“Are you… are you thediavolo?”she asked, her voice quavering.
She almost believed she was fearful.
Almost.
“They don’t call meDonDiavala because I’m an angel,” he countered, a guttural sound accompanying his words.
“I don’t suppose they do,” she replied in a breathy voice, sliding a silk-gloved hand down his hip and then to where the bulge of his engorged manhood rested at the top of his thighs.
He inhaled sharply when her hand cupped his sac through his tight pantaloons and gently lifted it.“Anxious, are we?”he asked, his gloved hand sliding up her arm to her elbow.When he moved it to cover one of her breasts, she, too, inhaled, not intending for her move to cause the mound to fit perfectly into his palm.
She lifted her knee almost in reflex, but given the layers of petticoats beneath her ballgown, the limb proved ineffectual.
Her hand did not, though, her thumb jabbing into soft tissue as her fingers squeezed as hard as they could.
Luciano let out a yowl at the very moment the drape disappeared from in front of them, revealing another young man.
“Mia donna, are you in need of assistance?”the intruder asked in perhaps the worst Italian she had ever heard.
Reacting to her squeeze with a breathless curse, Luciano bent over.At the same moment Vittoria chopped the back of his neck, the interloper shoved a knee up and into the heir’s face.
The unmistakeable sound of cartilage being rearranged was a precursor to a howl of pain that sounded more animalistic than human.
“Come with me,” the other man said, taking her hand in his.
“What?”Before she could decide which fate would be better—being discovered in an alcove withDonDiavala or on the arm of the tall Englishman in the adjacent corridor—it was too late.
She was suddenly out from behind the curtain and walking with her arm on his, their steps measured as Luciano’s moans of pain and curses continued from inside the alcove.
A footman and the butler had already come from around a corner, and in their rush to determine the source of the animalistic yowling, they bumped the caryatid supporting the marble statue of Apollo.
Vittoria almost felt sorry for the Roman god.Surely Apollo didn’t deserve his fate when he toppled from his caryatid and fell on the heir, one of his arrows impaling the very region that had suffered so much indignity only a moment ago.
The servants fared better, but barely, offering expressions of sympathy and the promise of a physician.
Beyond that, Vittoria knew not what fate awaitedDonDiavala.The Englishman had already steered her into the library and quickly shut the door.
A phrase her grandmother had said when she was young—something along the lines of ‘from out of the pan and into the fire’—came to mind before she squared her shoulders and planted her hands on her hips.
If this man intended to continue whatDonLuciano had started, he would find himself in the same world of hurt.
