‘Why are you being like this?’ Glory muttered helplessly. ‘I’ve surrendered every way I can but it’s still not enough for you.’
‘Don’t exaggerate, cara.’ With complete cool, Rafaello reached out to loosen her tight grip on her raincoat and fold her taut fingers into the hold of his. ‘I just don’t want there to be any misunderstandings between us. I’m calling the shots. What else did you expect?’
At the warmth of his hands on hers, Glory trembled. She gazed up into eyes dark as midnight but she had already lost his direct attention. Her raincoat had fallen open. His lowered gaze was welded to the exposed curves of her pouting breasts. A shocking stab of hurt travelled through her. ‘You said…you said I looked like a cheap little scrubber in this get-up, so why are you looking at me like that?’
‘Intellect aside, I’m still a red-blooded male with all the usual painfully predictable reactions.’ His smouldering dark golden scrutiny skimmed back up to her self-conscious face. ‘You’re no longer that guileless teenager who burned me up with the lure of her supposed innocence, but that’s a plus now. I want an experienced lover in my bed, a woman who can satisfy my every need.’
That admission made Glory stiffen. She dropped her head to hide the hectic flush in her cheeks. She was not ashamed of being a virgin, but nor was she prepared to take the risk of telling him the truth. Suppose he changed his mind about the arrangement he had offered her? A male, who was only interested in his own sexual pleasure would naturally prefer a woman who could match his own expertise between the sheets. And by the sounds of it, Rafaello had pretty high expectations. However, he was destined to meet with a major disappointment in that department. But to her way of thinking, there was a certain natural rough justice to that reality. Rafaello would get exactly what he deserved.
‘I think the only reason you want me is because I turned you down five years ago,’ Glory said before she could think better of that leading comment.
Lean fingers found her chin and turned up her eyes to encounter the scorching gold of his own. ‘You could be right, but then I never really turned up the heat, did I?’
‘Didn’t you?’ Her own voice sounded slightly strangled as he let that controlling hand drift down to the base of her spine instead.
All of a sudden even catching her breath and clearing her dry throat was a challenge. The tension in the atmosphere was electrifying. Her heart was racing like a trapped bird inside her ribcage and she was aware of Rafaello’s potent masculinity with every fibre of her being.
‘I was playing a waiting game,’ Rafaello confided huskily. ‘But now I don’t need to wait.’
He was going to touch her and she wanted him to touch her. Indeed, she could hardly wait for him to touch her, she registered in dismay. But even the shame that followed that acknowledgement could not still the insidious awakening of her own body. She was painfully conscious of the swelling heaviness of her breasts and the aching sensitivity of their rosy peaks but mo
st of all of the betraying surge of moist heat at the very heart of her.
He urged her closer and her nostrils flared on the heady familiarity of his scent. The faint aroma of aftershave underscored by warm male. She trembled, wanting, needing, suddenly strung up to such a height of hunger, she was dizzy with it. And then he took her mouth and kissed her with sensual probing intensity and it was as if her heart stopped on the unbearable sweetness of that sensation before thundering on faster and wilder in beat than ever before.
‘Imagine saying no to this, cara…’ Rafaello murmured thickly, lifting his arrogant dark head while she struggled for breath and the independent strength to hold herself upright instead of holding on to him for support.
Glory was devastated by her own sheer longing to be back in his arms again. ‘Stop teasing me…’
‘Is this what you call teasing?’ Shimmering golden eyes scanned her with predatory amusement. ‘Slow and seductive not what you’re used to, cara mia?’
In the grip of that passionate yearning, her quivering body no longer felt like her own. She gave way to her own frustration. She reached up and dragged his mouth back down to hers again. As her seeking fingers laced into his luxuriant black hair, he loosed a sound somewhere between a laugh and a groan. But in response he let his tongue probe deep between her lips in an explicit penetration that made her shiver with helpless anticipation against his hard, muscular frame. Closing his hands to her hips, he lifted her off her feet.
‘Rafaello…?’ Glory was taken aback when he settled her down on top of the antique mahogany desk.
‘You’re too short to be fully accessible upright,’ he mocked, curling his hand into the fall of her honey-blonde mane and then letting his fingertips skim appreciatively through the glossy strands. ‘Santo cielo! Your hair feels like pure silk…’
Before she could even guess his intention, he had parted her knees and drawn her right to the edge of the desk. Then he eased his hands beneath her hips and lifted her back to him in a much more intimate connection than had been possible while she had been standing. Her legs apart and left to dangle either side of his lean, powerful length as he moved into the space he had created for himself, Glory felt suddenly out of her depth and vulnerable. As she fought to force her stretchy skirt back down over her exposed thighs, even the heat of her own shivering hunger was incapable of silencing the alarm bells of panic his behaviour was rousing.
‘What are you doing?’ Glory exclaimed.
Rafaello looked down at her with stunning dark golden eyes, a frownline etched between his winged dark brows. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘What’s wrong?’ Glory demanded incredulously half an octave higher. ‘You’re expecting me to carry on with you on top of a desk and you’re asking me what’s wrong?’
Rafaello stilled as if she had thrown a stop switch. Lush black lashes dropped down to conceal his gaze.
‘Because cavorting on desks is out!’ Glory told him fiercely, the fear that he was trying to make a fool of her trammelling through her in an enervating wave. ‘I’ve met some real full-on creeps in my time but even they didn’t try to jump me on a desk—’
‘Is that a fact?’ Rafaello breathed not quite levelly, apparently transfixed by her frantic efforts to drag the hem of her skirt down over her thighs. Helpfully he stepped back so that she could lock her knees together again and achieve that feat.
‘Yes, that is a fact,’ Glory told him chokily, tears roughening her voice as her distress climbed in direct proportion to her embarrassment. ‘I want respect. I want boundaries to this “anything you want” stuff—’
‘I get the feeling that, on your terms, the desk is the absolute outer limits,’ Rafaello murmured in a taut undertone that shook slightly, his Italian accent thicker than she had ever heard it.
‘It’s a question of what’s decent.’
‘You’re not very adventurous, are you?’