Page 88 of Niccolo
In fact, her eyes were locked on mine.
There were other signs, too. Subtle, but they were there.
A slight blush in her cheeks…
A quickening of her pulse, which I could see in a vein at her throat…
And a complete disregard for everything else going on around us.
The only thing that gave me pause was when she hesitated before saying her name:
…Aurora Dispenza.
Almost as though she wasn’t sure she wanted to give it to me.
I chalked that up to her struggling with her attraction to me…
Which only made me redouble my efforts.
38
Sofia
He justwould not relent.
If you’d asked me earlier, I would have said such persistent behavior from a man would have turned me off.
But with Niccolo…
I liked it.
Quite a bit, actually.
He kept me on my toes, which wasn’t something any other man had done in recent memory.
“Iaminterested in something, though,” Niccolo smiled. “Whether we call it chess or a dance, you keep evading me. Specifically, my questions. Why is that?”
My pulse sped up as I realized he was correct.
I’d been reticent with information, and now I needed a reason why.
“Because – just like you – your questions are a bit too forward.”
“Well, ‘forward’ismy middle name,” he joked. “Audace, audace, toujours l’audace!”
French forAudacity – audacity – always audacity!
“Actually,” I said, “the quote is,‘L’audace, l’audace, encore l’audace, toujours l’audace.’”
Audacity – audacity – again, audacity – always audacity!
“Ah!” Niccolo said, delighted. “Someone knows their revolutionaries!”
It was a quote from George Danton, one of the architects of the French Revolution.
“Someone else knows just enough to misquote them,” I said with a hint of playfulness.
“Brevity is the soul of wit,” he countered, quotingHamlet.
