Chapter Fifteen Raffa #2
Her laugh was light and as frothy as overflowing champagne. “Raffa, trust me, you do not need to take me to a gala to see me naked.”
“No?” I arched a brow.
“No,” she said firmly, linking her hand with mine. “Honestly, I think if you snapped your fingers and looked at me in that way you do sometimes like I am prettier than Botticelli’s Venus, I would do almost anything you asked.”
“Even though you are a virgin?” I asked, despite never having explicitly spoken about her sexual history.
Her blush was obvious even in the dim car. “Maybe because I am. It makes me feel wanted and confident to have your attention. To earn your praise like I did in the car on the way to the vineyard the other day. I’ve always been very goal oriented.”
I laughed, startled by her endearing honesty although I should have been used to it. “Well, I am happy to oblige. Tonight, you will come back to the palazzo with me.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “But I’m afraid I don’t have any pajamas at your place.”
Cazzo , her coquettishness was making me hard just as we pulled up to the valet drop-off for the gala.
I put the car in neutral as we waited in line for the valet and slid my hand under her hair to pull her close.
“You can sleep in my cum,” I offered graciously and then ate the little gasp straight off her tongue.
I had not worried about how Guinevere would act on my arm, despite knowing the event brought the cream of Florentine society out of their villas, palaces, and penthouses in enough finery to feed a third world nation for years.
Still, she surprised me.
As she always seemed able to do.
Though it was obvious she had never walked a red carpet, she was elegance personified on my arm as I led her to the photography points and smiled for the cameras.
It was a short carpet with few paparazzi, mostly for local news outlets, but she was still blinking owlishly and adorably by the time we entered the palace.
Her Italian was much better than I had given her credit for, and the week of immersive language classes had only honed it further. When we engaged in conversation with the mayor and his wife, she was able to understand the flow of conversation and respond charmingly, if a bit slowly, in kind.
By the time we moved on from the Moris, they were utterly charmed by the bella donna Americana .
As was I.
The entire central piazza of the palace had been transformed into an extravagant outdoor ballroom, complete with a tiled dance floor overseen by a sixteen-piece orchestra.
They had transported some of the more recognizable statues from the galleries into the courtyard, so I had the pleasure of teasing my date about her resemblance to a marble nymph with flowers in her hair.
It was a warm evening, the sky gone to ink, with pinpricks of barely visible stars and a full-bellied moon I found Guinevere peering at as if they were a work of art framed in the rectangular silhouette of the buildings.
“It’s beautiful,” she admitted when I caught her, as if it was a secret.
“Do not be embarrassed by your enthusiasm for life,” I told her, dredging up an old quote from Ivern Ball that suited her so well. “‘Knowledge is power, but enthusiasm pulls the switch.’”
“I haven’t heard that before,” she said with a shy smile. “But I love it.”
“You should. It is true in general and for you. It is one of my favorite things about you.”
We had a quiet moment without an audience, tucked behind the statue of the nymph in a pocket of shadow.
“Oh? What else do you like?” she asked coyly, leaning back against a pillar and touching the low neckline of her dress. My mouth watered.
I stepped forward, curving around her to shield her from view as I moved her hair off one shoulder and placed a kiss there.
“It would be more sensible to ask what I do not like about you, cerbiatta ,” I murmured against her throat, touching my tongue to her pulse point to feel it pound. “To tell you everything I admire would take too long.”
“Flatterer,” she teased, but clutched me closer and arched into my mouth.
“Ah, Signore Romano, I should have known I would find you in some dark corner, feeding on a woman.”
The Neapolitan dialect made me tense even before the words landed. I turned to face the unwelcome intruder, keeping Guinevere at my back.
Sansone Pucci stood before me with a grim smile.
“Usually, people in dark corners do not like to be disturbed,” I pointed out to him coolly.
The last time Ludo reported to me, Sansone had been in the south, wrapping up a drug seizure off the coast of Calabria.
And suddenly, he was here in my city.
“I find things are always best brought into the light,” he countered with that smug superiority I had sensed in him from afar. “We have not officially met, but I had to introduce myself to the famous Raffaele Romano. Sansone Pucci.”
I inclined my head but said nothing, as he clearly already knew my name and was trying to set into motion a game of cat and mouse.
He would come to understand that I was neither.
The symbol of the Romano family had always been a wolf, a reference to Romulus, the founding father of Rome.
And wolves did not play games with their enemies or their prey.
“You know, I once met your father,” he continued. “I believe we were questioning him about fraud.”
“Which you were never able to prove,” I reminded him curtly. “Do not speak ill of the dead, Pucci. Whatever our differences, he was still my father.”
Sansone peered at me as if trying to read the truth in my implacable veneer.
The history of my falling-out with Aldo Romano was legendary in the right circles, those in the underworld and those in high society.
I had refused to take over the business as his only son and so had been cast out.
From the ages of twenty-one to twenty-nine, I had not set foot in Tuscany because of the man who ruled it.
It was the only reason I had been able to come home after his death and take over as capo dei capi as seamlessly as I had.
Everyone knew I had sworn never to follow my father, and when I moved back to Tuscany, I set up my own wealth management firm instead of taking over as CEO of the Romano Group, leaving it in the capable hands of Tonio and Leo.
It seemed my plausible deniability was coming under scrutiny now.
“And who, may I ask, is the lovely lady?” he had the audacity to ask, peering around my shoulder to smile at her.
I forced myself to stay calm even though I wanted to gouge his eyes out for even daring to look at her.
“Guinevere,” I said, pulling her in close at my side. “May I introduce the deputy director of the police, Signore Pucci.”
“Pleasure,” he said in perfect English, stepping forward to take her hand and bring it just short of his mouth in a facsimile of a kiss. “How did a foreigner come to be on the arm of Signore Romano tonight?”
She cocked her head slightly, considering him with none of her usual cheer. I watched as she managed to look down her nose at the much taller man.
“How does any woman end up on the arm of a man? He wins her favor.”
“Ah, and how did he win yours?” He stepped closer with a plastic smile I wanted to break into pieces.
“By being a perfect gentleman,” she replied smoothly, not realizing her unintentional reference to my nickname, Il Gentiluomo.
Sansone’s smile sharpened. “How wonderful for you both. I had heard from mutual acquaintances that you were prepared to be married to Stefania Burette.”
Guinevere did not shift one inch at his insinuation, and the last vestiges of my defenses against her crumbled like old stone.
“I am not,” I replied coldly.
“Obviously,” Guinevere added, turning to wind her arm through mine and beam up at me. “You promised me a dance, darling. Don’t make me wait any longer?”
I bent to press a kiss to her nose, oddly grateful for her staunch support in the face of the mysterious animosity between Sansone and me. The faith she had in me was so misplaced but felt like absolution.
“ Certo, piccola ,” I agreed. “Excuse us, Signore Pucci. I hope you have a pleasant time in my city.”
He nodded, pushing his hands into his pockets as I took Vera to the dance floor and spun her into my arms. I could feel his eyes on us long after I lost sight of him in the crowd and knew with certainty that somehow we had gotten on his radar.
Porca Madonna.
“You seem very angry,” Guinevere said softly, running her fingertips from my shoulder to my neck in a comforting caress. “Who was that arrogant ass?”
My bark of laughter was so loud, it drew attention from the partygoers around us.
Guinevere smiled in triumph at the sound.
“You are the most surprising girl,” I told her as I led us around the black-and-white floor. “I knew you would animate my life in ways I could hardly fathom, but the reality is much better.”
“For a grump, you can be very romantic.”
“I am Italian,” I reminded her.
She hesitated. “I’m sorry he was so rude about your father.”
“Do not be. He was a pezzo di merda .”
Her dark eyes searched my face, so soft and warm, inviting me to trust her enough to explain. For one heart-stopping moment, I wanted to lay all my awful history at her door and beg her to let me stay.
“May I cut in?”
I swallowed my sigh, wishing the night could have been about enjoyment instead of riddled with irritation.
“No,” I told Stefania without looking at her.
Guinevere stayed in my arms, but her gaze tracked the woman behind me. I danced us farther away.
“She looks like she swallowed a lemon,” she told me.
“That is just the way her face is.”
“Raffa,” she scolded, but she was biting back a smile. “Don’t be rude.”
“Why not? It was rude of her to interrupt our dance.”
“Is she a friend? I assumed so because she seemed comfortable enough to ask for a dance in the first place.”
“She used to be,” I confessed flippantly, though something in my gut clenched as I continued to say, “though lately she has confessed to wanting ... more. Marriage and the like.”