“Marry me,” he murmured between kisses to her eyelids, her forehead, her throat. She could hardly think straight. He held her so gently, so tenderly. With such love. “Marry me now.”
Her eyes were blurry with tears as she stared up at his darkly handsome face. There was a halo of light behind his head, and in the distance she could see birds flying up through the darkly shifting gray sky.
Then he lowered his lips to hers.
Her last thought before he kissed her was that she couldn’t remember loving him, but perhaps she didn’t need to remember.
Perhaps…she could just fall in love with him all over again.
CHAPTER SIX
KISSING Eve was like falling into hell.
It was fire. Sheer fire running through him. Talos placed his hand on the back of her head, his fingers twining in her beautiful hair, as he deepened the kiss.
For months, he’d hated her. Hungered for her.
Was that why finally kissing her now overwhelmed his senses more than ever before?
It wasn’t just desire that had changed the kiss, he realized. It was Eve. The kiss was different because she was different.
Wrenching away, he looked down at her. Her eyes remained closed. A blissful smile traced her full, bare lips. In her new clothes and hairstyle, she appeared sweet, natural and true.
The Eve he remembered had been none of those things.
Her eyes were still closed as she leaned forward, licking her lips with a tiny dart of her pink tongue. He nearly groaned. He wanted to take her to bed. Now. He’d already started to pick her up to take her back to the hotel when he caught himself.
No!
He took a deep breath. He couldn’t forget who he was really dealing with. The kind, innocent girl in front of him was an illusion. The real Eve Craig was a shallow vixen, a selfish liar. She’d given him her virginity just so she could betray him for another man. He couldn’t let her win.
This time, the victory would be his.
“Marry me,” he demanded, barely holding himself back from kissing her again. “Marry me now.”
“All right,” she whispered. “All right.”
He exhaled in a rush. Pulling away, he looked down at her fiercely. “Today.”
“I’ll marry you today,” she murmured, looking up at him with a happy, almost tearful smile.
“Talos? Getting married?” a man said behind them. “I can’t believe I just heard that!”
Talos whirled around in consternation to see an old friend grinning at him. The man split his time between New York and Tuscany—what the hell was he doing in Venice?
“Roark,” he said faintly. “What are you doing here?”
“I never thought I’d see this day,” Roark Navarre replied with a snicker. “You always said you’d never get married. You gave me a hell of a time when I married Lia. How the mighty have fallen!” Laughing, he took a step forward. “I can’t wait to meet the woman who—”
Then Eve shyly turned to face him, and the grin dropped from Roark’s face.
He stopped, his eyes widening.
Eve snuggled back in Talos’s arms. A pink blush suffused her cheeks as she looked at Roark with quiet happiness.
His old friend gave Talos a sharply questioning glance. “Is this some kind of joke?”
Eve blinked, furrowing her brow. She glanced between the two men. “What do you mean? A joke?”