As the rain started to fall more heavily, he drew her back inside an elaborate Gothic doorway. Then, to her surprise, he turned around to knock on the door of the palazzo.
“What are we doing here?” she asked, confused.
“You’ll see.”
They were admitted by a housekeeper. She told them in heavily accented English that, sadly, his friends the marchese and marchesa were away on vacation. But when Talos, with his most charming smile, asked to see the ballroom, she could not resist.
Who could? Eve thought.
Once the housekeeper left them alone in the enormous gilded ballroom, beneath the medieval fifteenthcentury timbers and decorated stucco rosework, Eve could not believe the ballroom’s size or beauty. To get a better view, she walked halfway up the sweeping stairs.
“And that is where I first saw you,” Talos said in a low voice behind her.
She whirled around. “Here?”
“At the charity ball the first weekend in June.”
The sun shone weakly through the tall windows of the palazzo, leaving a tracery of the Gothic rose pattern of the facade on the marble floor. She could almost imagine long-ago pirates coming to plunder the wealth of La Serenissima.
“Before that day,” he said, staring at the sunlight through the multicolored glass of the windows, “I’d scoffed at the rumors about you. No woman could be that beautiful, I said. No woman could be that mesmerizing.” Slowly, he turned to look at her. His dark eyes sizzled through her as he said in a low voice, “Then we met.”
Talos looked just like the dark corsair she’d imagined, the Barbary pirate who’d come to plunder the medieval city—to take what he wanted and burn the rest.
She blinked. How had she come up with such a brutal, cruel image? Where had that come from?
“I saw you coming down those stairs in a long red dress,” he said softly. “You were on the arm of my greatest business rival, but I knew at once that I would take you from him.” Slowly, he walked up the stairs toward her. “I would have taken you from the devil himself.”
As he came up the stairs toward her, she was unable to move. Unable to breathe.
“You made me pursue you across Venice for a week before you finally surrendered and agreed to accompany me to Athens. Where I finally discovered to my surprise that you were a virgin.” He fixed his dark eyes on her and a flash of heat coursed through her body. “For the first time in my life, I found myself wanting a woman more after I had bedded her, instead of less.”
He bent his head toward her. She couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe.
“The more I had of you,” he whispered, “the more I wanted.”
But as he lowered his head to kiss her, he suddenly stopped, then stiffened. Without touching her, he wrenched away, his eyes cold. “Come. We’re done here.”
After thanking the housekeeper, he led her from the palazzo. Outside, as the storm clouds brewed above them, she could feel a storm building between them as well, a tension that had nothing to do with tenderness.
He led her across an elaborate covered bridge that crossed the Grand Canal. It was momentarily empty of tourists, and as the cold, wet wind howled around them, he finally turned to face her.
His eyes were dark and hot.
A little thrill of jumbled fear and desire went through her as he took her in his arms. She felt his fingers brush her skin, felt his muscular body hard against hers. The tension increased inside her, tightening into a coil low in her belly.
“This,” he said hoarsely, “is where I first kissed you.”
He leaned forward, stroking the back of her head. Brushing stray tendrils from her cheek, he cupped her face with his hands. Staring up at his handsome face, she was aware of tiny details. The dark scruff on his chin, though he had shaved just hours before. She’d thought his eyes were black, but now she saw they were a deep brown, with slivers of honey-gold.
“And,” he said in a low voice, lowering his head toward her, “this is where I’m going to kiss you now.”
She trembled all over, her heart pounding like a frantic hummingbird’s wing. She wanted him to kiss her—but at the same time something pushed her to flee!
But she couldn’t. This time, he held her fast. He wouldn’t let her back away.
It was as if she’d never been kissed before. His lips were gentle at first on her mouth. Then he spread her lips wide. He teased her with his tongue, licking her lips, entwining her tongue with his.
Desire and need swept through her like a fire. And she forgot about running away. She couldn’t resist. She didn’t want to.