It was exactly the kind of thing he’d been saying since he’d become Conti Goba, and she didn’t know how much of his sweet gentility was Ari and how much was an act. Then again, he wasn’t the only one acting here. She wasn’t the elegantly calm Francesca Simmons, either, but the ballsy, desperate Frannie Lambert, dashing along fast enough to keep ahead of everyone else. She needed to keep her center and not forget who she really was.
“Well, thank you,” she said. “You would have been fine coming to the city all on your own, though. Other than nearly dying on the open sea. For that, you definitely needed me along.” She tried to infuse her voice with a teasing lilt, but she could hear the tremor it.I said, keep your center. But the way Ari was looking at her now, her center was dissolving into a warm puddle of need.
That…couldn’t be good.
Apparently oblivious to her distress, Ari fished in his pocket and pulled out the cloth packet of his identity card. They’d agreed not to study it closely until they had time to view it behind closed doors, and as he produced it Francesca exhaled in relief, glad for the distraction.
“Yes,” she said. “Let’s see what sort of man you are, Conti Goba.”
Ari set his glass on the table and unfolded the cloth, letting it fall away. He opened up the small booklet, nudging it toward her. “Those men, they chose well,” he said. “I’m quite a fine fellow of thirty years—which I can pass for with this beard—born and currently living in Makila. That’s, what, about fifty miles inland,” he mused, rattling off the information as if it wasn’t important.
Fran stared at him, unwilling to stop the flow of his thoughts, though inside she cheered. His random geography lesson was yet another indicator that his world was beginning to flow in around him, taking on form and function.
“Father Josef, mother Maria…what do you think?”
He held up the picture beside his face, and Fran had to laugh.
“It’s—close,” she managed, staring at the small black and white photo of a swarthy-faced man who could have passed for Ari, yes…after a bar fight and a weekend in jail. “You’ll need to grow your hair longer to really pull it off.”
He grimaced. “I shouldn’t have cut it after I left Turkey. I could have been this man’s cousin. Which reminds me…” he threw the identity folder down on the table and focused on her.
“First, to Conti,” Fran said hurriedly, lifting her glass. “May his life prove as interesting as his picture.” She winked at him. “He looks like quite a troublemaker.”
Ari picked up his glass again and touched it to hers, but his eyes had gone from curious to sensual in the space of a moment, and her own worry morphed back to desire with startling speed.
“You will have to watch out for Conti,” he said. “He has a weakness for cheap wine and fine American women.”
“I’ve heard that about him,” Fran said as she tipped the glass to her lips. Cheap or not, the sweet red liquid went down easily, and Ari joined her, tossing back his drink as well. Then he leaned forward intently as she lowered her glass.
She knew what was coming, welcomed it. Anything to get Ari to focus on something other than asking questions. Questions might cause her to have to spin some tales she’d have to keep track of, but there was nothing make-believe about the way Ari made her feel. And surely she could have that, for a little while longer.
Ari seemed to be thinking the same thing.
“It’s a vice poor Conti can’t control,” he said. Then he shifted the last inch to close the space between them and pressed his lips to hers.
Fran didn’t know how her glass found the table or how Ari moved so quickly, but a moment later she was being lifted up, Ari pressing her against the wall as her hands cradled his face, the roughness of his beard scraping her palms, adding to the sensory overload swamping her. He reached down and cupped his own hands around her backside and lifted her up against the wall, and she encircled his hips with her legs, reveling in the strength of him as he braced her weight.
“Francesca,” he murmured roughly and his mouth left hers, trailing kisses up the side of her face to her ear. He repeated her name over and over again, like a benediction, and she groaned as his teeth grazed her earlobe on his way to her neck. She knotted her hands in his shirt and pulled the fabric tight, bringing him up short as he drew away from her face and stared at her.
His gaze was so filled with longing it took her breath away, and Fran didn’t doubt he wanted this, wanted her. She also couldn’t deny how much she wanted him. Hewasn’ther patient, he wasn’t her charge. The doctors were clear that he was healthy. But could she—should she continue down this path with him? Shouldn’t she be the responsible one?
“A—ahhh,” she caught herself, hiccupping over the name she almost called him. And then the moment of her resistance was lost as Ari arced his body backward, and she felt every inch of his arousal as it pressed against the most intimate part of her.
Ari, of course, surprised her again.
“You are worried about me, aren’t you?” he asked, one hand flat against her back, bracing her against him as he shifted away from the wall. He easily strode the few steps it took to reach the bed and stood there, staring down at her. “I can see it in your eyes. So much caution, so much fear. But in this, you don’t need to worry. I’m not sick, Francesca.”
Before she could speak he leaned down, easing her lightly to the bed and stretching himself over her, his left hip sliding to the side as his right leg bent, trapping her in the frame of his body. He dropped a light kiss on her shoulder, where her shifting tank bared her skin, and she shivered at the pent up energy she could feel even at such a brief touch.
“But your memory—” she tried again, only to have Ari roll over her, his body pinning her to the soft mattress, his hands braced to either side of her head.
“My memory will return when it is ready to return,” he said. “Until it does, making new memories will have to suffice. Like this one.”
Ryker bent overFrancesca’s beautiful face, knowing in that moment that if he never remembered another moment of his former life, it would be a tradeoff worth having because she was in his arms, in his bed. There would be time later for rational thought. For now, he wanted to think with nothing more than his body and his heart.
For now, they could live solely in the present.
He met her gaze as her lips slowly teased into a smile. “If you’re sure?” she asked, and the soft tremor in her voice turned him inside out.
