Chapter 23
Lovers in the Afternoon
Meanwhile, at Villa D’Avalos
Excitement, anticipation, and disbelief combined to make Patrick experience a moment of lightheadedness. Perhaps he was hungrier than he thought—in more ways than one. “Tell me, my lady, when you say you wish to have your luncheon in your bed, are you...?” He paused and swallowed.
She glanced up at him as he opened the door to her courtyard. “Speaking of food or proposing lovemaking?” she finished for him. She stepped under the arched opening. “Perhaps a bit of both,” she said on a sigh. “I am hungry. I’ll have DeLuca send up a cold collation.”
“That sounds... uh, very good,” he stammered, closing the iron door until he heard the clunk of the latch when it engaged.
She watched him a moment before they made their way across the marble tiles. “Why, Patrick, for a man who claims he was about to propose marriage, you seem terribly nervous all of a sudden,” she accused.
“That’s because I am,” he admitted, opening the door to the villa when DeLuca didn’t immediately appear. When the butler stepped into the entry from somewhere off to the right, Patrick realized his guess that the servants quarters were on the ground floor was confirmed.
“Why?” She seemed genuinely curious as she shook the mantle from her shoulders and handed it to DeLuca. She rattled off a series of orders in Italian to the servant before lifting her skirts to make the climb up the stairs.
“I fear I am about to humiliate myself,” Patrick murmured, following her up the stairs he had climbed earlier that morning.
Had it just been that morning?
A quick glance at his pocket watch confirmed they had only been gone for a couple of hours.
Armenia glanced back at him, a brow furrowing in confusion. “Why?”
He dipped his head. “Uh, I haven’t been with a woman—in bed—in a very long time.”
For the first time that afternoon, she seemed uncertain of what to say. “Because...?”
He lifted a shoulder and sighed. “Travel, business, lack of opportunity.” He followed her down the corridor to her apartment.
“I’m not very social when I’m concentrating on business,” he explained, relieved when they were in the sitting room outside her bedchamber and he could close the door behind him.
“My son is constantly nagging me to...” He stopped speaking and stiffened when he saw her take a step back, her eyes wide with censure. “What is it?” he asked.
“Your son?” she repeated. “You are... married?” A hint of anger sounded in her words.
For the first time that afternoon, Patrick realized they hadn’t discussed his personal life. “No. Uh, I mean, I... I was,” he stammered.
“Divorced?” she guessed, her accusatory expression changing to one of curiosity.
“A widower,” he stated. “For several years now. It’s just been my son, Patrick Junior, and myself.”
Armenia visibly relaxed, although she still seemed unnerved. “No mistress?” she asked. “No... prostitutes?”
An odd sound came from his throat. “If you knew anything about the ladies of the evening in Boston, you would not be asking,” he said.
When he noted her eyebrow once again arched, he added, “Uh, they will rob you blind and leave you with venereal diseases or... syphilis,” he said, shuddering with disgust. “There is something to be said for celibacy.”
Apparently satisfied with his response, Armenia moved into her bedchamber. “When you said you thought you were about to... what was the word you said?” she asked, turning her back to him so he could undo her buttons.
“Humiliate myself,” he replied, quickly setting the jets free of their holes.
It was far easier to undo them than it had been to button them earlier that day.
“Uh, embarrass?” he clarified, thinking she didn’t understand his English.
“It’s not that I don’t know how to... to pleasure a woman,” he said in a quiet voice.
He pulled the ties of her corset and petticoats. “It’s only that—”
“You think it’s been too long?” She turned around, pulling her arms from her bodice as one of her petticoats fell to the floor.
“Maybe,” he replied. He swallowed and kept her gaze as he felt her gloved hand sweep down the front of his top coat. His erection, one he’d been fighting since they had been climbing the stairs, was evident behind his pantaloons, and he inhaled sharply when she pressed her palm around the bulge.
“Maybe not,” she whispered, her eyes never leaving his.
“And you?” he challenged. Given her beauty and his housekeeper’s opinion, he feared she bedded a different man every week.
She stiffened. “My favorite lover and I parted when Nikky and Donald were courting,” she murmured, her gaze darting to the side. “He had already taken up with someone… younger,” she whispered.
“Then he was a fool,” Patrick stated, groaning when she acknowledged his comment by tightening her hold on his arousal. “May I kiss you?”
She blinked and seemed to think on her answer for a time before she finally said, “This is where I may... humiliate myself.”
His brows rose in surprise. “You’re not about to say you haven’t kissed a man,” he warned, reaching for his pocket watch. “At least, not in the past half-hour, I suppose,” he teased.
She captured her bottom lip with a tooth as her gaze swept down to his cravat. “Before you took me by surprise in the Pantheon, it had been a very long time since I had engaged in such intimacy,” she finally replied.
“It had been a long time for me as well,” he murmured, thinking of when he had last kissed his late wife.
He wondered if he would have done so if he hadn’t have learned she was near-death.
Not everyone had the benefit of knowing when it might be their last chance at convincing someone they were loved.
“Yet we seemed to do it very well,” he whispered, his throat thick as he was reminded of the sorrow he had experienced only the year before.
Reminded of the guilt he felt at having spent too much of his time on his business and too little of it in Grace’s company.
Had someone asked him why he had chosen Rome from which to run his European base, he might have claimed it was merely logical given the shipping routes available.
But deep down, he knew its reputation as the City of Love might mean he could find another woman with whom to share his life. His modest fortune.
He was determined to give it a try. That he had crossed paths with such an interesting and gorgeous woman so early in his tenure in the city only proved he had chosen well.
He leaned forward and kissed her forehead as he reached around her waist to pull her closer. “Do you need to be anywhere this afternoon? Do you... have any appointments? Or are you expecting any callers?”
She shook her head. “Only DeLuca with our luncheon,” she said. “I told him to leave it in the sitting room.”
A grin appeared to lighten Patrick’s face before his lips brushed hers in a tentative kiss. When she didn’t back away, he touched his lips to hers again with a bit more force, finally capturing them in a kiss that had her relaxing into his hold.
When she slid the hand that had been pressing his manhood up the front of his coat to grip his shoulder, he moved a hand to the back of her waist and pulled her hard against the front of his body.
Given her height and the half boots she wore, she didn’t need to stand on tiptoe to continue the kiss, a situation he found he rather liked.
They could battle for one another’s lips without bending or struggling for balance.
He reveled in their mutual hunger for one another as their tongues tangled and her soft mewls sounded.
When he ended the kiss, he left his forehead pressed to hers. “Grazie,” he whispered.
Armenia blinked several times, as if she was awakening. “Grazie?” she repeated in confusion.
“Sì,” he replied, chuckling softly. Given his one hand was already at the back of her waist, he moved the other to join it and began loosening the laces of her corset as he continued to nip her lips with his.
Meanwhile, she had already started on his buttons, and by the time she had his coats pushed from his torso, he was pulling the gown from hers.
Layers of twill passed between them as he lifted the gown over her head. He didn’t send it to the floor, though, but held it out, shook it, and carefully draped it over the back of a nearby chair.
She watched in fascination, apparently expecting he would discard the gown on the floor.
She followed his lead and did the same with his top coat and waistcoat.
When her back was to him, he reached out and undid the ties of her second petticoat until it dropped in a heap at her feet.
Then he lifted the corset over her head.
He grinned at seeing her in only her shift and stockings, the thin cotton hinting at what he had seen earlier that day.
A body made for bedding.
A pair of breasts meant for suckling.
A pair of legs so long and lean, he could hardly wait to feel them wrapped around his hips.
“How do you like it?” he asked in a whisper.
She inhaled softly. “Like… what?”
He swallowed. “What brings you the most pleasure, mia donna?” He reached out and slid his hand along the side of her torso, his thumb barely skimming over the protrusion of her nipple evident in the fabric.
Both of her nipples were hard, he hoped evidence of her arousal and not because she was cold.
From the sound of her inhalation of breath, he knew his touch had caused something. Bending down, he placed his lips around the silhouette of one nipple and gently suckled it through the fabric.
Armenia immediately captured the sides of his face in her hands, her fingers spearing his dark hair. “For whatever you do, I wish to be on the bed,” she whispered. “You will use no restraints, nor anything that can elicit pain,” she added.
Patrick had to swallow a curse. What poor excuse of a man would dare restrain this woman or cause her pain in pursuit of pleasure? “Noted,” he whispered.