Page 15 of The Virgin’s Dance with the Devil (The Martinelli Wedding #3)

Chapter Eight

The buzz of Marisa’s phone finally pulled her out of a fitful sleep.

It was ten a.m. Checking her phone, she found a message sent an hour ago from her mother saying they were going to get breakfast in Accardiano and a new message from Luisa asking if she wanted to meet for brunch at the hotel’s Bistro. She replied to her sister:

Give me thirty minutes x

Yawning, she climbed out of bed and immediately spotted the envelope that had been slid under the crack of her door.

She pounced on it with the speed of someone who’d got eight solid hours of sleep, the racing of her heart telling her who the sender was even before she read her name scrawled in the handwriting that had become as familiar as her own.

Dearest Marisa,

I hope your dreams were as sweet as your kisses.

My love always,

Rico x

A wide smile on her face, she read it five times before kissing his name and putting it in the drawer of her bedside table.

Luisa was waiting for her at a table inside the Bistro.

“Are you okay here or would you prefer outside?” she asked after kissing Marisa’s cheeks.

“Let’s go outside,” she said. “It’s a beautiful day.” And it would be easier for her to spot Rico when he was up and about.

Although she knew intellectually that he was unlikely to be up before lunch, she couldn’t stop her gaze darting about for a glimpse of him.

The sisters ordered their food and made small talk Marisa had to concentrate hard to keep up her part in.

She felt fit to burst, constantly replaying everything that had taken place between them.

Replaying, too, his words, Every good girl needs a bad boy to bring out her suppressed desires, and every bad boy needs a good girl to tame their worst instincts.

Her desires hadn’t been suppressed. Until Rico, they’d been non-existent, and remembering what she’d allowed to happen on the Bali bed made her cheeks burn in a blush, not just at what they’d done but at how easily she’d lost herself.

Anyone could have seen them. Remembering how incredible it had felt…

what did she mean, remember ? She could still feel the heat he’d evoked, alive deep in her most secret places.

It was when they’d finished eating and Luisa was gazing at her phone with an absent expression on her face that she realised she wasn’t the only Rossellini there in body but not in spirit .

“Are you okay? You look like your head’s somewhere else.”

The face Luisa pulled made Marisa blush. It was a look that perfectly expressed that she knew Marisa’s head was elsewhere too. Mercifully, Luisa didn’t probe her, answering with a small laugh, “Gennaro… It’s only taken two years but he’s finally taken something I said seriously.”

“What do you mean?”

Luisa shook her head. “Nothing I can talk about. You know, that damned contract he made me sign.”

The draconian marriage contract that forbade Luisa from ever speaking about their life together.

For the first time since waking, Marisa pulled her thoughts away from Rico and gave her full attention to the sister she so adored. Her beautiful sister wasn’t just on edge, she realised. She was standing on a precipice.

“Luisa?” she said quietly when her sister disappeared again into her thoughts.

Luisa blinked herself back to the present and met Marisa’s stare with a smile that barely touched her cheeks. “Sorry. Just thinking of something I shouldn’t.”

“Gennaro?” But she knew she was right even before Luisa’s hopeless nod of confirmation. Of course it was Gennaro. She couldn’t remember a time when Luisa hadn’t been affected by him, right from when they’d been little girls and Luisa had hidden behind their mother when he walked into a room…

The hairs on the nape of her neck lifted, her heart expanding, tearing her away from her train of thought a beat before Rico strolled past them. He was with the older of his brothers, Mattia.

Her throat opened, and it took all her willpower to close it and not call out his name.

Maybe he heard her shout it in her head because his face turned, and his gaze zoomed straight to her .

If Luisa hadn’t slipped back into her own thoughts, she would have seen the look that passed between them, and she would have known, and Marisa would have been unable to deny it.

She didn’t want to deny it. She loved Rico, and she wanted her family to love him too, and it made her heart hurt to know the most she could expect was resigned acceptance.

He broke the look between them, elbowing his brother and nodding at the sisters.

Luisa saw that, and she muttered something under her breath as the Esposito brothers strode over to join them. Marisa couldn’t make out what it was, but the tone of her voice was disparaging, and for the very first time in her life, Marisa felt the urge to stamp on her sister’s foot.

The mean, violent thought washed away when Rico casually dropped himself into the empty chair to her right, immediately filling her senses with warm oranges.

“Good morning, ladies,” he said with a wide grin. “How are you both this beautiful day?”

“We’re fine, thank you,” Marisa answered with more serenity than her fluttering heart should allow, “Although it’s no longer morning.”

He looked at his chunky watch. “Damn. I’ve even missed brunch.” His dancing eyes found hers again. “I’m starving.”

The flame in her pelvis flickered.

Suddenly aware she’d twisted to face him and that her body language was that of a woman straining towards him, she had to force herself to twist back to the position she’d been in before.

A couple of Siena’s friends came over to join them.

No sooner had they all ordered coffees than more people came over, forcing them to pull their chairs closer together.

Rico was the first to do so, edging his chair so close to Marisa’s that the arms of their chairs rested together… and so did their thighs and forearms.

How she got through the next thirty minutes without spontaneously combusting was a mystery to be solved in another life.

She barely noticed when Gennaro and Niccolo joined them.

It felt like she was on fire, especially when Rico put his hand on his lap and his fingers tiptoed to edge against her bare thigh.

A form of madness came over her, and she put her hands on her own lap so their fingers could touch, the tips pressing together.

When the conversation enthusiastically turned to that evening’s masquerade ball, he murmured for her ears only, “I cannot wait to see what you’re wearing tonight.”

She tightened the pressure of her fingers against his. He returned it.

The phones of the groom and all the groomsmen present buzzed simultaneously. The summons for their suit fittings.

The tips of Rico’s fingers trapped the tips of hers for barely a second before he got to his feet. Shouting out a goodbye to everyone, he pushed his chair back, and as he wove around the back of her, his fingers brushed along her shoulder blades.

Marisa watched him walk away and supposed it was lucky that Luisa was too busy watching Gennaro walk away, too, to have noticed her little sister practically melt at Rico Esposito’s touch.

The hours that followed were the longest of Marisa’s life.

The restlessness that had driven her to seek Rico out at the casino had returned, but there was no way of snatching any time with him.

She just had to wait it out. At least, that’s what she knew rationally, but one thing she was learning was that where the heart was concerned, rationality could do a running jump, and so when Luisa said she was going to take a look at the hotel’s art gallery, Marisa declined to join her.

The minute her sister was out of sight, Marisa raced to her room for her beach bag and then speed-walked to the beach.

‘Their’ Bali bed was free. She settled herself on it and though she knew the odds of Rico finishing his suit fitting with time to spare to join her were negligible – and that the odds of him being a mind reader and intuiting she would be there waiting for him on the off chance he found the time were even worse – just being in the space they’d shared so intimately helped ease the restlessness.

It didn’t stop the time crawling, though.

She left it as late as she reasonably could before accepting he wasn’t going to join her and returning to the hotel.

It was time to get ready for the masquerade ball.

“Where did you disappear to earlier?” Luisa asked soon after she’d walked through Marisa’s door.

As the main rule for the evening’s ball was the strict segregation of the sexes until the ball started – the men had to arrive thirty minutes before the ladies; all guests expected to hide away from the opposite sex until the appointed time – the sisters were getting ready together.

Marisa felt her cheeks burn a tomato colour again, and she turned her face away before answering. “I went to the beach.”

She felt her sister’s eyes bore into her.

The urge to spill her secrets was suddenly close to overwhelming. “I’m going to take a quick shower. You choose the music.”

By the time she’d finished showering, the restlessness had returned with a vengeance, and with a huge dollop of anticipation thrown into the mix.

With favourite music from their adolescence playing and a bottle of champagne open, the sisters made small talk as they made up their faces and did their hair, then helped each other into their dresses.

It was small talk that was as forced as the small talk they’d made at the Bistro, the easy camaraderie they’d always enjoyed strained; strained through the secrets they were both carrying, but were not yet ready to confide in the other.

Marisa, who’d never gambled in her life, was willing to bet her monthly salary that her secret was the most explosive.

“Your dress is beautiful,” Luisa said wistfully when Marisa had pulled the straps up.