Rome
December 2
Grace leaned against the stone balustrade of the luxurious apartment at the top of the Spanish Steps, drinking in the glory of a Roman sunset. Though it was December, the evening was balmy, the setting sun somehow bigger and redder than any sun that had ever set over Manhattan.
From Florida they’d flown to Montenegro in a luxury jet that was like a boutique hotel room. During the flight, Drake started healing right in front of her eyes. Almost hour by hour, he improved.
She’d been so frightened on the horrific drive down to Tampa. Drake had been barely conscious, bleeding from multiple wounds and, worst of all, dazed and disoriented. For a horrific moment, she had thought he might actually die.
And yet, by the time they’d landed in Montenegro, been taken across the Adriatic in a speedboat to land north of Bari with a Mercedes waiting, he felt well enough to take the wheel. Grace had made a token protest, but he’d simply looked at her with a crooked smile, holding the passenger door open. She’d slid inside with a sigh of relief. She hated to drive. The nightmare journey to Florida through a storm with a wounded man beside her had been horrible enough. Driving in
Italy
? No thanks.
Trust Drake to find the most sumptuous apartment in Rome, across the street from the Hassler Hotel, at the top of the Spanish Steps. She’d gasped as they walked in, the Roman skyline glittering just beyond the enormous terrace. The travertine-stone lintel over the huge one-story carved wooden street door had had a coat of arms with 1537 engraved on it. A Renaissance palazzo, with a penthouse apartment that seemed to be theirs, frescoes and all.
She’d been worried about the toll all this travel was taking on Drake. The evening they arrived in Rome, Drake had come naked out of the huge marble bathroom, having taken the stitches in his shoulder out himself. He put a finger to her lips before she could say anything. “It’s okay, my love,” he’d said. Then kissed her.
A naked Drake kissing her…she could barely remember her own name after that.
She’d wanted to see Rome and he’d taken her, everywhere she wanted to go. Dressed in a long cashmere coat, which managed to mask his unusually strong physique, and a black watchcap pulled low over his forehead, with wraparound sunglasses and dark stubble blurring the line of his jaw, he passed unnoticed in the crowd, almost unrecognizable even to her.
This was her time, he made that clear. They did what she wanted, went where she wanted, saw what she wanted. She lost herself so much in Raphael’s
La Fornarina
at the National Gallery that the guards had to shoo them out at closing time. When with a start Grace realized she’d kept Drake standing for over three hours while she mooned over a painting by Titian at the Borghese Gallery, she started to apologize.
“Did you enjoy that, duschka?” he asked. “Did it make you happy?”
“Oh yes,” she breathed.
“Then I’m happy, too,” he said simply.
He stood quietly by her side as she spent an entire morning at the Sistine Chapel, his dark eyes taking everything in. Though he knew very little about art, Grace wouldn’t have been surprised if he were now able to describe from memory each and every one of the hundreds of paintings she’d dragged him to see.
It was all so…liberating. All her life, she’d had to disguise how passionately she loved classical art. Most people could get a little worked up about modern art, the trendier and more expensive the better, but classical art…bleh.
And of course, conversely, she had to feign an interest in the things most people were crazy about—money, fashion and gossip.
With Drake, Grace didn’t have to hide any aspect of her nature. After a couple of days, she was surprised to find that she was even unconsciously standing straighter, and realized she had lived her life slightly hunched, waiting for disapproval. Not with Drake. She could be herself, completely, and he loved it.
He loved
her.
Exactly the way she was.
He loved her. It was there, in his touch, in his rare smiles, only for her, in the way he looked at her.
He rarely left her side, and then only to take care of business. Like now. And she knew, like she knew that the sun setting in a blaze of glory before her would rise again in the east tomorrow, that he would come back to her.
Behind her, a light switched on inside the sumptuous living room fit for a prince and she smiled.
Drake was back.
In a moment, he was at her side, strong arm around her waist. She leaned her head against that massive shoulder and sighed. The sun was disappearing behind the glorious golden cupola of St. Peter’s, turning all the buildings a luscious, deep red. The Spanish Steps, below them, were full of people—tourists, students, families enjoying the warm evening, their voices a soft hum on the gentle evening breeze. Grace waved an arm, encompassing all of Rome. “This is so beautiful, Drake. Thank you for showing it to me.”
He turned his head to look at her. “Your pleasure has been mine. But our time here is drawing to a close, duschka. I wish it weren’t true, but it is. Europe is too dangerous for us. Soak everything up and commit it to memory, because the sad truth is that we can never return here again.”
She knew that. It had been made clear to her, which was why she’d been so greedy to see all the artwork she could.
He pulled something from his overcoat pocket, then tossed the overcoat onto a wicker chaise longue. “Here.” Two burgundy passports. “These are our new identities.”
Intrigued, Grace opened them. She and Drake were now Maltese, she saw. Victoria and Manuel Rabat. She fingered the identity page, covered in plastic, touching her new existence. “Victoria,” she murmured. “It’s a pretty name.”
Drake shrugged. “I like Grace more. But she is now gone.”
“Have you figured out where Victoria and Manuel are going?”
He smiled. “Yes. An island called Sivuatu, a couple of hours’ flight from Fiji. It is very lush, warm, but in the path of the trade winds, so the heat is mitigated. I have already bought a home for us. It is very beautiful. One wing will be set aside as your studio. I hope you will like it there.”
Grace met his dark gaze. “I’ll love it.” Her voice rang clearly with the force of her conviction.
He nodded gravely. “I hope so, for we will rarely leave the island. It will be our new home, in every sense, for the rest of our lives.”
“When will we leave?”
“Soon, as I said. Everything is ready, just one more thing has to happen and then we go, as fast as we can. But before we go, there is something else we must do.”
Grace watched, intrigued, as he pulled two small boxes from his pants pocket, holding them to her in the palm of his huge hand.
Two shiny black lacquer boxes, with BULGARI embossed in gold on the covers. He put one in her hand. “Open this one first.”
Smiling, she opened the box. Inside was a thick band of red gold inset with brightly colored gemstones. She lifted it out, the gemstones glittering with life and vivid color. Amethyst, topaz, aquamarine, peridot…she held the ring up to the light and drank in the glorious colors.
“It’s beautiful, Drake. Perfect. It’s just perfect.” It was. The design was clean and exquisite, the gemstones bright and flawless. Exactly the kind of ring to appeal to her.
“Open the other one,” he said quietly.
“Two rings,” she smiled. “That’s a little extravagant, don’t you th—” She stopped and gazed, puzzled, at the simple, enormous gold band in the second box. “Drake, that’s much too large for my hand.”
He smiled. “It’s not for you, duschka, it’s for me.” He extracted it from the velvet holder, placing it in the palm of his right hand. Intense dark eyes stared into hers. “Put it on me, my love. You know which finger.”
She did. Her heart began a deep, excited thudding in her chest.
With shaking fingers, she picked up the big gold band. It felt heavy and warm in her hand. She picked up his left hand and slipped it onto his ring finger. It fit, perfectly, just as hers had.
Once the ring was on his finger, he caught her hand, lacing his fingers through hers.
“We will arrive in our new home as man and wife, so we will never have a marriage ceremony. Therefore we will have our wedding now, and here.” He indicated the beautiful, terra-cotta-tiled terrace with the elegant wickerwork and iron furniture, the city of Rome laid out before them with its bustling crowds and elegant shop windows all lit up, the domes of the Renaissance churches rising up like dreams made of stone and tile from the forest of rooftop gardens. He brought her hand to his lips and kissed her fingers. Grace nearly cried at what she saw in his eyes, blinking back the tears, because this was the most solemn moment in her life, a moment that would split her existence on this earth into two. Before Drake and After Drake.
“Grace Larsen,” he whispered, “I promise to love you and protect you for the rest of our lives.” He swallowed heavily. His hard face, normally so impassive, showed signs of emotion, nostrils flaring white, deep brackets around his mouth, muscles rippling along his jawline.
Grace was shaking all over. Deep down, she never thought she’d ever get married. She was too odd, too eccentric, too out of step with the modern-day world. At times she hadn’t even minded, because the thought of a fancy, expensive wedding with tons of drunken guests, followed by a marriage in which she had to constantly pretend to be someone else, was almost too much to bear.
This was…perfect. So
perfect
for her. The man of her dreams in the city of her dreams. Just the two of them, vowing to love each other forever.
“Viktor Drakovich,” she whispered, her throat almost too tight to get the words out. She waited for the trembling to die down, for her voice to steady. Such a solemn moment, it deserved the best she could give. A deep breath. Another. When she finally spoke, her voice was calm. “I promise to love and care for you for the rest of our lives.” She bowed her head over their joined hands. “We are now truly man and wife.”
His hand jolted a little in hers and she looked up, startled. She barely had a chance to see his face, muscles tight, eyes ferociously fixed on hers, before he took her head in his big hands and started kissing her wildly. Eating at her mouth, tongue deep inside, breathing her in as if he were dying and her mouth contained the elixir of life.
“Mine,” he moaned into her mouth. “Mine forever.”
It was a hard kiss, almost violent, but Grace met his mouth with equal force, trying to meld with him, hands clutching at him in an effort to get closer, closer. Skin to skin. Loins to loins. Heart to heart.
He walked her backward into the living room, shedding clothes as they went. He lifted his mouth from hers for a nanosecond to whip his sweater off, then impatiently ripped away the underlying shirt. In a second, trousers and briefs and shoes and socks were on the floor and he pulled her to him, hard, still kissing her deeply.
Grace tightened her arms around him, his shoulders so broad her arms couldn’t meet. He was so hot, it was like holding warm steel in her arms as she settled heavily against him. His erection was huge and hot between them. She couldn’t resist the temptation to roll her hips against it, delighted to feel him swell, grow even harder and longer.
He wasn’t the only one affected. She could feel herself growing moist between the legs, her body readying itself for him.
He growled in her mouth, hooked a finger in the pale lavender silk shirt he’d bought her at Valentino and the La Perla bra beneath it and pulled, hard. The pearl buttons pinged as they bounced off the ancient terra-cotta tiles and the shirt and bra drifted to the floor. Grace moaned as his naked chest met hers, the feel of his skin against hers electric and almost unbearably exciting.
He walked them to the plush rug in front of the open fire in the huge, intricately carved hearth and, still kissing her wildly, eased them both to the ground. She could feel against her breasts the strong play of muscles as he brought them down, laying her gently against the priceless antique rug, then coming down on top of her.
He was shaking with the effort to control himself, but he didn’t have to. She needed this just as much as he did. She needed this wild coupling, this drive each of them felt to get inside the other’s skin. There was no such thing as being too close, not at this moment.
Her tongue licked deeply in his mouth, her arms strained to hold him as tightly as she could. Desire blossomed in her, a hot unfolding and swelling, until her skin felt too tight to contain her. It was almost painful, this intense desire, and she whimpered.
“Now, Drake. Don’t wait.”
It was as if she had lashed a whip across his shoulders. In seconds, he had her pants unbuttoned, sliding them down her legs together with her panties, and as soon as her legs were free, he was kneeing them apart.
He didn’t need to do that. They separated of their own volition, eager to twine around his hips. Oh God, his weight felt so delicious on top of her, heavy and warm, grounding her, making her whole.
It seemed insane to her that she’d spent almost twenty-eight years without this. How had she survived all those lonely nights?
Drake pulled back a little, face harsh, eyes closed to slits, as he reached down and opened her with his fingers.
“Have…to…
now,
” he gasped. He was always so careful entering her, making sure she was ready for him, but she could tell he couldn’t wait. She didn’t want him to.
In answer, she opened her legs even wider and lifted her hips, in an invitation as old as time.