by Lynne Graham
‘You don’t look like you’re listening,’ Vivi complained.
‘I’m listening,’ Raffaele growled.
‘Well, you don’t have to be so bad-tempered about it!’ Vivi tossed at him, pushing away her empty plate and studying him expectantly, her attention welded to his lean, darkly handsome features. ‘I’m trying to explain.’
‘I didn’t ask you to explain anything,’ Raffaele incised. ‘In fact, I think it would be much more sensible if we avoid discussing the past.’
Vivi groaned at that discouraging response and rolled her eyes heavenward again.
‘Try not to roll your eyes...it irritates me,’ Raffaele warned her.
Vivi clenched her teeth together hard and thrust back her chair to stand up, lifting her champagne glass and saluting him with an ironic look. ‘What a charmer you can be,’ she replied thinly. ‘As I was saying...’
‘Very, very slowly,’ Raffaele slotted in drily.
‘Because you weren’t listening!’ Vivi fired back at him in sharp rebuke. ‘And there’s no point me talking if you’re not listening!’
Raffaele stood up and watched her walk aimlessly across the room, the short skirt swishing above her long slender thighs and accentuating her curvy little behind, the ridiculous shoes merely making the perfection of her legs and delicate ankles more obvious. He released his breath in a controlled hiss, tense and angry about the level of his arousal and on another level outraged by the way she kept up the backchat.
‘Get to the point,’ he urged impatiently.
Vivi shot him a furious glance over one slim shoulder. ‘And I thought you had such great manners.’
‘Depends on the company I’m keeping.’ Raffaele compressed his sculpted lips, sentencing himself to silence once he appreciated that fighting with Vivi was only going to make his goal of marrying her more difficult to achieve.
Vivi spun, blue eyes violet with rage. ‘And we all know, of course, what kind of company you think I am.’
‘You were telling me about your employment in the brothel.’
‘The brothel was at the back in an attached building that I never had access to. It had a separate entrance. How was I supposed to know it was there?’ Vivi demanded, emptying her glass and setting it down with a sharp little snap at the end of the polished table. ‘I worked in the modelling agency, which was a legitimate modelling agency.’
‘Legitimate? A place with a photographer who persuaded Arianna to take her clothes off for the camera for glamour photos?’ Raffaele scoffed with disdain. ‘Do I really look that stupid?’
‘You may not look it but you are!’ Vivi flashed back without hesitation. ‘Arianna made an unwise decision but that was her call, not mine. She didn’t discuss stripping for the camera with me at any time. All I did was make the stupid appointment for her.’
‘And did you get commission for luring her into the studio?’ Raffaele derided.
‘Good grief, Raffaele... I was a receptionist, not a pimp!’ Vivi gasped. ‘I didn’t lure her anywhere. Why would I have?’
‘Because those naked photos were a means of profit in unscrupulous hands,’ Raffaele told her grimly. ‘I had to buy them back at a hugely inflated price to protect Arianna because the contract she unwisely signed had small print she didn’t bother to read.’
Vivi nodded reluctantly, frustrated that she seemed to be getting nowhere with him when it came to the matter of her own lack of involvement in his sister’s misfortunes at the agency. ‘Well, I’m sorry about that but it’s still got nothing to do with me. I was just one of the administrative staff.’
‘Why can’t you just come clean?’ Raffaele raked at her in a raw undertone. ‘I’m not going to tell tales to your grandfather. You were not a receptionist, you were one of the models doing escort work on the side.’
‘A model?’ Vivi exclaimed in angry disbelief, her hands coiling into furious fists. ‘I’ve never modelled in my life!’
‘Well, then, if you’re sticking to that story,’ Raffaele murmured in a silky purr that ran down her spine like a spectral caress, ‘perhaps you’d care to explain how the press managed to capture you on camera wearing a designer outfit that they priced as having cost thousands of pounds? How did a humble receptionist afford clothes that expensive?’
Vivi frowned and rolled her eyes at him again. ‘She didn’t. Everything I wore once belonged to your sister. She cleared out her wardrobe and insisted on giving me her cast-offs. As we’re almost the exact same size, it was wonderful for me because, fresh from university, I didn’t own many clothes and Arianna was sick of seeing me in the same dress when we went out.’
Raffaele had lost colour. ‘I don’t believe you.’
‘Phone her and ask if you must have verification,’ Vivi urged angrily. ‘My goodness, Raffaele, can’t you accept and believe anything I tell you?’
‘You were wearing second-hand clothing?’ Raffaele pressed incredulously.
‘I buy second-hand stuff in charity shops all the time...or I used to,’ Vivi muttered in the spirit of honesty integral to her outspoken nature. ‘Are you always so prejudiced against people who have less money than you? Do you always think the worst of them?’
‘I am not prejudiced,’ Raffaele bit out grittily.
‘Oh, yes, you are!’ Vivi hurled back, stalking up to him to poke a forefinger right into his shirt front. ‘If I cut you in half, I’d find prejudice running right through you in a seam of gold. According to your view of the world, only rich people have principles and self-respect. You thought the worst of me without good reason.’
‘I had good reason,’ Raffaele framed wrathfully. ‘And don’t touch me again.’
‘It was just a tiny little poke!’ Vivi’s forefinger stabbed his chest again because she couldn’t resist the temptation. ‘Stop being so blasted stuffy!’
Raffaele’s eyes flashed like a storm warning laced with lightning and he grabbed her up against him. ‘I’ll show you stuffy.’
‘Fighting words!’ Vivi scorned.
And then his mouth crashed down on hers and the world went dark and she teetered in her high heels, legs suddenly as boneless as grass stalks. His tongue pierced the moist interior of her mouth and set off a cascade of sensations that made her every skin cell tingle with excitement. Her eyes slid closed, her whole body gripped by an elemental force of pleasurable anticipation. She tried to fight it off, for an instant she even tried to pull back but her limbs were boneless, her body overheated and desperate to be crushed to the hard, unyielding strength of his.
‘What are we doing?’ she muttered shakily, briefly coming up for air.
‘What we should have done the minute you arrived,’ Raffaele growled, knowing he was dangerously out of control but unexpectedly enjoying that sensation of risk.
‘What cave did you come out of this morning?’ Vivi sniped while locked to him like a second skin, innately aware of every muscular and powerful line of his big body.
Raffaele stared down at the sultry reddened line of her full mouth and the warning voices in the back of his head receded into silence. He wanted her. He wanted her as he had never wanted any woman before and he wasn’t in the mood to deny himself. And colliding with those violet eyes clouded with passion as he went in to taste her mouth again, he knew that she wanted him just as much.
Good grief, he could kiss, Vivi conceded in a daze. Her head swam while her body craved the simple pleasure of being touched. Not something she had ever allowed herself to feel before but then she hadn’t been tempted before. Now wildly conscious of the heat gathering at the heart of her and the tightness of her nipples, she was trembling, stunned by the effect he had on her. An explosion of heat mushroomed up inside her as he worked her mouth, penetrating, withdrawing, setting up a chain reaction through her quivering length.
A lean hand probed beneath her skirt and she stopped breat
hing as he touched her. Without her volition her thighs locked round his hand and she gasped, stroked in that one place that drove her absolutely crazy, her lips parting beneath his as his fingers tugged away the crotch of her knickers and located the dampness she couldn’t control. Her body jackknifed in his hold and she jerked, gasping in response.
‘You’re incredibly sexy,’ Raffaele husked.
And Vivi gazed up at him, helplessly impressed by any form of compliment from Raffaele. The space between her legs was pounding out a drumbeat of craving stronger than anything she had ever felt and she couldn’t think straight, she couldn’t think beyond that terrible unrelenting hunger assailing her. ‘So are you,’ she muttered dazedly.
‘I have never wanted any woman the way I want you,’ he admitted in a driven undertone.
Vivi’s eyes gleamed with satisfaction because there was a wonderful symmetry about that admission. He wanted her as much as she wanted him. He didn’t like feeling that way any more than she did and that made them fully equal for the very first time...
CHAPTER FOUR
RAFFAELE LIFTED HER up off her feet into his arms and a stifled sound of surprise escaped her. But his sheer physical strength, not to mention his assurance, exhilarated her and sent her mind roaming in all sorts of intimate directions.
‘A caveman lurks inside that fancy business suit of yours,’ Vivi whispered, gazing up at him with instinctive appreciation as he settled her down on the ornamental sofa below one of the windows.
A caveman who only emerged around her, Raffaele adjusted, refusing to think. Even so, he didn’t do casual sex. Nor did he succumb to sudden impulses or give way to temptation. But, nevertheless, here he was with Vivi in his arms and a fire alarm wouldn’t have persuaded him to put her down again anywhere but on a horizontal surface. Some stuff didn’t need to be agonised over, some things between men and women weren’t complicated, he reasoned fiercely. Sex was just sex and their physical connection was remarkable and could well lead to them reaching agreement on the wedding her grandfather was demanding. Do you really believe that? a voice asked in his hind brain. And he knew he didn’t, but he didn’t much care either. Aroused to the point of pain, he was way beyond utilising logic.
For a split second, when he came down beside her, Vivi froze because her natural defences were suddenly all loudly screeching, ‘What are you doing?’
Raffaele, however, was more perceptive than she would’ve given him credit for because instead of grabbing her again he tilted her face up, scanning her anxious eyes. ‘Cold feet?’ he prompted, tensing at that prospect.
‘I don’t get cold feet,’ Vivi proclaimed with pride, feeling foolish about her momentary indecision. Insane curiosity was pulling at her because she badly wanted to know what intimacy would be like with him. If he was using her, she would also be using him and it was a plus that she would never have to see him again.
‘Madre di Dio... I hope not,’ Raffaele countered with heartfelt honesty, bending down to taste her mouth again with hungry, driving urgency.
Straight away the conflagration of heat came back and blew her away. Thought hung suspended while an expert hand disposed of the barriers between them. In fact, Vivi didn’t notice because Vivi was in a world of her own, a world of fiercely seductive physical need and sensation. He pushed her top out of his path and palmed her breasts, addressing his mouth to her straining pink nipples, and her temperature rose to an insane height, her body writhing of its own volition while he teased the tender flesh between her thighs with a skill that she was defenceless against. She gasped, moaned, clawed him down to her with an impatient hand, pale slender fingers locking into the crisp luxuriance of his short black hair.
Excitement gripped her in a heady wave as her hips rose in an arc of colossal craving, as if there were some distant point she would die if she didn’t reach. He crushed her parted lips, delved deep with his tongue, a shudder of violent arousal raking through his lean, powerful frame while she yanked at his tie, almost strangling him before he ripped it off for her. She needed to touch his skin, she needed to touch him so badly that not being able to actually hurt. While he kissed her, she struggled with his shirt until he tore it free, sending several buttons bouncing, unnoticed by either of them.
‘You’re burning me up,’ he groaned.
Vivi spread her hands wide on his lean bronzed chest, overpowered by the heat of his skin and his sheer muscular development as he leant over her obligingly. ‘You are hot,’ she whispered tongue-in-cheek.
And he got it, a sudden slashing grin banishing the often forbidding aspect of his lean, strong face, the febrile line of colour over his exotic cheekbones darkening. His thumb stroked across the most sensitive spot on her whole body and she jerked, suddenly mindless again, and his mouth engulfed hers. She wanted more, more, simply more. Nothing more elaborate distinguished her febrile thoughts. His sheer passion had shocked her and then delighted her but the excitement he evoked overwhelmed her.
Raffaele didn’t have a condom. She would be on the pill, he told himself, reluctant to take a break for a trip upstairs in case the impulsive beauty in his arms changed her mind—and it would kill him if she changed her mind! Of course, she would be on the pill or the implant or one of the other contraceptive options available to women, he assumed, tilting her slender thighs back with impatient hands and plunging into her with all the strength and energy of a man turned on to the point of madness.
A startling yelp escaped Vivi as a jolt of pain greeted that intimate invasion and she squeezed her eyes tightly closed, mortified by her outburst.
Raffaele had frozen in the act of penetration. ‘Did I hurt you?’
‘No, of course you didn’t,’ she declared, wanting to conceal her lack of experience, which struck her as deeply uncool at her age.
‘Then...er...why—?’ he began.
‘Got carried away by enthusiasm,’ Vivi lied but she could feel her face burning like hellfire at the fib. ‘That hurt,’ she mouthed in total silence as she buried her face in his neck, drinking in the achingly sexy scent of him with all the enthusiasm she had claimed because he smelled so incredibly good, all hot and musky with an undertone of designer cologne that was yummy.
‘Grazie a Dio... Thank God,’ Raffaele groaned in relief, shifting his lean hips in a motion that stirred up nerve cells that had run screaming from his initial thrust, sending instead an intriguing cascade of simmering sensation travelling through her lower body.
Her tension evaporated, liquid heat sizzling through her veins, lighting her up from inside out. He slid deeper into her and began to move and the hot, sweet pleasure began to gather in her pelvis, building and building like a fire being teased into flames. A kind of wonder gripped her as the frantic throes of arousal rose again and he released a guttural groan of satisfaction, muttering something indistinct in Italian, leaning down to crush her mouth under his again. For an instant she had thought in disappointment that he was done, that that was that, that all the fuss she had heard about was just stories to temp the inexperienced and then his pace picked up and the whole mood changed.
Raffaele rose over her, tipping her thighs back over his shoulders to pound into her in a raw demonstration of uncontrolled hunger. Her head fell back, the heat in her lower body spreading and mushrooming up inside her fast in a shocking surge that couldn’t be contained. Her heart started to race, breathlessness tightening her throat as the excitement climbed and her body clenched around him with an unbearable tightness. His urgency infiltrated every inch of her, dominating and controlling her in a way she had never dreamt, and then the heat exploded inside her and sent her flying. Contractions of pleasure convulsed her in an intoxicating wave that made her cry out in surprise and fall back, sated, in delirious delight, to revel in the aftershocks.
‘That was incredible,’ Raffaele said for her, brushing her tumbled copper curls back from her damp brow, his dark deep voi
ce raw and breathless as he lifted back from her to release her from his crushing weight.
An odd little silence fell and Vivi lifted eyelids that felt heavy because she was in a drowsy daze after that insane surge of sensual pleasure. Raffaele was frowning down at her. ‘There’s blood on you...’
A deep flush of mortification swept up over Vivi’s expressive face, her consternation unhidden. She sat up in haste to hug her knees, her mane of curls tumbling round her like a cloak. ‘Is there?’ she tried to say coolly but her voice emerged as hesitant and awkward as she felt. ‘I was a virgin. I wasn’t expecting actual bl—’
‘A...virgin?’ Raffaele exclaimed incredulously, ready to argue with her statement and then freezing to logically consider the facts, not to mention her grandfather’s warning. A warning to which he had not paid the slightest heed, he acknowledged sickly, because he had discounted the older man’s view of his grandchild where it conflicted with his own convictions. To have his convictions suddenly proved utterly wrong when he least expected it wasn’t an experience that Raffaele had had very often in life and it absolutely knocked him sideways.
‘Yes, no big deal,’ Vivi dismissed hurriedly, scrambling off the sofa to gather up her clothing and pull it on at speed, while simultaneously attempting to shrug a careless shoulder.
‘It was a very big deal if you were still a virgin at your age,’ Raffaele contradicted without hesitation.
‘I was just never that into...er...sex,’ Vivi muttered in a quelling tone. ‘And don’t ask me why I’m different with you because I don’t know the answer to that.’
‘It’s called chemistry,’ Raffaele breathed, still struggling to get a handle on the sheer shock value of Vivi, with her diamond-studded navel and Perspex heels, being a complete innocent. ‘It affected my judgement as well.’
Vivi shrugged again. ‘What’s done is done.’
She sounded very young and very sure of that and Raffaele suppressed a groan, suddenly feeling very much older than his thirty years as he zipped his trousers. ‘It may not be because in the grip of that chemistry I made a rash decision. Assuming that you would be on birth control and because I had nothing conveniently available, I omitted to use contraception.’