She took a step forward, then another, until she was almost touching him. There she stopped, her innate shyness kicking in. Nate’s gaze caught hers, pulled her in. She took the last step forward, sucking in a breath as he reached out, curved a hand around her waist and brought her to him in a loose hold that continued to give her every option.
She thought he would lean down and kiss her then. Instead, he focused on her lips, as if they were the most fascinating thing in the world. As if he had all the time in the world. Her breathing quickened, anticipation firing her blood. He brought his mouth down to hers without touching. Their breath mingled first, then the lush surfaces of their mouths. Oh, mio Dio. She was practically panting by the time he angled his head and took her mouth.
He brought his fingers up to capture her jaw, lightly, as if she might bolt at any minute. Explored the surface of her mouth with an exquisite thoroughness that just about brought her to her knees. Long and mesmerizing, the kiss went on and on, until she was boneless beneath his fingers, her blood moving through her veins in a hot, restless purr.
He moved his hands to her hips and brought her closer. About as close as their practice kiss. Except this time she didn’t feel any fear. She just wanted more.
His tongue traced her bottom lip, laving it. Then he nipped gently, taking the sensation to a whole other level. The moan that came from her throat was low, instinctive. He satisfied her demand, dipping his tongue inside her mouth and turning the kiss into a hot, uninhibited exploration.
Her insides contracted. She’d never been kissed like this before. Like he wanted to devour her. Possess her. The kisses she’d received from the men she’d dated on her quest to find a husband had been tame. This was far from tame. It was toe-curlingly sensual, like an overture to an opera, slowly building to the main act.
She met the bold strokes of his tongue with tentative forays of her own. It was a poor attempt but Nate seemed to like it, stroking her, urging her on with a low husky voice. She grabbed a fistful of his shirt for balance, arching instinctively into him as her body caught fire. His hands shaped her against him, molded her to the hard contours of his powerful body as if he’d been expecting it, waiting for it. She tilted her head back to his demand as he consumed her more deeply.
The thick, powerful evidence of his arousal burned an imprint into her, shocking her, heating the blood in her veins to a whole new level. Her hands curled tighter in his shirt, but she didn’t let go. Not when his kiss, when he, felt this intoxicatingly good.
Lost in a universe that was all Nate, all about the feel of his hard, hot body against hers, it was a full second or two before she registered the fact that all that heat was gone. That Nate had set her away from him with firm hands that remained on her hips to steady her as her heart pounded near through her chest. As if he knew how completely unbalanced she was.
“One kiss,” he rasped, his eyes on her face. “And now I’m walking away, Mina. Just like I said I would.”
She stared at him. “I—that was—”
“What I hope will erase that other kiss from your memory.” His mouth twisted. “Never to happen again.”
She nodded. “Esattamente,” she agreed shakily. Exactly. Never to be experienced again, either, she was fairly sure.
He picked his jacket up off the chair. “Buonanotte.”
She watched him walk away, as if he regularly brought women to their knees...metaphorically. Now she knew why she hadn’t accepted any of the suitors her mother had tried to foist on her. Because none of them, not one of the eligible and some of them very good-looking bachelors that had been presented to her, had ever made her feel even one-tenth of what Nate had just done.
Pulling in a deep breath, she kicked off her shoes, picked them up and headed for her bedroom. That might have done the job and knocked everything else clean out of her head. Proved to her she could trust her instincts. The issue, she predicted, was going to be finding a way to think of anything but what had just happened.
MINA HAD BEEN RIGHT on her wedding day. A real kiss from Nate was unforgettable. She’d spent a sleepless night in her big, soft bed tossing and turning, imagining what it would be like to be in his arms. Wondering about all the things he would teach her.
Which would stay right there in her imagination, she told herself as she sat in on a marketing meeting with Giorgio and his team to discuss the repeat guests campaign. What Nate had given her was priceless—a chance to prove she was more than just a pretty face whose only opportunities lay in trading on her looks. A chance to prove she was capable of more than providing a graceful introduction at an afternoon tea or cleaning toilets at the Giarruso.
Nate had also given her something perhaps even more important. He’d reminded her last night that despite how overwhelmed she felt in her current situation, she was not simply a creature of God’s universe, being batted to and fro by the whims and mercies of the world around her. She was a woman who’d chosen her destiny, who was finally standing on her own two feet.
It was something Celia’s mother had taught her on the school holidays she’d spent with the Bettencourts in Nice while her mother jet-setted around the world. When the gaping hole inside of her at never belonging to anything, at being so lonely it ached, had gotten a bit much to take, the certainty she must somehow be defective to never warrant her mother’s attention overwhelming the fragile vision of herself she’d built.
“You are special,” Juliana Bettencourt had told her. “You are a bright light, Mina, inside and out. Never forget that. Choose a future for yourself that brings you everything you deserve.”
She was determined to do just that as the marketers around her in the meeting threw about foreign terms like CRM—customer relationship management—data and click-through rates. She couldn’t blow this opportunity over a kiss, no matter how incredible it had been. Not even if it had made her feel truly alive for the first time in her adult life. Not even if the magnetic, combustible attraction she and Nate shared seemed like the once-in-a-lifetime type.
Over the next few days, she sat in on meetings with Nate about the expansion of the Grand’s conventions and meetings program and on a conference call with the global marketing team. On Thursday, they met with the local public relations agency Giorgio and his team used to execute their marketing campaigns. She took the brainstorming ideas they’d generated back to Nate, who added his thoughts, told her they were solid and gave her feedback to take to Giorgio. Having her own project to own and manage put a glow in her cheeks and a spring in her step.
By the time she and Nate stepped on the jet to fly to Hong Kong on Saturday, she was settling nicely into her new role and had lost a bit of her deer-in-the-headlights aura, as Nate liked to describe her as having.
If it hurt that her mother hadn’t bothered to call again, the fact that Silvio had also left her alone compensated for it. Apparently he really was done with her.
That worry behind her, all signs pointed straight ahead, no looking back. That’s where she was going.
* * *
Nate was getting good at this game. He’d spent the last week steadfastly ignoring the explosive chemistry between him and his wife. Putting his protégée through a ruthless schedule of work designed to wipe that kiss from her head.
For the most part, his strategy had worked. Mina had taken everything he’d thrown at her and dedicated herself to producing a thorough, well-thought-out result. The keen insight she’d shown in his suite that day at the Giarruso had proven his instincts about her right. It wouldn’t be long before she was an asset to his business.
Where his strategy wasn’t so effective, where he and Mina got into trouble, was in the in-between moments, such as this long flight from Capri to Hong Kong via London. Left alone together long enough, the attraction between them began to simmer, find its way through the cracks in their interaction