Wicked Temptation (Nemesis Unlimited) (27 page)

“And you?” she pressed Giovanni.

His lips thinned. “I am not feeling very musical tonight.”

“I noticed you had a violin case, Mrs. Parrish,” Thomas quickly interjected.

“My instrument was one of the few possessions I was able to keep,” she answered.

“Would you favor us by playing?” Thomas requested.

Her initial impulse was to refuse. With Marco and Giovanni all but sticking knives into each other’s backs, it hardly seemed an appropriate time. But the thought of playing again sent a wave of longing through her, and her fingers twitched as if forming notes on her violin’s neck.

If neither Marco nor Giovanni could come to an understanding, if the distance she and Marco had traveled had been for nothing, then shouldn’t she get some pleasure out of her time here in Florence? If nothing else, she was learning how to survive dangers and setbacks.

“Of course,” she said.

Marco said nothing.

“Niccolo can fetch it for you,” Giovanni surprised her by saying.

“No—I mean, no, thank you. I can retrieve it myself.” She rose from the sofa—the men all standing as she did so—and left the parlor to climb the stairs to their bedchamber. The violin and its case were just where she’d left them, so after a quick check to make sure the instrument was in good condition, she took them downstairs.

There, the silence was still thick as blood. Standing beside the piano, she pulled the violin from the case and spent several minutes tuning it. Travel across the Channel and the Continent hadn’t done much favors to its sound, and she fought to keep from grimacing as she made the most unmusical noises as she tuned the instrument. Finally, she was satisfied, tucked it beneath her chin. Began to play.

Bach’s partita, of course.

The first few notes came out awkwardly. She felt acutely conscious of all eyes upon her. There’d been a time when she used to play after dinner parties, but those times were long past. Over the past few years, when she’d played, she played for herself alone, her dream of performing for a paid crowd nothing but a dissolving mist. But now here she was—playing for an audience.

She screeched out a wrong note, and lowered the violin. “I’m sorry. I’m not … in form tonight.”

“Don’t stop,” Thomas begged, at the same time that Giovanni said, “Do go on, signora.”

But she shook her head, and started to put her violin away.

“Please,” Marco said quietly.

Her hands stilled, the violin suspended over its case.

Then she picked up the instrument again and played.

This time, the notes came out true. It took her a few moments to sink into the piece, to feel the embrace of the music around her, how she was bathed in the lambent glow of sound. Those beautiful, dark minor notes. The climbing scales and precipitous descents, as if a night-flying bird rose and fell with evening currents, black against a blacker sky.

In the piece, she rediscovered herself. The young woman she’d been in London, protected, naïve, in contrast to the woman she was now, having immersed herself in a world far more uncompromising and stark than she’d ever experienced or known. She was familiar with death, but now she’d seen its brutal side. With Hugh. And Devere. She’d witnessed the most dire poverty. And she’d made love with a man determined to keep himself a stranger.

A metamorphosis had occurred. Was occurring, even now. Who she would be when everything was over, she’d no idea. All she could do was hold fast to her strength, and survive.

All of this she poured into her playing. She forgot everything but the feel of her beloved violin, the bow as it arced back and forth across the strings, the sway of her body as she gave herself over to the music.

And then, suddenly, it was over. She’d reached the end of the piece.

Her eyes opened—when had she closed them?—to find three pairs of eyes staring at her. Thomas looked delighted. Giovanni appeared thoughtful. And Marco … Marco looked stunned.

She lowered the violin as Thomas started clapping. Giovanni and then Marco joined in, at which she gave a small bow.

“I think I rather missed that,” she said, which was a terrific understatement akin to saying she missed the ability to breathe.

“Brava,”
Giovanni murmured.

“Yes,
brava,
indeed,” Thomas added. “Do play some more.”

Now that the instrument was in her hand, she was loath to part with it. So she played the solo parts of Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 3—lively and bright, full of sunshine and hope. Mozart had been a favorite of hers when she’d been younger, but maturity and experience had brought her to Beethoven and Bach. She hadn’t thought she’d ever return to Mozart again. Now she needed him and his ebullience, his childlike complexity.

What was Marco to her? And what was she to him? Lovers, operative and client? More, or less? Answers kept themselves scarce. But there was this—music. It never withheld itself from her. And she was the agent that made it happen, pulling notes from the air and giving them form through her bow and fingers.

The music drew to an end, and she accepted another round of applause. Thomas beamed at her, while Giovanni continued to look pensive.

But Marco—his gaze was hot upon her, and intent radiated from him like a hunter on the trail of its prey.

Heat washed over her. Surely she blushed. But she’d never seen such ferocity in Marco’s eyes, as though he would leap across the room, hike up her skirts, and make love to her against the piano—uncaring whether or not they had an audience.

But that was one public performance she was unwilling to give.

At Thomas’s cry for more, she politely demurred, and put away her violin with faintly trembling hands.

“The journey and disappointments of the day have been very fatiguing,” she explained. “It’s time for me to retire.” After bidding her hosts good night, she stepped outside and began to climb the stairs.

“Marco—” she heard Giovanni say.

“A tempo,”
came the growled response. And then the sounds of Marco’s footsteps. In pursuit.

Her heart pounded in double time as she hurried up the stairs, trying to keep from being caught. And hoping that she was.

*   *   *

The moment she entered the bedchamber, she set her violin aside. Then stood in the middle of the room and waited, pulse racing, for Marco to catch up. His tread was steady, deliberate. And with each step, her breathing came faster and faster. Until he appeared in the door, and she all but gasped for breath.

Oh, he was a dangerous one. Without taking his gaze from hers, he stepped into the room and shut and locked the door behind him.

The moment hung ripe as summer, a suspension of time, where neither of them moved, but savored the possibility of what was to be.

She wanted this. Needed it. When nothing else was certain, including the future, there was this desire. It felt as though it would rip through her with gilded claws, and she craved that annihilation.

And he knew what music meant to her—more than anyone else had. He understood what she’d given and gained by her performance tonight. They shared that bond, beyond mere physical need.

But as she and Marco stared at each other, drawing the moment out, it felt as if bright jeweled threads stretched from her body to his. She wanted more than to be taken by desire. She wanted to own it. She wanted to have
him,
fully.

The last time she and Marco had made love, he’d been the one in command. Who’d guided her through the paths of sensation. And she’d been nearly overcome with fear, hiding herself, holding back. Not this time. This time, she would strip away all barriers, so that they were fully themselves.

“I remember another postcard.” She swayed toward him, feeling power thrum through her. He stayed exactly where he was, standing in front of the closed door. “Can you think which one?”

“There were many.” His voice was a low rasp.

“Yes, but
this
one intrigued me.” She stood before him, close enough to see the darkness of his stubbled cheeks, and the widening of his pupils. Though she didn’t touch him, his heat radiated into her skin. “A man was standing, just as you are. He was almost fully dressed. I say
almost
because there was one part of him that was bared.”

“His cock,” Marco rumbled.

Bold as she felt, the word made her burn.

“It was in a woman’s mouth as she knelt in front of him,” she said breathlessly.

“I remember.”

At last, she reached out to touch him. Ran her hand down his starched shirtfront. Lower. Until she found the hard length of his erection through his black wool trousers. He hissed in a breath as she cupped him. It still amazed her that this part of him had been inside her. Filled her completely.

“I remember, too,” she whispered. Then sank to her knees.

He said nothing, but his body was tense as a primed gun as she worked at his trouser fastenings. She reached in and wrapped her hand around his rigid penis. Then she drew it out. She imagined a photographer taking a picture of the scene, her looking at the picture. Arousal built higher.

In the lamplight, she got her first real look at him. The thick shaft. The smooth crown. A tiny drop of fluid at the slit. This was part of Marco, too. Mysterious and a little frightening but fascinating, too.

This was carnal, yes, but deeply intimate. Beyond two bodies striving for pleasure. This was them, literally and figuratively exposed. He allowed himself to be vulnerable. Such a rarity—and he shared it with her.

She glanced up. His skin had darkened, his nostrils were flared, and his jaw was clenched into a straight, rigid line. He stared at her through lowered lids. But his chest moved up and down quickly, breath soughing in and out. At his sides hung his hands, knotted into fists. Oh, he wanted this—she could tell. He wanted it badly. Yet he managed to hold himself back. To keep from frightening her.

There was still a thread of fear in her. More than that, however, was the measure of her strength. Pleasure was hers to bestow and take. Being on her knees made her no less powerful. With the most sensitive part of him in her hand, at this moment he belonged to her. And he wanted to belong to her.

Still, she wasn’t experienced. Not in this.

“Tell me,” she said. But it wasn’t a request. It was a command. “Tell me how to do this.”

He swallowed hard. “Grip the shaft … yes … like that. Lick the head.”

She did, swirling her tongue around it and finding the skin silky, with a bit of salt. He groaned, and heat traveled directly between her legs at the sound. She dallied there like that, licking him all around, even the ridge just beneath the head, which made him rumble like a beast.

Her breasts pressed tight against the inside of her bodice, and while she cursed the fabric for keeping her from touching them, there was something impossibly erotic about being completely clothed—in evening dress, no less—while performing this most intimate act.

“Suck … ah, God … suck me,” he growled.

She took more of him into her mouth. Drew on him, as if taking sustenance. And, heaven help her, did he feel wondrous. Hot. Hard. Silky.

Her eyes drifted shut as she lost herself in sensation and strength.

She felt his fingers threading into her hair. Gently pulling her closer. She took him deeper, past the head to the shaft itself. Impossible to fit all of him into her mouth, so she wrapped her hand snug around the base of his penis. Pumped him in time with her sucking. It took a few moments to find her rhythm, but find it she did.

“Cara, bella, dolce fragola,”
he said hoarsely.
“È così buono.”

A tide of arousal flooded her at his words, and the tightening of his fingers in her hair. She glanced up again to see his own eyes closed, his head thrown back. This tightly controlled man had given up control. To her.

Suddenly, he pulled from her mouth. She was left on her knees, with his erection in her hand, wet with her saliva.

“Remember that other postcard?” he rumbled, drawing her up to standing. “Where the woman had her skirts hiked up around her waist, her arse in the air as the man bent her over a table, his cock buried deep in her pussy.”

“I … remember.” She glanced over to the vanity. “There weren’t any mirrors, though.”

He led her toward the small table. “We can do better than those postcards. You’ll watch yourself as I put my cock in you. You’ll see the look on your face as I fuck you.”

Heat flared through her at his words.
Ah, God.

At the vanity, he placed her hands on the edge of the table. She could already see the stain of desire on her cheeks, how her eyes were heavy, and the loosening of her hair so it formed a wild corona around her face.

She watched as he gathered up her skirts, and felt the slight shaking in his hands as he did so. Cool air touched her through the opening in her drawers. But he didn’t seem satisfied. He pulled her drawers down, guided her to step out of them. Aside from her stockings and tiny evening slippers, she was bare now from the waist down. Again she was struck by the erotic feeling of being partly dressed, but also so exposed to him.

Looking in the mirror, she watched hunger carve him into hard contours as he stared at her behind, and the exposed folds of her sex. Surely he could see how wet she was, how ready, yet he looked his fill. His penis curved up higher, twitching, as he stared at her.

“Marco.” She moaned.
“Now.”

“Ora, amore?”
He teased her with the head of his penis, rubbing it along her and around her opening.

“Sì,”
she managed to gasp.

He chuckled darkly. “I like my language on your tongue.”

“I like … my tongue … on you.”

His laugh abruptly stopped. And with one thrust, he was inside her. Her gaze locked with her reflection. There she was. With Marco inside her. She looked the picture of unbridled lust. Like one of those erotic postcards. But better—because this was real and now. And him. God above, how she loved it. Loved …

No—this was only sensation. Nothing more. Wasn’t it?