Annie West - Sleeping With The Enemy

The first lawyer took the page and read it, then handed it back with a nod.

“Satisfied?” Nico asked as he shoved the document toward her again.

“I’ll let you know once I’ve read the whole thing.”

It took over twenty minutes, but she finished reading and attached her signature in bold strokes. She’d worked hard on that signature, ever since Frau Decker had told her she wrote like a mouse that expected to be eaten by the cat at any minute.

“Grazie, cara,” Nico said, taking her hand in his and helping her from the chair. A frisson of excitement rolled through her at his slight touch. How very annoying in light of what had just happened.

He lifted her hand to his mouth, as if he knew how she reacted to him, and pressed his lips lightly to her skin. A tingle shot down her spine. “Now, let us get married.”

Tina forced a smile. “Yes, let’s.”

She might be a mouse, and Nico might be the big cat waiting to pounce on her—but she fully intended to choke him on the way down.

They returned to Italy as soon as the ceremony was over. Nico thought about staying in Gibraltar for the night, but he had urgent business to attend to and no time for dallying.

He could hardly credit that he was a married man now. It wasn’t something he’d expected to do anytime soon, if ever. Not even to preserve the title within his direct line. It would have gone to a cousin, so it would not have been lost to the family, and that would have been good enough for him.

But now he was married, and to the most unlikely woman of all. Tina sat across from him as the jet winged its way back to Italy. She was still in her gown because he’d insisted on leaving immediately. He’d expected her to change on the plane, but she had not made a move to do so. She simply sat and read her eReader, as if flying in a wedding gown was the most ordinary thing imaginable.

She looked, he had to admit, incredible. Her riot of hair was contained in an elegant loose twist, though several strands had come free to frame her face, with its pert nose and long lashes that made her eyes look as if they were closed when they were merely downcast and concentrating on her book.

Her shoulders were bare, and her breasts rose into lush, golden mounds that threatened to spill over the stiff bodice. He remembered kissing her this afternoon, when she’d burst into the office in that ridiculously small bikini, and his body grew hard.

It had taken everything he’d had not to untie her bikini bottoms and thrust into her right there up against the door. He’d been about to do just that when the noise had reminded him they were not truly alone.

Nico shifted in his seat, unable to concentrate on the spreadsheets before him. He closed the computer with a snap, and Tina glanced up. Need jolted through him as their eyes clashed and held. He could feel the tension in the air, the electric snap of sexual promise that flowed between them like water gushing over a fall.

It would be so good when he stripped her naked again. So, so good.

“Why did you not change into something more comfortable?” he asked her.

She shrugged a pretty shoulder. “You can be forgiven for not knowing it, I suppose, but wedding gowns require a bit of help to get into and out of.”

He didn’t think his body could get any harder. Apparently, he was wrong.

“I’ll help,” he said. Growled, really.

Her violet eyes were wide. And blazing, he realized. As if she, too, were doing everything she could to not think about sex and failing miserably.

“I’m not sure you wouldn’t tear the fabric,” she murmured.

“I might,” he said, his blood beating hot and fierce in his veins. Urging him to take her.

“I’d rather you didn’t. If we have a daughter, I might like to give this dress to her someday.”

A fierce wave of possession swept him then. Why did the prospect of a child cause his gut to clench and his heart to throb?

“And if I promised to be careful?”

Her tongue darted over her pink lower lip; in response, the pain in his groin shifted to an excruciating level.

“I might have to accept your offer, since there is no other way to get out of the dress.”

Dear God, he wanted her right now. He wanted to take her hand and lead her to the plane’s bedroom and have his wicked way with her.

But they’d been airborne for an hour already and he knew they weren’t far from landing. Besides, he wanted far more than a quick tumble from her. He wanted to explore her thoroughly. He wanted to strip her slowly and build her excitement until she begged him to possess her. And that would take time. Time he did not have right now.

There was no choice but to control this need raging inside him like a hurricane.

“I will take you up on that, Tina, but not until we are safely home again.”

She dipped her head, but not before he thought she looked somewhat disappointed. The knowledge she wanted him, too, sent a slice of raw lust burrowing deep into his gut. When he’d taken her to bed in Venice, he’d thought she would be like other women. And she had been, until the moment when he’d realized he couldn’t quite forget the sexy virgin siren he’d bedded that night.

What was it about her? He’d been asking himself that since the morning after their encounter in Venice.

If he’d known who she was, he wouldn’t have touched her, regardless that doing so would anger Renzo. He might be bad, but he wasn’t that bad. Or, he was that bad, but he wouldn’t have been able to do it when he remembered her as a shy teenager, hiding behind her hair and gazing at him with puppy dog eyes when she thought he wasn’t looking.

She’d been sweet, shy and so very innocent. Her adoration had amused him at the time, though he’d been careful not to let her know that he knew how she felt.

She didn’t gaze at him that way any longer, and he found he missed it in a perverse sort of way. She’d worshipped him once, and now she did not. Now she looked cool and almost indifferent at times. He was certain, however, that she was not.

“What are you reading so intensely?” he asked, determined to change the subject in an effort to get himself under control.

She looked down at the eReader as if she’d forgotten it existed. What she said next was not even close to what he’d expected her to say. “Oh, just a journal article on rational option pricing and derivative investment instruments.”

Nico blinked as he dredged up memories of university. “You’re reading about financial engineering?”

He should have realized there was more inside that lovely head than he’d assumed, considering the way she’d gone after the financial arrangements in the prenup. She’d been a tiger. He’d thought she was just very savvy, but now he realized it was something entirely different.

It turned him on in ways he hadn’t imagined. And it made him wonder about those investments she’d mentioned. Not because he thought she’d made a fortune, but because he was suddenly curious.

She looked fierce. “And why is that so hard to believe? Not that you’ve ever asked, but I have a degree in finance. With honors, I might add.”

No, he hadn’t asked. Why hadn’t he asked? Because he’d thought her expertise was in shopping and looking pretty, that’s why. It was the sort of thing he was accustomed to from the women in his life. Not that he didn’t have seriously smart women working for him, but he’d never actually dated any of them.

“That’s impressive,” he told her sincerely. “I’m surprised you aren’t working for your brother with that kind of résumé.”

She looked angry. “Yes, well, Renzo has certain opinions about what I should be doing. And working for him was not it.”