Italian Stallions (21 page)

J
ust sex, Vince thought. Simple. Easy. Uncomplicated.

He only wished that were true as he watched Theresa move through the crowded tables at Ciao Bella. After almost a month of sleeping with her, his emotions toward Theresa were growing more fucking complicated by the day.

He’d figured the sex thing would cool down. He was, after all, thirty-five, and though he’d always had a healthy sex drive, his days of thinking about sex nonstop—not to mention doing it nonstop—had disappeared sometime in his twenties.

Man, had Theresa ever proven him wrong. He fucked her every single night, sometimes twice, and still he wanted her all the time. When he wasn’t fucking her, he was thinking about fucking her. About peeling back her shirt and sucking her tits into his mouth, sinking to his knees so he could slip his tongue inside the delicious heat of her cunt.

He kept his thoughts deliberately crude, refusing to think of what they were doing as anything but fucking, pure and simple.

But as he watched her, nursing his drink until it was time to walk her home, he knew it was more than that. He didn’t just want her, he craved her. Ached for her. Until sometimes when he was at work he was unable to concentrate as thoughts of her invaded his brain. He never lost focus when he was in the middle of a deal, yet twice this week he had drifted off during conference calls, assaulted by fantasies of Theresa showing up at his office and spreading herself naked over his desk.

And the late nights weren’t helping his focus either. Yet night after night, instead of turning in early so he could get some sleep, he lingered until the restaurant closed so he could take Theresa home.

Theresa looked over and caught him staring. She smiled, casual and friendly, giving no indication that in about forty-five minutes she was going to be naked and moaning as he did things to her that were still illegal in some states.

Unlike him, she seemed to have no problem whatsoever in keeping things casual. Not that she didn’t feel the same intense chemistry he did—he was sure of that. But unlike every other woman he’d ever dated, Theresa wasn’t inclined to share every single emotion she was feeling, didn’t need to divulge every detail of her past and expect him to do the same. Even when he’d asked, she was remarkably closemouthed about what her life had been like up until the moment she ended up in his lap.

He knew her mother and Gia’s were sisters, and knew that Theresa had left three years ago, and whatever happened caused a rift with the family. He’d deduced there was a guy involved but she refused to discuss it when asked. There had to be something going on. He’d known the Cipriani family for two years, and no one—including Theresa’s mother or father—had ever so much as mentioned her name.

About all he knew about her was that she was smart, hardworking, funny, and sexy.

Sexy as hell.

His cock thickened as he wondered where they would do it tonight. In the past three weeks, they’d managed to christen every room in his house. He’d especially enjoyed having her in the kitchen. The breakfast bar was the perfect height for her to sit while he stood between her legs and fucked her.

“You don’t have to wait for me,” Theresa said as they walked home later. “Gia can always give me a ride home, or I can walk.”

“I don’t like you walking by yourself.”

She snorted. “Believe me, I’ve made my way safely through neighborhoods a lot worse than this.”

“Like where?” he pressed.

“You know, here and there,” she said evasively.

His teeth clenched in frustration, but he didn’t push. “I have to go out of town tomorrow for a few days. I want you to promise me you’ll get a ride home with Gia.”

“Where are you going?” He took small satisfaction in the stricken look that flitted across her face as he unlocked his gate.

“London,” he said, taking her jacket and hanging it alongside his in the front closet. “I’ll be gone until Thursday.”

“Five days?” she asked.

“You gonna miss me?” he murmured, pulling her across the entryway to the sitting room. They hadn’t done it in there for at least a week.

“Maybe,” she laughed huskily as he pulled her down onto the silk-upholstered couch.

“Why don’t you come with me?” he said. The question had been spontaneous, but now that he’d voiced it it sounded like a brilliant idea. Loath though he was to admit it, he dreaded leaving. In the past when business travel cropped up, he’d seen it as a welcome break in his routine, not to mention time away from the pressure of whomever he was dating.

Not this time. He was so covetous of every moment with Theresa he didn’t want to spend one night away, much less five.

She laughed and seated herself in his lap. “Yeah, right, like I can afford to fly to London.”

“I’ll pay for your ticket.”

“Even if I were willing to let you buy me a ticket to London,” she said, the merest edge entering her voice, “I have to work.”

“I’m sure Gia would give you the time off,” he said, unbuttoning her blouse with practiced fingers. Baggy and unflattering though it was, Theresa’s Ciao Bella blouse struck him as sexier and sexier every time he took it off her.

“I can’t miss work. I need the money, especially since I’m starting classes next semester.”

That was one small piece of personal information she had offered, her desire to finish school and get her nursing degree. He admired her work ethic, but selfishly he wanted her to blow it off so he could have her to himself. Not to mention that her schedule, the opposite of his, put a major damper on how much time they could spend together. Which had seemed like an advantage at first, but now just pissed him off.

“If you need money, Theresa, I can give it to you.”

She went very still, her fingers frozen in the act of unbuttoning his fly. “What?”

He cleared his throat. In the past several weeks, he’d been hounded by the ever increasing need to protect her, take care of her. And the fact that she didn’t seem to want it only made it that much worse. “I mean, if you don’t want to work, so you can just focus on school, I’ll give you the money. It’s not like I can’t afford it.”

“You’re offering to be my sugar daddy?” she asked, her voice dripping with scorn. Every line of her body was stiff. “Is that why you think I’m after? Is that what you think of me?” She shoved away and scrambled off his lap.

He jumped up after her. “I didn’t mean it that way,” he said. “I just want to help.”

Her fingers fumbled with the buttons of her blouse, fastening them haphazardly in stiff, jerky motions. “I don’t need your money, Vince. I can take care of myself.”

“I know you can,” he said, plowing his hands through his hair in frustration. “Fuck it, forget I said anything about it.” She moved for the door but he caught her, pulling her stiff and resisting body against his. “Don’t be mad. It was a stupid idea, I know,” he said, though he personally didn’t think it was stupid in the least. “I just want to spend more time with you,” he admitted, tracing his lips down her soft cheek, the sculpted line of her jaw.

“You spend every night with me,” she pointed out, and he could feel her resistance waning as he licked and sucked the sensitive column of her throat.

He didn’t argue the point, nor did he admit that much to his chagrin, the nights weren’t enough. As he pulled her back down onto the sofa with him he realized that with Theresa, he would never get enough.

Theresa dragged through the next week, even though by rights she should have been happy about taking the first steps to get her life back in order. Not only had she managed to pay off her last credit card bill, she’d met with the head of the nursing program at San Francisco State. Despite her three-year break, Theresa would be able to jump back into the program where she’d left off. She had already registered for two classes starting in January.

And thanks to what she was saving on rent and the hefty tips she brought in from Ciao Bella, she would have no problem affording school.

None of that kept her from feeling downright crappy as she sat on Vince’s couch, flipping through five hundred channels of nothing. She hated how they’d left things. Her brain kept stewing over their argument, beating her up for not having handled it better. She shouldn’t have jumped all over him, but she disliked the idea of being taking care of. No, she wasn’t a wildly successful city chick with a booming career, but she was damn well capable of cleaning up her own messes. She wasn’t about to let herself become dependent on Vince, financially or otherwise.

Still, it would have been nice spending the week with him in London instead of here by herself. God, she missed him. More than she’d ever expected, and more than she wanted to admit.

She’d tried so hard in the past few weeks not to let herself get carried away, not to let herself get too attached. But she missed everything about him, from his smile across the bar at Ciao Bella, to his hot whisper in her ear when he was deep inside her.

She squeezed her thighs against the ache that bloomed between them. She
really
missed sex. And she missed the way he pulled her against him afterwards, the way he would curl his big body around hers so protectively. She hadn’t been able to sleep this week without him. She’d tried to convince herself it was because she wasn’t used to the smaller bed in the cottage. So she’d sheepishly slipped into Vince’s bed the second night, only to toss and turn.

Which hadn’t made Magda the housekeeper’s suspicious, censorious look any easier to bear.

As though sensing her depression, Chester picked up his head off the cushion next to her and nestled his big golden head in her lap. She couldn’t help but smile. The crazy hairball was actually making progress, if being able to maintain a sit-stay for all of ten seconds was progress. He still regarded every piece of furniture as his own personal doggie bed and had a tendency to hump every new person he met, but at least he’d stopped chewing up her shoes when she left him to go to work.

She yawned and rubbed the grit from her eyes. Thank God Vince was coming home tomorrow. The lack of sleep was starting to get to her, making her spacey at work and even a little paranoid. The last few nights when she’d walked home after work she’d had the strange sensation of someone following her, only to look over her shoulder and see no one. She’d also received a handful of hang-up calls on her cell phone. She’d chalked them up to a wrong number but they’d left her unsettled just the same.

She curled her fingers deeper into Chester’s neck fur. “You’ll protect me from the bad guys, right?” At the very least he’d lick them to death.

Right then her cell phone rang and she jumped about a foot, then rolled her eyes at her own skittishness. She didn’t recognize the number, but picked it up anyway. If it was her hangup artist, she’d happily set him straight.

“Hey baby.” Vince’s rich, low baritone seemed to reach through the phone.

“Hey.” Her voice was breathy with mingled pleasure and surprise. Vince hadn’t called her at all this week. Not that she expected him to, because it wasn’t like she was his girlfriend or anything. But deep down his neglect had hurt. “Is everything okay?”

“Everything is fine,” he said, sounding weary. “I’m sorry I didn’t call sooner, but the time difference makes it hard.

“It’s okay,” she said, doing her damnedest to ignore the little thrill she got at the idea he’d been thinking about her at all.

“I miss you, Theresa,” he said his voice going low and husky. “Did you miss me?”

“Maybe a little,” she said coyly.

“You don’t sound convinced.”

“Maybe you need to come home and remind me what I should be missing.”

“Lucky for you I’m coming home tomorrow. I’ve been thinking about you all week,” he chuckled. “I’ve been getting very creative.”

Theresa felt her blood race in her veins and she settled back into the couch. “Really? Care to share?”

He paused and swallowed audibly over the phone line.

“Are you someplace you can really…talk?” she asked, running her fingers idly along her velour covered thigh. She’d never in her life had phone sex. In fact, it had always struck her as kind of weird. But right now she was running red hot at the thought of listening to Vince share his more creative moments with her. “I don’t have to be at work for another four hours, so I have plenty of time to,”—she paused deliberately—“listen.”

He was silent so long she was sure he was going to blow her off. Embarrassed heat crept its way up her chest and she braced herself for him to laugh at her and her hamhanded attempts at acting the femme fatale.

“Where are you right now?” he said, his east coast accent thickening like it always did when he was turned on.

“On the sofa in your TV room.”

“What are you wearing?”

She looked down at her long sleeve T-shirt and stretchy yoga pants. “A black lace teddy, garters and stockings.”

His laugh rippled over her like a caress. “Really?”

“I like to feel pretty when I’m watching TV.”

“Honey, if you’ve been hanging out in lingerie in the middle of the afternoon, I’m going to have to start coming home for lunch.”

“Yeah? What would you do?”

He paused and she could hear him clear his throat. “I’d call you first and let you know I was coming over. Give you time to think about it so by the time I got home you would already be primed.”

Like she was right now.

“I’d tell you to get on the bed and wait for me. In fact, why don’t you go over there right now.”

“I’m walking,” she said and went over to the bed in the next room. Chester stayed where he was.

“Now take off your T-shirt and pants,” Vince said.

“Hey, you’re ruining it.” But even though she felt silly, she did exactly what he said.

“No, I’m not,” he laughed. “I love thinking about you hanging out in your sweats. And I love thinking about what you have on underneath.”

She looked down. “I’m wearing an ivory satin and lace bra—”

He made a low sound of approval. “The one where your tits almost spill over the cups?”

“Yes. And my underwear is the matching boy shorts with the stretch lace panel on the sides.”