Page 25 of Bene

Bene leaned in close to her again, just like before. And this time, she leaned into him, letting him get close enough that he could whisper in her ear when he said, “My name means blessed. And apparently, I am exactly that, considering who is sitting next to me.”

He moved to sit straight on his stool again, but Vanna quickly stopped him by doing nothing more than placing her hand to his thigh. A soft, innocent touch, sure, but those manicured, long pale pink fingernails of hers dug into his pant leg, and had his throat tightening instantly. He didn’t move a muscle, not even when she turned her head to the side, and he felt the way her lips curved into a sly smile.

“That was quite the line.”

“Did it work?” he asked.

Vanna tipped her chin up, their gazes met, and he had the pleasure of watching her tongue slide along her lower lip as she nodded. “It definitely worked.”

She closed that bit of distance between them first, but there wasn’t the slightest bit of hesitation in her actions when she kissed him. Just a soft graze of her lips moving with his before her mouth parted, and he found she tasted like sugared liquor, and pure heat. Sin, if it had a taste, he was sure. And she kissed how she looked, too … sweet and perfect and sexy. Licking the flavor of him right from his tongue while the slowness of her kiss had him feeling like he was about to run out of air.

Goddamn.

His hands found her thighs when she turned on the stool, forgetting his place, and where they currently sat in a very crowded bar. Not that she seemed to mind, given her hand tightened on his thigh while she used her other to stroke those nails down his jaw.

“Fuck,” he breathed against her mouth.

Vanna smiled. “That’s totally an option, too.”

Bene let out a hard, gruff noise. “Is that a promise?”

“How far is your place?”

That’s all he needed to hear.

Less than a block.

He lived less than a block away from the restaurant. Someone might call it divine intervention that the two of them would meet so close to where he lived, but she wouldn’t. She would say it was because she had good info, and the ability to frequent Bene’s haunts until the two of them bumped into one another.

And while she was happy to continue her plan—her need to fulfill her dead father’s vendetta still as strong as it ever was—she would be a liar if she said the man she came face to face with in that restaurant was not at all who she expected him to be. Perhaps a part of her had simply been convinced the man would be the spoiled, airheaded privileged Guzzi twin that the media portrayed him to be. Quick to jump on whatever pretty face threw eyes his way, and easily riled when his ego was stroked.

Weren’t most men the same, after all?

Bene had not been any of those things. Sure, she was a pretty thing who threw eyes at him, but that had been for an hour. She tried everything to turn that man’s gaze away from the television, and the drink in front of him. In fact, Vanna had been just about ready to up and leave Bene’s side when the man to her right started talking like she had anything at all to say to him. Whatever finally made Bene lift his head, look at her, and begin that conversation—simply thinking of her, and wanting to help out without any expectation of something back—changed everything.

Luck, maybe.

But when he lifted his head?

That’s when she saw the sadness. Something haunted in his eyes and face that made her realize, no, he wasn’t ignoring her … he simply didn’t see her world because he was too busy living in his own.

Then, he spoke.

And grinned.

Made her forget they were sitting in a bar, surrounded by people and noise. Somehow, he made her lose herself, and time, too. As though they were just two people having a conversation, that she wasn’t there by her own making, just to run into him so that she could soon ruin his life, and his family’s.

Oh, that wish was still there.

But for a time, she forgot.

He was not who she expected. He said a little less than a block to his place, and she didn’t hesitate to agree. And in the time it took the two of them to walk to the large building where Bene’s penthouse suite was apparently located thirteen floors high, Vanna hadn’t once second-guessed what she was doing with Bene Guzzi.

Yes, she hated his family for the things they had done. She planned to make him and the rest of them pay for it without a doubt. At the same time, she wouldn’t lie and say the man hadn’t engaged her mind, made her wet between her thighs, and had her believing he truly did think she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

Until this moment, Vanna hadn’t known how she would get her in to the Guzzi family. And right now? She had no problem with using Bene Guzzi to do it, and if she got to take the man on a ride during the process …

Vanna saw no problems.