Unnoticed and Untouched (9 page)

She didn’t think so, but she dutifully complied, finding bottled water in the refrigerator built into the sleek counter on one wall. He’d removed his gloves by the time she returned to him, and he took the pills, draining half the water, then leaned back in his chair, one hand spanning his forehead as he sat with his eyes closed.

“How was the Viper to ride?” she asked. “Was it everything you’d hoped?”

He actually smiled. “It was glorious,
cara mia
. Almost perfect. There are a few tweaks required, but she’ll be ready to go when it’s time.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” Except, of course, Renzo would insist on riding the motorcycle himself instead of giving it to one of the racing team to ride. “What happened when you got off the Viper, Renzo?”

She wasn’t sure he would tell her, but then he sighed. “My leg started to cramp on the final few laps. And that
last turn was a bit hard on the knee. The pain was … surprising, I suppose.”

“You promised not to push it,” she said tightly. “I wish you would at least see a doctor. He might be able to help.”

His blue eyes were piercing when they snapped open. “No. I’ve seen doctors. There is nothing they can tell me that I do not already know.”

“Do you really think you can ride the Viper for an entire season? How will you explain it if you can’t stand up when they hand you the trophy?” She could think of far worse scenarios, but she couldn’t bring herself to say them. He knew the possibilities as well as she did.

His voice was as hard as diamonds. “I can ride, Faith. There is no other choice.”

She swallowed the fear and bitterness roiling in her belly. “I don’t understand that, Renzo. You have an entire racing team at your disposal. Men who know how this is done as well as you do.”

“They don’t know,” he snapped, before muttering something in Italian. “I am one of the top-ranked riders in the world. And I know my motorcycles. It has to be me. This is the Viper’s debut. It has to succeed, and for that to happen, I must be the one riding. The sponsors are counting on it. The company is counting on it. Do you wish to find yourself downsized because the Viper fails?”

She knew how much it meant to him, how proud he was, and yet she didn’t believe it was as dire as he made it out to be. Yes, they might lose sponsors and, yes, the newest production model might not sell as well as hoped if the Viper was a disaster. Gavretti Manufacturing might even gain the upper hand on them, which would no doubt anger Renzo a great deal.

But so what? He would be alive and able to bring the company back from the edge of whatever misfortune they
might teeter upon. “D’Angeli isn’t going to go broke if the Viper doesn’t smash records,” Faith said firmly.

He looked at her darkly for several moments. And then he stood, his face whitening briefly as he clutched the edge of the desk. “I’ll shower and change and then we can go back to the villa.”

Faith ground her teeth in frustration. Typical man. He didn’t want to talk about it when she pointed out the flaws in his logic.

He started to limp toward the adjoining bath, but she hurried over and slid an arm around his waist. He might be stubborn, but she couldn’t watch him suffer.

“
Grazie
,” he said, leaning on her as she helped him into the bathroom. It was a luxurious room, outfitted in exotic African hardwoods and sleek chrome fixtures. There was a huge shower at one end, entirely encased in glass, complete with a bench and several nozzles up and down the walls on three sides, as well as one overhead.

“Sit,” she told him when they reached the leather couch in the dressing area off to one side.

He did as she said, and then she bent to take his boots off even though he had not asked her to. But how could he manage it when his leg still hurt? She got one boot off, and then the other before tackling the knee sliders, which were separate from the leathers because they had to be replaced so often. These were scraped pretty badly from his contact with the track, and it made her shudder to think again of how he lay almost flat on his side every time he went around a curve.

The barest slip of control and he and the bike would go their separate ways. At two hundred miles an hour.

Faith shuddered again. The leathers were made for protection, with Kevlar and titanium in the most vulnerable
spots, but the last thing she wanted was to see firsthand how good the protection they provided was.

How was it that one of the other talented riders on the D’Angeli team couldn’t ride the Viper? She didn’t believe it for a moment, no matter how good Renzo was. With Renzo as a teacher, how could his team fail? He was simply too proud, too stubborn, to admit he couldn’t do this any longer.

She got the sliders off and then lifted her head to look at him. The last thing she expected to see was the jut of an impressive arousal against the leather. Her gaze flew to his.

He smiled crookedly. “I could see down your shirt,” he said, not the least bit apologetic. “It’s a nice view.”

“You’re in no shape to be thinking about my breasts,” she told him somewhat prudishly, her cheeks flaring with heat.

He laughed. “
Cara
, I’d have to be dead not to think about your breasts. I assure you I’m quite capable of thinking about them. Of thinking of every centimeter of your body, I should add.”

Faith got to her feet and stood stiffly, in spite of the fact her body was doing that softening-melting-aching thing again. “I think you can do the rest yourself,” she said. “I’ll wait in the office.”

He stood, his face less tight now, and tugged at the zipper that held the leathers in place. It was like having that magazine ad come to life, she thought, as her breath caught and held while the zipper slid downward. Unlike in the magazine, there was a tight shirt beneath the leather, but it was still one of the sexiest things she’d ever seen.

“I’ll be, um, in the office,” she said, turning away as he laughed.

“You could stay, Faith. Wash my back.”

She spun to face him again just as he shrugged out of
the top half of the leathers and then peeled the shirt up and off. She’d seen his naked chest last night, but it had been dark. Now he stood before her in all his hard-bodied glory, muscles rippling and flexing beneath bronzed skin—and then she noticed a three-pronged scratch skating over one pectoral muscle.

Faith frowned even as her heart did that funny little skip thing again. She thought of him last night with a tiny mewing bundle in his arms. “Lola did that?”

He glanced down. “
Si
—but it is nothing.”

And then he was staring at her again, blue eyes daring her. Only a few minutes ago, he’d been in enough pain to bring tears to his eyes, and now he was standing there like some sexy demigod and tempting her into the kind of behavior that ought to make her turn and run right this instant. Instead, she was imagining it. Considering it.

Wanting it.

“How about it, Faith?” he said, his voice a sexy rumble. “Do you want to wash my back?”

“I—I—” She closed her eyes, darted her tongue over her lips. She was not doing this. She was not stripping her clothing and stepping into that shower with him when he’d probably done the same thing a million times before with a million different women. She couldn’t. “I’ll be in the office, Renzo.”

Before he could say another word, she hurried out the door and shut it firmly behind her. But his laughter echoed after her until she almost turned around and went back just so she could look at him one more time. Instead, she retreated to a chair by the window and forced herself to sit with her hands in her lap and stare at the Tuscan hills.

He emerged twenty minutes later, dressed in the trousers and button-down shirt he’d worn earlier, his hair still damp and curling sexily over his collar. Faith stood, clasping
her hands together to hide their trembling. Her heart was still racing, and her body still ached, no matter that she’d sat and tried to will the feelings away.

It didn’t work that way, apparently. She wanted things she’d never wanted before, and she didn’t quite know how to get them. How to take that plunge that would mean the difference between continuing the way she had been, and knowing what it meant to be a sensual creature focused on her own pleasure.

Renzo stopped when he saw her. His gaze met hers, heat flaring anew in the blue depths, and she knew that he could see her struggle with herself. He was far too perceptive when it came to women. She tried to remind herself why that was a bad thing, but she just didn’t seem to care.

“Come here, Faith,” he said, and she obeyed without once asking herself why she was doing so. He smelled delicious, clean and fresh and male, and she itched to touch him. But she kept her arms rigid at her sides as she stood before him and waited for something to happen.

Until he reached for her and tugged her into his embrace. One hand came up to cup her jaw while the other spread across the small of her back, pressing her to him. Faith gripped the powerful muscles of his biceps, her breath shortening in her chest.

“I’ve been thinking about something,” he said as she blinked up at him and wondered how any man could be so absolutely stunning. “I can’t stop thinking about it, in fact.”

“What’s that?” she asked, trying not to devolve into a stammering idiot.

He smiled, and her stomach flipped. “I want to be your first, Faith.”

She blinked. “M-my first?”

First what? She couldn’t think, simply couldn’t form a thought in her head when he held her so close, his body
warm and hard against hers, his mouth so close, so sexy that she wanted to bite him, kiss him, lick him.

He dipped his head until those perfect lips were only a whisper away from hers.

“Yes,
cara mia
, I want to be your first lover.”

She would never be certain who moved first, but then his lips were on hers and she was lost.

F
AITH
melted into his kiss as if she’d been born to do so. No man had ever kissed her the way Renzo had, she thought crazily. He kissed the way he rode motorcycles: expertly, passionately, and with a combination of control and recklessness that slayed her ability to think rationally about anything.

She was lost, helpless, powerless to resist when he held her so close, his mouth slanting over hers, his tongue sliding and teasing and tormenting.

He kissed her until she moaned, kissed her until she wrapped her arms around him and arched her body against his. Until she forgot who she was or where she was or why this might possibly turn out badly for her in the end.

His hand slid down her body, brought her hips in contact with his, and she gasped at the evidence of his need for her.

“I want you, Faith,” he said in her ear. “But I want you to make the choice. It has nothing to do with who we are, and everything to do with this raw need we both feel when we touch. I want to explore this feeling, and I want to show you how good it can be between us when we do.”

She could no longer deny that she wanted it, too. “Not here,” she said quickly. “I don’t want to do it here.”

He lifted his head until he could look down at her, stroked his fingers over her cheek before tucking her hair
behind her ear. “Of course not,” he said. “Tell me what your fantasy is,
cara
. A castle? A desert tent? A tropical island? Name it, and it’s yours.”

Her pulse thrummed in her throat until she felt dizzy, drunk with passion and happiness and fear all at once.

“I—I’ve never quite thought about it.” My God, what was she agreeing to? Was she really going to be this man’s lover? Was she really negotiating the terms of her surrender in a sunlit office in Tuscany?

“What about Venice?” he said. “A gorgeous palazzo on the Grand Canal. I will do this for you, Faith, if it’s what you want.”

He looked so serious, and she knew that no matter what she named, no matter how far-fetched, he would move heaven and earth to get it for her. To make her first time special. She was touched that he would go to such trouble, and yet at this moment she wanted none of those things.

She only wanted him. In a bed. In his villa, with the scents of the flowers on the breeze and his taste on her tongue. That was all she needed to make it special, memorable.

But she felt unsophisticated for wanting something so simple when he was offering her the world. Would he think her too sentimental if she told him? Too unimaginative?

“I can see that you’ve thought of something,” he said. “But you do not want to tell me. What is it,
cara
? Do you wish to refuse my offer? It is your choice, as I have said.”

Faith sighed and lifted her hand to trace her fingers across his full lower lip. She was beyond hope now. She couldn’t refuse even if her life depended on it. She knew that her heart probably depended on it, but that couldn’t stop her, either.

Her fingers moved back and forth while he held completely still. She’d never done anything so sensual or bold
to a man in her life, and yet the darkening of his eyes told her he liked it. She liked it, too. She felt as if there was a thread running from her fingers to her core, and when she touched him, her sex tightened with need.

“I want to go back to the villa, Renzo.”

He captured her fingers in his and kissed them. “Then that is where we shall go.”

The villa was only a short car ride away, but by the time they arrived, her bravado was fading and nerves were taking over. She was about to let a famous heartbreaker make love to her for the first time in her life. What if he didn’t enjoy it? What if he was disappointed?

Because this wasn’t about love. It was about desire and heat, about sexual gratification. Things that she knew nothing about, or at least not yet. What if she was terrible at it?

They left the car in the drive and passed into the house through the kitchen door, which was open to the breeze and the bright afternoon sunshine. The cook, Lucia, was busy making something that smelled wonderful. She looked up when they entered, and smiled. Renzo spoke to her for a few moments before Faith followed him into the long hallway leading toward the grand staircase, butterflies swirling in her belly until she was nearly sick with it.

When they were almost at the stairs, Renzo caught her to him and her blood began to sing once again. If he would just hold her, she could do anything.

“I want you desperately,
cara mia
,” he said, his blue eyes serious as he studied her face, “but I want you to be certain. And I want to do this right. You should be wined and dined and seduced, not taken upstairs and stripped naked simply for my pleasure.”

She clutched his sleeves as he cupped her face. She waited for the perfect storm of his kiss, that melding of lips and tongues that drove her insane with need, but his
lips only skimmed hers, the kiss chaste and soft. When she would have wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him to her, he lifted his head.

“Go, before I lose the will to send you away. We will dine together at eight. What happens then is entirely up to you.”

It was nearly ten minutes after eight when she walked into the dining room. Renzo turned at the sound of her entrance. He’d been convinced she’d changed her mind when she hadn’t been prompt—Faith had never been late even a single day at work, so it was inconceivable that she could be late now unless she wasn’t joining him on purpose.

But she was here, and his blood began to hum at the sight of her. It was true he didn’t know if she’d changed her mind or not, but the way she was dressed gave him hope. She wore a body-skimming blue wrap dress that was more daring than anything he’d yet seen her wear. It was still modest—Faith would always be modest—but the dress dipped in a V that showed the barest hint of cleavage while clinging to her curves.

Curves he wanted to explore in thorough detail.

Her color was high, he noted, her green eyes wide. Her blond hair spilled freely down her back, silky and shining in the lights from the Murano chandelier overhead. He had a sudden visceral reaction: he wanted to bury his fingers in her hair while he thrust into her body again and again.

Santo cielo
.

He’d been determined not to do this, not to give in to his desire for her now that he knew she was a virgin. But he’d realized today, when she’d bent down to remove his boots, that she was a fire in his blood he wasn’t going to quench any other way. Hell, she’d even invaded his ride on the Viper. At a time when he most needed his concentration,
she’d been in his head, her pretty eyes and flushed cheeks, her beautiful full breasts, her hot little tongue as he’d kissed her in the car last night.

Faith was in his blood, in his body, and he knew of no other way to drive her out than to immerse himself in her. But the choice was hers. Only hers. He would not take advantage of her innocence. If she told him to go to hell, then he would find another woman tomorrow and take care of this burning sexual need at the least.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” she said a touch breathlessly. “Lola wouldn’t settle down.”

“And how is our tiny tyrant?” he asked, going over and pulling out her chair like a gentleman instead of staring at her like the slavering beast he was. She skimmed past him, her hair brushing his arm, her sweet scent wrapping around his senses. She smelled like vanilla, he realized. Soft, warm vanilla.

It reminded him of home. Of his early home, when he was still a small child and his mother had plenty of work—and plenty of male attention, though he’d not known or cared how important that was to her then. They’d had a nice apartment with a sliver of a sea view. It had been tiny, but his memories of it were warm and happy.

Faith laughed as she sat down, though the sound was a bit high and nervous. Not the sound of a woman who planned to say no. Possessive heat coiled in his belly even as he felt a twinge of guilt.

“She is very tiny, and very tyrannical,” Faith said, and he remembered that they had been talking of Lola. “But so adorable.”

He took his seat, determined to do this right. To make this night special for her. “You love her already.”

She smiled. “I do. It’s hard not to. That’s why Mother Nature makes babies so cute.”

“Then I did the right thing in giving her to you.” It gave him pleasure to see her smile. He’d rarely seen her smile in all the time she’d worked for him. She was always so serious, so proper.

She met his gaze then, and he could see the worry in her expression. “How is your leg, Renzo? Was it just a cramp, or did you reinjure it on the track today?”

Something inside him tightened. “I did not injure myself,
cara
.”

She let out a sigh. “I’m glad.”

A lot of people would be glad he wasn’t injured—his team, his stockholders, his mother and sister—but somehow it seemed more important that she was relieved. That the worry lining her face was even now smoothing out and disappearing.

The meal arrived then, and their talk was confined to things like the kitten, his run on the track today—without any further mention of a doctor or his difficulty at the end of the ride,
grazie a Dio
—and the beauty of the Tuscan countryside.

“I will take you to Florence soon,” he told her, and she smiled so genuinely that it actually hurt. She was so sweet and innocent, and he had no right to take her for his own when he did not intend to keep her.

He should get up now, get into his car and go to his apartment in Florence. Alone.

But he would not. He wasn’t that selfless.

“Can we see
David?
” she asked excitedly.

“Of course. He is quite magnificent. I am an Italian male, and yet the first time I saw him, even I was moved by the beauty of the sculpture.”

She sighed. “There is so much beauty in Italy.”

“
Si
,” he said meaningfully. “There is.”

Her lashes dropped. She reached for her wineglass, her fingers trembling. It nearly undid him.

“Faith.”

She looked up. “Yes?”

“You can say no.” He drew in a deep breath. He couldn’t believe what he was about to say. “You probably should say no,
cara
. I offer you nothing except pleasure. And you can wait for that when the time—and the man—is right.”

She dipped her head to study the wine in her glass, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear as she did so. “If you don’t want me, it’s okay. I understand. I’m not sophisticated or experienced enough for a man like you, and maybe it is better if we continue to be professional after all.”

He reached across the table to tip her chin up. She tried to keep her eyes from meeting his. “Look at me,” he commanded.

Her lashes lifted until he was staring into the deepest, greenest eyes he’d ever seen. He felt a jolt in his gut, a visceral need for her that stunned him with its intensity.

“What I want is you beneath me. Naked,
cara mia
. Right now would not be soon enough.”

There was an electrical current in the air, sliding between them on invisible pathways that sparked and sizzled with each look, each touch, that flowed between them. Faith’s blood felt hot, thick, and her chest ached as if she couldn’t quite breathe properly.

Anticipation coiled in her belly.
Naked
. She tried to imagine it, tried to imagine what he said he wanted, and her vision swam as she did so.

She could hear Renzo’s soft laugh, and then he was standing and pulling her to her feet, holding her close. “Breathe, Faith. Don’t pass out on me.”

She clutched her fingers into the expensive silk of his
shirt and sucked air into her lungs. Air that smelled like him, spicy and male and clean.

“You must think me ridiculous,” she said, her voice muffled against his chest.

He stroked her hair. “Not at all. I think you’re refreshing. Lovely.”

“This is not quite how I imagined my first time would go.”

His voice was smooth, warm. “And what did you imagine,
cara
?”

She shrugged. She’d imagined love, though she wouldn’t tell him that. She wasn’t naive—she was a grown woman who’d had to take care of herself for the past eight years. She’d had roommates, she’d watched movies and she’d listened to bedroom tales when her roommates wanted to share. But, through it all, she’d imagined some sort of special moment when Faith Black—Faith Winston—met her Prince Charming. The man who would love her the way she loved him, and who would pledge his soul to hers when he made love to her for the first time.

It was a crazy fantasy, a girlish fantasy. She knew better. Relationships were messy and imperfect, and you kissed a lot of frogs before you found Prince Charming.

“I’m not sure,” she said softly. “Music, dancing, candles. Romantic nonsense.”

“It’s not nonsense if it’s what you want.” He took her hand and led her into the living area. The room was beautiful, she thought wistfully, as she sat on the plush couch at his direction and let her eyes roam over the wood beams and the original artwork that graced the stuccoed walls. Renzo picked up a remote control, and then the soft strains of smooth jazz filled the background.

There were candles clustered in the hearth, she realized, when he struck a long match and lit them. Then he returned
to the couch and sat beside her. She thought he might pull her into his arms, kiss her, but he simply sat back and put his arm around her. After a moment’s hesitation, she curled into him and watched the flames.

“Do you want me to tell you about my first time?” he asked.

Faith nodded. She could feel his smile against her temple. “This is top secret information,
cara
. It would surely ruin me if it got out.”

“I doubt that.”

He laughed at the sarcasm in her voice. “I was seventeen,” he said. “And very green. She was older than I, so sexy and experienced that I could not believe she wanted me.”

“I can,” Faith said, and meant it.

“Nevertheless, I fumbled quite badly. She was very patient.”

Faith pushed back until she could see his face. “What do you mean, fumbled?”