And she’d walked willingly into the Prince of Dark Temptation’s web. She’d stood at its threshold, caught in a spotlight, feeling like the subject of an experiment in human response conducted by some higher being.
Said being was sitting there, watching her, overshadowing their surroundings in a suit and shirt, sans tie, that had been sculpted around his magnificence, their darkness and textures deepening the spell that hung around him.
And he’d just invited her to get to work. On him.
The moment the parade of beautiful people dressed in red and black satin finished spreading their table with ingeniously prepared and arranged appetizers and filled their crystal glasses before leaving the bottle of Moët & Chandon in ice, Leandro leaned back in his chair, making his appraisal even more invasive.
“So, have you decided yet what you’ll do with your second shot at convincing me, Phoebe?”
She took a sip from her glass. And inhaled most of it.
After she redirected the fluid down her throat, she managed a strangled, “I’ll start with holding my tongue. How’s that?”
He mirrored her actions, bypassing the coughing-his-lungs-out bit, lids heavy as he licked the taste from his lips, making her feel as if he’d tasted hers. “Is that within your range of abilities?”
She took another sip, bent on proving that she could still manage basic stuff like swallowing. “It used to be. I was renowned for it.”
“Quella è la verità—isn’t that the truth. You had such rare reticence. Only when it came to talking, grazie a Dio. It was a trait I valued beyond measure.”
“Yeah, a woman who’s unrestrained in bed and keeps her mouth shut out of it must be every man’s dream.”
His eyes flickered. Surprised? That she’d put his innuendo into plain English? “I’m not every man, Phoebe. It wasn’t because I was interested only in bedding you that I valued your quietness.”
She plopped one of the hollandaise-covered, crab-stuffed mushrooms on her plate, cut into it. “No? Could’ve fooled me.”
He narrowed his eyes. “You’re implying you were quiet because my attitude discouraged you from talking?”
She took a bite. Tasted nothing. “Not really. There was nothing to say. But with all you had going on then, I did get the feeling that you wouldn’t have appreciated it if there was.”
“Nothing to say, eh? Strange how there can be two entirely different perspectives on the same situation. I thought you didn’t talk much because you had this innate…understanding of me and of our situation that transcended the need for verbal expression. I thought we didn’t use words because we were on the same wavelength without them. Seems that’s another thing I was wrong about.”
She concentrated. Hard. Swallowing now could end in a real emergency. The implication of what he was saying…
Could be anything really. From the poignant and profound to the meaningless and superficial.
She’d take something toward the end of the spectrum of the second interpretation. This was the man who’d let her walk out of his life and hadn’t even tried to call her again in eight years. She doubted he’d had one poignant or profound thought where she was concerned.
It seemed he was waiting for her to respond. When she didn’t, he sighed. “So you can still call on your tongue-holding talents. I really hope you won’t hold out for long. I find myself valuing your new intensity and contentiousness far more than I ever did your tranquility and acquiescence.”
“That must be maturity. The ‘me against the world until I take it over and no one better oppose-me’ young man has become a ‘the world is mine and I’m dying for a new challenge’ man.”
He threw his head back and let out another of those intoxicating peals of unadulterated maleness. “Ah, Phoebe, siete una sincera, genuina, autentica shaitana rajeema and I sperare ardentemente that you don’t hold your tongue ever again.”
Resigned that she’d live with constant arrhythmia with him around, she picked up what turned out to be a maple-bourbon-glazed chicken wing and nibbled on it. “So although you’ve outgrown some traits, you still make a salad of Italian, English and Moorish.”
His chuckles intensified as he watched her, and she imagined him nibbling on her lips, her neck, lower…“Only when one language doesn’t provide accurate enough words.”
“You couldn’t say I’m an honest-to-goodness wicked devil in English?”
“You understood!” His eyes sparked with wonder and approval. She felt like a child fluttering at her hero’s praise. Stupid. “And no, I couldn’t. The English words—and your translation is as perfect as can be—don’t have the exact nuances I wanted. Sperare ardentmente is more accurate than ‘I pray to God,’ too. Your idiomatic Italian is impressive. Most people who learn it as adults never learn its subtleties. But what made you learn Moorish? Almost no one in the Castaldinian cities uses it anymore.”
Phoebe reached for her glass. The lump in her throat suddenly felt much larger.
Should she tell him she’d wanted to understand what he’d crooned to her at the heights of ecstasy? What, in her reluctance to make any demands of him, she’d let go unexplained?
After she’d resumed breathing again, she decided to tell him part of the truth. “I was intrigued every time you used it. It sounded so…primal and passionate, so different from Italian and any other language I’ve ever heard. And though it’s not prevalent anymore, it—and the people who still speak it—is an integral part of the cultures that weave Castaldini. I felt I should know as much as I can of it. I’m not good by a long shot, but I get the general picture. My pronunciation stinks, though.”
He seemed to weigh her answer. Then he picked up her hand, encased its sweaty coldness in the warmth and torment of his long, beautiful fingers. “Say something…”
“Shai’,” she blurted out.
Another boom of virile amusement rocked her. “And I was going to say don’t take me literally and say shai’.”
“How about I say nothing? La shai’?”
He laughed again as he gave her hand a squeeze that could have left burn marks on her flesh before rocking back in his chair and throwing his hands in the air. “I take it back. Say anything.”
“Ai shai’.”
He leaned across the table, two fingers sealing her lips, his eyes radiating amusement…and arousal. “Ai shai’ out of those lips should be banned as a lethal weapon. But in Moorish it becomes one of mass destruction. Your accent doesn’t stink, it scorches.”
“I basically said one word,” she mumbled against his fingers, wondering what it would do to the course of the evening—and of her life—if she sucked them into her watering mouth.
Good thing he saved her from finding out. He brushed her lips with the backs of his fingers for one heart-bursting moment before withdrawing the temptation. “It was enough to tell me that I need some serious preparation before I hear a full sentence.”
She plopped back in her chair, hopefully out of reach of more will-destroying touches. “So now we know why I speak Moorish. Why do you? None of the younger generation D’Agostinos I know do.”
“Alas, I’m no longer one of the ‘younger generation.’ Everyone from my generation was required to learn it at school.”
“But no one speaks it, apart from smatterings that have made their way into mainstream Castaldinian Italian.”
“There