Page 16 of The Virgin’s Dance with the Devil (The Martinelli Wedding #3)
“Compared to yours, it’s boring.” Luisa’s dress was a flamboyant number that showed plenty of cleavage and plenty of thigh when she walked.
Coupled with her mask, it had a real seductive Venetian flavour to it.
By contrast, Marisa’s black lace dress was plain without any form of leg slit.
The spaghetti straps fell to a bodice that showed only a hint of cleavage, the skirt flaring and swishing only a little to her ankles.
The fitted underdress that ran from bodice to knee prevented any modesty slips showing through the lace of the dress.
It felt wonderful on her though, fitted but giving her the freedom to move without constriction.
Luisa raised an eyebrow. “Boring? That dress is sexy … Come on, let’s get it tied up. Turn round.”
The whole thing was held together with corset-style lacing at the back, and Marisa obeyed so her sister could secure her in it. Then, both sisters ready, they stood together in front of the full-length mirror.
“What?” she asked, seeing her sister’s narrowed stare.
“Your lipstick’s wrong. You need red. Hold on.”
Much preferring neutral colours, Marisa never wore red lipstick, but as soon as she’d applied it, she could see Luisa’s judgment was the right one, and suddenly the tight bun she’d scraped all her hair back Flamenco-style into didn’t seem so plain and boring compared to her sister’s more elaborate do.
But Luisa continued scrutinising her. “Have you got your hoop earrings with you? The big ones you got for your twenty-first?”
Marisa nodded and dived to her jewellery box, exchanging her plain studs with the thick, heavy gold hoops.
Now Luisa nodded her approval, her face breaking into what had to be her first genuine smile since they’d arrived in Accardiano. “Now you’re perfect.”
The order came for the men, all dressed in their finest tuxedos, to form a horizontal line. With good-natured murmuring, they obeyed.
The double doors to the ballroom opened. Rico’s veins thickened.
The women, who’d gathered together far away from the men, streamed in, each removing a seating number from a top hat. They all looked spectacular, their theatrical masks making many of them unrecognisable. As hard as he strained his eyes, he couldn’t see Marisa amongst them.
The tables had been set out like a giant horseshoe around the dancefloor’s perimeter.
With his seating number in hand, he was searching for his position when he spotted a petite, slim woman in an elegant black lace dress, dark chestnut hair pulled back in a tight bun and a mask that covered much of her face taking her seat.
There was something about the way her shoulders moved that made his heart thump and compelled him to take a second look.
As if she could feel his stare, she turned her gaze in his direction.
His heart stuttered before thumping again.
Plump, blood red lips curved shyly.
Everyone else in the vast ballroom disappeared.
Marisa tried to eat, but she barely managed half of her first course.
Anticipation was playing too much havoc in her stomach for food to wind its way in.
It was the same anticipation that had stopped her properly gawping at the incredible transformation the ballroom had undergone, the casino turned into a seductive delight of deep red and flickering chandelier and candlelight.
It was the anticipation of seeing Rico again causing it.
He looked so handsome in his black tuxedo. Just gorgeous. She wanted to pinch his black bowtie in her fingers and pluck it off. To her disappointment, he’d been seated on the far side of the horseshoe, his back to her.
She tried making small talk with the gentlemen placed either side of her, but her heart wasn’t in it. When the time came for all the gentlemen to take a new seating number and move places, she knew neither of them was sorry to be leaving her.
This time, Rico was placed on the same section as her, but on the same side of the table.
She couldn’t even look at him, not without craning her neck and looking past the dozen or so people separating them to her right.
That course finished, and it was time for the men to move again.
This time, she was stuck with a Martinelli cousin she’d known since childhood and a friend of the Espositos who flirted so outrageously with her she was tempted to stab her fork into his hand.
Rico must have stayed quite close to where he’d already been because she didn’t see him switch.
Her luck changed with the dessert course when he was seated opposite her .
Her pulses were already racing before his eyes skimmed hers as he sat his huge frame down. The butterflies in her belly fluttered all the way to her throat, the beats of their wings so violent she took a large drink of her wine to compose herself.
His piercing stare glanced her one more time before he turned his attention to the beautiful woman seated to his left…
and kept it there. The woman, Ciara, Siena’s friend, had flirted her way through all the earlier courses, and now acted as if all her birthdays had come at once and Rico was the birthday cake she was going to eat.
She might as well have licked her lips at him for all the subtlety she was showing.
If Marisa had thought the man she’d wanted to stab with a fork had flirted outrageously with her, that was nothing compared to how Ciara flirted with Rico.
The worst of it was, he clearly didn’t mind.
If anything, he was revelling in it and flirting back, even if he wasn’t pawing at her the way she was pawing at him, fingering the lapel of his tuxedo jacket and then having the audacity to pinch his bow tie too!
Marisa pretended not to notice and chatted to the gentleman on her right, who was, mercifully, a happily married man who only did a spot of the mild flirting that was practically compulsory for an Italian man.
Mild flirting was normal. What was not normal was feeding your dinner partner a spoonful of dessert whilst giggling coquettishly as Ciara did to Rico.
Coffee was poured, plates of pretty petit fours laid out, but Rico and his flirt only had eyes for each other.
Marisa ate three chocolate petit fours in a row, more to stop herself throwing her wine glass at the pair of them than because she wanted to eat them.
All the excitement and anticipation had drowned under a growing weight of unhappiness and humiliation, and it was a struggle for her to pay any attention to her charming companion, who was now telling her all about his latest grandchild.
Some people were already rising from their seats and seeking out their friends. She longed to rise with them. She felt sick. Studiously avoiding the flirting couple in front of her, she forced her lips into a smile and was grateful her mask hid the rest of her features.
She wanted to leave. If she hadn’t been seated with her back to the wall and so would be utterly conspicuous when she edged her way out, she’d take sanctuary with her sister at the other side of the horseshoe…
except her sister was getting to her feet and so was Gennaro, and now they were crossing the dancefloor towards the exit with their hands tightly clasped.
Understanding suddenly struck her like a bolt of lightning, and she watched her sister and brother-in-law leave the ballroom with a strange ache beating in her already hurting heart.
Her heart hurt even more when the flirting couple got to their feet too. She was still keeping her gaze far from them, but they were there in the periphery of her vision, Ciara’s coquettish giggles an echo in her ears that landed like nails on a chalkboard.
Marisa’s misery was complete seconds later when they disappeared from her periphery, and the coquettish giggles faded.
The live band who’d been setting up were ready. The main chandeliers were switched off, leaving the room aglow with the dim, romantic lighting of the smaller chandeliers, casting everyone in shadow and giving the atmosphere a gothic, seductive feel.
The evening’s compere took to the stage and introduced the band, and invited everyone to couple-up and take to the dance floor.
“Would you like to dance?” her dining companion asked kindly.
She shook her head, hardly able to dredge even a small smile for him. “That’s very sweet of you, but I bet your wife is waiting for you to dance with her.”
He beamed and bowed his head, and then he, too, left the table.
With everyone either on the dance floor or leaving their seats to go on it, Marisa snatched at her chance to leave. She would slip through the crowd but not look at anyone. If she didn’t look, she wouldn’t have to see Rico holding another woman on the dance floor.
Finishing her wine, she pushed her chair back and edged the length of the table.
She was two chairs away from the end of her section of the horseshoe when a tall, muscular figure dressed in a beautifully fitting tuxedo and a black mask that perfectly suited the predatory wolfishness emanating from his piercing blue eyes appeared, blocking her escape route.
She came to an abrupt halt. Everything inside her contracted before rippling violently, and she didn’t know whether to turn on her tail and flee in the opposite direction or violently push her way past him.
Before her frozen feet could decide which way to go, he performed a mock bow. “Would the beautiful lady care to dance?”
“No.” She looked over his shoulder because it hurt too much to look in his eyes. “Please let me pass.”
The silence that followed was as loud as the thuds of her heart.
“You’re upset,” he said, the lightness in his tone gone.
“Not at all,” she refuted stiffly. “I simply don’t want to dance.”
“With me specifically or with anyone?”
“Let me pass.”
Another silence followed. “Okay,” he said slowly. “I’ll let you pass. But you have to give me one dance. ”
“No thank you.”
“I’ve never heard a fuck off delivered so politely.”
Her eyes darted to his before her brain could stop them.
The violence inside her grew.
There was grim contemplation in his stare. “Give me one dance, and then if you still want to go, I won’t stop you.”
Taking a deep breath to stop the tears that had built up behind her eyes from falling, she jerked a nod and whispered. “One dance.”
His expression unchanging, he held a hand out to her.
She gathered her strength and raised her chin. “I’m perfectly capable of walking to the dance floor without your help.
His mouth tightened, but he turned his body and swept his arm out to let her pass.
She sidled past him, careful not to allow their bodies to brush, then shuddered when he placed a hand proprietarily on the small of her back and led her onto the dark, crowded dance floor.
The song the band was playing ended as they faced each other.
A new song began.
Rico drew her into his arms.