Rafaello's Mistress

by Lynne Graham

  So that was how he had reasoned it all out to satisfy himself as to her guilt and greed. It was a tidy reading of past events but it was not what had happened. Then she had been foolish to hope that Rafaello would even consider accepting her word over his father’s.

  Letting his allegations lie unchallenged, for she saw no good reason to continue a losing battle, Glory said flatly, ‘I meant what I said downstairs…I’m leaving. If you’re so keen to have a mistress, why don’t you ask Lady Fiona? She seemed more than willing!’

  ‘For no good reason that my brain can comprehend, I want you much more.’ Rafaello strolled away from the door at a leisurely pace.

  ‘I’m not getting mixed up with a man who is carrying on with other women—’

  ‘As far as I can see, my bed’s empty… Fiona and I have a history, but that’s not something I intend to discuss with you, cara.’ Rafaello came to a halt only inches away from her and reached for the long plait curling over her shoulder with a calm hand.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Glory spat, feeling threatened by his proximity.

  ‘I like the mermaid hair loose.’

  ‘Do you think I care what you like?’

  ‘I believe you can learn if I give you lessons in easy stages, bella mia.’

  She encountered sizzling dark golden eyes and her breath snarled up in her throat. His fingers were busy unravelling her hair. All she had to do to bring an end to that liberty was put some distance between them, but she stayed where she was. ‘I’m no good at learning what I don’t want to learn.’ Glory recognized the edge of desperation in her own voice. ‘Let me go home. This is not going to work, Rafaello—’

  ‘Let me be the judge of that—’

  ‘But you said you wanted an experienced lover,’ Glory reminded him in a last-ditch attempt to persuade him that she was not the kind of woman he really wanted. ‘I’m an amateur—’

  ‘Well, I didn’t want a professional,’ Rafaello told her, quick as a flash with the repartee.

  Her colour heightened. ‘I’m a virgin.’

  The lean fingers engaged in slowly disentangling her hair stilled. ‘That’s not even funny.’

  She gritted her teeth. ‘I wasn’t trying to be—’

  Rafaello cupped her elbows to hold her still in front of him. He gazed down at her with wondering eyes. ‘If you were Pinocchio, your nose would reach as far as the front door. A virgin? You? Even five years back, I wasn’t entirely convinced by the purity pleas but I gave you the benefit of the doubt. I could hardly argue.’

  Glory breathed very deep. ‘What makes you so sure that I’m not?’

  ‘You’re too sexy,’ Rafaello responded without hesitation. ‘You move, you walk and you talk like a woman who knows her own body—’

  ‘I’ve lived inside it a long time—’

  ‘Virgins are a rarefied species. I’ve never met one your age—’

  ‘You ask every woman you meet, do you?’ Glory snapped, out of all patience and increasingly offended and angry rather than embarrassed. As she pulled her arms free Rafaello settled his lean, strong hands onto her rigid shoulders instead. ‘Well, it’s about time you woke up to the fact that there are quite a few women who don’t believe in putting sex on a level with having a takeaway—’

  ‘I don’t eat takeaways either. I am irredeemably attached to the gastronomic delights provided by my French chef. Tell me, are you trying to make me feel guilty about our arrangement? Is that why you’re suddenly telling whoppers the size of Jonah’s whale?’ Rafaello enquired with sardonic bite. ‘If I thought you were a virgin I’d run like hell. But I know you can’t be. I know it the way I know the earth is round.’

  That seemed fairly conclusive. But he had hurt her. It hurt her even more to realise that he had even doubted her innocence five years earlier. He was such a cynic, but more than anything else he was revealing that he had always seen her just as other men saw her: in the most demeaning light. As a blonde bombshell, a sure thing, not too bright and bound to be promiscuous. But at least he had explained Fiona Woodrow’s presence to her satisfaction, hadn’t he?

  Glory worried at her full lower lip with her teeth and looked up at him in sudden Stark appeal. ‘I just don’t want to be your mistress—’

  ‘You really ought to stop me taking your dress off, then. I warn you, once I catch a glimpse of delectable bare skin I will use every trick in the book to get you horizontal.’

  So intent on her troubled thoughts had Glory been that she hadn’t noticed that he had unzipped her dress. Now she gazed down in frank confusion as he eased the garment slowly from her shoulders and down over her slender arms, exposing the pouting swell of breasts cupped in white lace. ‘Rafaello, n-no…’

  ‘I can put my hand on my heart right now and admit that nothing has ever turned me on harder and faster than your gorgeous breasts,’ Rafaello confessed with earthy male appreciation.

  Conscious of him with every fibre of her being, Glory trembled. Unprompted, the dress drifted down over her hands and dropped to her feet. She recognized the burning hunger in his intent gaze and the most terrible physical weakness flooded her. All natural modesty was overborne by the realisation that he was admiring her, appreciating her. The wanton side of her nature adored that and thrilled to the reassurance that he liked what he was seeing. Then it was what she had always secretly sought from him. She had always wanted Rafaello to be her first lover, her last lover, her forever lover. Temptation was pulling at her hard. Why shouldn’t she pretend that something other than the cold arrangement he had offered had brought them together again? Hadn’t she spent five years fruitlessly seeking a male who could make her feel like Rafaello had once made her feel?

  Rafaello gathered her up into his strong arms and carried her over to the huge bed. ‘I have been waiting a very long time to do this.’

  As he threw back the bedspread and settled her down on the crisp white linen sheet Glory whispered, ‘Honestly?’

  He plucked off her shoes and straightened with easy grace to stare down at her. ‘Per amor di Dio, how could you doubt that?’

  Glory’s look collided with his stunning golden gaze and her heart started to pound. Yet, lying down, she felt so much more self-conscious than she had standing. Her bra and panties might cover a great deal more of her than most beachwear but never had she been more aware of her own body and never had she felt less clothed.

  ‘You’re the only woman who has ever denied me. A clever move, that…’ Rafaello was unbuttoning his shirt, a slanting smile on his beautifully shaped mouth. ‘Perhaps that’s why I want you so much, bella mia.’

  Hurt tinged her growing apprehension. ‘It wasn’t a move. I wasn’t trying to be clever—’

  ‘Weren’t you?’ He cast off his shirt. ‘It doesn’t matter now.’

  But it mattered to her that he should hold such an unrelentingly low opinion of her. Yet she could not retain that level of concentration, not when she was seeing Rafaello shorn of his shirt for the first time. Five years ago he had invited her to join him for a swim in the indoor pool up at the Park but she had made excuses not only because she couldn’t swim but also because she had feared that folk would say that Glory Little was really getting above herself. She had endured enough cracks about ‘mixing with the toffs’, had soon learned that people were, at the very least, uncomfortable watching the gardener’s daughter dating Benito Grazzini’s son and heir. The very last thing she would have risked was being seen swanning round the Grazzinis’ luxurious pool complex.

  Now her mouth went dry as she focused on the hard, muscular planes of Rafaello’s chest and the taut flatness of his abdomen. He was absolutely gorgeous, just as she had known he would be. His bronzed skin, rippling muscles and the haze of crisp black curls sprinkling his pectorals were overpoweringly male and sexy. She discovered that she could not take her attention from him for a moment lest she miss the chance to admire a different angle of view. Her face burned with colour at that acknowledgement. Pulling he
rself up against the pillows, she more covertly scanned his narrow hips and long, powerful thighs as he shed his well-cut trousers.

  ‘I hope you’re planning to do the same for me,’ Rafaello drawled softly.

  ‘Sorry?’

  Rafaello, clad solely in a pair of black silk boxer shorts, sent her a wolfish look of all-male amusement. ‘I can feel your eyes devouring me like fire.’

  Glory reddened to the roots of her hair and ducked behind it, belatedly grateful that he had undone her plait and given her that amount of cover. ‘Obviously you’d like to think so—’

  ‘Lust can recognise lust,’ Rafaello assured her, stripping off his last garment with a level of cool she could not credit, for certainly she could not mirror his self-possession.

  There he was, totally revealed, and she was stunned. Naturally she had been a bit curious as to what a man looked like when… But wondering had not kept her awake at night. Indeed, in the past, registering that a man was physically aroused by her had always made her feel instinctively disgusted, only noteably that had not been her reaction to Rafaello. However, now seeing him in that naked state truly shook her, for she had never dreamt that he would be quite so intimidating.

  ‘We’re not going to fit.’ Glory mumbled in a strangled voice, and then so appalled was she that panic had provoked her to say such a thing and out loud, she shut her eyes tight and cringed for herself in embarrassment.

  ‘Is that a compliment, bella mia?’ She could hear the smile in his dark accented drawl, the satisfaction. He was irrepressible, she thought in furious mortification.

  ‘Even your little shell-like ears are turning scarlet,’ Rafaello noted with amusement.

  ‘No, they’re not!’ Glory gasped, whipping up her hands to touch the offending parts and discovering that they did indeed feel rather warm and hurriedly pulling her hair over them in concealment.

  As the mattress gave slightly beneath her she realised she had company on the bed and her eyes flew wide. She connected head-on with eyes as golden as dazzling sunlight, all the more accentuated by the effect of his spiky black lashes and the bronzed hue of his staggeringly attractive lean, dark face. It was like jamming her finger in an electric current. His sheer sizzling appeal bereaved her of breath and made her heart thump like a demented road drill.

  ‘Come here…’ Rafaello urged huskily, lean hands closing on her forearms to tug her closer.

  From that first moment, he gave no quarter. He caught her mouth under his and plundered her soft pink lips with molten hunger. She shivered in sensual shock, her breath rasping in her throat and turning into ragged little gasps as he continued that marauding assault at full pitch. His tongue danced and mated with hers and then darted deep with a rhythmic eroticism that she was defenceless against. He had once taught her that just kissing could be incredibly exciting, and his technique reduced her to the level of absolute compliance.

  Rafaello released her swollen mouth and surveyed her passion-glazed face with hotly appreciative eyes. ‘We’re supposed to be seated downstairs enjoying a long and leisurely meal by candlelight—’

  ‘I couldn’t eat!’ Glory exclaimed in dismay as if he was threatening her with that possibility.

  ‘Later…’ Rafaello seemed to taste the word as if he was savouring the far more entertaining alternatives currently available to him.

  Only brute force could have dragged Glory from him at that moment. As she stared up into his mesmeric bright eyes he hooked an expert finger in the front fastening on her bra and the cups parted, releasing her full breasts into his reverent hands. Her throat closed over on the almost painful surge of sensation that assailed her as he touched her there for the first time without clothing to dull her own response. All Rafaello had to do was brush his thumbs over the throbbing pink peaks of her nipples and she was lost beyond redemption. She loosed a moan she could not restrain and her face burned hot with embarrassment because he was watching her.

  ‘You denied us even this much five years ago,’ Rafaello reminded her in raw-edged reproof.

  As he rubbed the tender buds straining for his attention she was trembling beneath the rising strength of her own response. Had she had breath she could have told him that, with hindsight, her caution then had been very wise. Even now, she did not have the control to deny herself and would have had considerably less when she loved him. No matter how tough it had been to lose him, she knew it would have been ten times tougher and more demeaning had he succeeded in seducing her into bed with him.

  ‘I’m going to drive you crazy with desire, cara.’ It was both threat and promise combined.

  ‘You already got there,’ Glory framed unevenly, torn between exhilaration at her own intoxication and fear at the effect he was having on her.

  Rafaello tipped her back and rearranged her to his satisfaction, fanning out her honey-blonde hair over the pillows when it caught beneath her shoulder. ‘I’m only beginning…’

  He tugged up her knees and lifted her to extract her from her panties in one smooth movement. And the very smoothness with which he did that jolted her into wondering how many other women it must have taken to develop that amount of expertise. That hurt enough to make her think, but then that arrogant dark head lowered. He captured a rosy nub between his lips and proceeded to torment her sensitive flesh without conscience. Before very long the stroke of his wicked tongue and the glide of his even white teeth had reduced her to a level where concentration was an impossible challenge.

  ‘I already knew you had a perfect body,’ Rafaello groaned, scanning her hectically flushed face with earthy male approval. ‘But I had no idea that you might also be every man’s fantasy of the perfect lover, bella mia.’

  Challenged to speak as well as respond, Glory blinked up at him, feeling she must have misheard him. ‘A…fantasy?’

  ‘You heat up fast.’ Rafaello extended, running an appreciative hand down over a slender thigh and employing a judicious knee to deftly separate it from its partner.

  Glory tensed, not so sure a fast heat-up rate was a compliment to be cherished. Suddenly she was feeling very vulnerable, apprehensively aware of the boldness of his arousal as he shifted against her hip, wondering if there was even the remotest hope of waves beating on distant sunny seashores in store for her. Or whether something like the one or two more disturbing experiences she had heard other women share with blunt amusement might be her lot instead.

  ‘If you hurt me, I’m not doing this again,’ she warned him tautly.

  ‘Accidenti?’ Rafaello dealt her a startled appraisal. ‘Hurt you? I’m not going to hurt you. I’ve never hurt a woman in my life!’

  Grateful for that reassurance, Glory put up no objection to the sensually tender kiss he seemed to use to soothe her with action as much as words. Indeed, within a very short space of time she forgot her apprehension. True, she tensed when he let his fingers roam through the tangle of blonde curls at the apex of her slender thighs, but then he reached a place so impossibly sensitive to his skilful attentions that thinking about what came next was quite beyond her. She had never dreamt that she was capable of feeling what she felt then. Sunk into mindless pleasure and writhing uncontrollably with a hunger that felt wicked, greedy and utterly devouring, she ached and burned to a height of excitement that felt unbearable.

  When she could no longer stand that gnawing ache for satisfaction Rafaello seemed miraculously to understand. But, just as he was hauling her under him with a degree of wild, needy impatience that she found even more exciting in the mood that she was in, he paused and stretched away from her to yank open the drawer in the bedside cabinet.

  Entirely in the grip of her shameless, feverish hunger, Glory listened to him mutter a fierce imprecation in Italian and regarded him with blank eyes.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Rafaello ground out, staring down at her with what looked remarkably like a prayer in his gorgeous eyes.

  He was asking her permission, she thought, which, considering that he was trembling wit
h eagerness against her, seemed very considerate and sweet.

  She raised her hand and let her fingertips trail in a caress beneath the taut line of his shapely mouth. ‘Yes…of course.’

  With an air of intense relief Rafaello claimed another passionate kiss and slid his hands beneath her hips to tip her back. She felt the hot, urgent probe of his shaft against her most tender flesh and she was so driven by the tormenting ache for fulfilment he had roused in her, she urged him on in a movement as old as time itself by rising up to him and wrapping herself round him. He answered that invitation with a driving thrust. For the first instant, she was shocked by the sensation of invasion, and, for the second, overwhelmed by responsive pleasure to that incredible intimacy. Then came a sharp, stabbing pain that wrenched her from her sensual spell with a vengeance, and she cried out.

  Rafaello stilled and gazed down at her with an expression of shattered disbelief. ‘You can’t be…’ he whispered half under his breath.

  There was no mistaking the level of his shock at the discovery that she had not been lying about the precise extent of her experience. Stunned golden eyes gazed down into hers.

  Something perilously akin to smugness eased the dying remnants of physical discomfort Glory was suffering. She liked the idea that she had shattered his image of her and proven it to be false.

  ‘I’ll stop…’ Rafaello gritted, taking her aback with that decision in turn.

  Glory closed both arms round him, let her fingers delve through the thick silk of his black hair, scanning the lean, strong features so close to her own. ‘Might as well finish,’ she mumbled, hot-faced, telling herself that she didn’t want him thinking she was a tease by calling a halt at what could not be said to be a good moment for him.

  ‘Si…bella mia,’ he muttered with a flattering amount of appreciation. ‘Per meraviglia…stopping now would kill me!’

  Generosity felt very good at that point. While she was resigning herself to enduring the rest of it for his sake while striving to explain to herself why she should feel so self-sacrificing all of a sudden, Rafaello took her even more by surprise. He surged into her with an immense gentleness that she found incredibly touching and then, to her astonishment, even more enjoyable. Her eyes opened very wide.