Glory sat up, flushed and stiff. ‘We were fighting—’
‘This beats the hell out of fighting, amore mia,’ Rafaello pointed out with husky conviction.
Her hands were shaking and she wound them round her upraised knees while she fought to find the strength to get back off the bed again, reinstate control and common sense. But her defences weren’t working, weren’t there to call upon. Her whole world had begun to cave in around her when her father had started speaking a couple of hours earlier. The bricks and mortar of her childhood stability had taken a heavy hit. Little memories were still sneaking up out of her subconscious and striking hard: the phone constantly ringing but never answered, her mother taking it off the hook, pacing the floor, back and forth in tortured circles, hands knotted as if she was praying, tears running down her face as she shooed her curious little daughter into the kitchen and suggested she set the table for supper. A woman fighting temptation, a woman craving the man she loved but denying herself. And just as Talitha Little had loved Benito Grazzini, Glory loved his son.
‘Forget them…forget all of it,’ Rafaello urged with angry impatience as if he was attuned to her very thoughts.
But how could she forget when that was why he would marry her? Then would she rather do without him? Would pride be any consolation when she denied herself what she most wanted? Rafaello on any terms. Any way she could have him, she conceded painfully, recalling those wanton weeks on Corfu. Any excuse. He knew that but she was only now facing that same fact that pride had a lesser hold on her than he had.
She connected with his blazing golden eyes, sensing his anger, his frustration and mercifully his desire. Desire was there in the smouldering caress of his gaze as it roved over her, lingering on her full mouth, the pouting thrust of her breasts beneath her buttoned cotton top. Even without the fancy frills of the right make-up and the right clothes, he was hungry for her.
‘I am so hot for you, I am burning up,’ Rafaello growled, throwing his shirt aside, exposing the hard hair-roughened expanse of his muscular torso and the hard bronze slab of his flat stomach.
‘Yes.’ Acknowledgement escaped Glory’s already parted lips in a sighing breath for she was melting just watching him strip. Total weakness, total lack of resistance, that was what she was feeling and it was running through her like a burst dam of susceptibility. With hands that were all thumbs she began to pull at the pearlised buttons on her top. Then, losing patience, she tugged it over her head and emerged in time to see him strip off his boxer shorts. She caught her breath and her mouth ran dry at the potent virile proof of his male hunger for her.
Arrested bright blue eyes pinned to him, Rafaello padded over to the bed and reach
ed for her. He took about five seconds to extract her from her combat trousers. Kneeling on the bed, he pulled her to him and let his tongue slide once, twice into the moist depths of her mouth in an erotic penetration that sent the blood thundering through her veins in helpless response and left her trembling.
‘You’re so sexy,’ she whispered unevenly.
‘And you have the most divine body I’ve ever seen,’ Rafaello husked, depriving her of her bra, freeing the ripe swell of her breasts from confinement, shaping his hands to her burgeoning curves with near reverent care.
Is that all? she almost asked, needing to be so much more, but that pained thought was as quickly lost in the rush of pleasure induced by his caressing fingers brushing over her distended pink nipples. The sensation was so intense as to be almost unbearable and she shut her eyes in embarrassment as a moan escaped her.
‘You’re even more sensitive now, amore mia,’ Rafaello murmured thickly, impatient hands dispensing with her panties and then rearranging her so that she lay fully exposed to his plundering gaze.
In dismay she opened her eyes wide, and she moved her arms to cross them protectively over herself. He caught her hands in his and settled them back either side of her. ‘Rafaello!’ she gasped strickenly, painfully aware of her changing shape, needing and wanting to conceal those alterations from too close a scrutiny.
‘Dio mio…you excite the hell out of me,’ Rafaello ground out, raw appreciation in the fascinated appraisal he dealt her prone figure, releasing one of her wrists to run a satisfied hand over the slight swell of her stomach and splay his long fingers possessively there. ‘Those Grazzini genes you insulted are inside you, part of me, part of you—’
‘Pushy genes,’ Glory mumbled, not really knowing what to say because his attitude had taken her by surprise.
Rafaello dealt her a scorching smile that sent her vulnerable heart racing. ‘Strong and assertive, cara mia,’ he countered with amused agreement.
He really did want their baby. For the first time she recognised that reality and, even as relief coursed through her, it brought pain in its wake, for his warmth seemed directed at the child she carried, rather than at her. His child lay at the very heart of his wish to marry her. So when he kissed her there were tears in her eyes, but when he touched her quivering body she could no longer retain such thoughts. Indeed, she was all the more eager to forget and find the only true oblivion she had ever known.
Excitement took her in a fiery rush as he found the throbbing peaks of her breasts, lowered his proud, dark head and tasted the swollen buds, laving them with his tongue, delicately grazing them with his teeth. He was setting her on fire, rousing a tight aching feeling deep in her pelvis, making her gasp at the slow-burn effect of his knowing touch on a body too long starved of sensation.
‘I do want you…I always want you!’ she moaned in sudden shame at her inability to control the wild hunger he had ignited.
Rafaello leant over her like a dark avenging hero, hot golden eyes flaming over her, primal satisfaction emanating from every hard angle of his darkly handsome features. ‘And all I want to do is torture you with pleasure until you beg…’
Shock momentarily stilled the upward rise of her hips, the squirming invitation she could not prevent that close to his lean, powerful frame. Rafaello claimed a devouring kiss from her swollen lips, sending an electrifying current through her sensitised body, and gazed down at her again, connecting with the bewilderment in her passion-glazed eyes. ‘And beg…and beg…until you’re enslaved, amore mia.’
Glory tried and failed to swallow, staring up at him like a rabbit caught in car headlights, certain of destruction but hypnotised. ‘S-sorry?’
Rafaello ran an expert hand down over her quivering length to the very heart of her, where she ached for the merest hint of a touch, and her entire body rose in an eager movement as unstoppable as a tidal wave. Something akin to anger burned in his intent scrutiny as he watched her respond helplessly to that provocative power-play. ‘I was a bloody fool when you were eighteen. I should have taken you to bed. I don’t believe that anything could have parted us then!’
‘R-Rafaello…?’ Glory was startled by the angry regret and bitterness that he made no attempt to hide from her.
‘But we’re together now, amore,’ Rafaello growled, capturing her mouth again and shifting a hair-roughened thigh over her to hold her captive.
‘I love you…’ she gasped, lost in the tormenting hunger he had ignited.
Rafaello tensed and then vented a harsh laugh, scanning her with blistering golden eyes that emanated anger like a forcefield. ‘If you say that one more time I’m walking out on you forever!’
Glory stared up at him, utterly intimidated by that threat. She could feel the tears of rejection welling up. With a roughened imprecation in Italian he curved his hands to her cheekbones and he followed the track of one salty tear with his lips in a disorientatingly tender salutation that bemused her even more. ‘It’s OK…’ he soothed not quite levelly. ‘Really, it’s OK…’