The Medici Mistress: Nothing and no one would stop him from having her. (2 page)

“Nothing about us was ever wrong.” He had a faraway look in his eyes, as though he was speaking to himself more than her. “Except, perhaps, the timing.”

“Mmm,” she nodded, wanting to pull away but needing to be close to him. “How we met right before your wedding, you mean?”

“
Si
,” he was lost in the past. “This body,” he whispered, dipping his head so that his lips were pressed lightly against her ear. “It is the stuff of dreams.”

Her mouth parted; her brain was searching for something to say. A hiss of air escaped. Nothing else.

“I can picture you perfectly, beneath this prim dress you wear. Your pale skin, and perfect pink nipples. Your flat stomach and long legs. I can still hear you. The sounds you make when you’re about to come; the way you squeeze around me as though your life depends on it. I have forgotten nothing about you,
cara
.”

“You don’t get to speak to me like this,” she insisted, though she was a puddle of arousal. “I am not your play thing. Something to amuse you when you decide you want it.”

“Ah, I do want it,” he promised, running his tongue along her jaw.

“Please, don’t.” To her chagrin, her voice was shaking, and wet with unshed tears. “I won’t deny that I… want you… but I won’t be a woman who breaks up a marriage.” She shook away from him, but searched his gaze, her expression beseeching. “I would never have been with you before, if I’d known you were… engaged.” She cleared her throat. “It was all a mistake. A terrible, wonderful mistake.”

“Annie,” his voice was urgent, “I need to speak with you.”

“No.” She held up a hand, her voice restored to its usual imperious tone. “Let’s leave sleeping dogs lie. You’re married, and I’m involved with someone.”

“I see,” he nodded, his Adams apple jerking in the column of his neck. “And who is this man you’re seeing?”

“None of your business.”

He expelled a breath through his nose, his nostrils flaring with silent rage.

“You might be comfortable cheating on someone, but I’m not.” She was somewhat overstating the case between herself and Thomas, but at that moment, she needed her friend’s visage to keep the very real and present Giac at arm’s length. “And I don’t want to be the other woman. Not again. I will never forget the shame of knowing I slept with another woman’s fiancé. And I will never forgive you for having put me in that position.”

The door opened, forestalling any further communication between them. Annie had only a second to pull her professional shield tightly around herself again. She suspected that her face still had remnants of emotional disquiet on it, which did not escape the curious gaze of Lincoln Barrett’s PA, Donna Mills.

Lincoln Barrett followed behind his capable assistant, his expression affable, his pin-striped suit immaculate. His eyes flicked from the powerful bearing of his old friend, Giac Medici, to the woman he vaguely remembered from the legal team. Of the eleven hundred employees at Amicus, it was saying something that he remembered anyone beyond his executive group.

But this woman had an impressive knack for excelling. He had personally walked through the nineteenth floor, where the legal staff were located, and seen her working at all hours. After midnight, on several occasions, her dark head bent, her face a picture of concentration.

“Annie, isn’t it?” He asked, a welcoming smile on his face.

Annie wasn’t put at ease by his practiced kindness. Lincoln Barrett had been handpicked by Giac to run Amicus because he was almost as shrewd and terrifying as Giac himself.

“Yes. Good afternoon, Mr. Barrett,” she said, nodding curtly and thanking the heavens for her lucky escape. She moved towards the door, ignoring the continued gaze of Donna Mills. The woman was legendary in the building for her ability to sniff out scandal. Pregnancies, divorces, affairs;  nothing stayed secret for long, once Donna had a hold of the information.

She half expected Giac to stall her again, but he didn’t. She made it through the door, and pulled it closed behind herself with relief.

Three years had passed in the blink of an eye, and she was yanked back in time, to the feelings and sensations that had driven her younger self to desperation.

* * *

“I wasn’t aware you knew our Annie,” the blonde woman asked testily, as she eased herself into a chair to his right, crossing her long, stocking clad legs at the ankles.

Giac had spent his life keeping his emotions private. “We met several years ago, when I acquired Amicus.” He said in a tone that did not invite further speculation.

Unfortunately, Linc was not easily dissuaded. “She’s a stand out member of the legal team,” he said, his approval obvious. “I have often noticed her working late. Far later than most of them, who knock off a whisker before five.” He lifted his eyes heavenward.

Giac didn’t want to talk about Annie. He didn’t even want to talk
to
Annie. His body was burning with a renewed need for her. More intense than he’d felt before. Three years had passed, but his desire for the woman had gone nowhere.

“I’m surprised she works so hard with a man like Thomas Jones waiting for her at home,” Donna said with a knowing wink at her boss. Giac watched the familiar way they interacted with a strange sense of foreboding. If Linc was screwing his secretary, he would be livid. Generally, Giac was a stickler for keeping business and personal relationships separate. Everywhere except with Annie Carlton.

“The painter?” Giac hated himself for asking. He’d been to an exhibit of the man’s at MOMA only two months earlier. Carrie had insisted on his accompanying her.

“You’ve heard of him, of course,” Donna continued with a nod. “Hottest new thing on the art scene.”

Beneath the table, Giac screwed his hands into fists. He’d heard of him, and he’d seen him. The man was young, good looking, in that weak, trendy sort of way, and probably perfect for Annie. His impressionist style works were a breath of fresh air in a modernist art world, groaning under the weight of Pro Hart imitators.

Giac focused on the matter at hand. He was well trained to hone his mind to whatever required his attention at the time. But there was a small part of his brain ticking over the problem of Annie. And it was a problem.

He had come to believe that he’d imagined the force of their attraction. That nothing could really be as good as what he remembered. But that hope and fantasy had disappeared the minute he’d seen her again.

Now, he knew he wanted her. Needed her. And he knew he would have her. No one else mattered besides them. He simply needed her to understand that.

CHAPTER TWO

“Giac,” she giggled, as he lifted her easily over his shoulder and carried her through the plush penthouse. “Put me down! I can walk!”

“You might have sprained your ankle,” he contradicted darkly, keeping his hands on her legs with effort. He longed to run his palms up her body, to feel her back, her ass, to touch her everywhere; inside and out.

“I’m fine,” she insisted, playfully punching his strong back with her fist. “If you put me down I’ll show you that I’m not hurt.”

He didn’t listen. “I don’t know what you were thinking, jumping into the fountain like that.”

Her laugh was like a fine bead of crystal in the wind. Dainty and exciting, and oh so fresh and alive. “I was hot.”

“The fountain is not for swimming in,” he muttered, thinking again how beautiful she’d looked as she’d lifted her long, flowing skirt around her thighs and leaped into the shallow water. Only to twist her ankle and falter in the shallows, so that he had had no choice but to reach for her and hold her to his body. It was then that he’d known. They would be together. Wild horses would not halt the attraction.

The flirtation that had been simmering between them for over a week had been driving him wild. Literally making him feel like a caged animal at night, desperate and hungry. She was all he could think of, and phone conversations with Carrie had been a duty he increasingly wished to avoid.

“Oh, pish,” she retorted, her polished British accent at odds with the behavior Giacomo had come to count on in Annie. He could only describe it as completely free spirited. Her predilection for summery dresses and bright accessories against the background of the incredibly stilted office of Amicus Incorporated had pulled him in. Her bright smile, shining eyes, clear skin, and the way she seemed to laugh with him even when they were discussing something as bland as UK tax law had left him with a sinking feeling of adoration.

“Pish?” He teased, though his mood was dark. For he knew what was about to happen, and it would be a death knell to the life he had planned. A nail in the coffin of the man he had hoped he could be.

“Yes. You know. Nonsense. Absurd. Boring.”

He winged his brows together as he shouldered through the doors at the end of the corridor. He made straight for the bed, and dumped her unceremoniously in the middle of it. She ran a hand through her curtain of dark hair, pushing it away from her eyes. He saw the moment she realized where she was. The laughter in her eyes sparked into something far more dangerous.

That was the point in time when he could have turned back. But he did not. Giac lowered himself to his knees, sinking into the thick white carpet, and took her ankles in his strong hands. He removed her shoes and slid them under the bed.

“What are you doing?” She whispered, her eyes searching his face.

“Making sure you’re okay,” he said, running his hands over one ankle. The inspection was far from clinical. His fingers probed and touched, gliding over her skin, rubbing the soft soles of her feet.

“I’m fine, honestly.” She said, trying to be sophisticated, when her heart was threatening to burst from her chest, it was beating so hard.

“The first time I saw you, I knew this would happen,” he said thickly, skimming his hands up her calves, to her thighs.

Annie sucked in a deep breath. “Knew what would happen?”

“This.” He claimed her mouth with an intensity that branded her soul.

It was what she had wanted from that first moment, too. He’d been talking to the entire legal team, explaining what the changes in ownership would mean for the staff, when their eyes had locked across a very crowded meeting room. He had carried on, as if unaffected, but Annie had found it hard to get her breathing under control. She had intended to leave the meeting room as soon as she could, but her manager had kept her talking, which made her easy prey for Giac Medici. He sought her out, and made her fall in love within five minutes.

She groaned, lifting her hands and running them through his crop of dark hair. Of their own accord, they dropped lower, to his shoulders, and she was pushing at his shirt, desperate to make contact with the chest she’d been drooling over for a week.

He pressed his body against hers, so that she fell against the thick mattress. He ground his hips to hers, watching as she felt his arousal hard, firm and demanding against her clothed abdomen.

“Giac,” she whispered, thinking of all the reasons she should put an end to this.

“Annie,” he mocked quietly, staring so hard into her eyes that surely he could see every facet of her being.

“Is this crazy?”

“
Si
,” he smiled wolfishly at her, but his hands on her shoulders were insistent. He slid the elastic straps of her dress down, pulling at it roughly, his need to see her as great as hers to see him.

She wasn’t wearing a bra. Her breasts were small enough that she didn’t need one. His breathing was ragged as he ran his fingers over her nipples, then his mouth.

Her hips lifted in spontaneous response. Her insides were slick with an unfamiliar clench of moisture. He shifted the dress lower, then removed it completely, tossing it into the corner of the room.

It hit the wall and slithered to the ground. As it hit the carpet, Annie felt the final door close on any thought of stopping what they were in the midst of.

Her underwear, whilst practical and sensible, was nonetheless, the sexiest thing Giac had ever seen. He slid it away impatiently, his arousal straining almost painfully against his boxers as he looked at her, naked and perfect, on his enormous bed.

Her skin was the color of vanilla ice cream, her eyes like sea moss. Her lips were pink and heart shaped, and her hair was as black as night, as soft to touch as silk. As for her body, he hadn’t known it was possible for a woman to be slender yet voluptuous, diminutive but toned. She was so very alive, so completely intoxicating. “You take my breath away,” he whispered, keeping his eyes locked on hers.

“I need to see you.” She responded thickly.

“Then undress me,” he challenged, his eyes dark and stormy.

Self conscious of her nudity, Annie slid shyly from the bed. “I… are you sure?”

His face flared with amusement, only there was nothing funny about it. This was a darkly desperate situation, and even he, Giacomo Medici, renowned for his self-control, was powerless to stop what was happening. “I’ve never been more certain in my life.”

She darted her tongue out and licked her suddenly dry lips. Her fingers shook as, one by one, she unbuttoned his thick, cotton business shirt. She started at the top, and worked her way down, and as her fingers grazed his stomach, his muscles bunched beneath her touch. Tentatively, she pushed the shirt at the shoulders, until it fell from his well-built frame.