Take Me (Take Me 1)

“Who the hell are you?”

Lily’s daydream was cut short by Travis’s appearance. His anger was palpable. It was bad of her, but Lily couldn’t resist the chance to see how much Travis truly wanted her.

“Rafe, this is Travis. Travis, this is Rafe.”

She gave the introduction as if she were introducing the two men over tea in the garden, which only seemed to piss Travis off more.

Rafe looked from Lily to Travis with amusement. “Is this man your lover?” he said to Lily. From the tone of Rafe’s voice, it was clear that he thought Travis to be a subpar American.

A giggle gurgled up in Lily’s throat. She couldn’t believe these two magnificent men were fighting over her.

Over little old me! she thought with glee.

Travis reached for her arm to drag her up out of her chair. “We’re going to be late for our next meeting.”

Lily made a show of fighting his presumptuous maneuver, but inwardly she was thrilled by his possessive actions. “Meeting? What meeting?”

Travis glared at her. “Forget it. I’ll go by myself,” he said. “I’d hate to interrupt you and your new friend when you’re looking so cozy together.”

He turned away and walked briskly up the street. Lily panicked. So much for testing her new feminine wiles and making Travis jealous. Instead, all she was succeeding in doing was driving him away. Lily felt like a nasty, terrible person. Travis had treated her to an incredible day, and she had repaid him by being a wanton flirt with the first guy who smiled at her.

Without so much as a backward glance at Rafe, Lily shot away from the table to run after Travis.

“Travis!” she yelled, hating the desperation in her voice. She fumbled for a way to smooth things over, saying, “Travis I—” but the look he shot her was so full of disgust that the words got stuck in her throat.

Her heart grew even heavier when Travis didn’t speak to her during their walk back to the hotel. At the lobby entrance Travis’s eyes were cold steel. “Don’t ever play games with me.”

He turned away from her and headed back into town.

Lily’s heart stopped beating as she tasted the fear of losing Travis in her mouth. His sharp words were a cruel reminder that she would never be in his league.

What had she done? Her fantasy had quickly turned into a nightmare. Instead of a perfect evening to end their perfect day, Lily had screwed the whole thing up with her little game. Why had she felt the need to tease Travis with Rafe? How would she have felt if Travis had dangled a lithe, Italian beauty in front of her face?

Well, she would have expected it, thinking that her time was up and he was moving on to greener pastures. Even so, she would have let him try to explain.

Or would she? Lily thought about her outburst in Nonna’s kitchen when she had attacked Travis for his

“other women”. And now she had flirted with a strange man in a cafe to try and get a rise out of Travis.

Lily cringed. She had thought that the quiet and insecure Lily was giving way to a sexually confident and adventurous woman. But now she wasn’t so sure. Maybe she was just plain turning into a bitch on wheels. Seeing herself in this light wasn’t pretty. Maybe she should go back to the old Lily. It wasn’t nearly as much fun, and she would never experience such mind-blowing sex again, but all in all it was so much safer.

“Ah, Lily,” Giuseppe said, pleased to see her. “How was your day? What do you think of our little town?”

Lily gulped back her unshed tears. She didn’t want Giuseppe to think she didn’t love Saturnia. Because she did with all her heart. “It’s wonderful, Giuseppe,” she said, forcing a wide smile that never made it to her eyes.

He nodded slowly, sensing something was wrong. “Good, good,” he said, scratching his chin. “And where is Signor Carson? Getting a bottle of wine for a romantic evening, perhaps?”

Lily’s bottom lip trembled, and she knew she had to get up to the room or she would embarrass herself in front of the kind man. “Yes, probably,” she said, then added, “I think I’ll go up to our room to take a nap now,” before hurrying up the stairs to the room she and Travis shared. She closed the door behind her with a soft click.

That’s when the tears started falling.

And didn’t stop.

Travis headed for the nearest bar. His chest had a gaping hole in it, one that only alcohol could cure.

He ordered a shot of whisky. It burned a path down his throat, but Travis welcomed the pain. One more, then two. But drinking wasn’t making anything better. It wasn’t even making him drunk. A waste of perfectly good whisky.

A dark-eyed girl at the end of the bar kept trying to get his attention by shaking her br**sts farther and farther out of her low-cut top. Several times he’d almost gotten out of his chair to make his move. That would show Lily, he thought.

Whom was he kidding? Booze didn’t have a chance in hell of curing what ailed him. Big br**sts on some Italian stranger weren’t gonna do it either.

He wanted Lily.

And Lily wanted to screw some stranger.

Travis lifted a finger in the bartender’s direction for shot number four and swiveled around on his stool to stare at the stranger’s br**sts again.

Which only made him think about Lily’s br**sts, worlds plumper and softer than any he had ever touched, ever tasted.

He slammed his fist down on the thick wooden bar. That scum bag at the cafe had been about to fondle Lily’s br**sts right there at the table. Travis had nearly jumped across the nearby tables to pummel the man into bloody pulp.

His pride was ground deep into the mud. It was a strange, awful sensation. They all were.

Losing control.

Being jealous.

Wanting Lily again and again, never feeling like he had enough of her.

The shot glass at the edge of his lips, Travis realized he had a hard choice to make. Was Lily worth it?

The answer hit him square across the chest, knocking the breath right out of him: Of course she was worth it. Only a complete idiot would turn his back on this kind of happiness, this kind of pleasure, this kind of unbelievable sex. And if he wanted to claim more of the incredible joy that being with Lily had granted him, he’d have to face his demons head-on, not sit hunched over a bar downing whisky shots.

Throwing several euros on the counter, Travis left the bar. He had one quick side trip to make before he went back to the hotel room. If he played his cards right, maybe he could convince Lily that he was worth another chance after all.