Chapter 11 Naomi
NAOMI
Iwatch fluffy clouds fold into one another like cotton candy around a stick and tell myself to think about anything except last night.
The jet hums a smooth, expensive lullaby; Rhode Island dwindled into a pinpoint landscape hours ago, and Tuscany is a promise stamped on the horizon and a calendar invite I didn’t accept so much as get swept into.
Vasso’s jet is a study in sinful understatement: cream leather, dark wood, a table that turns from a desk into banquet table at the touch of a button.
And a bedroom at the back I am absolutely not thinking about.
It’s not the first private jet I’ve been on, but it’s definitely the most statement-making.
Like the man himself.
He sits across from me, sleeves already rolled up his brawny arms and tie discarded. He bristles with effortless power, the kind of man private equity funds take meetings for—jaw you could level masonry with and eyes that look like they were taught patience and then taught how to weaponize it.
He sets an iPad on the table between us. “Itinerary,” he says, as if that word hasn’t become a synonym for trap in our shared vocabulary. “We should familiarize ourselves with it.”
I tip it toward me. His assistant has been…thorough.
Afternoon vineyard tour with Il Vecchio himself—our octogenarian funder and host for the next three interminable days—ending in a barrel room blessing and “symbolic locking of a cask” with our initials. Photos provided to trade press.
Couples’ cooking class with renowned Chef Nonna Rosaria; feeding each other pici while she clucks over “honeymoon appetite.”
Hand-in-hand stroll through the Montalcino market, sampling cheeses and olives while a “friend with a Leica” happens to be there for candid shots.
Vespa ride through the countryside, scarves and sunglasses, a drone shot over the cypress lanes.
Sunset truffle hunt with the estate’s dogs, followed by a private dinner for two in the old man’s west vineyard pergola. “Lean into besotted.”
I inhale, trying not to choke on the word besotted in a bulleted list. “This is… a lot of interacting.”
He lounges back, satisfied. “That’s the point. Let him see it. Let the world see it. We give them a love story and they give us latitude.”
“I didn’t realize ‘latitude’ came with truffle dogs and Vespa helmet hair.”
His mouth curves. “We’ve proved we’re more than capable of a real performance. As per last night.”
Heat scalds my cheeks so fast I want to fan them with the iPad. My mind flashes treacherously to candlelight and glass and the feel of his hands where I needed them most. Betrayer, I tell my skin. Traitor, I tell my breath.
He watches the color bloom and, God help me, actually looks pleased. “I love that,” he says, low and sincere in a way that makes my pulse pound. “More of that.”
I glare at him because it’s either that or climb across the table. He smiles, wolfish, warm, a little bit ruined from lack of sleep, and something in my chest trips. My lips part before I can stop them. It feels like standing too close to a bonfire and deciding the singe is part of the pleasure.
“Focus,” I tell myself more than him, and tap the screen. “The last one.”
He leans in, shoulder brushing mine as if accidentally on purpose, heat bleeding into my bare arm. “Private dinner for two beneath the pergola,” he reads, voice amused. “‘To impress upon them how desperate we are to spend time alone. Natural for newlyweds, no?’”
I arch a brow. “Natural?”
His eyes flick to my mouth. “Very.”
An attendant appears, a vision in charcoal and tact. “Champagne for takeoff, Mrs. Dillinger? Mr. Dillinger?”
“Yes, please,” Vasso answers for both of us, and I should object to the presumption but my tongue has other concerns—like remembering the shape of his when our mouths melded and dueled in filthy and or so delicious—
I shut that down so hard the thought ricochets.
Flutes arrive, pale gold and civilized. He lifts his, turns it a fraction, studying the bubbles like he wrote them a performance review. Then he raises it toward me.
“To practice,” he says, and when I roll my eyes, he adds, softer, “To appetite. To the part where you stop pretending you don’t have one.”
The champagne is cold; the implication is not. My cheeks rebel again. I take a sip because my dignity needs coolant.
We drink as the moment stretches taut as violin string.
When it gets too much, when I feel that pulse between my legs is going to explode, I stand abruptly, wisely choosing to flee the battlefield before I admit I already surrendered. Which I haven’t.
“I’m going to lie down,” I say, smiling like a woman whose heart isn’t trying to climb out of her dress. “I’m sure you have more worlds to conquer.”
His gaze travels over me, unhurried, unapologetic, as if mapping me is his right and my obligation. “Indeed I do.”
I hate the way my knees like that. The way my nipples rise and my belly heats.
So I tip my chin, walk past him down the short corridor, and swear the air changes when I leave, as if the cabin misses the charge as much as I do.
In the bedroom, the lights are low, the bedding a crisp invitation I try to ignore and fail within a minute. I kick off my heels, slide onto the duvet, and stare at the ceiling while the jet leans its shoulder into the sky.
I close my eyes and try not to replay the orchard of things we didn’t say last night.
The way he unclasped the necklace with steady hands and unsteady eyes.
The way I heard possession and bitterness and recalled that damned the driveway.
In hindsight I can’t miss the moment he turned from the boy in the greenhouse to the fierce, ruthless man he is today.
The man who bristles with sizzling passion one moment and cuts you down with his tongue the next.
God, the way we flung the truth at each other like knives and somehow didn’t bleed out right there. It can’t happen again. Which mean I need to get my emotions under control before we land. Before we board the cars on the tarmac in Florence, and arrive at the villa outside Montalcino.
Where I need to put my game face on or risk failing at the agreement we made.
But is it so easy to distance oneself from a repeat of searing memories made real last night. Especially by my own choice? When even now, I only need to close my eyes to feel him moving inside—
A soft knock, draws a gasp and deep chagrin at being caught dwelling on last night. Again.
“Naomi?”
My name in that rough voice is a wicked little hinge. I turn my head and find him leaning in the doorway, one shoulder propped, hair a shade too disordered to be legal in daylight. Dark eyes track over my body once more, setting fire wherever they touch.
“We’ll be wheels-down in two hours,” he says. “Would you like a tray brought to you?”
“I’m fine.”
“Liar,” he murmurs, a trace of fondness that lands where fond things should not.
“Before you go back to being fine—” He holds up the iPad, taps the cooking class.
“I’ve approved the itinerary. I’ve been told Nonna Rosaria has a soft spot for people who look hungry.
And Enzo will definitely need you to look the part so you might want to practice your besotted face. ”
I snort. “And yours is already perfected.”
“Only because the subject matter’s compelling.”
He means it like a tease. It doesn’t land like one. Something inside me does an odd, warm roll, and I hate that it feels different than a win, or a checkmark, or a box ticked in the pursuit of power.
“Okay, noted. Anything else?”
“Get some rest,” he adds, gentler. “You’ll need your strength for the Vespa. I drive like a sane man when I’m alone. With you, I make poor choices.”
I bite back the smile because apparently I have some self-respect left. “I’ll wear a helmet.”
“Good idea,” he says, and then he winks, retreats, and leaves me with the treacherous grin that spread, uninvited, over my face.
I flop back and stare at the ceiling again, muttering a prayer to whatever god handles women with too many feelings and too much history: keep me upright, keep me angry, keep me from falling where I’ve already fallen once.
The jet hums as Tuscany draws nearer.
Somewhere between the vineyard tour and the truffle dogs, I’m going to have to decide which part of this is performance and which part is the thing underneath we’re both too stubborn to name.
Decide and annihilate before feelings…deeper feelings get in the way.
For now, I close my eyes and picture a pergola strung with lights, a table for two, and a man who can make me blush on a plane by toasting my appetite like it’s a virtue.
God…I’m doomed, I think, and the thought tastes like champagne.
###
The next sensation that I’m not alone is when someone dims the cabin light into a hushed gold, the kind that flatters and invites intimacy.
I’m half-dozing on the duvet when the door clicks, and even with my eyes closed I know it’s him; the air changes, like the jet itself leans closer.
“Did I wake you?” Vasso asks, voice pitched low, velvet dragged over a scrape.
“Not really,” I say to the ceiling, which is currently the safest place to look. “I’m not very good at sleeping on planes, as plush as they may be.”
He strolls to the foot of the bed and braces his palms on the mattress, sinking it an inch, putting his body into my gravity well.
His shirt gapes open at the throat, and I fight the urge to stare at his vibrant skin, to push away the vivid memory of how it felt to stroke him there, to feel his steady pulse.
To watch sweat slick his skin as he pounded into me.
God, it’s sinful how hot Vasso Dillinger is.
How unfairly confident his masculinity overpowers even the strongest woman.
Seriously…the line of his forearms could be a religion.
Even that faint nick along his jaw I didn’t notice earlier, the kind you get from shaving while making decisions about other people’s futures.