from her fingers to her core, and when she touched him, her sex tightened with need.
“I want to go back to the villa, Renzo.”
He captured her fingers in his and kissed them. “Then that is where we shall go.”
The villa was only a short car ride away, but by the time they arrived, her bravado was fading and nerves were taking over. She was about to let a famous heartbreaker make love to her for the first time in her life. What if he didn’t enjoy it? What if he was disappointed?
Because this wasn’t about love. It was about desire and heat, about sexual gratification. Things that she knew nothing about, or at least not yet. What if she was terrible at it?
They left the car in the drive and passed into the house through the kitchen door, which was open to the breeze and the bright afternoon sunshine. The cook, Lucia, was busy making something that smelled wonderful. She looked up when they entered, and smiled. Renzo spoke to her for a few moments before Faith followed him into the long hallway leading toward the grand staircase, butterflies swirling in her belly until she was nearly sick with it.
When they were almost at the stairs, Renzo caught her to him and her blood began to sing once again. If he would just hold her, she could do anything.
“I want you desperately, cara mia,” he said, his blue eyes serious as he studied her face, “but I want you to be certain. And I want to do this right. You should be wined and dined and seduced, not taken upstairs and stripped naked simply for my pleasure.”
She clutched his sleeves as he cupped her face. She waited for the perfect storm of his kiss, that melding of lips and tongues that drove her insane with need, but his lips only skimmed hers, the kiss chaste and soft. When she would have wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him to her, he lifted his head.
“Go, before I lose the will to send you away. We will dine together at eight. What happens then is entirely up to you.”
It was nearly ten minutes after eight when she walked into the dining room. Renzo turned at the sound of her entrance. He’d been convinced she’d changed her mind when she hadn’t been prompt—Faith had never been late even a single day at work, so it was inconceivable that she could be late now unless she wasn’t joining him on purpose.
But she was here, and his blood began to hum at the sight of her. It was true he didn’t know if she’d changed her mind or not, but the way she was dressed gave him hope. She wore a body-skimming blue wrap dress that was more daring than anything he’d yet seen her wear. It was still modest—Faith would always be modest—but the dress dipped in a V that showed the barest hint of cleavage while clinging to her curves.
Curves he wanted to explore in thorough detail.
Her color was high, he noted, her green eyes wide. Her blond hair spilled freely down her back, silky and shining in the lights from the Murano chandelier overhead. He had a sudden visceral reaction: he wanted to bury his fingers in her hair while he thrust into her body again and again.
Santo cielo.
He’d been determined not to do this, not to give in to his desire for her now that he knew she was a virgin. But he’d realized today, when she’d bent down to remove his boots, that she was a fire in his blood he wasn’t going to quench any other way. Hell, she’d even invaded his ride on the Viper. At a time when he most needed his concentration, she’d been in his head, her pretty eyes and flushed cheeks, her beautiful full breasts, her hot little tongue as he’d kissed her in the car last night.
Faith was in his blood, in his body, and he knew of no other way to drive her out than to immerse himself in her. But the choice was hers. Only hers. He would not take advantage of her innocence. If she told him to go to hell, then he would find another woman tomorrow and take care of this burning sexual need at the least.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” she said a touch breathlessly. “Lola wouldn’t settle down.”
“And how is our tiny tyrant?” he asked, going over and pulling out her chair like a gentleman instead of staring at her like the slavering beast he was. She skimmed past him, her hair brushing his arm, her sweet scent wrapping around his senses. She smelled like vanilla, he realized. Soft, warm vanilla.
It reminded him of home. Of his early home, when he was still a small child and his mother had plenty of work—and plenty of male attention, though he’d not known or cared how important that was to her then. They’d had a nice apartment with a sliver of a sea view. It had been tiny, but his memories of it were warm and happy.
Faith laughed as she sat down, though the sound was a bit high and nervous. Not the sound of a woman who planned to say no. Possessive heat coiled in his belly even as he felt a twinge of guilt.
“She is very tiny, and very tyrannical,” Faith said, and he remembered that they had been talking of Lola. “But so adorable.”
He took his seat, determined to do this right. To make this night special for her. “You love her already.”
She smiled. “I do. It’s hard not to. That’s why Mother Nature makes babies so cute.”
“Then I did the right thing in giving her to you.” It gave him pleasure to see her smile. He’d rarely seen her smile in all the time she’d worked for him. She was always so serious, so proper.
She met his gaze then, and he could see the worry in her expression. “How is your leg, Renzo? Was it just a cramp, or did you reinjure it on the track today?”
Something inside him tightened. “I did not injure myself, cara.”
She let out a sigh. “I’m glad.”
A lot of people would be glad he wasn’t injured—his team, his stockholders, his mother and sister—but somehow it seemed more important that she was relieved. That the worry lining her face was even now smoothing out and disappearing.
The meal arrived then, and their talk was confined to things like the kitten, his run on the track today—without any further mention of a doctor or his difficulty at the end of the ride, grazie a Dio—and the beauty of the Tuscan countryside.
“I will take you to Florence soon,” he told her, and she smiled so genuinely that it actually hurt. She was so sweet and innocent, and he had no right to take her for his own when he did not intend to keep her.
He should get up now, get into his car and go to his apartment in Florence. Alone.
But he would not. He wasn’t that selfless.
“Can we see David?” she asked excitedly.
“Of course. He is quite magnificent. I am an Italian male, and yet the first time I saw him, even I was moved by the beauty of the sculpture.”
She sighed. “There is so much beauty in Italy.”
“Si,” he said meaningfully. “There is.”
Her lashes dropped. She reached for her wineglass, her fingers trembling. It nearly undid him.
“Faith.”
She looked up. “Yes?”
“You can say
