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Draco nodded. “It was by accident, I know, but I drove around that last curve, saw this ruin … I don’t know how to say it. It seemed somehow familiar. Crazy, perhaps, but I got out of the car, walked up to these steps …”
Anna traced her fingers lightly over the crest chiseled into the stone. Then she put her hand on Draco’s arm. His muscles were tight as steel.
“No,” she said softly, “not crazy at all.” She smiled when he took his gaze from the ruins of what had surely once been a magnificent castle and looked, instead, at her. “You walked to the steps, and you saw the Valenti crest.”
Draco nodded. “Yes.” He shrugged as if it were not important, but the darkness in his eyes told her that it was. “I don’t know if you can understand what it was like to discover that I carry the blood of brave, good men in my veins.”
Could she understand? Anna wanted to laugh. Or maybe cry.
“I understand all too well,” Anna said gently. “And now you’re going to restore the castle.”
A muscle knotted in his jaw.
“Yes. Sì. I am.” His smile was fleeting. “Trust me, bellissima. My architect and builder assure me that this wish is crazy.”
Was this truly Prince Draco Valenti? Did her arrogant, take-no-prisoners aristocrat actually have a heart?
Not that he was hers. Not that she would want him to be hers. There was nothing logical to that idea, nothing rational about it …
“I know succeeding in this is important to you, Anna. Securing the land for your family, I mean. But—”
To hell with logic.
Anna grasped Draco’s shirt, lifted herself to him and pressed her lips to his.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE drive back to Catania seemed to take forever.
How could it not, when Draco kept pulling the SUV onto the shoulder of the road so he could draw Anna into his arms and kiss her?
He kept telling himself that the exquisite torture would end once they boarded the plane. Then they’d have all the privacy they needed.
He gathered her into his arms as soon as they were in the air.
She came to him with hot eagerness, straddling him, her kisses wild and abandoned, her hands on him and his on hers until he made a sound that was half groan, half laugh, leaned his forehead against hers and said, “Bellissima. You’re killing me.”
“Am I?” she whispered, and the delight in her voice made him laugh again.
“You know you are.” He pressed his lips to the hollow of her throat, felt the swift race of her blood just beneath the delicate skin. “Anna. I’ve never wanted a woman the way I want you.” He paused. “But we’re going to wait.” He wrapped his arms around her, gathered her tightly against him. She was trembling, Dio, so was he. He kissed her hair, her temple, her eyes. “We are going to wait until we are alone. Until there is all the time in the world for us.”
For us. Anna closed her eyes, buried her face in his shoulder, inhaled the glorious scent of him, of his arousal.
“I want you in my bed, not on a plane, not in a hotel room.” He gave a soft laugh. “It makes no sense, I know, but—but that is what I want, Anna. You and me and a quiet place that belongs only to us.”
Gently he cupped the back of her head, tilted it so that their eyes met.
“I love having sex with you,” he said gruff ly. “But it’s time to make love.”
What he’d said hung between them. He hadn’t planned it; he wasn’t even sure what it meant. He only knew that it was true. He, the pragmatist, the man who thought making love was a phrase used by romantic fools, wanted to do exactly that.
Now he waited for Anna’s
answer. He stroked his hand the length of her back, soothing her, steadying himself. Waited for her to tell him he was wrong, that sex was sex, that she didn’t want to be in his bed, to lie in his arms, that all she wanted was quick, passionate release ….
“Yes,” she whispered. Her lips curved in a tender smile. “Take me to your bed, Draco. And make love to me.”
Something inside him took wing. “Anna,” he said, “il mio amore …”
