One Naughty Night. Joanne Rock

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      3

      RENZO CESARE HAD kissed plenty of women in his day.

      Not that he considered himself a connoisseur or anything, because that just sounded plain sleazy. But he had some experience to compare Esme Giles’s kiss against, and that tentative brush of her soft pink mouth over his completely obliterated all memory of holding anyone else in his arms.

      He’d told himself he would let her set the pace tonight since he’d intercepted her from meeting her real date in the first place. According to his sister, no woman wanted to be insulated from life by a hulking Cesare male who would claim mob affiliation in a heartbeat if it would scare potential predators.

      Yet here he was, doing his gentlemanly best to save Esme Giles from herself and all the while falling under the spell of her sweet pink lips.

      Lips he found himself parting with the sweep of his tongue. Damn. Damn. Damn. He hadn’t meant to do that.

      But man, she was sweet.

      She tasted like rum and something more sugary. Sort of like the strawberry lip gloss girls in his junior high used to wear. All innocence. How had he gone his whole adult life without realizing strawberry lip gloss still turned him on nearly twenty years later?

      Her body sank into his a little more, giving him all the more appreciation for the shape and feel of her bare breasts beneath her dress.

      Goodbye all innocence. Hello sensual woman.

      The hard beads of her nipples had his body answering hers in kind, encouraging him to do all the things to her they both wanted so badly….

      Except they were in the middle of a goddamn dance floor.

      Renzo broke their kiss, unable to pull away from her totally without disrupting her balance. Besides, he didn’t dare move away from her quickly or he’d end up exposing them both a bit too…intimately.

      Esme’s eyes remained closed a moment, and when she lifted her lids to gaze up at him again, the passion-clouded expression he saw there made him want to drag her somewhere private and—

      Wait.

      Wasn’t he supposedly saving her from that kind of fate when he’d told her a whopper of a fib tonight?

      Backing them off the side of the floor, Renzo peeled himself away from her with more than a little regret.

      “Maybe you ought to walk me up to my room now,” she whispered, her voice barely audible above the synthesized whine of the next dance song.

      “Good idea.” Renzo steered her through the crowd, using his body as a shield for her to make sure no drunken idiots copped a feel on the way.

      He could not, should not, would not, get any more involved with Esme. The whole charade had been ill-conceived and it would be least embarrassing for all parties concerned if he simply said good-night to her right now.

      Just as soon as he knew she was safely inside her room.

      Once they cleared the Moulin Rouge Lounge and hit the bank of elevators, she paused, fishing in her purse.

      “I’m on the fourth floor in the Sensualist’s Suite. Maybe I’d better find my key.” She shook her purse as the elevator arrived. Apparently convinced the key lay within the white satin bag, Esme began the search with determination etched on her delicate jawline.

      “The Sensualist’s Suite?” He had no idea why he tortured himself by asking as they stepped inside the elevator.

      Maybe because liars deserved to be tortured.

      Withdrawing the plastic card from her bag as they soared up to the necessary floor, Esme’s cheeks flushed lightly. “It’s the kind of room that has to be seen to be believed. I had no idea the accommodations here were so…” Her eyes darted about the tiny elevator cabin—outfitted in soft brown suede walls and decorated with a fake-leopard-print-covered bench—as if in search for the right word. Finally, her gaze landed on him. “…so sexy.”

      His body twitched in reaction to the word rolling off her tongue. In reaction to their proximity in the quiet privacy of the small space.

      The torture had officially begun.

      “My sister told me all the rooms were redesigned when the hotel went from a couples resort to more of a singles haven.” As the doors slid open on the fourth floor, Renzo’s hand moved automatically toward her waist to help her out of the elevator.

      Just before his fingers made contact with the small of her back, he caught himself. If he touched her once, he might never stop. At the last moment, he redirected his errant hand toward the open doors button and pressed that instead.

      “Hotels are always remodeling,” Esme remarked as she strode down the hall, her gait more confident and easy now that they were alone. Maybe she just didn’t enjoy crowds. “This is different. This is spectacular.”

      Too late, Renzo realized they had arrived at her door and that she was already unlocking it. Opening it.

      And somehow they were in the middle of a conversation about her room, which she now wanted to show him.

      His feet paused at the threshold of the door—his brain knowing he probably shouldn’t СКАЧАТЬ