Millionaires: Rafaello's Mistress / Damiano's Return / Contract Baby

‘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 most 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?’

‘Not in lifts or on desks,’ Glory agreed shakily, sliding off the wooden surface in haste and smoothing her rucked clothing down with trembling hands.

‘I wasn’t actually planning to consummate our agreement on the library desk—’

Too self-conscious to look at him, her cheeks hotter than hellfire, Glory shrugged a slight shoulder in a jerky, defensive motion. ‘How was I supposed to know what you were planning? You embarrassed me—’

‘Tell me, do you know what foreplay is?’

If Glory had been feeling overheated before he said that in the charged tone of a male trying hard not to laugh at what he obviously found amusing, her temperature hit boiling point in receipt of that mocking enquiry.

‘I do know you’re not talking about golf, if that’s what you mean!’ she launched back at him angrily, bright blue eyes sparking fierily. ‘But I’m not here to be the butt of your smart-mouth comments, Rafaello Grazzini—’

‘And you’re not here to cavort on my desk either. Sorry, couldn’t resist it, cara,’ Rafaello drawled, lean, strong face expressionless. ‘I think what we need here is a list—’

‘A … what?’

‘Of places where sexual activity is forbidden. And, while we’re on the subject, possibly you ought to consider throwing in news of any other strong aversions before I share a bed with you.’

Encountering those brilliant, beautiful dark eyes, Glory paled. ‘You think this is funny, don’t you?’

‘No, I’m fascinated. In my entire experience of women, I have never had a conversation quite like this,’ Rafaello assured her, smooth as silk. ‘It looks as if your mother is going to have the last laugh on me after all. And please do not take that comment as any form of insult to her memory.’

Glory swallowed hard. Her throat thickened. She felt more like bursting into tears. Just then she did not need the reminder of her late mother. Not on the very night she was being expected to abandon those principles. She saw that nerves and shyness had made her overreact to an unfamiliar and seemingly threatening situation. He had only wanted to kiss her, maybe touch her a little. But she had thrown a three-act tragedy and made an ass of herself in the process.

‘I’m glad I’ve given you a laugh,’ she muttered, cut to the bone.

Rafaello released his breath on a slight hiss and reached for her tightly knotted fingers to urge her back to him. She moved only when the pressure got too much to withstand. With a rueful groan, he murmured, ‘I wasn’t laughing—’

‘You were,’ she mumbled tightly, the tears threatening.

‘You’re wearing a real in-your-face sexy outfit. I didn’t think a woman who dressed like that would take fright quite so easily,’ Rafaello admitted above her downbent head.

‘I did not take fright,’ Glory bit out in a driven tone, picturing a panicking Victorian spinster screaming on a stool at the sight of a mouse.

‘OK … you took offence, but it’s over,’ Rafaello rephrased in his deep, husky drawl. ‘Go on upstairs. After I’ve called your father, I’ll join you.’

Glory froze, all her nervous tension returning. ‘Where?’

‘In my bedroom. Of course, you’ve never been upstairs. I’ll take you up—’

‘No, just tell me where,’ Glory interrupted tautly.

A phone began to ring. Rafaello released an imprecation in his own language, hesitated and then strode impatiently back over to the desk. ‘It’s my private line. I should answer it in case it’s something important.’

‘Where?’ she prompted again, grabbing up her coat and sticking her arms into the sleeves.

‘First door off the main landing. Stay,’ Rafaello urged as he reached for the phone and, studying her, he surprised her by stretching out an inviting hand.