Venice. Talos had never expected to return here again.
But sometimes, he thought grimly, a man had to change the playbook in the middle of the game. He would do whatever it took, be as romantic a fool as any man could be, in order to lure Eve into marriage before her memory returned.
He looked down at her in his arms as they crossed the water of the canal. Her eyes shone with wonder, her full pink lips were slightly parted as she gazed around the city with awe.
The same way every man who saw Eve looked at her.
Even right now in this water taxi. The young Italian driver kept glancing back in his mirror. Talos’s bodyguard, Kefalas, was sitting in the seat behind them, and even he had looked at Eve a bit longer than strictly necessary.
Eve was freshly showered and had changed her clothes on his private flight from London. Her dark hair now fell in thick, glossy waves past her bare shoulders, brushing the nipples Talos could easily picture beneath that clinging red jersey dress. The dress showed off the top swell of her overflowing breasts beneath the spaghetti straps, and barely reached halfway down her creamy thighs. She’d put on lipstick, a red color that matched her dress. Her legs were slender and perfect, ending in sharp black stiletto heels.#p#分页标题#e#
He couldn’t blame either of them for staring. Even though he wanted to kill them for it.
Strange, Talos thought, he’d never been jealous before of other men staring at Eve. He’d always accepted it as his due. He’d taken it for granted that other men would always want what he, Talos, possessed.
But for the first time it caused his stomach to curl. Why? Because Eve was carrying his child? Because he intended to make her his wife?
His wife in name only, he reminded himself. To protect his unborn child. Not because he cared for Eve. He felt nothing for her but scorn. And, he was forced to admit, lust.
Giving the driver a hard stare until the young man blushed and returned his focus to the wheel, Talos pulled Eve closer against him on the seat. She leaned back against his chest, reaching her arms over his neck and smiling up at him.
“It’s beautiful here.” Her blue eyes were as warm as bluebells in a spring meadow. “Thank you for bringing me to Venice. Even though I’m sure it was very inconvenient…”
He smiled down at her. Taking her hand, he brought it to his lips.
“Nothing is inconvenient to me if it gives you pleasure,” he said, and softly pressed his mouth against her skin.
He felt her shiver beneath his touch in the warm afternoon sun. The air was salty and fresh. In the distance, he could hear the calls of seagulls, hear the distant chiming of medieval church bells.
“You’re so good to me,” she whispered, visibly affected by the way he’d kissed her hand. The realization that she was almost like an innocent, easily swayed by sensual desire, lit a dark fire in his heart.
The femme fatale she’d once been had disappeared along with her memories, it seemed. Dressed in the red dress and lipstick she still looked just like the same arrogant, cruel, fascinating creature she’d been three months ago, but she’d changed completely. With her skittish reactions, her youthful naïveté, she was almost like a virgin.
Except she wasn’t—she was pregnant with his baby. And while she’d certainly been a virgin before they’d met, she’d never been innocent!
Remembering how they’d conceived that baby, all of his limbs suddenly seemed to burn where he had contact with her. Looking down into her beautiful face, he saw the vulnerability in her blue eyes, saw her pupils dilate. He was reminded of those hot breathless weeks in Athens when her naked body had been beneath his own. When he’d thought that beneath her achingly beautiful, shallow surface something existed that might be truly rare—truly worth possessing.
And he’d kept right on thinking that up until the day he’d seen her having breakfast with his rival, coldly giving him evidence to destroy Talos’s company.
Remember that moment, he told himself harshly. Remember how she betrayed you—and why.
But as Eve looked up at him dreamily beneath the elegant, decrepit palazzos of Venice, with the sunlight shining off the canals, all he could suddenly think was that he wanted to kiss her. Now. Hard. To brand her permanently as his, to punish those cherry-red lips until she gasped and cried out in his arms.
His hands tightened around her shoulders, his fingers gripping into her slight frame as he remembered their days and nights in June. He’d been addicted to bedding her. He’d been lost in a woman, in a way he’d never experienced before or since.
He considered himself ruthless. He considered himself strong. But she’d bested him and he’d never seen it coming.