Page 199 of Modern Romance Collection May 2024 Books 1-4

The night was dark and quiet. Venice’s streets and bridges and waterways were almost empty. The dark water was still, reflecting the glitter of the lights from the surrounding buildings. Domenico kept hold of her hand as they walked in silence, the gentle brushing of his thumb feeling the crazy skittering of her pulse, making him wonder if she was also sensing that new intimacy between them, if she was as aware of him as he was of her, every brush of her arm, the nudge of her hip.

‘Am I allowed to ask what the crisis is?’ Rae asked after a few minutes of quiet. ‘Or is it top secret?’ she teased and Domenico saw it as a sign that she was feeling it too, that whatever had shifted had done so for them both.

‘It’s fairly top secret, yes,’ he said, slanting her a quick smile to keep the light mood in place because he didn’t want to disturb that connection blooming between them. It was the closest he’d felt to another person in a long time and whilst that normally wouldn’t have mattered to him, in that moment it did. ‘But for you I’ll make an exception. The Ricci Group is negotiating a big deal that will see us expand into operating a cruise line.’

Her eyes popped. ‘Like Raphael always wanted?’

Domenico was surprised that she’d remembered. Surprised, and pleased. ‘Yes.’

‘Domenico, that’s incredible. Congratulations.’ Her smile illuminated her whole face and Domenico’s lungs squeezed. She was so beautiful, so much more than she knew, that it was actually painful. In the months that she’d been gone he’d encountered countless women, many of whom were eye-wateringly stunning, yet none had drawn from him a reaction that could compete with his response to Rae’s smile.

‘Thank you. It’s been hard even getting to the negotiations. The company we want to partner with has a CEO who is notoriously guarded about who he deals with, but we’ve been making some good progress lately and I don’t want anything to derail it.’

‘Did Elena know about it?’

He gave a single nod of his dark head. ‘She did. I told her a few weeks before she passed. When she took over Raphael’s role as CEO she tried to realise that dream on a few occasions, but it never worked out.’

‘I remember her telling me. I always got the sense that was a big regret of hers. She must have been incredibly touched that you were doing that.’

‘Sì, she was.’ The memory of that conversation, of all his conversations with Elena, rolled slowly through his mind, a million shards of memory causing a million throbs of pain.

He tried not to think about it too often—his default way of dealing with anything difficult—but he missed her. Missed her more than words could express. It was an ache that at times diminished but then always roared back into existence. At times he felt that, without her guiding presence, he had no sense of whether he was coming or going, no anchor tethering him to the earth.

It was an unpleasant snapshot of what his life would have been had Elena not stepped in and taken him in as a baby and it only sharpened his conviction that he had to succeed in this deal. He had to show Elena that she had been right to give him the chance in life that she had. Once more he needed to prove his worth.

‘It must still be incredibly hard for you,’ Rae said, watching his expression and reading everything in it, and abruptly he felt too exposed, too vulnerable, and he worked to shove those feelings back into the locker they’d sprung free from. Because he’d already told Rae too much, allowed her to glimpse too much of him. ‘It’s not been long since she passed. If you ever want to talk about it, about her, I’m here.’

As she made the offer, she watched him from those deep blue eyes and a potent emotional need stretched within him. A yearning to accept and tell her everything and deepen that tentative bond weaving itself around them like a magic spell. To reach out and grasp the comfort and connection she could provide and once more feel moored to something, someone. To feel that he had a place to call home, someone to call his family.

But they were dangerous yearnings that had to be cauterised. Ripped out, root and stem. Because chasing those feelings only led to heartache. That was a mistake he’d made already—he would not be foolish enough to do so again.

‘I’m fine,’ he said curtly, resuming a faster stride. If he said that enough times, believed it to be true, at some point it would start to be true, wouldn’t it?

‘Well, if at any time you change your mind, the invitation stands,’ she said lightly, and was it his imagination or did Rae look a little deflated at his brusque dismissal? And why did that bother him?

They reached the palazzo. Lights burned in a few of the windows invitingly. Rae looked at the door and then back at him, a small smile on her lips.

‘Thank you for walking me back. I hope you can fix whatever the problem with the deal is. Goodnight, Domenico.’

‘Not so fast.’ Domenico seized her hand as she tried to turn away. With a single step he moved closer to her, close enough to cause her breath to audibly hitch and her eyes to explode with colour. ‘A man in love doesn’t say goodbye to his wife for the night without a kiss.’

She swallowed and looked back at him nervously. ‘There’s nobody around, Domenico.’

There wasn’t. But he didn’t care. ‘I’m not taking any chances,’ he breathed, lowering his head towards hers.

Ithadbeen about making sure any lurking photographers or eavesdroppers had a show of them engaging physically. He was adamant about that, even though his lips had been tingling with anticipation of the moment their mouths would meet, but when the petal softness of her lips moulded to his and she responded with that gentle mewl of pleasing capitulation, his nerve-endings caught fire and the kiss became about something else entirely.

About coaxing more of that passion from her until she had no way of hiding from it. And revelling that in that heady, fevered pounding of his blood that she, and only she, could inspire.

Because this was something that Domenico understood and was happy to accept. Desire made complete sense to him, far more than those bewildering emotional yearnings that had surfaced with such strength only moments ago.

Banding his arms around her and drawing her tight against the wall of his body, he sought to squash those feelings into nothing, to incinerate them with the force of the heat blooming between their bodies, and with the passion of their kiss intensifying he could feel the confusion in his mind lessening, shrinking, until all made perfect sense again.

This was all that he wanted from Rae. Not her compassion, or comfort or understanding. He wanted the taste of her on his tongue, the feel of her arching and gasping beneath his hands. That was all permissible, the maximum he would allow himself to crave, to take.

And Rae was offering plenty of herself. Her hunger had overtaken her, her mouth moving against his with as much abandon and eagerness as his own, her chest grazing wantonly against his. She couldn’t hide it. She sought everything that he did and as the flames of her desire licked against his own, they swirled into an even brighter, hotter, more treacherous fire.

Pressing her backwards into the wall of the palazzo, Domenico slowed the rhythm of their mouths, taking the kiss deeper as he slid his hands inside her jacket and around her body. Moving slowly, purposefully, they traced her waist, down over her hips and then around, exploring the toned peachiness of her bottom, the feel of her as exciting, as arousing, as dangerous as the taste.

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