She swallowed, trembling. She licked her lips, moving her cheek against his shirt as she looked up at him. “I can’t just run away,” she sighed. No matter how she wished she could. “I need my memory back, Talos. I can’t just float through the world not knowing who I am. I can’t marry a virtual stranger, even if you’re the father of my child—”
“So I’ll take you to the place where we first met. To where we began.” She felt his dark gaze fall upon her mouth as he said softly, “I’ll show you the place where I first kissed you.”
Her bones turned to liquid. She looked up at him, her heart pounding as she licked her lips involuntarily. “Where is that?”
His eyes were hot and dark. “In Venice.”
“Venice,” she repeated, and the word was a wistful sigh. She looked up at him with yearning, knowing she should refuse—knowing she should stay in London and see the specialist Dr. Bartlett had recommended. But her refusal caught in her throat. Caught by her romantic dreams. Caught by him.
Talos reached down to stroke her tender bottom lip with his thumb, caressing her face with his powerful hands.
“Come to Venice,” he said darkly. “I will show you everything.” He cupped her face with both hands, holding her hard against his body as he looked down at her, commanding her with his gaze. “And then,” he whispered, “you will marry me.”
CHAPTER THREE
SUNLIGHT reflected off the water as they took the motoscafo, a private water taxi, from the Marco Polo Airport. The September weather was bright and warm as they crossed the lagoon, passing by the Piazza San Marco and the Bridge of Sighs on the way to their hotel.
Venice. Talos had never expected to return here again.
But sometimes, he thought grimly, a man had to change the playbook in the middle of the game. He would do whatever it took, be as romantic a fool as any man could be, in order to lure Eve into marriage before her memory returned.
He looked down at her in his arms as they crossed the water of the canal. Her eyes shone with wonder, her full pink lips were slightly parted as she gazed around the city with awe.
The same way every man who saw Eve looked at her.
Even right now in this water taxi. The young Italian driver kept glancing back in his mirror. Talos’s bodyguard, Kefalas, was sitting in the seat behind them, and even he had looked at Eve a bit longer than strictly necessary.
Eve was freshly showered and had changed her clothes on his private flight from London. Her dark hair now fell in thick, glossy waves past her bare shoulders, brushing the nipples Talos could easily picture beneath that clinging red jersey dress. The dress showed off the top swell of her overflowing breasts beneath the spaghetti straps, and barely reached halfway down her creamy thighs. She’d put on lipstick, a red color that matched her dress. Her legs were slender and perfect, ending in sharp black stiletto heels.
He couldn’t blame either of them for staring. Even though he wanted to kill them for it.
Strange, Talos thought, he’d never been jealous before of other men staring at Eve. He’d always accepted it as his due. He’d taken it for granted that other men would always want what he, Talos, possessed.
But for the first time it caused his stomach to curl. Why? Because Eve was carrying his child? Because he intended to make her his wife?
His wife in name only, he reminded himself. To protect his unborn child. Not because he cared for Eve. He felt nothing for her but scorn. And, he was forced to admit, lust.
Giving the driver a hard stare until the young man blushed and returned his focus to the wheel, Talos pulled Eve closer against him on the seat. She leaned back against his chest, reaching her arms over his neck and smiling up at him.
“It’s beautiful here.” Her blue eyes were as warm as bluebells in a spring meadow. “Thank you for bringing me to Venice. Even though I’m sure it was very inconvenient…”
He smiled down at her. Taking her hand, he brought it to his lips.
“Nothing is inconvenient to me if it gives you pleasure,” he said, and softly pressed his mouth against her skin.
He felt her shiver beneath his touch in the warm afternoon sun. The air was salty and fresh. In the distance, he could hear the calls of seagulls, hear the distant chiming of medieval church bells.
“You’re so good to me,” she whispered, visibly affected by the way he’d kissed her hand. The realization that she was almost like an innocent, easily swayed by sensual desire, lit a dark fire in his heart.
The femme fatale she’d once been had disappeared along with her memories, it seemed. Dressed in the red dress and lipstick she still looked just like the same arrogant, cruel, fascinating creature she’d been three months ago, but she’d changed completely. With her skittish reactions, her youthful naïveté, she was almost like a virgin.
Except she wasn’t—she was pregnant with his baby. And while she’d certainly been a virgin before they’d met, she’d never been innocent!
Remembering how they’d conceived that baby, all of his limbs suddenly seemed to burn where he had contact with her. Looking down into her beautiful face, he saw the vulnerability in her blue eyes, saw her pupils dilate. He was reminded of those hot breathless weeks in Athens when her naked body had been beneath his own. When he’d thought that beneath her achingly beautiful, shallow surface something existed that might be truly rare—truly worth possessing.
And he’d kept right on thinking that up until the day he’d seen her having breakfast with his rival, coldly giving him evidence to destroy Talos’s company.
Remember that moment, he told himself harshly. Remember how she betrayed you—and why.
But as Eve looked up at him dreamily beneath the elegant, decrepit palazzos of Venice, with the sunlight shining off the canals, all he could suddenly think was that he wanted to kiss her. Now. Hard. To brand her permanently as his, to punish those cherry-red lips until she gasped and cried out in his arms.
His hands tightened around her shoulders, his fingers gripping into her slight frame as he remembered their days and nights in June. He’d been addicted to bedding her. He’d been lost in a woman, in a way he’d never experienced before or since.
He considered himself ruthless. He considered himself strong. But she’d bested him and he’d never seen it coming.
Now, he hated her with all his heart.
But he still wanted her. Wanted her with a consuming desire that could destroy him, if he ever let down his guard.
He would never give in to her temptation. Even if his weeks of bedding her had been the most erotically charged experience of his life, he would never take her again. If he ever even kissed her, he might be lighting a flame that he could not control.
He watched her nervously lick her lips—those full, cherry-red lips that had once made him shudder and scream with desire so intense he’d literally thought it might kill him.
He could tell she was bewildered by the electric connection between them. She didn’t understand it. Unlike the Eve he’d known, who’d kept her feelings so carefully hidden, this girl didn’t guard her expression. Her thoughts were clearly bare on her angelically beautiful face.
Good, he told himself harshly. The perfect weapon to use against her. He would convince her to marry him. He would romance her. Woo her. Court her. Lure her. He would take her as his wife—today. By any means necessary.
Except one.
He would not take her to his bed. He would not.
Eve turned her face up toward the bright