“Why?”
He thought he sounded relatively polite and civilized, all things considered, but her scowl only deepened.
“Do I need a reason? You said people wear them.”
“So they do.” He couldn’t let himself touch her. Not until he was certain he could keep himself in check. “This is Venice. But I want you to tell me why you want one.”
Lily tilted up that marvelous chin of hers and he felt it like a bolt of heat lightning, straight into his aching sex. Soon he would be unable to walk entirely, and those stairs would look that much better. He could pull her astride him, taking the cold floor against his back, and he could—
He shook the vivid images away. Somehow.
“I want to pretend to be one of the great Venetian courtesans,” she told him sharply, as if she’d read his mind. She eyed him, and Rafael was sure she had. “Isn’t that why you brought me here? So I could recreate history?”
“Unless you’d like to recreate our own history right here on the hard marble steps,” he said with a quiet savagery, “I suggest you try again.”
She looked at him, then away, though that proud chin remained high.
“I don’t want to be recognized. I don’t particularly enjoy being treated like a ghost from beyond the grave.” He watched the elegant line of her lovely neck as she swallowed. “Especially when I can’t remember the person they’ll think I am.”
“I will remember for the both of us.”
He didn’t know where that pledge came from, as if he was a good man and this was that kind of situation. And then she looked back at him, her blue eyes lit with a kind of warm, wry humor that he thought might be the end of him right there. And she didn’t quite smile, but he felt it as if she did. Like a gift.
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” she said.
And Rafael found he couldn’t speak. He summoned the nearest servant with a lift of his finger and was glad of the few moments it took to produce a golden demimask, the perfect foil for her gown. For her lovely face.
She reached out for it, but he anticipated that and ignored her. He stepped closer to her than was entirely wise and fit the mask to her face carefully, something like reverently. He ran his fingers along the edges and smoothed it over the top of her elegant cheekbones, and felt the sweet reward of that catch in her breath and then the shiver of it, just that little bit ragged, against his hands.
“There,” he said, and he sounded like a stranger. “Now no one will know who you are but me.”
Lily’s eyes met his through the mask, and he thought they were troubled. Too dark. Something like lonely.
Or maybe that was him.
“I thought that was the point,” she whispered, and her voice was as thick as it was accusing, with that undercurrent of something like grief besides. “I thought that was what you’ve been at such pains to show me. That no one but you does.”
“Or ever will,” he agreed, more growl than vow.
And he couldn’t do what he wanted to do, not then and there, so he did the next best thing. He took her hand and led her out into the night.
THEY TOOK A water taxi to the party, which was being held in a stately Renaissance-era palazzo that appeared to genuflect toward the dark waters of the Grand Canal. As they came in toward the dock wreathed in holiday lanterns, Lily tipped her head back to gaze up at three full stories of blazing lights from every finely carved window. Music poured out into the night, folding in on itself against the water and the stone buildings of the city, and elegantly dressed partygoers laughed loud enough to spike the breeze.
And Lily was finding it very, very difficult to breathe. At least she had the mask tonight, she thought. Not only would it conceal her identity from the rest of the world a little while longer, she hoped it might go a long way toward hiding her thoughts from Rafael, too. He read her far too easily.
The thought of what, exactly, he might be reading on her face and in her eyes at any given moment—well. That didn’t exactly help her breathe any better. She tried to conceal that, too, as she slipped out of her warm cape and left it in the cabin of the water taxi Rafael had hired for the night, as directed.
Rafael handed her out of the boat when it reached the grand palazzo’s guest dock, and Lily was proud of herself when she simply climbed out, as if touching him was nothing to her. Then he took her arm as they walked up the elegant steps toward the festive great hall, its doors flung open to the night as if the cold dared not enter and the dark had best submit to the blaze of so many torches. He was warm beside her, and something like steel, and Lily told herself her awareness of him was a warning, that was all.
Beware. That was what her pulse was trying to tell her as it beat out a frenetic pattern against her neck. Be careful here. With him.
Nothing more than a warning.
Inside the open central hall of the magnificent palazzo, it was like a dizzying sort of dream. Like being swept up into a jewel-studded music box and meant to twirl along with all the gorgeous creatures who were already there in all their finery, moving this way and that across the marble floors and beneath the benign majesty of priceless glass chandeliers some two stories above. Rafael excused himself to go and do his duty to their hosts, his neighbors, leaving Lily to find her way to one of the great pillars and stand there, happily anonymous. She braced herself against the stout, cool marble as if it could anchor her to the earth. She didn’t know where to look first. A single glance at the scene before her and she felt glutted, overdone on sensation and stimuli.
On this particular Venetian magic.
Lily had certainly attended her share of fancy parties in the past. She’d even gone to a great ball in a Roman villa once, with the entire Castelli family and her own mother in attendance. She’d attended glamorous weddings in stunning locales international and domestic, exclusive charity events that had seemed to compete for the title of Most Over the Top, and had once danced in a brand-new year with most of Manhattan spread out at her feet in a desperately chic four-story penthouse on Central Park West. But all of that had been a long time ago, and none of it had been Venice.
Tonight, everyone glittered the way the finest diamonds did, unmistakably well cut and intriguingly multifaceted. The women were nothing less than stunning, while each and every man was distractingly debonair. Was it the people or the place itself? Lily couldn’t tell. The air itself seemed richer, brighter. There were jovial feathers and the occasional masks, striking black tie and sumptuous couture. Gowns and jewels and sartorial splendor crowded the whole of the expansive first level of the palace, a gracious orchestra played holiday-tinged music from a raised marble dais that seemed to hover as if by magic just above the throng and the sleek marble dance floor in the center of the grand space opened up to the night sky above, yet was surrounded by so many clever little heaters that it was impossible to feel the mid-December chill.
Lily shivered anyway, and she knew it wasn’t the temperature. It was the sheer, exultant decadence. This was a sinking city, a nearly forgotten way of life, and yet not a single bright and shining person before her seemed the least bit aware of any of those unpleasant realities as they danced and laughed and pushed back the night.
Something inside her turned over too hard, then ached.
“Come,” Rafael said, his mouth against