“Stop crowding me. Stop…” A panicked gasp fell from her mouth. “This is a bad idea on so many levels.”
Every time he came near, he could see the pulse fluttering madly in her neck. See her breaths hitch in and out. Feel warmth arc between them.
But despite the attraction, he was beginning to believe she wanted nothing to do with him. The thought rankled.
He’d never been vain, but no woman had ever resented his attentions. Not since he had become taller and broader than any boy he had known in his teens. Not since he had remade his family’s fortune ten times over. Not since he’d become one of the most powerful men in Milan. “What is a bad idea?” he asked, closing the distance between them once again.
“Why would Gio involve Enzo and Stefano even indirectly if he knew how much you loathed him? You were right, he…”
“Manipulated us, si,” Raphael finished for her.
It burned Raphael that Gio would use Stefano to rope him in, but Pia was right. Unless Raphael did something to calm Gio down, his schemes would only get wilder. No measure would be unacceptable if Gio thought he was doing it for their good.
If he thought it would push Raphael into taking Pia off his hands.
“Then you know why we can’t—”
“Let Gio think he’s been successful. Let the whole world think you’ve beguiled me,” said Raphael.
“How do you think I feel knowing that he went through this elaborate charade to…coerce you into this with me? As if I were useless inventory he wanted to move? As if I were a pawn to entice the mighty King?”
“He’s manipulative, si, but it doesn’t mean he’s not worried.”
Shaking her head, she backed away. “But I don’t like—”
Before she could utter another word, Raphael caught her upper arms, tugged her toward him. “I told you what I would do if you did that,” he said with a growl before he touched his lips to hers in a soft buss.
He only meant to shock her, he told himself. To show her that being attracted to him wasn’t the end of the world. That her idea was indeed the perfect solution for now.
Except all his reasons flew away the minute her mouth stilled under his.
Her hands caught on his chest. The long lashes cast crescent shadows on her cheeks. But it was her wide eyes that snagged Raphael. The slumberous desire in them. The soft mewl of pleasure that fell from her mouth as her palms moved and settled over his chest. His heart thundered like a wild beast under her palms, her body’s warmth slowly infiltrating his.
One kiss… All he wanted was one kiss.
One taste of the tantalizing lushness of her mouth. One taste to see if she was as sweet as she sounded.
One moment with the woman who stared at him like no other did. As if he were her deepest fantasy.
“Raphael…” Her entreaty incensed him. How dare she walk into his domain and turn him upside down?
Fingers curled around her nape, he tilted her face and slid his tongue over her trembling lower lip.
She moaned into his mouth—a tremulous whimper that heated his blood. And shuddered. Her body softened and his hardened. Fitting his mouth flush against hers, he moved it this way and that. Heat stirred from that soft friction and her fingers became stiff against his chest. Digging and pressing. Grasping.
He kissed her mouth again and again, a soft slide, a hard press, teasing and taunting, somehow controlling the feral hunger blooming in his blood. “Open your mouth, tesoro,” he pleaded, every muscle curling in heated anticipation.
Her body arched into his touch even as she said, “They’re watching…please…”
And yet, she pressed closer, until her small breasts were plastered against his chest. Until her thigh was encased between his own. He stroked his hands up and down her back, soothing those infinite tremors, willing her to take the leap. Mindless hunger consumed him. “Give in, bella. Kiss me.”
And merciful God above, she did.
Slowly. Softly.
Like a whisper of a butterfly’s wing, she pressed a tentative kiss at the corner of his mouth, flicked his lower lip with the tip of her tongue. From one corner of his mouth to the other, she kept kissing him until it felt like there was a hot poker inside of his own body. Until the control he was exercising spewed hot shivers all through him.