Wildest Dreams (The Contemporary Collection) (32 page)

At last their waiter reached over her shoulder to set a square gold serving plate in front of her. Next came her serving of fettuccine, a generous portion twice as large as that of the men. Finally she was offered freshly grated Parmesan, something neither gentleman had been served.

“It’s a compliment of the most sincere kind for a beautiful woman,” Caesar said, his gaze amused as he sat back, watching the flush on Joletta’s face. “All that is required is to say thank you.”

She did that, of course; still, there was something compelling about the experience. Added to the presence of Rone and Caesar, it made her feel special, different, if only for the night. She could feel that difference in her smile, in her walk as she left the restaurant, in the way she felt inside. She was not sure how long it would remain with her, but it was nice while it lasted.

All true gondolas were black; it was not only a requirement, but a strict tradition, according to Caesar. The one he had reserved for their journey along the canals shone with polish from its high carved prow to higher stern. It seated five on seats covered with crushed burgundy velvet, and the sea horses that decorated the sides were of softly gleaming brass. If it was so splendid because of the tourist trade, Joletta didn’t want to know; she preferred to think it was because it was typical of Venice and the Venetians.

The gondolier was good-looking in a Pan-like fashion in his shirt of black and white stripes. He was also deferential yet enterprising in the assured Italian manner she was coming to recognize. It was he who managed to hand her into the gondola while Caesar and Rone stood arguing politely about where they were going to sit. As he saw it, Rone looked at Caesar and the two shrugged. Rone turned immediately, then, to step into the boat, taking the seat beside Joletta. The other man threw up his hand before settling into the seat in front of her and turning to lean over its back to talk to her.

The Grand Canal was fairly well lighted, but not so brightly as most city streets; it was certainly dim enough to maintain the air of ancient romance. The night wind off the Adriatic Sea was fresh and cool without being strong enough to cause anything more than a slight swell in the water. The regular thump and splash of the gondolier’s oar was hypnotic, while the glint of moonlight on the winding channel between the old buildings seemed almost stagelike in its perfection.

Caesar pointed out some of the more famous of the palaces as they passed them, also indicating Casanova’s house and the place where Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning had lived during their sojourn in the city. As he showed them the house of Marco Polo, indicating the water that lapped over the landing as a sign of the gradual sinking of the city, he rested his hand on Joletta’s knee in a casual gesture. Her attention was so focused on the graceful old building that she hardly noticed.

Rone leaned to clamp his fingers on Caesar’s wrist, transferring the other man’s hand to the back of the forward seat. His expression in the dim light was pleasant yet with a trace of challenge as he met the Italian’s gaze. Caesar said something under his breath that sounded less than complimentary, but the moment passed as he shifted immediately afterward to point out the Rialto Bridge looming up before them.

A short time later they turned into a smaller canal. At the same time they were joined by another gondola, this one carrying a soloist and an accordion player. While they idled slowly down this darker waterway the singer, a dark slim man with an operatic voice, serenaded them with “Santa Lucia,” “O Sole Mio,” and “Torna a Surriento,” as well as “Non ti Scordar di Me,” at Caesar’s request. Strollers on the canal bridges stopped to listen as the gondolas swept past beneath them. People hung from the windows of houses for the free concert, while one man, walking on a short stretch of sidewalk running alongside the water, joined in the refrain in a quite creditable performance. His voice followed them for some time as they eased along.

The romantic songs, the uninhibited joining in of the stranger, the heart-tugging music were all such clichés they bordered on caricature. Torn between scorn and amusement for her own sentimental susceptibility, Joletta simply gave up and enjoyed it all. She lay back in the velvet seat, relaxing against the cushion. Discovering that Rone’s arm was stretched out behind her, she used it for a pillow.

It occurred to her to wonder, after a time, if this could be the same canal where Violet and Allain had stayed; there was no reason to doubt that that building with its stained plaster and columned loggia was still around here somewhere. The place had been standing for three hundred years or so when those two had come to it; another hundred and forty could make little difference. Venice had changed in many ways, but much of it had also remained the same.

The gondola neared a cross channel. The gondolier called out his warning, then swung the long boat to enter the intersecting canal. This one was unlighted, closed in by blank stone walls. They rode into dimness that grew ever blacker. It became so dark that Caesar was no more than an indistinct blur, and it was impossible to see the prow of the gondola.

“Perfect,” Rone said.

Turning, he placed his warm fingers at the jawline of Joletta’s face, tilting her head. His lips, gentle, smooth, warmly possessive, touched hers.

The sweetness of it, the rightness in time and place, at that moment, was like a chime ringing inside her. She had been corrupted by the European lack of inhibition, she thought, for she did not care that the gondolier was directly behind them or Caesar ahead in the darkness. She turned to Rone, spreading her hand over his chest to feel the firm, sure beat of his heart. Relaxing against him, she accepted the impulses that drove them both with the same ready inevitability as she had accepted the music.

His hold tightened. He traced the sensitive surfaces of her lips with his tongue, probing, receiving the grace of entry. In delicate play, their tongues touched, the smooth-nubbed resilience of both meeting with exquisite abrasion. Their lips warmed, softened to conform yet more closely.

Joletta turned more completely against the hard length of his body as tingling pleasure invaded her senses. It rose higher, flooding like an Adriatic tide. Beneath it, fueling it, increasing it, was an exhilaration so wild it brought a prickling of goose bumps to the surface of her skin.

The light began to increase.

With slow reluctance, Rone released her.

The night was cool without the protection of his arms, Joletta discovered. She hadn’t been ready for him to let her go. She could not remember when she had felt so alive, so desirable, so euphorically happy.

It was crazy and she knew it. There were people dogging her every footstep, maybe trying to harm her.

Maybe that danger was a part of what she felt, some primitive response to its threat.

Maybe it was just the freedom phenomenon, the effect of being far from home and the people who knew her, of being, finally, on her own.

Maybe it was simply that wine and male appreciation had gone to her head.

She didn’t know, wasn’t even sure she wanted to know. It was enough, for now, simply to feel it.

The sensations remained with her as the gondola ride came to an end. They were there as Caesar kissed her hand in a good-night salute before parting from them at the landing. They lasted while she and Rone strolled to the hotel and climbed the ancient winding staircase that led to their room. It was with her still as Rone unlocked the door.

Joletta, entering the room first, reached for the light switch. Rone caught her hand. For an instant she was afraid he had seen or heard something in the darkened room.

No.

He closed the door behind him and turned her to him. Placing her hand on his shoulder, he drew her into his arms.

His lips in the darkness were heated and heady in their sweetness. Joletta felt herself lifted, swung, carried toward the bed. Moonlight washed over her as he placed her in the patch of it that streamed across the mattress from the open window. As he loomed above her the broad width of his shoulders, the shape of his head, and individual strands of his hair were outlined in a nimbus of silver that left his face in shadow. He seemed, for the briefest possible instant, a stranger and threatening because of it.

Then he eased down beside her, joining her in the wash of light, and she was engulfed in the rich, barely tasted familiarity of him.

Silvered by the moon’s steady glow, they melded together, mouth to mouth, thighs entwined.

There was something inevitable about the moment to Joletta, as if she had known from the second he had turned to her in the gondola that it must come. Or perhaps it had become inescapable before that, when he had pulled her from the wrecked car, or earlier, when he had kissed her on the bridge at Lucerne, or even as she had looked up to see him there in Paris. It seemed that she had been waiting a lifetime, waiting only for this. Now she need wait no longer.

Wine and rich languor moved through her veins. She touched his face, the faint bristles of his beard just emerging from his skin, the firm planes of his cheek and square turn of his jaw. He cupped her face in a strong hand, fingering the softness of her skin and the gentle perfection of the bones beneath it. For long moments their eyes met in the dimness, searching, dark and liquid with promise.

On a swift, indrawn breath, Joletta tightened her hold around him. The firmness of her breasts pushed against his chest and her lower body pressed the incredible heat and rigidity of his masculine form. Through the soft cotton of her skirt, she felt his need of her, and her heart swelled, thudding into the bones of her ribs. The muscles of his shoulder under the cotton of his shirt were taut yet fluid with movement as he stroked her back. The scent of him, of cotton and sandalwood, of warm male and the humid freshness of the Venetian night, was an incitement. It blended with her own Tea Rose scent to form an erotic rhapsody of fragrance.

He was not a novice; the sureness of his touch upon her breast, at the buttons of her blouse, proved it. But then, neither was she. The relationship she had shared with her fiancé had been hasty and, for the most part, none too satisfactory. Perhaps for that reason Joletta could not remember ever feeling this same compelling need before. She had never known this frantic impulse to hurry, to fling herself upon him and urge instant gratification while at the same time acknowledging a deep, internal yearning for slow and unending fulfillment. She wanted to be a part of Rone, to make him a part of her, to know him without reservations.

Was that ever really possible?

These thoughts flickering through her mind were banished as she felt cool air against her bare skin. Rone brushed aside the fine material of her blouse. The warmth of his breath, then the moist heat of his mouth, brushed across the arch of her throat. A tremor caught her as he flicked the hollow at its base with his tongue. It increased as he moved lower, trailing a moist path of warm kisses along the valley between her breasts while he unhooked her bra.

Heat flowed along the surface of Joletta’s skin. The beat of her heart became a muffled drumming in her ears. She moved to help as he tugged her skirt from her hips, then gasped as he lowered his head to brush his mouth across the tense muscles of her abdomen. She caught his hair, tangling her fingers in its silken crispness as if to stop him, then, with a soft sound in her throat, she let him proceed.

Unhurried, certain in his movements, he buried his face in the concave hollow of her belly, breathing her rare scent, tasting the sweet hollow of her navel before moving upward once more. He circled the peak of a breast with his tongue, savoring the texture and resilience with meticulous care as he ascended toward the crest. Joletta ceased breathing as her senses expanded. Her skin radiated warmth. Then as she felt the heat of his mouth close on her nipple, she yielded to that searing caress.

She had not known it could be like this, had never felt such a hot flood of sheer, wanton delight. She lifted trembling fingers to his face, smoothing its strong planes, feeling the slight movement of his jaw as his tongue abraded the nipple he held. There was inside her a sense of giving, of bountiful fullness that brought an ache to her throat.

Leaving one nipple taut and wet, he gave the other the same slow and careful attention. He paused to press his lips to the firm curve where her heart throbbed in steady, shuddering pulsation beneath the skin. Shifting then, moving upward once more, he sought her mouth while he smoothed his hand in steady and deliberate descending circles, reaching inexorably toward the silken triangle at the juncture of her thighs.

How intimate a touch could be, invading privacy, destroying barriers, reaching deep into secret places that had been closely guarded, with a pleasure that both demanded and beseeched acceptance. Rone was insidious, undeniable, assured, constant. His ministrations brought the molten surge of unbridled desire. A soft sound vibrated in her throat. She moved against him, with him, drowning in sensation, afraid he would stop. Unbidden, in an ecstasy of giving, she eased her thighs open to allow greater access.

He took it, following his touch with his mouth. Joletta gasped, succumbing, answering in silent grace to his guidance. She ceased to think as the pleasure grew, only shifting slightly, reaching for him in wanton, passionate gratitude, reveling in the muscular hardness of his body that was so perfect a complement to her own softness.

There was magic in the exploration of tender hollows and sensitive curves and protuberances. It quickened inside them, blooming, while their breathing deepened and their hearts battered against each other. It banished past and present, leaving only blind need and its delicate tending, its deliberate, tendon-straining enhancement.