by Lynne Graham
His sculpted mouth compressed. ‘Out... I need to go out. I’m feeling...’ he shifted a fluid brown hand in almost aggressive emphasis ‘...cooped up here.’
Already pale, Maya snatched in a deep quivering breath. ‘Fancy some company?’ she heard herself ask like an over-eager schoolgirl.
Stunning dark golden eyes rich as caramel, Raffaele tensed, his strong jaw clenching. ‘Not tonight, I’m afraid,’ he told her levelly. ‘Tomorrow, we’ll talk... OK?’
No, it wasn’t OK. Maya didn’t want him to go out, didn’t trust him to go out in the parlous state of their already broken marriage. She didn’t want to be around for the talk he had mentioned either. In fact, she wanted to run and keep on running from that possibility because, unhappy though she was with the current state of affairs, it was infinitely better than being deprived of him entirely. And not only did she not recognise herself in those cowardly reactions, she hated herself for that urge to shrink away and hide from a truth that would hurt.
As Raffaele disappeared into the lift, Maya lifted her phone and stabbed a single button. ‘Sal?’ she asked as the head of Raffaele’s security team answered. ‘I need to know where Raffaele is going tonight.’
Troubled silence fell on the line. ‘Mrs Manzini...’
‘Please... I don’t want him to do something stupid!’ Maya gasped.
And Raffaele was perfectly capable of doing something stupid to break himself out of the marriage he felt trapped in. It wasn’t the confinement of the apartment that was making him feel cooped up; no, it was the constraint he had put himself under since she had left the hospital.
‘I’ll text,’ Sal breathed curtly.
‘I promise I won’t tell him how I found out,’ Maya murmured gratefully.
Within minutes the text came, naming a fashionable nightclub that Raffaele owned. And as Maya headed for her room, a voice was screaming in her head that she couldn’t do this, couldn’t run after him, couldn’t force a showdown because that wasn’t the dignified way to deal with a husband who didn’t want to be a husband any more, who had probably never wanted to be a husband even at the start. But as stubborn, defiant and tough as Raffaele was, he was also still her husband.
Maya cursed as she rampaged through her elegant and restrained wardrobe because in the mood she was in, she didn’t want elegant and restrained. She dug out the outfit Raffaele had bought for her that first day and wrinkled her nose at the leather and lace corset top and the tight skirt before throwing both items out onto the bed. If that was what he liked, that was what he was getting, she decided, pulling out sky-high heels and hold-up stockings before heading into the bathroom to do her face.
She needed to do something, not sit around wringing her hands being passive and letting Raffaele make all the major decisions. She was smart, she was strong and he did do crazy impulsive things, so she had to look out for him even if that meant sticking out a foot and tripping him up hard when he threatened to go in the wrong direction. He also needed to learn that she didn’t play games, didn’t close her eyes to avoid seeing what she didn’t want to see and that she wouldn’t dance around the truth when it came to laying down her boundaries.
* * *
When Raffaele saw Maya moving towards him in the club, his own security clearing a path through the crush for her benefit, he momentarily thought he was imagining her. How could Maya have found him? Why would she have followed him and why the heck would she be dressed in a way that was decidedly not her style? For some reason she was also sporting enough diamonds to sink a battleship. Maya, who was no fan of conspicuous consumption or showing off his wealth.
The short skirt put her outrageously long legs out on prominent display, legs that were incredibly shapely from slim knee to delicate ankle. Her round small breasts were swelling over the edge of the corset top in a most provocative show and Raffaele hated that he couldn’t drag his eyes from her. With her hair draped like a sheet of pale satin down her slender back and framing her beautiful face, her green eyes were glittering as brightly as the diamonds in her ears and at her throat, her sultry peach-tinted lips slightly parted. And he knew right then, if he had ever had any doubt, why not a single woman who had approached him had contrived to awaken his interest. No man went happily from a woman who was a hundred out of ten in the desirability stakes and readily settled for less. In the seconds it took Maya to reach him, Raffaele’s slumbering libido raced from zero to sixty, making his heart pound and his trousers tighten.
Rage shot through Maya the instant she saw Raffaele. He wasn’t alone in his VIP velvet-upholstered booth, which was cordoned off from the rest of common humanity. Of course, he wasn’t by himself, not a lone billionaire on the prowl for company. And when it came to company, Raffaele was surrounded by glamorous options. A half-naked redhead with all the chest development that Maya lacked was lounging up against the side of the booth trying to chat him up while stroking his arm, arching her spine back to ensure that her assets jiggled with her every excited breath. An exotic brunette was coiled sinuously up with a giggling blonde on the seat beside him. Maya wasn’t quite sure whether they were with Raffaele or with each other, but it didn’t matter, he was still breaking rules.
As far as Maya was concerned, he wasn’t allowed within twenty feet of a gaggle of sexy, beautiful women without her around or at the very least her permission. And no way was she giving him permission, not while they were married. The cordon was released to allow her free passage and Maya planted herself directly in front of Raffaele. ‘Get rid of your friends,’ she instructed quietly. ‘Unless you want an audience to what I have to say.’
Spellbound by her belligerent attitude, Raffaele dealt her a slow, assessing smile and dismissed the company he had gathered. ‘Madonna mia... To what do I owe the honour, bellezza mia?’
‘I wouldn’t take that tone unless you want to be drenched by a drink,’ Maya bent down to say.
Raffaele snaked out both arms and tumbled her bodily down on his lap. Maya fought that repositioning, which put her in a more submissive position, and wrenched herself over him instead, her tight skirt ripping at the split in the back as she knelt across him, green eyes angry and determined.
‘What’s the problem?’ Raffaele asked, carefully smoothing down the torn skirt as best he could because he didn’t want anyone else catching even a glimpse of her panties or her stocking tops.
Maya looked into gleaming golden eyes and spoke from the heart. ‘We’re married. You’re exclusively mine and you’re breaking the rules.’
‘We don’t have any rules now,’ Raffaele argued tightly, struggling to suppress the bold arousal her behaviour had induced, wondering if there was a streak of crazy in his bloodline because he was finding her take-no-prisoners public confrontation the sexiest move ever. You’re exclusively mine. Why did that outrageous statement turn him on even harder and faster? When had he ever wanted to belong to any woman?
‘You only get your freedom back if I’m pregnant,’ Maya reminded him. ‘And I’m not pregnant!’
Sheer unvarnished shock reverberated through Raffaele’s big powerful frame.
‘And you’re in default in this marriage contract too,’ Maya added informatively. ‘You’re not even trying to get me pregnant.’
‘In default? That’s an...interesting take on the situation,’ Raffaele conceded, seriously stunned by the dialogue. ‘I wasn’t aware that any further “trying” could still be on the agenda. In fact, for the first time ever with a woman, I was attempting to do the decent thing.’
‘I don’t want decent. I don’t want apologies or pep talks or excuses from you. I want a baby,’ Maya interposed bluntly. ‘It’s very simple.’
‘Your grandfather can keep his technology company. I’m walking away from this unholy mess. I started it and I’m finishing it,’ Raffaele stressed in a driven undertone.
‘No, you’re not. You don’t get to make
this decision for me. I still want a baby...your baby. Business doesn’t come into this for me,’ Maya protested. ‘That company has nothing to do with this any more. Try to keep up, Raffaele...you’re falling behind. If you try to walk away without fulfilling your obligations to me—’
‘Obligations?’ Raffaele growled.
Maya laced possessive fingers into his tousled black hair and ground down slowly onto his lap, discovering with secret satisfaction as she met the hard thrust of his arousal why he had been holding her off him. He wanted her, he was just fighting the urge and striving to hide his susceptibility from her.
He had married her, made her fall in love with him and given her a baby she had miscarried. Then in the aftermath, when she was at her most vulnerable, he had suddenly backed off, cruelly cutting the connection he had taught her to crave. Now all her hormones were in uproar and she wanted stuff she shouldn’t want but couldn’t help wanting. She loved him, she wanted him, oh, dear heaven, did she want him, and she also wanted another baby. Not as a replacement, because she would never forget the child she had lost, but she needed a child she could hold in her heart as part of them both after he had ended their marriage.
Big hands framed her hectically flushed face. ‘That’s really what you want most?’
Her eyes stung with tears, but she blinked them back fiercely, a feverish glitter in her green eyes. What she wanted most was his love but that wasn’t a very likely development and she was willing to settle for the best she could get. Slowly she nodded in silent serious confirmation.
Raffaele crushed her soft mouth under his and kissed her breathless. And holy hell, he could kiss, she acknowledged.
Her heart was hammering so hard he could feel it against his chest. The hunger flooding him was overwhelming, almost unbearable in its intensity. This wasn’t what he had signed up for but giving Maya what she wanted most was what he wanted to do. That felt right, all of a sudden continuing their marriage felt right instead of wrong to him and he consigned every other concern to hell. He had overthought stuff, reached the wrong conclusions, somehow forced her to come to him with a demand. But if it put Maya back in his bed, did she really think he had been likely to argue? And why, underneath the seething hunger he was experiencing, did he feel hollow, even disappointed, when he should be on a high?
CHAPTER NINE
‘YOU DON’T NEED to carry me!’ Maya scolded as Raffaele scooped her into his arms to carry her out of the limousine into the lift Sal already had waiting for them.
‘Your skirt’s ripped. I don’t want you flashing those beautiful legs for anyone but me,’ Raffaele whispered, his mouth close to her ear and lingering to tug at her soft ear lobe and then settle against the quivering pulse point on her neck that sent her temperature rocketing.
Maya had forgotten about that ripping sound she had heard. She was still in shock at the confrontation she had dared to stage and even deeper in shock at its unexpected success. Of course, Raffaele liked bold, he liked honest, he liked straightforward and that was what she had been, telling him what she wanted upfront, leaving no room for misunderstandings, keeping it simple. But there were still some questions to be asked, she reminded herself firmly.
He carried her into the master bedroom where he had left her sleeping alone since their return to London.
‘Were you planning to sleep with another woman tonight?’ Maya asked bluntly.
‘No. I still feel way too married to consider any form of infidelity,’ Raffaele admitted with convincing cool. ‘I just couldn’t face staying in tonight, so close to you and yet not being free to touch you. It plays on my nerves.’
‘You’re the one who settled himself into a separate bedroom!’ Maya reminded him helplessly.
Raffaele settled her down on the bed. ‘I thought I was being considerate. I thought the last thing you would want was me anywhere near you!’
‘Why? It’s not your fault I miscarried,’ Maya countered gently. ‘It happened and it hit both of us hard but I’m ready to try again...but you’re not?’
‘Once we were in the separate bedrooms it just seemed to make better sense to continue that way and let it all go,’ Raffaele breathed in a raw undertone. ‘I made a mistake forcing you into this marriage. I was trying to put it right as much as I could for your benefit.’
‘I don’t want better sense,’ Maya whispered tremulously, welded to the scorching golden turbulence in his eyes and the amount of emotion he was struggling to contain, thinking yet again of how seriously she had underestimated him and his capacity for feeling and of how that could yet prove to be an insuperable barrier between them. Raffaele was feeling stuff again and he didn’t like it: his frustration was palpable. There was no guarantee that once he came to terms with what he was feeling he would still even be attracted to her, was there?
‘I don’t want sense,’ she said again. ‘I just want you.’
But that definitely wasn’t the truth, Raffaele thought grimly, gazing down into her anxious green eyes with a sharp inner pang: she didn’t want him for his own sake. She wanted him to get her pregnant and ultimately, hopefully give her another baby. It wasn’t that fine a distinction either, he reasoned, considering that any fertile man could have provided the same service. Even so, he would settle for it because he had never wanted any woman the way he wanted Maya and living with her without being intimate with her, he had decided, was an unbearable situation to be in on a daily basis.
And if he had Maya back in his bed again, life would feel normal instead of empty and confusing again, wouldn’t it? In reality he suspected that it was that sense of normality, occupation and focus that he craved even more than sex. And now he could stop agonising over such intangible responses because they would soon die away again. Sex was simply sex and Maya simply happened to be the sexiest woman alive. Of course, it was only sex with her that he was missing. Why did he persist in seeing complexity where there was none? She wanted a baby and, if he was honest with himself, he did too now. The child they had lost had marked him as well, creating a space where once there hadn’t been a space in his world. There was nothing complicated about any of that, was there? ‘You’re exclusively mine,’ she had said. That was what had stirred up all the weird feelings infiltrating him. He didn’t belong to her and she didn’t belong to him, regardless of the rings they wore. But if another man so much as looked at Maya, he would kill him. That went without saying. That was normal, sexually possessive behaviour, he told himself calmly.
With a renewed sense of purpose, Raffaele gently turned Maya over and unzipped her skirt. ‘I thought you didn’t like this outfit.’
‘I thought you did.’
‘Oh, you put it on for me, did you?’ Raffaele laughed softly as he unlaced the back of the leather top. ‘Your seduction outfit? I like it even more. But to be brutally frank, anything you wear has the same effect on me. With you, I’m sort of basic in that field, bellezza mia.’
Maya tensed as he turned her back round to face him again. She gazed up at him, feeling that wild feverish flutter of excitement burning through her like a brand. ‘Basic works for me.’
‘It shouldn’t. You deserve the flowers and the violins and the smooth stuff,’ Raffaele told her earnestly. ‘I wouldn’t even know where to begin with all that.’
‘You’re doing just fine,’ Maya breathed chokily.
‘In the club,’ Raffaele muttered raggedly, his nostrils flaring as he shaped his hands to the firm swell of her breasts, catching the straining peaks between his fingers, ‘I just wanted to smash you up against the nearest wall and get inside you again. I was so turned on, I felt like an animal. That’s what you do to me.’
A little quiver snaked through Maya as her nipples tightened and sent a darting arrow of heat down into her pelvis, making her shift, achingly conscious of the damp heat between her thighs. ‘That’s OK.’
‘What would you know about it?�
�� He wrenched off his shirt, angled up his lean hips to unzip his pants, vaulting off the bed to remove them. ‘You’ve only had me...not the best introduction.’
‘I like how you make me feel,’ she told him confidently, determined not to hide from either him or herself when it came to that reality because he made her feel alive as nobody else ever had. It was as though she had gone through life sleeping until he came along, shattering her expectations but still somehow managing to steal her heart.
Raffaele closed his lips to a pouting pink nipple as he shimmied off her last garment, long fingers tracing the delicate folds between her thighs, and her head fell back and she gasped, hips rising in supplication, her whole body tingling with thrilling arousal. Slender fingers lacing into his black hair, she dragged him up to her and found his mouth again for herself, hungrily, urgently tasting him.
Arranging her beneath him, he drove into her hard and fast, stretching her with his length and girth. A rippling shockwave of delight convulsed her womb. It was electrifying, demanding, everything her desperate body craved. He delivered with every forceful thrust of his lean, powerful body until she was riding wave after wave of sensation. It was no gentle reintroduction to their intimacy; it was wild and elemental and incredibly exciting. He shot her to an explosive climax that sent pulsing paroxysms of pleasure rolling through her and she came back from that slowly with his name still on her parted lips.
Afterwards, Maya gazed up into his lean, breathtaking face, the line of faint colour accentuating his exotic high cheekbones, the stubble outlining his wide masculine mouth, and then she collided with his dark deep-set eyes, a scorching sunset gold with satisfaction and her every thought died away.
‘I feel better,’ Raffaele confided, smoothing her damp hair back from her brow and then momentarily lifting back from her to gather her tumbled hair off the pillow and push it out of her way so that she could cool down. A wolfish smile slashed his beautiful mouth as he held her possessively close. ‘So much better, bellezza mia. Maybe you’ll let me take you to visit your sister now.’