Nolan’s eyes were hard, near-obsidian shards as he made his case. ‘At the palazzo you were not the least interested in sleeping with me. I believe your words were “take your hand off me”. That seems to have changed in a rather short time. Frankly, I find your about-face unbelievable. Perhaps we should try your resolve before this goes any further.’
It was all the warning she had. He seized her mouth in a bruising kiss that left her breathless and reeling from its onslaught, but there was no mistaking this kiss for anything other than what it was—a punishment, a proving ground.
Nolan dragged his mouth away, his eyes narrowed in flinty speculation. ‘That’s what I thought.’ He ran his hand across his mouth, and Gianna knew whatever test he had put to her she had failed. ‘A woman always kisses her truth. Now, why don’t you tell me how it is that a woman who didn’t want to be wagered turns down her freedom when it’s offered to her, especially when she’s not particularly interested in sleeping with me?’
Gianna gathered her dignity and looked him in the eye. She was losing him, not because she lacked competence in the arts of seduction, but because he saw through her, he knew her game and it dulled her one weapon. ‘I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Before you oh, so conveniently fell into the canal you were about to say “this is where I stay”,’ he prompted, not believing her feint of ignorance. ‘Somewhere between the ballroom and the canal incident, you decided you didn’t want to be free of me.’
His meaning was evident. Anger surged. ‘You think I planned this? You think I wanted to fall into the canal?’
Her own accusation didn’t appear to stoke his temper. His gaze remained steady. He let go of her wrist and crossed his arms over his chest, entrenching. She recognised the signs. ‘There are those who would say you’ve done well for yourself tonight. You’re here, after all, in this sumptuous room. The question is why?’ His voice was a sensuous caution, reminding her that she toyed with a dangerous man in spite of the kindnesses he’d shown her. ‘What do you want so badly, Gianna, you’re willing to put your hand and no doubt eventually your mouth on a stranger’s cock?’
It would have been better to have simply called her a whore. His crass description of her efforts to bribe him into compliance put her over the edge. Whatever restraint she had left fled in the wake of her temper at full boil. She raised her hand and struck him hard across the face, across that beautifully curved sweeping cheekbone.
‘How dare you!’ But she knew how he dared. He dared because it was true. She’d been willing to do that much and more if need be and it shamed her. In those moments she’d become like her mother, the very life she was trying so hard to avoid—a life dependent on a man’s reactions to her charms.
Nolan stepped away from her, his body coiled but controlled. He didn’t even raise a hand to touch the red stain she’d left on his face. She envied him that reserve he could conjure at will. ‘I’m sorry if the truth stings, signorina,’ he said coldly. ‘Please excuse me. I find I’m not good company this evening. I’m going to find a nice stiff drink or two. Make free of the room. I will not be back tonight.’
He couldn’t leave! She was already regretting her actions. Didn’t she know by now violence solved nothing, it only made things worse? How quickly she’d sunk to the very depths she despised in the count. ‘You’re not dressed,’ she asserted hastily. In her anger she might have ruined everything. She couldn’t let him go with things like this. What had she been thinking to strike him? What if he sent for the count? She couldn’t go back.
Nolan’s hand stalled on the doorknob, and he gave her a wry smile. ‘For what I pay here, princess, they’d let me drink naked.’ Then he was gone, leaving her alone with a bed and a half-full decanter of brandy. It should be enough to numb the pain. Things would look brighter in the morning. They had to, because they looked impossibly dark right now.
Oh, the agony! Nolan groaned, but the noise of it, the effort of it, only made the pain worse. His head was splitting like Zeus about to birth Athena. With a blind hand, he groped for the bedside table and the morning remedy he left there for occasions like this. His hand came up empty—no furniture, no magic morning. Why was that?
Nolan hazarded a peep out of the slit of one cautious eye. Ow! He shut it quickly and cursed. Who the hell had left the curtains open? The morning was not off to a good start and it was only sixty seconds old. If this was how the day was going to progress, he would stay in bed. Then he remembered why he couldn’t. For starters, he wasn’t even in a bed, but a chair and a deuced uncomfortable one at that. Second, this wasn’t his room. This was Hotel Danieli’s private club, with its large bay of windows looking out on to the canal. He was here because she was there—there being his perfectly appointed room with night-dark curtains the staff knew to keep drawn until noon and his miracle remedy against all nature of hangovers on his bedside table.
Nolan shifted, his body conflicted in its priorities. Did it stay still, to dull the ache in his head, or give in to the urge to stretch and relieve the stiffness of having passed out in a club chair hours ago? His body opted to move. That was a mistake. He regretted moving instantly, then regretted having drunk so much brandy. Well, it hadn’t entirely been brandy. There’d been some wine, too. This was all her fault, every aching, throbbing body part of it. The evening in its entirety flooded back in head-splitting flashes; the card game, the gondola, the canal—oh, Lord, the canal—he still carried a faint whiff of it on his skin—and the girl who had ruined everything, even his solution to save them both from further complication.
He’d offered her freedom from the agreement. She was supposed to have taken it and left him at the pier—dry and ready to move forward with the next step of his plans. It was a nice expedient option that should have satisfied them both. Apparently she had a different option in mind—one that involved falling into the canal. Even now, he wasn’t sure if she’d done it on purpose. It had been an enormous chance to take on her part in a dress weighted down by pearls.
That wasn’t the only thing he wasn’t sure about. Was she really a virgin or had the count lied about that, too? It was rather hard to believe and yet he couldn’t rule it out as truth. Nolan groaned again, this time from the realisation of what he’d done based on accepting the count’s word at face value. What if he’d been wrong to trust her? If she had manipulated everything, it meant he’d just left a very experienced con artist alone in his room with all of his winnings. Nolan forced himself into an upright position, fighting hard to ignore the spinning room and the stab of pain. He had to get upstairs.
It was an absolute labour of Hercules to pull himself up the grand staircase in his dressing gown in front of bright-eyed tourists heading out to see the sights. It wasn’t the dressing gown that bothered him. If he’d been in better spirits, he’d have made a game out of it, bowing and nodding to the ladies as if he were fully clothed. But he was in no mood for games. His head ached, his stomach roiled on the verge of nausea and it was suitable punishment for what he’d done. Had he let her manipulate him or was she simply that good and he hadn’t seen it coming, he who prided himself on being a student of human nature?
Nolan ran through the progression of events. She’d been trying to seduce him, which had been an obvious if enjoyable ploy. He recalled with clarity the feel of her warm hand on his very responsive cock. If she’d been a different sort of woman in different circumstances, he would have taken her generous offer. But he’d been wary of her motives. When seduction had failed, she’d opted for a quarrel. In hindsight, he could see how that would work to her advantage. Perhaps she had intended
