Chapter 11: Sixty Floors

The Visconti board met on the fifty-second floor of the hotel tower, in a glass room with a table long enough to seat twenty.

I sat at Adrien's right hand, as the fiancée, with a notepad I did not need.

Two of his uncles argued about vineyard leases. A third read figures aloud in a flat voice.

Adrien's hand lay on my knee under the table.

It was rule one. In public he touches. He had put it there at the start of the meeting without looking at me, and it had stayed for forty minutes.

His thumb moved in a slow line along the inside of my knee, over the silk and back.

I had not heard a word of the lease report.

Heat had gathered low in my body and stayed there.

It had been building since Saturday, since the kiss and the sound I had made against his mouth.

I had not slept properly in two nights.

I leaned toward him and looked at his notes.

"Your uncles are very dull," I murmured.

"Yes."

"Your hand is lower than it was."

"Is it?"

"It is." I kept my eyes on the page. "Move it higher, or take it away. I am tired of being teased in front of an audience."

His thumb stopped.

The room had not heard. His uncle went on reading figures about Bordeaux.

Adrien turned his head and looked at me.

His face was perfectly composed. The only thing that moved was a muscle in his jaw.

"Careful," he said, so quietly that I felt it more than heard it. "I keep my word. I will not touch you in private."

"We are in a boardroom."

"With eight men watching."

"Then keep to the public rule," I said, "and show them how."

His hand tightened on my knee.

Slowly, deliberately, it moved a hand's breadth higher.

I did not breathe.

"Monsieur Visconti," said an uncle. "Do you agree?"

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