Italian Kisses: A Billionaire Love Story (3 page)

Liam didn’t give Giuseppe a chance to answer, assuming assent and beginning to lead me out to the dance floor. I was in awe. Liam had played Giuseppe perfectly. The small Italian didn’t know whether to puff up in pride again or protest. Besides, if he did protest, he would look ungracious.

Liam had it all wrapped up in a neat little bow the same baby blue of his eyes.

I could have kissed Liam then and there. And he knew it, too. I could tell from the way he looked down at me.

“That was...” I started.

“Bold? Decisive?” he supplied.

“Impressive. Maybe you are good at reading people, after all.”

We stood in the middle of the dance floor. Couples wheeled around us in time to the music in near perfect synchronicity. If I were to look down from the mezzanine it would have been mesmerizing. And there we stood in the middle of that maelstrom of dresses and tuxedos, the calm eye of Hurricane Armani, Bardelli, Rubinacci, and whatever other designers were represented.

“I don’t like to boast,” Liam said.

“I’m sure you don’t. So, if you’re so good at reading people, did you notice anything else interesting when you perused my table of contents?”

He slipped one arm around my waist and drew me in closer, our bodies touching. My throat tightened. He really did smell good. The other hand he slid slowly down my arm, the tips of his fingers leaving trails of gooseflesh like a farmer’s plough leaves churned earth. Then he threaded his fingers through mine and lifted our hands up so that we stood in position. But we didn’t start dancing, not yet.

Liam wet his lips, making them even more inviting. My heart thumped against my ribs so hard I knew he could feel the beats against his stomach. “I know that you don’t need any dancing lessons, Emma.”

I put my hand on his shoulder, the top of my thumb brushing against the starched collar of his shirt for a moment. “And how could you possibly know that?” A tingle that had started in my thighs began spreading its tendrils throughout my body, leaving me pleasantly warm all over.

“It’s in the way you move, actually. The way your hips sway, the way you walk. You’re graceful. You’ve had lessons.”

I hadn’t caught him looking at my hips, at my legs. But he had. He’d checked me out and he liked what he’d seen. That tingling turned to buzzing, low in my stomach. Despite the air conditioned air circulating around us, I flushed with heat.

“Care to prove that theory?” I said.

His smile grew, both corners of his mouth twitching up. He leaned in closer, his handsome face looming in my vision, his mischievous blue eyes latching onto mine and refusing to let go.

He’s going to kiss me!
My heart tried to escape the prison of my ribs. Wouldn’t that be just the thing, too? A handsome, charming guy leaning in to kiss me and I ruin the whole occasion by bursting. At least I’d chosen the red dress for tonight. If I did burst, at least everything would match.

I responded, my lips parting in anticipation, my eyes hooding, my body ready to melt in his arms as soon as our mouths met.

But he didn’t kiss me. Instead, his mouth slipped past my cheek, dangerously close to grazing my skin. “I intend to,” he whispered.

Before I could protest, we whirled off in unison with the other dancers. He led expertly, never having to glance down at our shifting feet. His hand on the small of my back held me steadily against him, leaving no chance for escape.

We whirled and whirled. I didn’t think we moved fast enough to make me dizzy, but dizzy I became.

More than once, I caught sight of Giuseppe glaring at us from the sidelines. The first time, he spoke to an older man and woman, probably extolling the virtues of the department. But he appeared to pause in the middle of the sentence to shoot a look out at me, weaving his gaze through all the bodies marauding between us.

Then another time I saw him on the opposite side of the floor, speaking to a sharp-nosed woman who appeared annoyed when he turned his attention from her to me.

This wasn’t going to end well, I knew.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Liam whispered. Despite the volume of the music and the conversations all around us, a whisper was all he needed. He held me so closely I could hear him easily, could feel the warm tickle of his breath against my neck and shoulder.

“This isn’t going to end well,” I said, voicing my thoughts.

He considered that for another revolution of our bodies, then he leaned in closely so that his lips grazed my earlobe, sending a spark down my spine. “Who says it has to end?”

I’d been operating this entire time under the assumption that at some point we’d part ways that night. Maybe after another pleasant dance or two or however long Dr. Aretino could spend collecting donations for the school.

Only that at some point in the very near future we would part and this would be nothing but one of my only pleasant memories of my time in Rome.

But maybe this was what I really needed. I knew I needed something, some change, some drastic event. Maybe Liam was that change? That brush that would sweep across the dusty chalkboard that was my life here this past semester and give me the second chance I needed.

So many little warnings and caveats popped into my head, my tendency to over think things over thinking this. But that was my problem, too. Maybe my life was the way it was because I never took chances, never went on impulse. It was time for me to act on impulse.

I can give in. Just for one night, I can give in.
Because that was all this could be, just one night. That’s what I told myself, anyway.

Except for one niggling caveat. One whose eyes I could feel drilling through Liam and into me from the other side of the room.

“What about Professor Aretino?” I said. Surely if Liam could read people as well as he seemed to, he must have apprehended how things went between the good professor and me.

“Don’t worry about Aretino. Not tonight,” Liam said, his lips so hot against my ear.

That warmth helped break through the final barricade, to burst the dam and down the shrill warning voices.

“Okay,” I said, my body beginning to shake against his.

“Come with me now,” Liam whispered.

“I will.”

He kissed me, then. Lightly on the neck, just below my earlobe. Soft, pliant, and warm lips pressed against the sensitive skin there, followed immediately by the light and delicious prickle of his stubble.

Liam finished the dance, each shifting step more aching than the last for the both of us. It was the best foreplay I’d ever had, the burning, secretive looks we gave each other. The light touches that could only go so far with all these people around. The feeling of his hot breaths against me and the sensation of his lips on me when he dared place another delicate, trembling kiss on my throat.

By the time the quartet announced a break I could barely stand, Liam holding most of my weight against him by main strength. My legs felt like two worn out rubber bands.

And we haven’t done anything but dance yet!
I kept thinking. Who was Liam? He could flirt, he could flatter, and he could dance. He danced better than my instructors had. What else could this body of his do?

He let go of my waist, but kept a strong grip on my hand. This grip he used to lead me through the crowd, the two of us weaving around the other dancers and guests like a warship twining its way through mines bobbing in the ocean.

Dr. Aretino’s eyes tracked us the entire way, but he couldn’t catch us. He’d been speaking with an older man in a military dress uniform when the quartet had stopped playing, and he could do nothing but watch.

This isn’t going to end well
, I thought again as we slipped into the foyer where I’d bumped so serendipitously into him. The same doorman saw us and opened the door, letting the warm air of the Roman evening spill into the room. “Your car will be ready, sir,” he said.

Liam didn’t drive a Lambo, as I’d imagined. It was a new BMW M3 coupe, the same ashy grey as a cloudy sky in the evening, and it was a rental.

So I learned more about mysterious Mr. Baby-Blues. He didn’t live here (but then again, neither did I). And he had a suite at a place called the Inn at the Roman Forum. A five star place, of course. We pulled up and I could actually see the lights the government used to illuminate the Coliseum. Which I actually hadn’t been to see yet since arriving at the beginning of the school term.

I hadn’t seen much of the city at all, really.

A valet came out and took the car and I forgot all that, though, suppressing the nagging, concerned voice at the back of my mind yet again.

***

W
e got into his room, the beep of his cardkey against the electric lock the sweetest sound I’d heard all evening. There was a fireplace. Several tapestries, all copies of various Renaissance artists.

There were large bay windows covered in sheer drapes through which I could see the Forum, but it registered as only an afterthought in my mind. The only piece of art I wanted to see that night was the sculpted body I’d felt beneath that Armani suit of his earlier.

And of course there was the bed, an enormous, decadent thing loaded with pillows and thousand-thread count sheets. He took me over to the bed but didn’t throw me down onto it like I so desperately wanted him to.

But then his hands grabbed me, pulled me close. There were no more judging eyes anymore, just the two of us.

No one to see him take a handful of my hair and make a fist in it, the pressure it made it my scalp delicious. No one to see the way he canted my head back in his grip and kissed me on the mouth.

It was light at first, exploring. His stubble prickled me again, those prickles working their way down the front of my stomach, adding to the heat blossoming between my thighs.

The kiss deepened, our lips writhing together. God, his mouth was so hot on me. I groaned when he slid it down my neck, kissing my bare shoulder as he pulled the strap down my arm.

His fingers brushed back across my clavicle, dipping so achingly close to my chest, evoking an erotic response by avoiding the erotic areas of my body. For a few moments, anyway, while he could control himself.

How long that control of his impulses would last, I didn’t know. But I didn’t want him to control himself. I wanted him to lose himself in me just as badly as I wanted to lose myself in him.

His kisses became more desperate, then, as though he picked up on my desire.

“I need you,” he said.

“Then take me,” I breathed back. My breaths burned up through my throat. I didn’t know my body could get this hot. But he’d stoked my fire so well back on that dance floor.

The barest hint of a smile touched his flushed lips at my response. He spun me around so that I faced away from him and pulled me against him, my shoulders touching his chest and my hips touching his.

His mouth kissed a line of fire along my shoulder, then up the side of my neck. I tilted my head, giving my body to him while his hands smoothed the front of my dress over my stomach again and again.

“Liam...” I said, reaching back with one hand, running my fingers up into his hair. It was as soft as I’d thought it might be, and he let out a low groan when I made a fist in that hair.

I heard the slithery sound of my zipper going down. Putting his hands on my shoulders, he smoothed the straps down my arms, leaving my biceps and forearms sprinkled with goosebumps.

My breaths came quick and hot when he slipped my dress down to the waist. Sensitive skin crinkled when the cool air touched my bared body. After several aching moments, his hands moved up the smooth skin of my stomach, sliding up to better cup and appreciate me.

His lips slid down my neck, down my shoulder blade, down the curve of my spine as he sank to his knees behind me.

And then he gripped my dress, pushing his fingers down between the fabric and my skin. He bared me slowly, drawing the dress down until the silky material pooled around my ankles.

I thanked God at this point that I’d chosen not to wear my sensible underwear, choosing instead a much more barebones pair with lines and seams that wouldn’t show through my dress.

And also that I’d showered and ran my razor over my calves and thighs. Calves and thighs which Liam proceeded to knead and massage with those strong, hot hands of his. They worked up first one, then the other, stopping for a few agonizing moments before drawing closer and closer to my heat.

My heart quickened the nearer he drew. I gasped when he began following his hands with his lips.

The muscles low in my stomach, in my bottom, in the back of my thighs, began tightening.

The heat of his breaths against my inner thighs was almost too much to bear, my body responding in an instinctual, primal manner to his advances, his two steps forward, one back manner of teasing me up to incredible heights.

He almost finished me when he pushed his fingers down into the waistband of my panties and began drawing them down. He followed the waistband with his lips, too.

“Not yet,” he said, “I’m not finished with you yet... I haven’t even started yet.” There was a promise in his deep voice that electrified me, that had saliva squirting into my mouth as the hunger built within me. And then he lifted up my feet one at a time to slip my panties all the way off, his fingers like hot shackles around my ankles.

“When?” I replied, my voice husky with desire.

“When I say so. I’ve been wondering something about you since we danced,” he said, in between kissing up the back of my thighs.

“What’s that?”

“How you taste,” he said.

He gave me no time to reply, pushing me down onto the bed and flipping me over onto my back. He moved to sate his desire right away, finding the source of my heat, tasting me.

Liam really did know his way around a woman’s body. Knew just where to kiss. How to put his tongue to good use. When to go faster and when to slow down.

He was also merciless, and it wasn’t long before I had all my fingers threaded into his hair, my body bucking against the mattress while my climax tore through me, hot and unstoppable, every muscle in me tensing to the point of snapping before relaxing.