Chapter Fifteen Raffa
Chapter Fifteen
Raffa
“Stop pacing,” Martina said through her laughter. “A woman cannot be rushed.”
I checked my Rolex again as I turned on my heel and walked back along the path I had been tracing for the last fifteen minutes. There was being fashionably late, and then there was being late . But that wasn’t the entire reason I was anxious.
Guinevere’s reaction to my aggression that afternoon had both eased and excited something inside me. I had acted instinctively, as I would have if he had insulted Mama or my sisters or Martina. No one insulted the women in my life and remained unscathed.
Apparently, Guinevere was now among their ranks, and truthfully, it was hard not to question if I would go to the same lengths for her that I had and would go to for my family after knowing her for all of two weeks. It was so unlike me and so wildly stupid that I could not quite digest it.
But I knew it was the truth.
Especially in the car, after she’d questioned me. When she had blinked those luminous dark eyes, filled with their usual curiosity but also a notable degree of acceptance and even a little arousal. When she had taken my face in her hand and kissed me in a way that felt like a stamp of approval.
“Okay,” she had said, “I can accept it for four weeks or four decades.”
I rubbed a hand over my eyes as a fantasy of those four decades unfurled like cinema roll behind my lids.
Enough.
It was one thing to indulge in this affair. To enjoy Guinevere while I had her. And quite another to dream of any future.
She was as bright and hopeful as a shooting star across my dark galaxy, and I had to remember that. Fleeting, but lovely to behold.
“The dress fit?” I asked Martina, even though I had asked her twice already.
That was the other reason I was pacing.
I could not wait to see Guinevere in that dress.
It was one she had seen in the window of a boutique we’d passed on our run to Piazzale Michelangelo the other night.
Midstride, she had halted and turned to the window as if drawn by gravity.
I had stopped immediately and then followed behind her silently as she crossed to the display and raised her fingers the way she had in the car our first day out in Florence.
There was reverence in her face as she stared at the gown, and when she finally realized I was beside her, she startled as if awaking from a dream.
“Sorry,” she’d murmured, that gorgeous flush spilling from her cheeks to her chest. “I’ve never seen something like this before.”
“A dress?” I asked with an arched brow to tease her gently.
A little shoulder shrug any Italian would be proud of. “It looks like art.”
I sent a soldier out to buy it the next day.
“It fits,” a voice said, slicing my thoughts to ribbons. “And it’s gorgeous.”
I followed the sound up the grand staircase leading from the second floor to the marble-floored foyer.
And there she was.
Italian writers had coined the term sbigottimento , which referred to a phenomenon that had no direct English equivalent but meant the profound and arresting feeling of being confronted with the object of your desire.
It was almost sickening in its extreme. I lost my breath to it, heart knocking too hard at my breastbone as if it was fighting to escape my chest and go to her.
Guinevere.
Gliding down the stairs toward me in a diaphanous dress of sheer layers hand painted with vague impressions of flowers in light pastels.
It made her look like a nymph shrouded in fog, picking up petals as she walked through dew in some blooming spring pasture.
All that thick dark hair had been loosely curled, some caught up at the back of her skull where I liked to cup my hand.
I imagined the end of the night when I could take out the clip and watch the heavy fall of mink around her bare shoulders.
Proserpina, indeed.
Without my consent, my hand had found its way to my chest, where I was pressing it as if I could force my heart back inside the cage of my ribs.
Too fanciful for a capo. Too dangerous for a man in my position, and yet there I stood.
Struck by il colpo di fulmine .
A lightning bolt of passion so acute it felt like it could be love.
“You haven’t said a word,” Guinevere noted as she took the last step and floated toward me, made taller with her heels but still so much shorter than me I had to bend my head to maintain eye contact. “Don’t tell me you hate it?”
“I hate myself for agreeing to take you as my date,” I admitted caustically. “Because I will be the one having to fight off a room of admirers.”
Her laugh was delighted, the antidote to the angst burning like acid in my gut.
“We must stand as a united front, then, because you look absolutely ...” She drifted off as her gaze dipped to my polished dress shoes and rose up the length of my black Dolce & Gabbana suit.
Her fingers ran lightly up the velvet lapels to the open throat of my black dress shirt.
I swallowed against the press of her touch and watched the way her mouth fell open on a little sigh. “Stunning.”
I grasped her fingers and brought them to my mouth. “Thank you, but it does not hurt my pride to know that I pale in comparison to you. You are lucky—otherwise I would be angry we are late.”
“He has a thing about time,” Martina inserted helpfully from her seat on the antique velvet sofa. “You get used to it.”
I leveled her with a cool look that ordered her to be quiet.
She mocked zipping her lips and then throwing away the key like the insolent soldato she was.
“I have a present for you,” I told Guinevere, reaching into my pocket for the gift I’d found in a small shop in Santa Croce the other day on my walk home from meeting with my man at the local bank.
“Raffa, no .” She was suddenly fierce, pushing my hand back into my pocket. “Equals, remember? I’m not here for gifts and palaces.”
I stared at her implacably, waiting for her to take her hands from mine.
“I’m here for the sex,” she declared loud enough for Martina to snort Peroni through her nose. “If you must know.”
I pursed my lips to hide my smile and merely raised my brows until she sighed and let go. Only then did I lift my closed fist between us.
“This is a gift I bought for fifteen euro in a local shop,” I told her dryly. “But it is something I thought would be fitting for a girl whose nickname in America is Jinx.”
I turned my fist over and opened my palm to reveal the red coral pendant attached to a gold chain.
“This is a cornicello . In the south, where my father was from, it is a good luck charm. There are many stories about how people came to wear them that date back to the Neolithic period, but my favorite is that it was first derived from a crescent moon, for the goddess of the moon. She is also the goddess of the hunt, and her symbol has always been the deer. So what better lucky charm to give to my unlucky little fawn?”
Guinevere reached out tentatively, mouth open in a little moue as she touched the twisted coral horn with her pinky. “It’s beautiful, Raffa. And very, very sweet,” she teased, looking up at me with black-velvet eyes strewn with glitter.
I turned her around, so she would not see the way she affected me, and efficiently clipped the necklace around her throat. When she faced me, I could see that the pendant rested in the hollow of her throat.
“It’s your favorite color too,” she murmured, touching it against her skin. “I love it.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and stared at her with blatant displeasure. “Really? I could not tell. Did we not talk about how I expect to be greeted just a few hours ago?”
She rolled her eyes, but there was no curbing her wide smile. She practically sparkled with happiness.
“Oh, I think I remember something about that. Let me ...” She braced a hand against my chest and rolled to the tips of her high heels, using her other hand to tug me down by the back of my hair when she still couldn’t reach. When her lips touched mine, I could feel the shape of her smile.
“Better?” she murmured.
“No.”
When she opened her mouth to speak, I sealed it shut with my own and kissed her the way I’d wanted to for the last two hours.
I cupped her neck instead of her head so I did not ruin her hair and pressed my other hand to the base of her spine so I could tip her slightly over my arm and absolutely plunder her mouth.
I could feel her knees weaken at the onslaught, the feathery moans of her pleasure like a siren’s song urging me to take her right there in the middle of the foyer.
It had been almost a week since I’d last really touched her, and every inch of me burned to teach her more, show her how explosive I knew it would be between us.
A harsh cough splintered the moment.
“Ah, now you are really running late,” Martina called out with faux helpfulness.
“ Togliti di torno. ” I told her mildly to fuck off, and both Martina and Guinevere laughed.
“So,” Guinevere asked after I’d helped her into my Lamborghini and she had rolled her eyes at my excess. “What is the charity we are raising money for tonight?”
“For the museum itself. There are ongoing construction and restoration for a building constructed in the sixteenth century.”
“Fair enough. You don’t seem like the kind of man who would enjoy events like this.”
“I am not.” In fact, I tried to send Martina or Carmine in my place whenever I could. I rarely even visited Florence proper, running most of my business from Villa Romano and traveling through the north as needed.
“Then why are we going to this one?”
“Two reasons. The first is that I have not made an appearance in Florentine society in some time, and it is a beast that requires at least infrequent feeding. There will be many people there I should rub elbows with. Even then, I might have canceled last minute if it were not for my second reason.” I slid a hand over her thigh and squeezed.
“Seeing you in that dress, and later, seeing you out of it.”