“Virginia, you wound me.”
“Doubtful.”
He smiled. “I do want to know what you are thinking. You look too serious for a woman at a party.”
She didn’t know how to respond to that. She wanted—no, needed—to be mysterious. She couldn’t allow herself to forget for one moment that she wasn’t here to fall in love with Marco Moretti. She was here to break a curse.
But when he pulled her into his arms on the dance floor, she forgot about plans and curses. She forgot about everything except the way his arms felt wrapped around her. The way his shoulder was the perfect place to rest her head, which she did for only one second, because the sexy scent of his aftershave was too potent that close.
“I was thinking that at this party, everyone wants something from you.”
“Including you?”
Yes, she thought, but didn’t say it out loud.
“It’s okay, I know you do. Everyone wants something, I want something from you.”
“What do you want from me?”
“Another kiss.”
Of course he did, and that made her agenda so much easier because she wanted him to want her. But at the same time…
“You’re doing it again,” he whispered into her ear. “I’m going to think that you aren’t happy to be with me.”
Shivers ran down the length of her body from her neck to her toes. Her breasts felt heavier all of a sudden, and her nipples perked up, as if they wanted the warmth of his breath against them.
“Of course I’m happy to be with you, Marco. You are the man every woman wants…all you have to do is beckon and any woman here would come to you.”
“I don’t want any other woman tonight, Virginia, only you.”
“Why?” she asked.
“I could say that it is the hint of mystery in those deep, chocolate-brown eyes of yours. Or the smoothness of your skin against my hand.”
“But that’s not it?”
“No, cara mia, it’s not. The reason I want only you is much more base and too demanding to be tamed by words.”
“Lust.”
“You say it with disdain, but there is a power to lust and to attraction at first sight. From the moment I caught sight of you, I have been unable to think of anyone else.”
She smiled up at him and let go of those silly girlish dreams she’d secretly harbored about love. Lust was exactly what she wanted from Marco, and she should be very happy that he felt it.
“It’s the same for me.”
“Is it?” he asked, drawing his hand down her back. Her skin was exposed by the plunging V at the back of her dress and his fingers felt big and warm against her skin.
He pulled her closer to his body as he spun them around the dance floor. His mouth touched the exposed skin at the nape of her neck. His lips felt warm and moist against her skin as he said something she couldn’t understand. All she understood at this moment was that she wanted Marco Moretti.
Her flesh was sensitized to him. She felt alive in this man’s arms. Perhaps it was the magic of the night, or maybe it was the peach Bellinis she’d drank going to her head. But deep inside her, where she kept the superstitious part of her soul, she knew it was the curse coming out. She knew this attraction went beyond her and Marco.
It was something cosmic and wonderful, she knew. Especially when he lowered his head to hers. She didn’t wait for him to kiss her, but instead rose on her tiptoes and met his mouth with her own.
He brushed his lips over hers before opening them the slightest bit. She felt first the barest rush of his breath over her sensitive lips and then the smooth taste of his tongue.
He kissed her with the kind of passion she’d only read about in books and seen on movie screens. She clung to his shoulders as everything feminine inside of her responded to everything masculine in him.
Kissing Virginia was addictive. Like the rush he got from going over two hundred miles per hour on the track. There was that feeling of being in charge of something he knew he couldn’t really control.
Her mouth was sweet and she clung to him like she couldn’t get enough of him, either. He maneuvered her off the dance floor, keeping one arm around her waist and tucking her close to his side.
“Where are we going?” she asked. Her voice was breathless and her lips, swollen. There was something almost ethereal about her. He would never have admitted that fact out loud, but having grown up under a very suspicious Italian mother, he believed strongly in things that couldn’t be explained.
“To a place where we can be alone. Is that okay with you?” he asked her. Expectation sizzled in the air between them. He felt almost as if they’d met before. With her, he didn’t feel the distance that he felt with most women, as if they had an expectation of something that he couldn’t deliver on.
She nodded and smiled. Her mouth was wide and so damned sensuous. He’d never get enough of kissing her. And for tonight, he didn’t have to. He ran his hand down the center of her bare back, enjoying the feel of her soft flesh under his fingers.
“I’d like that,” she said. There was a hint of shyness in her voice, a timidity at odds with the brazen and mysterious woman he’d known her to be so far.
“Virginia?”
“Yes?”
“Are you sure?”
He saw hesitation in her eyes, but then she nodded her head, curls dancing around her face as she stepped forward. She rose on tiptoes and drew his head toward hers and brushed her lips over his. She kissed him deeply and passionately, arousing him with just that one aggressive move.
“I’m very sure,” she said.
“Good,” he said, his own voice sounding husky.
He led the way out of the party toward the elevator and almost groaned when he saw Dominic coming. He didn’t want to talk to his brother now.
“Merda,” he muttered under his breath.
“Excuse me?” Virginia said pulling away from him. “Is everything okay?”
“Pardon me. My brother is heading this way, and with him there is always a discussion about business.”
He fought the urge to hit the call button for the elevator again. That would make it look as if he were afraid of Dominic, and that wasn’t the case. He just wanted to get Virginia out of the party to be alone with her.
That made him feel a bit odd. He’d never been one of those men who needed to keep a woman all to himself. With Virginia, he realized he wanted just that.
“I didn’t realize that a driver would be involved in the running of a company,” she said.
“At Moretti Motors we have decided to keep things all in the family. So that means that we all take an active role in running it.”
“Doesn’t that interfere with your driving?” she asked.
Marco liked being involved in running the company. Dominic, Antonio and he had decided the reason their father had lost his controlling share of the company was that he had not been involved in the day-to-day details. And that was one thing he and his brothers were determined not to let happen.
“Not most of the time…but it can put a crimp in my love life.”
She rolled her eyes at that. “Saying things like that might be more