Chapter Five #3
Having left nothing to chance, not for years now, Giaco had made certain that Ivy had every available stylist on call.
Not to make her over, as she was beautiful without any help, but to carefully tailor her appearance so that over time, she looked as if she was on some kind of dimmer switch.
Brighter and brighter in his presence, so that the papers would call it love.
Tonight she seemed brighter than should have been possible from a simple application of cosmetics, but something in him reacted a little too strongly to that notion. Maybe he wanted to believe—too much—that it was something else. Something more.
The trouble with all of this is that he was far too interested in this woman when he had only ever conceived of her as a means to his own ends.
And he couldn’t lose sight of what was important now, no matter how she might glow.
Or how his forearm felt branded by her touch, well into the evening.
He lectured himself on these things all the way through dinner and then afterward, it all promptly went to hell when he took her hand as they exited the restaurant. “I thought we would walk back home,” he told her, his voice gone gruff again.
And he could feel her immediate reaction to what he said. Not the walking part. Home.
Her reaction meant that he reacted, too. And it felt like a spark causing a flame and then a flame developing into fire in the space of a heartbeat. Or maybe it was simply that her fingers were in his, linked together, and he already knew that touching her was dangerous.
Giaco had always loved women. He was fully aware that his reputation suggested quite the opposite and he hadn’t done much to fight that, but the truth was that he reveled in the female form. If he was an artist, it was in this. He delighted in the mysteries of a woman’s body.
It would not have said he had a type. There was not any particular form or color hair or height that drew him in. He had been lucky enough to sample everything. And he had never regretted it.
But Ivy was something else altogether.
He spent significantly more time than he would ever wish to admit torturing himself with what else might have happened on that couch in his father’s office, had he simply…
followed the cues that he could read all over her body.
Had he closed that last bit of space between them and set his mouth to the crook of her neck, the curve of her lips—
Giaco couldn’t count the number of times he’d had to take himself in hand since that day, hoping to dispel this hold she had on him—but it always seemed to make the memory more intense.
She made the memory more intense. She made everything intense, when he had always prided himself on keeping everything easy. Simple.
Now they walked down the streets in Rome, melting into the crowds in this busy part of the only city he had ever truly loved, and he was on fire.
When all she was doing was holding his hand.
He could not for the life of him understand why such a simple, prosaic touch should hum through him like a thousand hymns sung in Saint Peter’s Basilica, like this was something sacred.
It was nothing of the kind, of course. It was business and could never be anything else.
Giaco kept telling himself that.
When he got to a certain bit of shadowed alley that snaked between a few buildings and was set back from the street, he pulled her into the mouth of it with him, then backed her up against one stone wall. He propped himself above her, one forearm above her head, and looked down at her.
Though it was difficult to focus when her mouth was right there.
“You got the itinerary, I assume.” He said it matter-of-factly.
She swallowed, and he watched the motion of her slender throat. “As you are no doubt aware, your assistant is nothing if not thorough.”
“That is one of Gabriele’s many strengths,” he agreed.
“Yes,” she said, sounding something like formal. She tilted her head back a bit more, and smiled up at him—though now she was back to the practiced smile of hers. He could not pretend to like it. “I read it. Did he write all that?”
“He did,” Giaco said. And he could have left it there, because he already knew how little the whole world thought of his intellect. Most assumed he had none worth mentioning. But for some reason, he couldn’t let Ivy think that. “He typed it up quite neatly as I dictated it, in fact.”
“Then it’s you, then,” she said, and she was still looking up at him like that.
As if they were standing in a shadowy place only steps from the crowd, bantering the way lovers might.
Meaning, he knew, that she had absolutely read the itinerary.
When he only stared down at her blankly, and only partly because he didn’t know what she meant, she laughed.
“I had no idea that deep beneath your indolent and cynical exterior beats the heart of a romance writer.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Because it’s all so tidy, isn’t it?” Somehow, her blue eyes seemed to burn even brighter here in the dark.
“It’s a perfect love story, delivered directly to the masses.
Tonight our first kiss. Each outing will advance us into hints of more and more intimacy.
This will inevitably lead to the perfect engagement with photos leaked to the press against our will, as if what we really want is to fly under the radar.
And then, of course, we’ll perform a spectacular wedding that makes our happy-ever-after a foregone conclusion.
A triumph of three-act structure, Giaco.
I had no idea you were such a dedicated storyteller. ”
“I am one of the greatest storytellers you will ever meet,” he told her, not sure why his voice sounded so dark. “The best story I tell is me.”
And he tried to make that come out like one of his usual, drawling little barbs that made people around him think he meant the opposite of whatever it was he said. He tried to make it over into the usual sort of verbal performance art that he was so well known for, but it didn’t work this time.
He could see it was perfectly clear to her, here in the hush of this alley while Rome swirled in all its bright noise and motion almost within reach, that it was nothing short of the stark truth.
“Giaco,” she began.
“Pucker up, little saint,” he ordered her, in that same dark voice. “It’s time to be romantic.”
And then he leaned in and took her mouth with his.
He felt her stiffen beneath him for just a moment, and then she kissed him back.
Giaco shifted and caught a glimpse of the paparazzo he’d explicitly tipped off tonight, lurking farther back in the alley. He knew all the best angles to use to give the man the proper photos. He knew how to kiss so that both he and his partner looked their best in the inevitable two-page spread.
But when she surged toward him, flattening her hands against his chest and arching into him, the kiss got deeper. Harder.
Not entirely within his control, though that should have been impossible.
He felt seized with some kind of fever. Or possibly that damned wine he’d had with dinner had gone to his head, suddenly and irrevocably. He felt as if he was spinning, and yet somehow there was nothing sickening about it.
There was only her.
Only Ivy, her mouth a bright, hot counterpoint to his as if she was as swept away in this moment as he was. As he shouldn’t have been.
His other hand found its way to her face, and wrapped around the nape of her neck, which he had spent too long now feeling like another brand in the palm of his hand.
This didn’t exactly help. He cradled her head and he moved her where he wanted her to go. Because where he wanted to go was even deeper. Even wilder.
Even hotter, if that was possible.
And he could feel his whole body shudder into that blast of heat. He could feel her, everywhere.
He could smell a hint of the scent in the crook of her neck. It was something complicated, like citrus and cloves. Because, of course, Ivy Amis would never wear bog standard vanilla or anything else that smelled like sugar.
Giaco wanted to eat her alive. He thought maybe that was what he was doing.
He dropped his other arm from its lazy position propped up over her head and then he had both hands on her face, kissing her and kissing her. Her body was pressed to his and he could feel all of her, at last. Those plump breasts, pressed into him. The sweet, searing heat of her body, warming him.
His fingers were moving into her hair, threatening the pins that held it all in place, and the only thing he could think about was how best he could get inside her—right here in this alley—because he thought that if he didn’t he might die.
She pulled away then, though that made no sense. Then she looked up at him, her chest moving too fast. Her blue eyes wide, and much darker now.
“Giaco…” she whispered. “We can’t.”
For a moment he had absolutely no idea what she was talking about. He couldn’t understand why she would end something so perfect. So wildly necessary.
Then, like a key in a lock, it clicked. And he remembered himself.
Which is how he knew, in a rush of horror, that he’d forgotten himself in the first place.
He, Giaco Tavian, who had a preternatural ability to spot any possible hint of a camera from a mile away. He, who had set up this whole night and had literally written the script.
Giaco couldn’t think of a single other time he had ever lost his head like that. He had never forgotten himself so completely. If she hadn’t stopped him, he would have been deep inside her already—when he’d known going in that there was a paparazzo in this alley with them.
Because he’d called the man himself.
He pulled back and ran a hand down the side of her face, because he couldn’t resist. Or he couldn’t help himself. They were beginning to feel like the same thing.
There were no words, or possibly he couldn’t speak. Instead, he took her hand again, led her out of the alley, and spent the rest of their walk home unsettled and something very much like thrown.
Because if he couldn’t play this role of his in every possible circumstance, then the real truth was that Giaco didn’t know who the hell he was.
And that had the power to ruin everything.