Chapter Six
THEY TOOK A water taxi to the party, which was being held in a stately Renaissance-era palazzo that appeared to genuflect toward the dark waters of the Grand Canal.
As they came in toward the dock wreathed in holiday lanterns, Lily tipped her head back to gaze up at three full stories of blazing lights from every finely carved window.
Music poured out into the night, folding in on itself against the water and the stone buildings of the city, and elegantly dressed partygoers laughed loud enough to spike the breeze.
And Lily was finding it very, very difficult to breathe. At least she had the mask tonight, she thought. Not only would it conceal her identity from the rest of the world a little while longer, she hoped it might go a long way toward hiding her thoughts from Rafael, too. He read her far too easily.
The thought of what, exactly, he might be reading on her face and in her eyes at any given moment—well.
That didn’t exactly help her breathe any better.
She tried to conceal that, too, as she slipped out of her warm cape and left it in the cabin of the water taxi Rafael had hired for the night, as directed.
Rafael handed her out of the boat when it reached the grand palazzo’s guest dock, and Lily was proud of herself when she simply climbed out, as if touching him was nothing to her.
Then he took her arm as they walked up the elegant steps toward the festive great hall, its doors flung open to the night as if the cold dared not enter and the dark had best submit to the blaze of so many torches.
He was warm beside her, and something like steel, and Lily told herself her awareness of him was a warning, that was all.
Beware. That was what her pulse was trying to tell her as it beat out a frenetic pattern against her neck. Be careful here. With him.
Nothing more than a warning.
Inside the open central hall of the magnificent palazzo, it was like a dizzying sort of dream.
Like being swept up into a jewel-studded music box and meant to twirl along with all the gorgeous creatures who were already there in all their finery, moving this way and that across the marble floors and beneath the benign majesty of priceless glass chandeliers some two stories above.
Rafael excused himself to go and do his duty to their hosts, his neighbors, leaving Lily to find her way to one of the great pillars and stand there, happily anonymous.
She braced herself against the stout, cool marble as if it could anchor her to the earth.
She didn’t know where to look first. A single glance at the scene before her and she felt glutted, overdone on sensation and stimuli.
On this particular Venetian magic.
Lily had certainly attended her share of fancy parties in the past. She’d even gone to a great ball in a Roman villa once, with the entire Castelli family and her own mother in attendance.
She’d attended glamorous weddings in stunning locales international and domestic, exclusive charity events that had seemed to compete for the title of Most Over the Top, and had once danced in a brand-new year with most of Manhattan spread out at her feet in a desperately chic four-story penthouse on Central Park West. But all of that had been a long time ago, and none of it had been Venice.
Tonight, everyone glittered the way the finest diamonds did, unmistakably well cut and intriguingly multifaceted.
The women were nothing less than stunning, while each and every man was distractingly debonair.
Was it the people or the place itself? Lily couldn’t tell.
The air itself seemed richer, brighter. There were jovial feathers and the occasional masks, striking black tie and sumptuous couture.
Gowns and jewels and sartorial splendor crowded the whole of the expansive first level of the palace, a gracious orchestra played holiday-tinged music from a raised marble dais that seemed to hover as if by magic just above the throng and the sleek marble dance floor in the center of the grand space opened up to the night sky above, yet was surrounded by so many clever little heaters that it was impossible to feel the mid-December chill.
Lily shivered anyway, and she knew it wasn’t the temperature.
It was the sheer, exultant decadence. This was a sinking city, a nearly forgotten way of life, and yet not a single bright and shining person before her seemed the least bit aware of any of those unpleasant realities as they danced and laughed and pushed back the night.
Something inside her turned over too hard, then ached.
“Come,” Rafael said, his mouth against her ear and the steel expanse of his chest at her back, and that ache bloomed instantly into something darker. Thicker. Infinitely more dangerous. “I want to dance.”
“There must be hundreds of women here,” Lily replied, her eyes on the spectacle before her. It was overwhelming, yes—but he was worse. He was so much worse and infinitely more tempting. “I’m sure one of them would dance with you. If you asked nicely.”
His laughter was a dark and silvery thing, light against her ear and then, deep inside her, a tectonic shift that sent tendrils of need shooting off in all directions, and she couldn’t bring herself to jerk away from him the way she knew she should.
“I don’t want to dance with them, cara. I want to dance with you.”
Lily wanted to dance with him in this magical palace more than she could recall wanting anything, ever, which was precisely how she knew she shouldn’t do anything of the kind.
She pulled her head away from that sweet brush of his mouth against her ear, though it took her much too long and hurt a bit too much to break that connection.
When she turned to face him, his gaze was trained on the upper swells of her breasts where they rose above her bodice, where she could feel the goose bumps from his proximity prickling to life.
The truth of her reaction to him. Obvious and unmistakable, no matter what she said.
Rafael took a long time raising that dark gold gaze to meet hers, and when he finally did, his expression was a molten, simmering thing that nearly made her moan out loud.
“I don’t dance,” she told him. Quickly, before she could betray herself by saying nothing at all—by letting him simply sweep her along with him.
He stood there, tall and darkly beautiful and wearing black tie as if it had been crafted specifically as an homage to his perfect masculine form, and she wanted to cry.
Sob. Scream. Anything to break that rising tension inside her.
Anything to break the hold he had on her.
Anything but what she felt called to do, down deep in her bones, and in that deep, lush throb between her legs. “I mean, I don’t think I know how.”
“You do.”
“I don’t know what good it will do to tell me that, if I can’t remember and trip all over your feet and make a terrible scene. I doubt that’s the kind of spectacle you want at a party like this.”
She only realized how snappish she sounded when he reached over and traced the lower edge of her mask with a single finger.
It was pressure, not heat. He wasn’t touching her, not really, and there was absolutely no reason whatsoever that her pulse should speed up like that, or her breath should hitch. Noticeably.
More evidence against her, she knew.
“You don’t have to remember, Lily,” he said, his gaze much too bright and his voice a low, caressing thing that did everything his finger did and more, winding inside her and making her whole body clench tight and hot and needy. “You only need to follow where I lead.”
Rafael didn’t wait for her answer, which she supposed was some kind of blessing. Or more likely, it being the two of them, a curse. He simply reached down, took her hand and led her out on to the floor.
And Lily told herself she was blending in with the crowd here, nothing more.
That she didn’t want to be recognized at all tonight, which meant she also didn’t want to draw any attention to herself by causing a scene.
It was bad enough that Rafael was so gorgeous and so instantly recognizable—she could see heads turn as he cut through the crowd, something that was so commonplace to him, clearly, that he didn’t even seem to notice it as it happened.
Lily told herself it was the right thing to do, to go along with him so obediently, so easily.
That she was simply making sure she remained anonymous and unremarkable—just another well-dressed woman in a demimask, one of many here tonight.
But then he turned and took her in his arms, and Lily stopped thinking about anything but him.
Rafael.
His sensual mouth was a grim line, but she could see that searing intensity in his eyes, and it made her tremble deep inside.
She had no defense against that hand that wrapped around hers, or the one that settled low on her back, as if she was naked, as if the sleek fall of her dress was no barrier at all.
He could have pressed a burning coal to her bare skin and she thought that might have affected her less.
She swallowed hard as she slid her own hand into place, over the taut, corded muscles of his sculpted shoulder, and felt the bright hot heat of him blaze into her as if he was a radiator.
Lily felt scalded. Turned pink and raw from even that much fully clothed contact—but all she could seem to do was stare up at him, her lips parting on a ragged breath, his own dark need like a physical presence she could feel as well as her own.
She knew she should have done something—anything—to lighten the moment, to wrench herself away or to conceal how she shook at his touch, at that predatory, possessive look in his dark eyes, but she didn’t.