gaze dropped to his mouth, then quickly returned to his eyes. She let out a deep breath and tugged her hand from his hold. “We should probably go.” She took a step back. “The lines to get into the Colosseum will be long.”
“Not until you answer my question.”
She shifted from one leg to the other, clearly uncomfortable. At the moment, he didn’t care.
“We agreed we wouldn’t do this,” she said in a small voice.
Yes, they had, but for the first time in his life, Aiden was going back on his word. He was tired of her pretending that he was the only one who had been affected by the attraction between them.
“I have a modification to our earlier agreement,” he said. “I’ll agree to put the conversation off while we’re in Rome, but you have to agree that we discuss it before I leave for Zurich, Nyla. I don’t want to go back to being just someone whose status you occasionally like on Facebook. I don’t know what I mean to you anymore, but you mean too much to me to continue on the way we have been.”
Her eyes slid closed. For the briefest second Aiden thought she would turn down his request, but then she said, “Okay.” She looked up at him. “But we wait until after Christmas.”
He nodded. “I’m holding you to that.”
She released a weary laugh. “I wouldn’t expect anything different.”
They made their way to the Colosseum, which was as magnificent as Aiden had imagined. As they stood in the line that wound its way around the massive structure, Nyla pointed out the grass-covered stone ring about twenty yards from the entrance and explained that it was where the gladiators who survived their turn in the arena would wash after their fight.
When they entered the arena, Aiden just stood there for a moment and took it all in.
“This is amazing,” he said. “I can’t imagine this place filled with people cheering on a match to the death.”
“It makes American football seem tame, doesn’t it?”
“Like child’s play,” Aiden agreed.
They trailed behind a tour group with an English-speaking tour guide, who pointed out the many statues that remained intact after nearly two thousand years.
Once they exited the Colosseum, Nyla suggested he take a picture underneath the famed Arch of Constantine, located just steps away from the ancient arena. This time Aiden insisted he be allowed to pose like a warrior coming home from battle.
Her carefree laughter as he struck pose after menacing pose solidified his decision not to bring up the past again today. She was right. This was supposed to be a fun day of sightseeing. Every time he tried to insert the past, Nyla pulled further away. That wasn’t why he’d brought her here. He didn’t want her running away from him. He wanted the exact opposite.
“We’re pretty much crisscrossing the city,” Nyla said. “But I’d rather try to see the Vatican today instead of waiting until tomorrow. We’ll come back to where we’ll have dinner tonight.”
Aiden gestured for her to lead the way. “After you, Madam Tour Guide.”
Nyla hailed a cab, and ten minutes later, they were standing outside the fortresslike walls that surrounded Vatican City.
Aiden started for the line that wrapped around the wall, but stopped when Nyla tugged his wrist.
“Is there a problem?” he asked.
“Before we go inside, there’s something else we have to do.”
They crossed the street and stopped before a large plate-glass window. Behind the glass case inside were mountains—literally, they looked like tiny mountains—of ice cream.
“You’re joking right? It’s thirty-five degrees out here and you want me to eat ice cream?”
“Not ice cream, gelato. And I don’t care how cold it is, you cannot come to Italy and not have gelato.” She took him by the arm again and dragged him into the gelateria.
Aiden was baffled by the number of people waiting in line to buy gelato on such a cold day.
“I’ve had gelato before,” he said with a shrug. “I don’t get why people think it’s so special.”
“Just taste it,” Nyla said, handing him his cone. His eyes grew wide at his first taste of the rich, creamy dessert. She grinned. “Told you.”
“Yeah, so this is a lot better than ice cream,” he conceded. He followed Nyla to the counter that faced the street and sat on a bar stool that afforded them a view of the line of people entering the Vatican.
“And this isn’t even the best gelato I’ve had,” she said. “It’s pretty close, though.”
She ran her tongue along the rim of the cone, lapping up the rivulets from the already melting dessert.
Aiden couldn’t be sure, but it was a safe bet that he had never in his life gotten so hard so fast, at least not since he was twelve years old. He had to swerve the stool to the right just in case his sweater couldn’t fully conceal the erection that had sprung up at the sight of her tongue stroking that gelato.
“Mmm...” Nyla murmured, licking her lips. “There shouldn’t be something so sinfully good this close to the Vatican.” She held the cone out to him. “Want a taste?”
It was an innocent enough gesture, but in his current state of mind Aiden couldn’t help the barrage of erotic thoughts that suddenly crashed through him.
His eyes trained on Nyla, he leaned forward and took a taste of the sweet treat. “Mmm,” he said. “The best thing I’ve tasted in a long time.”
Her gaze dropped to his mouth. Her lips parted, then quickly closed as her eyes shot to his. Aiden held his cone out to her.
Nyla stared at it as if the gelato were forbidden fruit. “I’ve...uh...I’ve tried that flavor already,” she said.
A grin tipped up the corner of Aiden’s lips. “Try it again,” he encouraged in a low voice.
She glanced at the gelato, then at him. Aiden saw her chest lift as she pulled in a steadying breath before she leaned over and licked in the same spot he had.
He swallowed back a moan, though just barely.
The situation in his pants reached nuclear meltdown proportions, a hot ache gripping him as he studied the drop of chocolate cream that clung to the bow of her bottom lip. It took every ounce of restraint in his body not to lean forward and lick it off.
“Is it as good as you remember?” he asked, his voice so husky he could barely hear it.
Nyla’s gaze lowered once again to his lips. “Even better.”
To hell with fighting this.
Aiden leaned forward, preparing to fulfill the fantasy that had been on his mind all day. But before he could connect his mouth to hers, Nyla reared back and twisted her stool toward the window.
She pointed across the street. “We’d better get going before that line gets any longer.”
Aiden shut his eyes against the onslaught of lust that coursed through him. He nearly suggested they skip the tour; it seemed sacrilegious to enter into a holy place with such unholy thoughts flooding his mind.
The wait to get into the Vatican was longer than the one for the Colosseum, which was expected at this time of the year, but seeing the famed painted ceiling of the Sistine Chapel made it worth the wait.
They shuffled their way inside St. Peter’s Basilica, which Nyla explained was the length of two football fields. She pointed toward the massive tomb where St. Peter was buried. “Do you see that dove in the stained glass window past the altar? Its wingspan is seven feet.”
“No way,”