the power to send him away. I will be here if you need me.”
Shivering, Angelina stared at the suit jacket stretched taut over the detective’s broad back as he walked out of the restaurant. More than anything, she wanted to do the same. But her aunt and uncle waited, even though lunch was the farthest thing from her mind.
*
“Is it him?”
Luciano watched Angelina Natale exit il Ducato and hail a cab. “He does have a look about him,” Luciano said into the cell phone. He started the Fiat’s engine.
“But you can’t tell if it’s him?” Capo asked. “Don’t you remember?”
“I remember,” Luciano said, and at the boss’s disdainful snort, added, “His face, it is changeable. He could be from anywhere.”
Luciano had been watching Angelina Natale and her boyfriend for days. They arrived together at the Conservatory in the morning, and left to have dinner in one of the bistros nearby in the evenings. The guy never left her alone for one minute. Until today, the first time Luciano saw her leave the apartment without her bodyguard.
“Ah-h-h,” Capo said. That exasperated sigh did not bode well. “And who is he?”
“He’s her boyfriend.” Luciano turned left at the light, three cars behind the taxi. She was going back to the apartment.
“This, I know.” The leaden tone in Capo’s response spurred him to elaborate.
“They live together. Ugo wrote a note. It’s the same guy that stopped him from getting the Stradivarius that night in the Roman district.”
“Idiota, what is his name?”
“We got nothing on the guy, Capo. Nobody knows him.” The only thing he knew for sure was that Antonio Russo wasn’t his real name.
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