‘You’re always dating.’
‘Yes.’
‘So what’s the difference?’ Ariana frowned. ‘I might be innocent in the bedroom, but I am not stupid, Gian...’
‘I never said you were.’
‘I’m not asking for love. I don’t want lies to appease and promises that you won’t keep,’ Ariana said. ‘I’m all too familiar with them, but I do want you to make love to me.’
‘Ariana—’
‘No,’ she broke in, and they argued in loud Italian all the way home. ‘Don’t make me ashamed for admitting it. I’m twenty-five and a virgin. I don’t want to be married, Gian. Do you not think my mother has endless suitors in mind for me? I can’t have a casual relationship or it will be a kiss and tell. You know that...’
He looked at the spoilt, immature Ariana speaking like the woman she was.
‘Surely there have been kisses...?’
‘Yes,’ she admitted, ‘plastic kisses from plastic men, but your kiss nearly made me come.’
He laughed because she fascinated him.
Like a stunning portrait, like a song you had to pause just to go back and listen to the lyrics again.
He loved how she stated her case.
They argued all the way to the swish apartment block where she lived. ‘I get that I’m not as experienced or as worldly as Svetlana...’
‘Stop,’ Gian said. ‘Just stop right there. Why would you sign up for inevitable hurt, Ariana?’ Gian asked. ‘You know it’ll go public, and you know your family will find out, and I know that I’ll end things...’
‘How?’ Ariana asked. She wasn’t begging or persuading, more genuinely perplexed. ‘How do you know?’
‘Because I never want to get too close. I date women who understand from the get-go that we’ll never progress further than we did on the very first night.’
‘So I would get no more than a kiss and a cone of hot chestnuts,’ she teased. ‘Well, rest assured, you wouldn’t have to worry about dumping me, Gian. I would grow bored with you very quickly.’
He didn’t smile at her joke and he would not relent, but rather than face being alone she turned off the voices in her head and tried to argue with a kiss. She put her arms around his neck and pressed her mouth to his, but there was no longer solace there for his was pressed closed and unyielding, and she sobbed as he pulled his head back.
‘Go in!’ he warned her.
‘Please, Gian, I don’t want to be lonely tonight.’
But when he remained silent, Ariana got the message. He did not want her, so she scrabbled around for her dignity. ‘Thank you for seeing me to my door.’
‘Get some sleep.’ Gian said.
‘Oh, please,’ Ariana scoffed as she huffed off. ‘As if that’s going to happen.’
He watched her leave, and by honouring Rafael he felt like he’d failed her. ‘Ariana...’ Gian called out, and it troubled him how quickly she turned and was back at his side.
He would not sleep with her, no matter how much they both wanted it.
He would do the right thing by Rafael and Ariana.
‘I’ll come in, but I’m taking the sofa.’ She nodded, both regret and relief flooding through her as he spoke on. ‘You don’t have to be alone tonight.’
CHAPTER SIX
THEY PASSED THE dozing doorman and took the elevator, although Gian stood like a security guard to the side of her, rather than like a man who had almost kissed her to orgasm.
She was all dishevelled in her head as they stepped into her apartment. ‘Thankfully,’ Ariana said as she closed the drapes, ‘it was serviced while I was away, or we would be knee-deep in...’ Her voice trailed off.
Knee-deep in what? Gian wanted to ask, for there was no real evidence of her here. He could be walking into any well-heeled woman’s apartment in Rome—and Gian had walked into many—and the décor would be much the same. It was all very tasteful with plump sofas and modern prints, yet it was rather like a show home and there was barely a hint of Ariana. Even her bookshelves offered no real clues, for there were a few classics on the shelves as well as elegant coffee table books. There were at least some photos up, but even they seemed carefully chosen to show, so to speak, only her best side.
‘Do you want a drink?’ Ariana offered.
‘No, thank you.’
Now that she had him here, Ariana didn’t quite know what to do with him. It was, she thought, a bit like stealing a bear from the zoo, making it your mission to get him home and then...
‘I’ll show you around,’ she offered, ‘where you’re sleeping. Given that you’d rather it wasn’t with me.’
‘I don’t need a tour,’ Gian responded. ‘I will stay here.’ He pointed to the sofa.
‘I do have a guest room.’
‘I’m not here to relax.’
‘You are such a cold comfort.’
‘Better than no comfort at all. I do have some scruples, Ariana. I am not going to make love to you on the night of your father’s funeral when you are upset and not thinking straight.’
‘Oh, believe me, I am thinking straight. Life is short, Gian, life is for living, for loving.’
‘Then you’ve come to the wrong man because, as I’ve repeatedly said, I don’t do love.’
She wanted to stamp her feet. She knew she was being a bit of a diva but she was beyond caring.
When Ariana wanted something, she wanted it now, and when she’d made up her mind...well, it was made up.
‘Can you unzip my dress, please?’ Ariana lifted her hair and stood with her back to him, waiting for the teeniest indicator—a run of his finger, a lingering palm, him holding his breath—as he found the little clasp at the top of the velvet dress and undid it. Yet Gian was a master of self-control and without lingering he tugged the zip down so that her back and the lacy straps of her black bra were exposed.
‘There,’ he said, with all the excitement of an accountant relocating a decimal point.
She turned around and her dress slipped down, exposing her shoulders and décolletage, but he looked straight into her glittering eyes and smothered a yawn. ‘It’s been a long day,’ Gian said. ‘Perhaps you should go to bed.’
‘So much for the playboy of Rome,’ she sneered as she headed for her room, embarrassed that he clearly did not want her.
No wonder, Ariana thought as she stood in the bathroom and looked at her blotchy tear-streaked face.
She cleansed her skin and then ran a brush listlessly through her hair. She pulled on some shorts and a T-shirt and then climbed into bed. Sulking, she pulled the covers up to her chin.
‘Do you want milk or something?’ Gian called.
‘I’m not ten!’ she shouted through the darkness. It was worse having him here like this than being alone. Except, as she lay in the dark, Ariana knew that wasn’t strictly true. She loathed the dark and the night, especially since her father died, and now it did not seem quite as dark and the place not quite so lonely.
In fact, there was comfort just knowing that Gian was near.
Finally, whatever it was that had possessed her, that had had her angrily demanding sex, left her.
Oh, Papà!
Gian listened to her cry, and knew that for once it was not for attention. Though it killed him not to go to her, Gian knew they were necessary tears.
He opened the drapes and looked for something to read. Some might call it snooping, but really he was looking for somewhere to charge his phone when a cupboard fell open and he could see that this was where Ariana had been hiding. It was rather chaotic and piled high with photos, wads and wads of them, and dated boxes too. Ah, so she must have been knee-deep in photos, Gian realised, trying to choose some favourites for the funeral montage. As well as that, there were fashion magazines and blockbusters and recipe books...
An awful lot of
them!
Gian selected one and tried to block out her tears by reading. He just stared at the method for tempering white chocolate until finally she fell into silence.
He was reading how to make cannelloni when he heard her again.
It was almost hourly, like some tragic cuckoo clock, but Gian kept the door between them closed for he would not sleep with her on the night of her father’s funeral. Surely only foolish decisions were made then...
Gian was completely matter-of-fact about sex. To him it was as necessary as breathing. Perhaps it was an exaggeration, but he felt he would not have lived to the age of twenty-five without the escape of it, and he knew he could give her that, but only when her head was clear.
To know she trusted him was significant, for the thought of her misplacing her trust in someone else left him cold.
He watched the black sky turn to a steel grey and, even though Gian knew his logic was flawed, when the silver mist of a new day dawned and he heard her little cry, Gian went through and sat on the bed.
Ariana was far from a temptress at dawn. She covered her face with one hand as he came in, and little bits of last night played like taunting movies.
‘Did I make a complete fool of myself?’ she asked in a pained voice.
‘Of course not,’ he said magnanimously, then teased her with a slow smile. ‘You just pleaded with me to make love to you.’
‘Perhaps it was the cognac,’ she said hopefully, but they both knew it had been a small sip and that had been back in Luctano. There had been a lot of walking and talking since then and she could hardly blame the chestnuts! ‘I’m sorry for my behaviour. I don’t actually fancy you, Gian.’
‘Really?’
‘Well, sometimes a bit, but then I remind myself that you are just a hunk of good-looking...’ She liked his slow smile. ‘I remind myself how mean you can be...’
‘Mean?’
‘One glass of champagne at my interview!’
He smiled for he thought she hadn’t noticed the absence of a bottle.
‘Ah, that.’
‘A meal at your bar instead of your restaurant...’
‘You make it sound like the local dive.’
‘Perhaps, but even so I deserved five stars last night. Anyway,’ she continued, ‘when I do find myself fancying you, I remind myself how remote you can be and how humourless you are.’
‘Well, it’s good you’ve come to your senses,’ Gian said, ‘especially as I don’t have condoms with me. I tend not to keep them in my funeral suit.’
She stared back and resisted smiling, determined to prove her humourless point.
‘Except we wouldn’t need them.’ He held up a purple foil packet of contraceptive pills. ‘What are these for?’
‘You’ve been snooping.’
‘Not really, I wanted toothpaste. I just wondered what you were doing on the Pill if you’re not sleeping with anyone...’
‘Yet!’
His jaw was set in a grim line. He had this vision of Ariana chasing some bastard who sensed her fragility, yet she was not fragile now. Ariana was looking right at him and there was none of last night’s desperate need for comfort, just the desire that had always been beneath it.
‘So?’ he asked. She looked at the purple Pill packet and was about to lie, as she so often did, and say she was on the Pill for her skin, or so that it made her cycle more predictable, or whatever she would say if her mother found them.
But Gian was certainly not her mother.
And with Gian there was no reason she could see to lie.
‘I went on it because I feel like the only person in the world without a sex life, and when I go away with friends I don’t want them to know I’m the only one...’ She shrugged. ‘Pathetic, huh...’
‘No more pathetic than when I was younger and would have condoms on me, just to have them on me...’
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
They shared a smile in the thin dawn light but then hers wavered. ‘Look, I’m sorry I’ve made things even more awkward between us. I should never have foisted myself on you. I was all a jumble.’ She looked at his suave good looks and then at his chest. His tie was gone and his shirt unbuttoned, though just at the top—enough to see a glimpse of chest hair—but she reminded herself of how empty a vessel his chest was and again tried to salvage some pride. ‘And it’s not as if I enjoyed kissing you last night. In fact, it was like kissing a screen. I felt nothing...’
‘Really?’
The thin morning light disappeared as his face came closer, but she refused to be moved by the brush of his lips and the softness of his mouth, just as he had refused to be moved by hers.
Except his kiss was more refined, more skilled, more measured and she found she could not quite catch her breath as her mouth fought not to relent.
‘Like kissing a screen?’ he checked.
‘Yes,’ she said, and felt the scratch of his chin drag on hers. As his fingers came to her jaw, his tongue slipped in, and she absolutely refused to moan at the bliss. In fact, she held her mouth slack as his tongue moved in and out. He tasted divine, all minty and fresh, but there was nothing clean about his kiss—it was filthy, in fact. Thorough, probing and potent with skill, his tongue felt like it ran a wire straight down between her legs and she bunched her hands into fists rather than reach for his head.
‘Still nothing?’ he checked, and now his hand was stroking her breast through her top and Ariana was sure that if she hadn’t been lying down she might have fainted.
‘Nothing,’ she lied.
‘Do you want me to stop?’
‘No.’
‘Do you understand it is just this once?’
‘Oh, stop with the lectures,’ she said, as his fingers slid inside her top. ‘I accept the terms and conditions...’
He laughed.
Gian actually laughed. Not that she saw it, for he was pulling her T-shirt over her head, and Ariana was loose limbed and compliant and letting him.
‘Please get naked,’ she said. ‘I want to see you.’
‘For a virgin, you certainly know how to provoke me,’ Gian commented as he rose from the bed and started to undress.
‘Because you provoke me,’ Ariana responded. She felt a blush spread across her chest as he removed his shirt and discarded his clothes.
Oh, God. She had always known he was stunning, but he looked so toned, and so male—his chest hair, the thick line on his stomach—and she was holding her breath in nervous, excited anticipation as he unzipped.
He was the most beautiful thing she had seen and she was far from shy, just staring with hungry eyes. It made her blood feel too heavy to move through her heart as he took her hand and closed it around his thick length.
He was warm and hard and he felt like velvet and he let her explore him. Gian kissed her neck, and he kissed down her chest and when his mouth met her breast she wept inside.
‘Help me,’ she said, because he made her so frantic with desire and his warm hand was on her stomach, which made her want to lift her knees.
‘Does that help?’ he said, and she moaned as his hand moved down and he stroked her.
‘Not enough,’ she gasped. ‘God, Gian...’ And then she whimpered, for the soft vacuum of his mouth on her breast and the relentless pressure below created a feeling akin to both panic and bliss building inside her.
And though his intention had been to bring Ariana to the edge and then take her, instead he indulged in the pleasure of watching her orgasm build.
Her eyes opened to his for a moment, and she had never felt more bathed in attention, or so in tune with another person.
Then she gave up watching him and shut her eyes, arching her neck as she surrendered to the sumptuous pleasure he so easily gave. He kissed her then so slowly that it felt like a revival
but then his thighs were between hers and his mouth was by her temple as her hands held his hips, holding him back, digging him in, both wanting and conflicted. She was desperate for fusion and for the initiation she would allow only Gian to give her.
It hurt, and yet it did not.
He squeezed into her tight space and it was both pleasure and a pain that must surely end. Yet her lungs were expanding and cracks of light returning to the blackout he had brought upon her, and everything multiplied as he moved slowly inside.
‘Gian.’ She said his name as she had wanted to since her interview. She rolled it on her tongue and tasted it as he moved deep inside her.
She felt crushed, she felt covered, she felt found. ‘Gian,’ Ariana said again, as he moved faster, but his name was more like a warning now, for he was tipping her towards the edge and she almost did not want to go.
For then they would end.
‘Let go,’ he told her. He could feel her slight panic and the mounting tension, and then when she shattered he shot into her in relief.
Both breathless, both dizzy, they lay there, catching their breath.
He adored her inexperience, not just because of the honour of being her first but because she could never know that, even while making love, he held back.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THEY LAY THERE together in silence. Ariana examined her conscience and heart for regret and found none.
Not a jot.
For Gian, there was rare peace as he lay there, their limbs knotted together. Only one thing missing. ‘We need food.’
‘I have none,’ Ariana happily admitted. Her world had been turned upside down since the death of her father, and anyway she tended to eat out. ‘Well, I have some ice cream.’
‘Ice cream?’
‘A lot of ice cream!’ Making it was her hobby, her absolute guilty pleasure. Wearing a small wrap, she padded to the kitchen. There she defrosted two croissants and filled them with ice-cream in flavours of cardamom and pistachio and a dark chocolate one too while she waited for the mocha pot to boil and wondered how best to take back her heart.
The Italian's Forbidden Virgin (Mills & Boon Modern) (Those Notorious Romanos, Book 2) Page 8