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"Endymion was a handsome shepherd boy," she said finally, drawing on recollections of what she'd learned in a college mythology course. "Selene, as you said, was the goddess of the moon." "A human and an immortal," Dante remarked. She could feel his eyes on her now, that whiskey-colored gaze watching her. "Not the ideal combination, is it? Someone usually ends up dead."
Tess glanced at him. "This is one of the few times things worked out." She stared hard at the sculpture in order to avoid looking Dante's way again and confirming that he was still watching her, so close she could feel the heat of his body. She started talking again, needing to fill the space with something other than the awareness that was crackling around her. "Selene could only be with Endymion at night. She wanted to be with him forever, so she begged Zeus to grant her lover eternal life. The god agreed and put the shepherd into an endless sleep, where he waits each night for his beloved Selene to visit him."
"Happily ever after," Dante drawled, a note of cynicism in his voice. "Only in myths and fairy tales."
"You don't believe in love?"
"Do you, Tess?"
She glanced up at him, into a penetrating, probing gaze that felt as intimate as a caress. "I'd like to believe in it," she said, not sure why she was admitting this now, to him. The fact that she had said so to him confused her. Anxious suddenly, she strolled over to a neighboring case of Rodin pieces. "So, what's your interest in sculpture, Dante? Are you an artist or an enthusiast?"
"Neither."
"Oh." Dante kept pace with her, pausing beside her at the kiosk. Tess had dismissed him as out of place when she first saw him, but hearing him speak, seeing him up close, she had to admit that despite the fact that he looked like something out of a Wachowski brothers' action movie, there was an unmistakable level of sophistication about him. Beneath the leather and muscle, he had a worldly wiseness that intrigued her. Probably more than it should. "What then? Are you a patron of the museum? "
He gave a mild shake of his dark head.
"Working security for the exhibit?" she guessed.
It would certainly explain his lack of formal wear and the laser-sharp intensity that radiated around him. Maybe he was from one of those high-end insurance units that museums often hired to protect their collections while on public display.
"There was something here I wanted to see," he replied, his mesmerizing eyes unflinching on her. "That 's the only reason I came."
Something about the way he looked at her as he said it--the way he seemed to look right through her --gave her pulse a little jolt of electricity. She'd been hit on enough in the past to know when a guy was working some kind of angle, but this was different.
This man held her gaze with an intimacy that said she was already his. Not bravado or threat, but fact.
It didn't take much to imagine his large hands on her body, stroking her bare shoulders and arms. His sensual lips pressing against her mouth, his teeth gently grazing her neck.
Exquisite.
Tess stared up at him, at the slight curve of his lips, which hadn't moved despite the fact that she just heard him speak. He moved toward her regardless of the milling crowd--none of whom seemed to notice them at all--and tenderly traced the line of her cheek with his thumb. Tess could find no will to move as he leaned down and brushed his mouth along the curve of her jaw.
Heat ignited in her core, a slow burn that melted even more of her reason.
I came here tonight for you.
She couldn't have heard correctly--if for nothing else, the very fact that he hadn't said a word. Yet Dante's voice was in her head, soothing her when she should be alarmed. Making her believe, when everything reasonable told her she was experiencing the impossible.
Close your eyes, Tess.
Her eyelids fell shut and then his mouth moved over hers in a soft, mesmerizing kiss. It wasn't happening, Tess thought desperately. She wasn't really letting this man kiss her, was she? In the middle of a crowded room?
But his lips were warm on hers, his teeth roughly grazing as he sucked her lower lip between them before drawing back. Just like that, the sudden, surprising kiss was over. And Tess wanted more.
God, how she wanted.
She couldn't open her eyes for the way her blood was thrumming, every part of her hot with need and an impossible yearning. Tess weaved a little on her feet, panting and breathless, astonished at what she'd just experienced. She felt a cool breeze skim her body, raising goose bumps in its wake.
"Sorry I took so long." Ben's voice jolted her eyes open as he strode up with drinks in hand. "This place is a zoo. The line at the bar took forever."
Startled, she glanced around for Dante. But he was gone. No sign of him at all--not anywhere near her or in the circulating crowd.
Ben handed her a glass of mineral water. Tess drank it quickly, half tempted to take his champagne and down that too.
"Oh, shit," Ben said, frowning as he looked at her. "There must be a chip in that glass, Tess. You've cut your lip."
She brought her hand up to her mouth as Ben scrambled to give her a small white napkin. Her fingertips came away wet, vivid scarlet.
