Take Me

Travis nodded, so she scooped up a forkful of pasta and held it out across the table. He wrapped his long, tanned fingers around her hand, sending a jolt of awareness up and down her spine. His eyes burning into hers, he put his mouth around the tongs of the fork and pulled the pasta onto his tongue. Lily could practically feel his warm lips suckling at her ni**les.

But no matter how swept away Travis’s touch made her feel, she had to remember that Travis had many lovers. Lily couldn’t fool herself into believing she was special. And judging by the beautiful clothes in his luggage, he had one stashed away nearby.

Abruptly, she pulled her hand away and set it down on the plate with a clank. “I’m tired,” she said. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to call it a—” But before she could bid Travis a good night and get away from the hot promise she read in his eyes, a gorgeous young Italian stallion approached the table.

“Bella signora, will you honor me with a dance?”

“Me?” She fought the urge to look over her shoulder to see if the young man was talking to a woman behind her. And then she remembered. I’m wearing The Dress. Evidently its magic powers hadn’t worn off quite yet.

Gracing the stud with a wide smile, she held out her hand to him, glad for the excuse to get away from Travis.

“The bella signora,” Travis interrupted with a sneer, “is otherwise occupied right now.”

If Lily hadn’t been so confused by the show of masculine rites going on between the two men, she might have been able to laugh at how Travis was obviously flexing his biceps.

It was just her luck, she cursed, that Travis had picked that particular night to become possessive of her.

Especially when she had already decided that she was not, under any circumstances, going to give in to her body’s demands, no matter how much she wanted to feel his heavy weight pressing her down into the mattress. Besides, since she was nearly positive that he had an Italian lover stashed away, Lily wasn’t about to miss out on her one chance to dance with a sexy foreigner. Sure, his shoulders weren’t as broad as Travis’s, his brown eyes didn’t have the smoldering heat that Travis’s green eyes did; but all that aside, he was definitely the second-cutest guy who had ever asked her to dance.

Ignoring Travis, Lily let the young man lead her to the dance floor. The stud held her close, pressing the firm lines of his body against hers, but Lily was hardly able to pay attention to him; not when Travis was staring holes into her back, not when she would rather have been in Travis’s strong, warm arms.

As if from a distance, she saw herself dancing with the gorgeous foreigner, his hands moving down her back, and knew, without a doubt, how proud Luke would be of her. Travis has never had a woman taken away from him, Luke had said. At the time, Lily hadn’t thought that she would be the first one, but now she hoped that when Travis saw how interested this guy was in her, he would begin to want her even one-tenth as much as she wanted him.

The warm chords of the classical guitar reminded her of that fateful night at the fashion show. It seemed like a lifetime away, a life where she was the invisible girl hiding in the corner, and Travis was the larger-than-life pirate who could ransack an entire ship and never once notice her for all the gold and silver blinding him. There in Italy, in The Dress, Lily felt that girl slipping away. It was frightening to lose the person she had always been; but the joy she felt at emerging from her cocoon, even if it had taken thirty years, was so great she wanted to sing it out to the whole world.

Caught up in a sudden rush of joy at the new colors that she saw before her, she pulled the Italian closer and relished the sensations of hard male muscle against her soft curves. He wasn’t Travis, but he was life, and right then, that was the most important thing.

The song changed from soft and slow, to pulsing and intense. Lily followed the lead of her partner, melting into him. He moved so well and she was feeling so alive, so brand-new. She was in beautiful Tuscany, in the arms of a well-built Italian man at least five years her junior.

Suddenly, all her senses came alive. Travis isn’t at our table anymore, she realized. He stole her from the Italian without a word and pulled her into his arms. She pressed her hips against his, rubbing herself against the thick bulge in the front of his jeans.

Lily didn’t have any idea where her previous dance partner had disappeared to. All she knew was that she was finally where she belonged. In Travis’s arms.

In a replay of the night at the fashion show, Travis pulled her off the dance floor and out onto the street.

But, instead of being in San Francisco, instead of going back to his loft to attack each other greedily, they were a part of the mysteries of Tuscany.

Travis seemed to know exactly where he wanted to take her as he led them down the street away from their hotel, then through a crack in an ancient rock wall. They crossed a narrow dirt road to a field of wild olive trees. Travis was moving so fast, Lily stumbled in her heels.

In an instant he spun around and caught her. A thin patch of moonlight gleamed through the olive branches, illuminating the lust in Travis’s eyes, full and undisguised. Lily shivered as he backed her up into the trunk of the tree. He pressed into her, and several olives shook from the branch to the ground.

“You’re mine,” he growled, then his mouth was coming down over hers. His warm breath fanned against her lips, and her heart stopped beating. The sensual friction of his thighs pressed against the vee between her legs was unbearably wonderful. She was moist, so slick and ready for him. Just one kiss, and she’d explode.

But he didn’t lean forward to kiss her. Instead he waited for her to make the first move, saying, “Tell me what you want, Lily,” and she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. After all, this whole “professional boundaries” thing was her stupid idea.

For one night, in an olive grove in Saturnia, couldn’t she forget Luke’s admonishments not to give in to Travis? Wasn’t it fair for her to steal a few hours of carnal pleasure with the most incredible man on any continent?

Travis shifted his leg ever so slightly against her, and her body practically wept through the thin fabric of the dress, through the almost nonexistent lace of her thong. New life surged through her again, and with it came a new power. He wanted her, she knew he did.

The old Lily would have hidden from these feelings, sure that giving in to Travis’s need, giving in to her needs, was wrong.