Nic cupped her cheeks between his palms. "She's probably jealous."
"Jealous! She's a bloody—" She swallowed the insult and tossed her head. "Anyway, why was Mr. Vecchi calling her signora? I bet she told him she and Sebastian were married."
"As to that," said Nic with a small, uncomfortable sigh, "they are married."
Merry's jaw dropped even as she drew breath for her next rant. For a moment, her lungs wouldn't work at all.
"I know," he said, lifting his hands, "they don't behave like man and wife. They consider what they
have an 'open' marriage. In its way, for them, it works."
"But why even bother to marry?"
Nic pulled a rueful face. "They love each other. They simply love freedom more."
Merry began to speak, then found she couldn't. Freedom. Wasn't that what she'd claimed she wanted all along, how she'd pictured her later years: free to take lovers when she chose?
But not to
marry
them, she thought. Marriage was a promise to forsake all others. Or it ought to be. She hadn't realized she believed that but she did. Her brothers and her parents had taught her the value of commitment. For all its flaws, marriage was a matter of honor, of giving one's word and keeping it. Without being aware of it, she squared her shoulders.
It seemed the new Merry Vance wasn't quite what she'd expected.
Nic stroked her upper arms. "Do you want to leave? Find a hotel to stay in on. our own?"
The offer startled her. Rather than give in to temptation, she shook her head. "I don't want to come between you and your friends."
"They'd understand. I want you to be comfortable."
"I am," she said, but her chin wobbled in spite of her efforts to keep it firm.
Seeing the telltale sign, Nic cursed under his breath and pulled her closer. She couldn't help curving into him; he was too warm, too caring—even if he didn't care as deeply as she did.
"I'm sorry," he said, his lips against her hair. "I didn't mean to expose you to the edge of Evie's wit. She fancied me once, years ago—at least, as much as she fancies anyone other than Sebastian. I think she hoped I'd save her from him: if I could make her fall in love with me, she could break her obsession
with him. But those two are destined for each other, always circling, always taking little cuts. Whatever Evangeline thought she needed, it wasn't what I had."
"Were you sorry?" Merry dared to ask.
"Sorry?"
"That you couldn't be what she needed."
"Oh, Mary." His laugh was as arid as a desert. "In all my life, I've never been what anyone needed. But my heart wasn't broken, if that's what you mean. Even then, I knew better than to make promises I couldn't keep."
His arms tightened around her back, tense but possessive, as if his words stirred some conflict only her nearness could allay. You want me to need you, she thought, the knowledge as clear as the sun sparkling off the canal outside. You want me to need you because you need me, too.
She lifted her head and he met her gaze, his eyes troubled despite his smile. Don't say anything, she told herself. Just let this be and it might grow. Afraid to burst the fragile bubble, she dragged her hands down the slope of his back until their hips were snugged together. She forced herself to match his attempt at lightness. "You made me a promise, Nic. I trust you haven't forgotten it."
His expression turned sensual; practiced, the cynical side of her might have said, though his smile still warmed the blood coursing through her veins. "What promise would that be?"
"To stuff me full of every inch of you I could take."
"Ah. That promise." He bent and tugged her lower lip between his teeth. "Are you sure you want me to keep it now, when all of Venice lies before us?"
"Venice can wait," she said breathlessly. "I can't."
"Can't?" The word seemed to interest him as much as the mark his teeth had left on her mouth.
"Can't," she repeated, almost out of air. "I haven't held you in too long."
"Eight days," he supplied agreeably, his eyes heavy, his face beginning to darken, "and eight long, randy nights."
Her hands slipped over his bottom and squeezed his muscled cheeks. The crotch of his trousers grew measurably warmer. Inside them, his sex was hard and thick. "You've been a gentleman."
"More than you can imagine."
"If you'd stop being a gentleman now, I'd be very grateful."
"Would you?" His eyes danced as he gathered up the back of her skirts. A grind of his hips punctuated the question. "Would you cry with thanks while I pumped inside you? Would you quiver and sob and clutch me with your quim?"
She couldn't answer. He had found the parting in her drawers and, an instant later, the parting between her legs. She was wet for him, summer warm, as his touch skated over her sultry folds. The sound he made when he pressed two fingers inside her was like a lion's purr. His intrusion was just what she'd
been craving. She squirmed over it, melted over it, and her voice broke on a sigh.
"So," he said, deep and rough, "my little Mary is no liar. She's weeping for me already."
He stroked her clutching walls, pressing the back of her passage, then the front. His knuckles nudged something sharply sensitive and she couldn't hold back a cry.
"Mm." He probed for the spot. "There's something good here, I see. Something worth exploring."
Merry gasped and tried to squirm away. "Don't, Nic. It's too much."
He chuckled but he stopped. "Maybe it's too much now," he said. "A bit later I'd wager you'll like it fine."
As if to prove he could make her like anything at all, his thumb slipped backward, oiled by the fluid of
her lust. She jumped as it, too, probed her body, gathering a strange, tight tingle from a part she'd never thought to let anyone touch.
"Nic!" she gasped, a helpless protest. Or maybe it wasn't a protest. Maybe it was a plea for more.
Nic seemed equally aroused by the forbidden nature of his foray. His body was stiff, shaking palpably
in desire. At her gasp of shock, he held her tighter, pushing deeper into her anus, setting his teeth to her neck and breathing hard. "Don't lie to me, Mary. And don't lie to yourself. Your body doesn't know what it's supposed to like. It only knows what it does."
She groaned as he rubbed her with all his hand. Heat surged through her, a deep, prickling ache that swelled beyond the regions he could touch.
"Imagine this as my cock," he said, the words coming hoarse and thick as he rotated slowly with his thumb. "Imagine I filled you front and back."
Try as she might, she couldn't deny her yearning for the experiment he described. Would it hurt? Or would it simply be a new surrender? Certainly, she was not hurting now. Her pearl of pleasure felt like
a tiny sun, pulsing frantically against the pressure he was exerting. Her body was enjoying this. Her
body was on fire.
Which didn't mean she was comfortable doing more.
"The window is open," she whispered, her voice too unsteady for sound. "There's a breeze blowing
over my bum."
He laughed and kissed her, deeply, wetly, as if he meant to fuse their mouths. The kiss was wilder somehow, more excited—whether because of their recent abstinence or from his unusual play, she could not say. Before she could ask, he lifted her off her feet, his fingers slipping from her to leave a throbbing emptiness behind. With a swoosh of wool and cotton, her skirts fell down her legs. He was carrying her. The breeze grew stronger, the smell of brackish water, the cry of hungry birds. He set her down on the little balcony, steadying her when she tottered on her feet.
She wanted him so badly she was weak.
"Look," he said, turning her to face the balustrade of stone. "Here's something I know you'll like."
At first she thought he meant Venice, spread before them like a drunkard's happy dream: water and sky and palazzos bridging the gulf between. Then her skirts crept once more up her legs.
"Nic—" She started to turn, but he caught her head and gently, firmly pushed it back.
"No." Soft as it was, his voice held a ring of command. A snap of cloth and metal announced the opening of his trousers. His feet sidled between her own, spreading them, spreading her. She shivered as the length of him burned her through her drawers. He was so long, so deliriously thick and hard. His breath came heavily as he spoke. "Venice was built to show off beautiful things. Here, of all places, why shouldn't you do what you like best? Why shouldn't we both do what we need?"
The balustrade pressed her belly where he'd crowded her up against it. A crinkling sound told her he'd taken one of his sheaths out of his pocket. She bit her lip. She wanted him to take her, wanted it enough to cry. No one could see, not really; the front of her skirts covered everything below her waist. And Nic was behind her. They would look as if they were embracing, as any lovers might. The chance that someone might guess, though, set her limbs atremble. Sighing, she felt him breach her drawers. The skin of his crown was hot, both delicate and firm. He teased it over her lips, then between them, then around the tiny spear of her clitoris. Her sheath clenched down on itself, trying to grab what it wished were thrust within.
"I'm going to fuck you," he whispered. "I'm going to make up for every night I did without. In front of
Venice
and the world, I'm going to cram my hungry cock up to your womb. And you, Miss Mary, do
not have the will to stop me."
"No," she admitted with the last of her breath, "I don't."
He growled in answer. His first deep thrust drove a cry from her startled throat. By luck or design he'd found the tender spot he'd pressed before. She whimpered at the sharpness of the pleasure, at the thrumming stretch of him inside. He steadied her, and perhaps himself, with a tighter grip around her hips.
"Sh," he said, drawing back until his rim was caught inside her clutching gate. "You mustn't let anyone hear."
His warning made it that much harder to be quiet, no doubt as he'd intended. He knew her too well, her Nic. She felt fevered, her fear of discovery the peg that tightened the wire of her desperate need. She wanted him to slam into her without restraint, to drive her beyond the bounds of sense, and yet this taut control was more exciting still. She trembled as he cupped her pubis and thrust again, his finger finding her swollen bud just as the tip of him crossed those fateful nerves. The stimulation was almost more
than she could bear, the pleasure so deep it felt like pain.
Nic laughed at her tortured groan. "Better," he said, reversing the dragging glide. "But not quite quiet enough."
"I'll show you quiet," she swore, but it took all her strength to keep her reaction to a shudder.
When she licked her lip, she tasted blood.
He did not mean for it to be easy. With each slow thrust, he caught the place again, pushing the ache deeper, making her want it more. Nor was he immune to the charm of their position. He thickened with every pulse until he had to gasp for breath against her cheek. His whole body was rigid, coiled tight against the powerful lure of release. Even the arm that wrapped her waist seemed to harden into stone.
"Faster," she pleaded.
"Slower," he breathed.
She reached back to grasp his hip. "Harder, then. Do it harder."
He said her name on a laughing scold. "Look at the city. Look at this beautiful, decadent city."
She looked, but all she could feel was him. The thrust of his penis. The heat of his chest. The throb and quiver of his blood. "I-can't," she said. "I can only think of you."