Chapter Two
ROCCO GAZED DOWN at the exquisite woman in his arms. Her mask adorned with trembling feathers, fashioned as butterfly wings. This was what he’d come to the ball to find. An escape from the sensation of being apart, like a stranger in his own life. Eternally changed.
His attention drew to the inner pocket of his coat which seemed to burn against his flesh. There, he carried a letter, one that now never left him because it was the reminder that everything he’d previously believed about his life had been a lie.
The results of a DNA test.
He’d kept the glass Leo Zanetti had drunk from for a week, before making his fateful decision to send it for testing.
Now he wished he’d turned his back and ignored Zanetti’s taunts.
Whilst he’d waited the eight weeks for the results, he’d said nothing to his parents.
Why should he? He hadn’t really believed what he’d been told.
Simply wanted another weapon to use against Zanetti.
Yet the results were incontrovertible. He and Leonardo shared twenty-five percent of their DNA, meaning he’d been told the truth. They were half-brothers.
His grip on Lily tightened almost involuntarily at the memory of the day he’d opened the letter.
How the sense of his parents’ betrayal sliced deep.
His confrontation with them almost Shakespearean in its intensity.
How could he believe anything that came from their mouths?
Their betrayal worse than Carla’s because she hadn’t been his blood.
Any shred of trust he’d had was burned away.
He was as black as the clothes he wore, right to the core of him.
Like he was the embodiment of mourning. Walking through his life as some automaton.
Still working in the family business because they had employees who relied on him, but now remotely, given he’d left Milan. Seeing no-one. Existing, not living.
He’d come to this ball full of colour and light, craving to lose himself in the hedonism—when the truth was, he was already lost.
‘What does farfallina mean?’ Lily asked, if that was her real name, although he expected it was since she seemed to have little artifice about her. Her whisper-soft voice drawing him from his dark thoughts.
‘Little butterfly.’
When he’d seen her in the line-up to enter, there was something about the woman that held his attention.
A word that teased the deepest recesses of his consciousness.
One he refused to acknowledge. Then, when it appeared she was going to be turned away, he’d been driven to come to her rescue.
Even now, he half expected her to take wing and flit off into the crowd, since it was clearly her first time at a function like this, given her reaction to the exhibitionism in the more secluded corners of the room.
The pupils of Lily’s transfixing blue eyes flared, but she didn’t pull away, instead melting into him. One hand resting gently on his chest. The sense of rage and recrimination that had overtaken his life seemed to relent in the rightness of this moment.
Muse, his traitorous brain whispered to him. Rocco tried to ignore the word drifting through his consciousness like a feather on the breeze. He found inspiration everywhere. One person was not the repository of it. He would never give another that power over him. But a night? He could offer that.
‘My arms are where you were meant to be,’ he said, and her lips parted on the tiniest of gasps.
That breathy sound was what he craved to hear as he buried himself deep inside of her.
He wanted to strip her back. Peel away the layers and search for her core.
Because he knew, if he wanted to lose himself, that she was his escape.
He should kiss her, but seduction was a subtle and intricate game he hadn’t played for too long.
He’d missed the back and forth, the anticipation. ‘I hope you don’t fly away yet …’
The corners of her rosebud-pink lips tilted in an enigmatic smile, as if he’d won some challenge he hadn’t known he’d entered.
‘Seems I’m still standing here, not going anywhere.’
This ball was all about immersing yourself in carnal pleasure, yet what might be on offer to him from any number of strangers here was nothing when compared to this woman who’d caught his attention as if he’d been blinded by a spotlight.
Sono stato baciato dalla fortuna …
‘Then I’ve been kissed by luck.’
‘Is that all you want to be kissed by?’ she asked, her voice soft and sweet when the way she looked at him was all spice.
A burst of heat roared through his gut. Settled much lower.
The ache, sudden and heady. Blistering arousal he hadn’t experienced for longer than he cared to admit after the events of the past few months.
It gave him the same sense of excitement and discovery as touching a piece of virgin wood, yearning to chip away at the secrets it held.
The intoxicating secrets.
‘What are you really asking?’
He wanted her to be sure, because he had nothing to offer this woman apart from his body.
Perhaps that’s all she wanted too. Only playing ingenue, a role she wore like her beautiful dress, that could be stripped off when she was ready to show her real self.
However he believed she was showing him her real self.
She carried a freshness, a kind of wonder suggesting someone who wasn’t jaded like so many others here.
Like him. If that were the case, he should turn and walk away.
Such a woman had no place with him, yet it was like he’d taken root into the ground beneath his feet.
‘What are you offering?’
Whatever you wish for.
No. He was happy to give her parts of himself, but not all. If you gave someone your all they would take it and wield it as a weapon. Better she know who he really was, not the fantasy each of them might build in their own minds.
‘I’d debauch you right here if that’s what you want. Who am I to refuse a woman her desires?’
Lily’s breath hitched. Another delicious little gasp that inflamed his arousal even further.
‘You wouldn’t.’ Her lips parted, the merest of flushes bleeding onto her cheeks. As difficult as it was to judge a person behind a mask, he knew desire when he saw it.
‘Look around you, farfallina. What do you think tonight is about but throwing off the shackles society imposes on us? It’s the chaos you think I’m patron of.
The chaos I believe you came to experience for yourself because each of us here is searching for something.
’ He leaned forwards to whisper in her ear.
As Rocco did, he breathed in the scent of her.
The luscious notes of flowers and fruits, like she was perfect, ripe and ready to pluck. ‘Am I right, Lily?’
Heat bloomed in Lily’s belly, swirled, entered her veins.
Slid through her body on a delicious journey before settling low and pooling between her legs.
She ached for him. A desire, like she’d never experienced before.
This craving, the emptiness, the need to have someone close, to have them overwhelm every sense in your body and consume you. Fill you.
This man was right. Tonight she had come to throw away the shackles of a life that didn’t seem to fit her anymore. It was just—she hadn’t expected to find this. Something so consuming, so quickly.
‘You move fast,’ she said, unsure whether she wanted him to slow down or speed up. He was clearly more worldly than her. He’d not even batted an eyelid at the couples in the alcoves around the wall, unlike her reaction. What if she somehow …disappointed him.
Dull.
She tried to shake the word from her head, but it dug claws in and held.
‘Are you searching for chaos, or safety?’ he asked.
Her heart raced like it wanted to escape the confines of her chest. She was standing at a crossroads. Lily had no doubt that if she chose safety, this man wouldn’t begrudge her. He’d be gracious in his retreat.
But she hadn’t walked away from her engagement, from her whole life, for safety. She’d come here to lose herself. Find herself. To live.
‘Chaos,’ she whispered.
His mouth curved into a smile of distinctly masculine satisfaction.
Like a cat that had found a pail of cream.
Was he going to invite her to his hotel or wherever he was staying in Venice?
Should she invite him back to hers? She’d never done anything like that before.
But wasn’t tonight and this whole trip supposed to be about new experiences?
‘You should watch the performance that’s about to begin,’ he murmured, releasing her.
Lily’s stomach dropped. That wasn’t what she’d expected. Perhaps she was getting this wrong, and he wasn’t interested after all.
‘And what will you be doing?’
Medici shrugged, yet his grin was pure devilry that made her blood surge fast and hot. ‘I’ll be here, watching with you. Look. The aerialist is incomparable. She comes from one of the finest circuses in the world.’
Lily turned as a performer in a flesh-coloured leotard, which made her appear almost naked, wrapped herself in strips of fabric, red as blood.
Twining and tangling herself. It seemed formless, till she was lifted from the stage as if she was flying.
The crimson strands snaking round her as she was hoisted higher and higher and higher from the stage.
Tumbling and turning as the music swelled.
Lily watched transfixed, a delicious warmth suddenly at her back. Medici, standing close. Closer, as he stepped in. The presence of him, looming behind her, sending a shiver sparkling up her spine.
‘The silks look soft. What would the fabric feel like, against bare skin?’ he said.
The merest of brushes teased the palms of both of her hands. The touch of fingers so gentle she might have imagined it except for the sting of exquisite sensation that followed as he stroked her.