Page 2 of I Would Beg For You
I stiffen and school my features, looking away from him.
I don’t know how I know because I’m not looking at him, but I know he is coming towards me. Those long legs eat up the space, and they’re getting closer.
Just that stride can make a woman wet her panties, because a man who moves with such measured control of himself is already telling the world he exerts this same discipline in all aspects of his life, including the bedroom.
Add to it the GQ-cover-worthy good looks wrapped in such an expensive package and with whiffs of a dark, sultry scent coiling around him, this could be the devil incarnate himself, sent to Earth to lure mortals unsuspecting or not.
Swirls of sandalwood and cypress reach my nostrils, and it takes everything to not sniff it all in, to inhale his aroma and drown in it. Still the same signature scent he wore five years ago, when I got so close to him that evening under the mistletoe.
Do not think of that, Naomi. I forbid you!
These last words bring to mind another admonition. One spoken in a paternal male voice that couldn’t hide the slight slurring from imbibed whiskey.
My father has forbidden me to have anything to do with the Andretti family, Valentino in particular.
Why him? Because I have always had eyes just for him. Valentino was a man. Eleven years older than me, he was always a grown-up. Not a bland boy trying to impress with stupidity, the kind I met every day in school.
I’ve never had time for crushes and infatuation. At ten, he fascinated me, reminding me of Hollywood movie stars, dark and brooding and mysterious. Then at fifteen, I took one look at twenty-six-year-old Valentino home for the Christmas break, and I knew this is the man I want. Period.
“Little Naomi Smith,” he drawls as he settles his tall frame in the bank of chairs across from me.
“Not so little anymore,” I snap.
He said those same words to me on that fateful night when I bared my heart to him. They cut just as sharp today as back then. Five years ago, no sighting of him in the meantime, yet it’s as if time hasn’t passed, like I haven’t grown up from a silly teen to a woman out of college and with a strong resume under her belt already.
His intense gaze peruses me from head to toe. “I can see that.”
Somehow, his words make me feel naked.
Worse, they make mewantto be naked in front of him.
Damn it! This asshole toyed with me in the worst way. How can I still want him?
Uh, hello. Have you seen him?
This seems to come directly from my ovaries.
“I didn’t think I would see you again,” he adds in a soft tone.
Something that always gets to me about Valentino is how he never raises his voice. The soft rumbling in his words call to the depths of a person, bringing to mind sultry whispers but also veiled threats that can sound more ominous coming from such a low tone.
Little Naomi Smith.
The quiet in the words slashed my heart to pieces that day.
“Didn’t seem like you wanted to see me again,” I throw back, resigned to get a grip on myself and not let this man ever get the better of me again.
The sound of a half-hearted laugh pulls me to look at him once more. This time, a full-on smile graces his beautiful yet dangerous face.
See?The ovaries again.We want him. We definitely do!
Shut up!
“Did I really do that?”
He leans back in the chair, the plastic almost espousing his tall, lithe form as he stretches his long legs out and gives me a perfect full-frontal view of his gorgeous body covered in those elegant dark clothes.
“Did I?” he asks again.
