Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
Giovanni’s lips were on hers. It was not a soft kiss, not the gentle lingering of lips that were described in romantic novels.
It was immediately as heady and alive with passionate energy as their kisses in the carriage had been.
This was a hard pressure, his mouth pressed feverishly against hers, his hands cupping her face.
Kissing him without the influence of champagne was revelatory.
It was as if all her fevered fantasies, all those memories hidden inside her dreams, were becoming suddenly crystal clear.
The taste of him, coffee and sweetness, and the scent of him, oranges and tobacco, was overwhelmingly familiar.
It was like a drug to her. She didn’t want it to stop.
She would do anything to keep him kissing her.
“Bea,” Giovanni whispered against her lips, “we shouldn’t…”
Beatrice could feel him preparing to pull away, feel his warm, rapid breath as he sought to control himself.
He moved one of his hands back down to the desk, and his gaze back to the floor.
The other hand lingered loosely on her shoulder, as if he couldn’t quite bring himself to let go of her entirely. She refused to let him go.
“Don’t,” she whispered. She looked into his eyes, pressing her body closer.
She felt his knees parting slightly, allowing her legs to slip easily between his.
She wouldn’t let his gaze pull away from hers.
His dark eyes, shiny with leafy green and hazel tones, held hers.
He watched her like a tiger as she moved slowly, languidly, closer into his embrace.
“Don’t run away from me,” she let her hands drift to his thighs, hearing his breath hitch in his throat at her touch. She had sat astride him in the carriage but had not touched him like this before. Clearly, he enjoyed it.
Encouraged, she moved her hands up his chest, her own stomach flipping as she felt the firm muscular form underneath his shirt and waistcoat. This was the body she remembered pushed against hers in the carriage.
“Bea,” Giovanni’s hands grabbed hers, his chest rising and falling heavily, a strange flush moving up his neck. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”
Beatrice’s anger flared, feeling that same frustration she had felt in the carriage again. He was always torn between what he should feel towards her and what he did feel. He wanted her carnally, she knew it was true, he couldn’t deny it, but he felt like he shouldn’t.
“Why are you pushing me away?” Beatrice tried to pull her hands out of his grip but it was too tight. His eyes flickered angrily. “Why do you keep trying to deny what is happening between us?”
“Nothing is happening,” Giovanni muttered and swallowed hard. She watched his Adam’s apple bob against his dark skin and wished she could pull his stock from his throat and taste him there. “I won’t let anything happen.”
“Then what is this?” Beatrice demanded. Unable to move her hands from his grip, she pressed her body into his and watched his eyes flutter closed.
“This…” his throat worked and his fingers were gripping hers so tightly that the tips were going numb, “this is a young lady working out her desires. It is… merely physical.”
“Merely physical, Gio?” Beatrice was infuriated.
“Yes,” Giovanni refused to open his eyes, as if he didn’t want to see her face as he said these things to her. “I have seen this with other women. Other ladies with… little experience.”
She wanted to shout at him and berate him for his carelessness with her heart.
How dare he bring up other ladies when he was holding her hands and had kissed her so perfectly moments before?
How dare he equate her feelings, borne out of years of yearning for him, with the light-skirts he made love to at his club or at balls?
When those girls were kissing him in his arms, they weren’t carrying with them years of fantasies and friendship.
She was nothing like them, and she wanted to scream at him for even suggesting it, especially when she knew it couldn’t be what he really felt, but she didn’t.
Instead, she lowered her voice intimately.
“If that’s true, then why have you been denying me?” She whispered, watching his face twist as her breath fell close to his ear. “If this is simply physical, why are you holding back?”
He shook his head, refusing to answer. He was clearly trying to retreat back inside himself, to shut away the part of him that had risen up in anger when she had called him a coward.
The part of him that had desperately wanted to prove himself by kissing her so savagely.
She wanted to draw him back out. She thought there might be another away.
She ignored the vice grip of his hands around hers, and leaned her face in closer to him.
“Is this merely physical?”
Boldly, she pressed a kiss against the dark stubble of his jaw. She saw his eyelids flicker and his mouth twitch. It was working.
“Do you touch those other women like you touch me?”
“Bea,” he whispered hoarsely but didn’t push her away.
Beatrice let her lips linger against his skin, moving gently down to his throat.
Giovanni moaned. Beatrice tried not to gasp with desire as she felt the vibrations of it against her lips, a vibration that seemed to travel through her all the way down to that secret place between her thighs.
She kissed him harder, pulling his hands down to her waist, feeling his resistance.
The two parts of him were warring, she could feel it, but she hoped his desire for her would prevail. Maybe then she could prove to him that they were worth something. That she was more to him than other women he had been with. That she was more than the little girl he had known.
“Is this what you do with them?” Beatrice murmured, letting her tongue probe his skin and hearing him gasp. “If it is merely physical, what are you afraid of?”
She felt the moment he gave in to his desire. His hands spread across her back and he kissed her deeply, taking her breath away. Then, one hand grasped her hair furiously, almost painfully, so that she was forced to look into his eyes. They were dark, swirling and full of passion.
“I am not afraid,” Giovanni growled. Then suddenly, he had lifted her around the waist, spun her around and seated her on the desk, pressing kisses into her bare throat.
“Gio!” She exclaimed in breathless surprise, but still she reached her fingers up to grasp his collar, tangling them into his hair.
It felt impossibly right to her, to have his body finally close to hers again.
She hadn’t realized how much she had been craving it, how much her whole body had ached for him.
Everything inside her rejoiced as if all those years of longing for him were finally vindicated.
“You want to know what happens with those other women?” He gasped, eyes blazing angrily. “You want me to tell you every sordid detail? Do you truly desire to know exactly what kind of a rake I am?”
She knew he was riled up and torn between desire and rage, but she didn’t care. She grabbed his face between her hands and pulled his lips against hers.
“No, I want you to show me,” she whispered against his mouth.
He moaned, his tongue dipping into her mouth and dancing against hers. An electric thrill of desire ran through her and she lost all sense of thought. She lost all sense of propriety. She was completely absorbed in the sensation of the moment.
She let him push her down on the desk, feeling his hands fumbling to push letters and ink bottles away underneath her.
She felt the warmth of his body pressed against hers, the rough tug of his palm under her knee as he lifted her leg.
She felt the pressure on the desk as he climbed halfway on top of her, his fingers slipping up her thigh under her skirts, his other hand moving from her waist to her breast.
She gasped and arched her back, pressing into his hand, her mind alive with the sensation of this new, unexpected pleasure.
She could feel a tension building below her belly, a warmth growing in intensity between her thighs.
All she could hear was his grunts and moans, her own gasps and the sound of blood pounding in her ears.
Briefly, in a more sensible part of her mind, she wondered if this would be enough to force Giovanni to recognize his feelings for her.
She felt a pang of guilt in an even deeper part of herself.
This was her brother’s closest friend. Giovanni had been Silas’s ally, companion, and partner-in-arms for nearly all of their lives and travels.
Beatrice knew that, but it wasn’t stopping her from pushing Giovanni to choose between her brother and her.
And in that moment, with Giovanni’s hand reaching up her skirts to clutch her buttock through her shift, she didn’t care.
She didn’t care if Silas walked in and saw them together.
She didn’t care if the whole world knew that she had given herself over to Giovanni completely.
All she cared about was that he couldn’t deny it anymore. What was happening between them was real. Suddenly, there was a sound outside the door. Her heart jolted and she pulled her face away.
“Gio,” she gasped, “someone’s outside!”
“Cristo!” Giovanni gasped, pushing himself off Beatrice and standing up hurriedly. He stared at the door frantically, struggling to re-tie his stock from where Beatrice’s insistent fingers had pulled it loose. What if Silas walked in?
Please God, please no, not like this, please.
“What is it—?” Beatrice began to ask, but Giovanni rushed to cover her mouth with her hands.
“Shh,” he hissed, staring at the door. He could feel her warm breath on his palm. Silas could burst in any second and then everything would be over for him.
He imagined Silas’s anger, his furious words: You’ve betrayed me! My own sister? You’re my closest friend—I trusted you with my life, and this is how you repay my trust?