out of the top half of the leathers and then peeled the shirt up and off. She’d seen his naked chest last night, but it had been dark. Now he stood before her in all his hard-bodied glory, muscles rippling and flexing beneath bronzed skin—and then she noticed a three-pronged scratch skating over one pectoral muscle.
Faith frowned even as her heart did that funny little skip thing again. She thought of him last night with a tiny mewing bundle in his arms. “Lola did that?”
He glanced down. “Si—but it is nothing.”
And then he was staring at her again, blue eyes daring her. Only a few minutes ago, he’d been in enough pain to bring tears to his eyes, and now he was standing there like some sexy demigod and tempting her into the kind of behavior that ought to make her turn and run right this instant. Instead, she was imagining it. Considering it.
Wanting it.
“How about it, Faith?” he said, his voice a sexy rumble. “Do you want to wash my back?”
“I—I—” She closed her eyes, darted her tongue over her lips. She was not doing this. She was not stripping her clothing and stepping into that shower with him when he’d probably done the same thing a million times before with a million different women. She couldn’t. “I’ll be in the office, Renzo.”
Before he could say another word, she hurried out the door and shut it firmly behind her. But his laughter echoed after her until she almost turned around and went back just so she could look at him one more time. Instead, she retreated to a chair by the window and forced herself to sit with her hands in her lap and stare at the Tuscan hills.
He emerged twenty minutes later, dressed in the trousers and button-down shirt he’d worn earlier, his hair still damp and curling sexily over his collar. Faith stood, clasping her hands together to hide their trembling. Her heart was still racing, and her body still ached, no matter that she’d sat and tried to will the feelings away.
It didn’t work that way, apparently. She wanted things she’d never wanted before, and she didn’t quite know how to get them. How to take that plunge that would mean the difference between continuing the way she had been, and knowing what it meant to be a sensual creature focused on her own pleasure.
Renzo stopped when he saw her. His gaze met hers, heat flaring anew in the blue depths, and she knew that he could see her struggle with herself. He was far too perceptive when it came to women. She tried to remind herself why that was a bad thing, but she just didn’t seem to care.
“Come here, Faith,” he said, and she obeyed without once asking herself why she was doing so. He smelled delicious, clean and fresh and male, and she itched to touch him. But she kept her arms rigid at her sides as she stood before him and waited for something to happen.
Until he reached for her and tugged her into his embrace. One hand came up to cup her jaw while the other spread across the small of her back, pressing her to him. Faith gripped the powerful muscles of his biceps, her breath shortening in her chest.
“I’ve been thinking about something,” he said as she blinked up at him and wondered how any man could be so absolutely stunning. “I can’t stop thinking about it, in fact.”
“What’s that?” she asked, trying not to devolve into a stammering idiot.
He smiled, and her stomach flipped. “I want to be your first, Faith.”
She blinked. “M-my first?”
First what? She couldn’t think, simply couldn’t form a thought in her head when he held her so close, his body warm and hard against hers, his mouth so close, so sexy that she wanted to bite him, kiss him, lick him.
He dipped his head until those perfect lips were only a whisper away from hers.
“Yes, cara mia, I want to be your first lover.”
She would never be certain who moved first, but then his lips were on hers and she was lost.
FAITH melted into his kiss as if she’d been born to do so. No man had ever kissed her the way Renzo had, she thought crazily. He kissed the way he rode motorcycles: expertly, passionately, and with a combination of control and recklessness that slayed her ability to think rationally about anything.
She was lost, helpless, powerless to resist when he held her so close, his mouth slanting over hers, his tongue sliding and teasing and tormenting.
He kissed her until she moaned, kissed her until she wrapped her arms around him and arched her body against his. Until she forgot who she was or where she was or why this might possibly turn out badly for her in the end.
His hand slid down her body, brought her hips in contact with his, and she gasped at the evidence of his need for her.
“I want you, Faith,” he said in her ear. “But I want you to make the choice. It has nothing to do with who we are, and everything to do with this raw need we both feel when we touch. I want to explore this feeling, and I want to show you how good it can be between us when we do.”
She could no longer deny that she wanted it, too. “Not here,” she said quickly. “I don’t want to do it here.”
He lifted his head until he could look down at her, stroked his fingers over her cheek before tucking her hair behind her ear. “Of course not,” he said. “Tell me what your fantasy is, cara. A castle? A desert tent? A tropical island? Name it, and it’s yours.”
Her pulse thrummed in her throat until she felt dizzy, drunk with passion and happiness and fear all at once.
“I—I’ve never quite thought about it.” My God, what was she agreeing to? Was she really going to be this man’s lover? Was she really negotiating the terms of her surrender in a sunlit office in Tuscany?
“What about Venice?” he said. “A gorgeous palazzo on the Grand Canal. I will do this for you, Faith, if it’s what you want.”
He looked so serious, and she knew that no matter what she named, no matter how far-fetched, he would move heaven and earth to get it for her. To make her first time special. She was touched that he would go to such trouble, and yet at this moment she wanted none of those things.
She only wanted him. In a bed. In his villa, with the scents of the flowers on the breeze and his taste on her tongue. That was all she needed to make it special, memorable.
But she felt unsophisticated for wanting something so simple when he was offering her the world. Would he think her too sentimental if she told him? Too unimaginative?
“I can see that you’ve thought of something,” he said. “But you do not want to tell me. What is it, cara? Do you wish to refuse my offer? It is your choice, as I have said.”
Faith sighed and lifted her hand to trace her fingers across his full lower lip. She was beyond hope now. She couldn’t refuse even if her life depended on it. She knew that her heart probably depended on it, but that couldn’t stop her, either.
Her fingers moved back and forth while he held completely still. She’d never
