Rafael's Suitable Bride

by Cathy Williams

Cristina thought no, because nothing with Rafael was as obvious as he liked to pretend, least of all when he was attempting to appear as pure as the driven snow. She knew that verbally he could run rings around her, and that quicksand he had mentioned… Well, she would find herself well and truly drowning in it.

  ‘What?’ she heard herself saying.

  ‘There’s one place we haven’t made love.’

  The atmosphere was suddenly charged. From being on the defensive, Cristina could feel the drag of her senses pulling her under. His eyes were slumberous, and sent shivers racing impossibly through her body.

  ‘You…you can’t divert me with…by…’

  ‘With…by…?’ he mimicked, amused, back in control. ‘Anyone would think that I had sent you into a tailspin.’

  He reached forward and unclicked her seat belt, then he pushed it away, his arm brushing against her breast, making her gasp at the contact.

  ‘Now tell me that this is a bad idea.’ He leaned in towards her and crushed her open mouth under his, and Cristina’s mind emptied of all thought as a blistering passion was unleashed. Hands that wanted desperately to push him away curled around his neck. She couldn’t get enough of his kisses.

  She had spent half the night berating herself for her foolishness in ever having got involved with him. She had given herself lecture upon lecture on the importance of love and the sanctity of marriage. In her head she had laughed derisively at him, and he had quailed at the logic of her arguments, admitting defeat and then begging her to be patient with him, to show him how to love. She had been the dominatrix cracking the whip, the bearer of truth and light, leading the way, fully in charge.

  At no point in those imaginings had he scuppered proceedings by daring to touch her. Was that why she was now…Lord, but no!…allowing him to pull her across? To scramble until she was on his lap, where she could feel the pulsating of his stiffened member through the fine fabric of her summer dress?

  She couldn’t have chosen a more appropriate style for making love in a constricted space.

  ‘I don’t want this.’

  Rafael held her face in both his hands, looked at her seriously, because forcing himself on a woman when she said no, even if her body said Yes, was not his style.

  ‘You mean that?’ he breathed huskily.

  Cristina could feel herself drowning in his amazing eyes. Even when she blinked to clear her head, she still felt giddy.

  ‘Yes. No. I don’t know…’

  ‘How can I change your mind?’ Rafael asked softly, slipping his hand under the hemline of her dress which had ridden halfway up her thighs. He toyed provocatively with the lacy waistband of her underwear, running his finger along her stomach in a repetitive movement that was driving her crazy.

  ‘I can’t think when you’re doing stuff like that.’ Cristina heard the weak craving in her voice with despair, because there was still some small part of her brain functioning and it was telling her to stop this madness right now.

  ‘Good,’ Rafael encouraged soothingly. His finger dipped a little lower so that he could now feel the silkiness of her pubic hair, and just the tip of that crease which was teasing him with its promise of honeyed sweetness. ‘Thinking can be a much overrated virtue,’ he murmured. He slid his finger deeper and groaned as she squirmed against it.

  ‘This is crazy.’ Was it, though? Cristina now wondered. She felt confused, horrified at her inability to resist him—but pushing up behind those emotions was the thought that perhaps this was what she needed for closure. She needed to do this, to make love with him one last time. She couldn’t go through her life haunted by the memory of his touch. She would be greedy and take this now. ‘I mean,’ she curved, pliant, against him. ‘What if someone drives up this lane and sees us?’

  Rafael breathed a sigh of relief. He wasn’t sure what he would have done had she turned away from him. His body was on fire, as it always seemed to be when she was around, and in this neck of the woods passing motels with cold showers were few and far between.

  ‘No one drives up these lanes,’ he told her thickly, pushing his fingers deeper into that inviting cleft, and then cupping her with his hand. He could feel her dampness against his skin, an unbelievable turn-on. As was the knowledge that even in the midst of her rant she still couldn’t resist him, still couldn’t deny the demands of her own body.

  He suddenly felt on top of the world.

  Her dress was front-opening via a series of tiny, fiddly imitation-pearl buttons. Even though he felt on the verge of exploding, wanted to rip them apart, Rafael was going to take his time.

  ‘In that case, why are they here?’

  ‘For randy teenagers like us who can’t hold on any longer.’ He shot her one of those crooked grins that made her toes curl. In truth, everywhere around them was deserted. In the distance, she could spot some cows relaxing in the shade of a copse of trees. It was idyllic.

  He began undoing the tiny buttons one by one, savouring the sight of her creamy flesh as it was gradually exposed to his hungry eyes.

  Her lace bra was a flimsy barrier for her breasts. Through the white lace, her pink nipples peeped at him, making his taste buds go into immediate overdrive.

  The Bentley, which was a comfortable ride, was now revealing the additional and unadvertised bonus of being incredibly spacious when it came to situations like this, especially for someone of his powerful build. He would definitely have to bear that in mind when they next took a drive through the countryside. Forget the Ferrari. Bring the Bentley.

  Her dress was now opened to the waist, but instead of pulling it down, Rafael reached behind and expertly unclasped her bra, and as it loosened he pushed it up so that her heavy breasts spilled free.

  The unease which he had earlier felt, when she had removed the engagement ring and given him her moralistic speech about love and romance, had disappeared.

  He sighed and leaned forward so that he could lose himself in her.

  Cristina watched his beautiful dark head descend and closed her eyes, arching back so that she could present her breasts to him. He adored them. Of that there was little doubt, and she would enjoy his adoration, even if it was only of her body, the least important part of her as far as she was concerned.

  As he suckled on them, she felt that familiar fire course through her body, igniting those wanton urges which he had discovered and made his own.

  She clasped her fingers into his hair and once more closed her eyes, sighing with a mixture of regret and pleasure as he continued to feast on her breasts, only finally surfacing when he couldn’t, he confessed, hold back anymore.

  ‘This is what you do to me,’ he murmured roughly, as always slightly shaken by her ability to completely wipe out all his self-control.

  She levered herself up as he jerkily unzipped his trousers. She, too, was on the point of no return. Watching him lavish attention on her was almost as erotic as the actual physical touch. For a man who could be arrogant, frighteningly self-assured and sometimes just plain exasperating in his need to control his surroundings, he was vulnerable in his desire.

  The front windows had been rolled down, and a balmy breeze brought with it the distant sound of cows lowing and, from somewhere far away, a tractor turning over the fields.

  Cristina, carried away on the wings of powerful, drugging passion, couldn’t imagine ever doing this with anyone else. There were a lot of things she couldn’t imagine doing with anyone else, but she closed her mind to all of that. And as their bodies joined, and she felt him thrust in her, she succumbed to those racing heights of pleasure that had her gasping and moaning and shuddering against him.

  After a timeless period, they surfaced and their eyes met, Rafael’s slumberous with satisfaction, Cristina’s, if not with regret, then certainly with sadness.

  She edged off him and did her best to straighten herself up in the confines of the car. She pulled down her bra, ignoring his lazy request that she remove it and shove it in the glove compartment.


  ‘I mean,’ he commented thoughtfully, ‘We still have quite a distance to go. What if we decide that we need to take another break?’

  ‘We won’t.’ She finished fastening the last of the pearl buttons. When she got back to her apartment, she would have the dress laundered and put away. Somewhere out of sight and out of reach, but still accessible should she ever want to take it out of its wrapping and remember.

  She made a point of yawning and rested her head against the window.

  Rafael was more than happy to let her sleep. Frankly, at this point in time, he was more than happy to let her do anything. That silly disagreement had been sorted in the most effective way possible. As he manoeuvred the Bentley back onto the main road, he glanced across and saw that she appeared, indeed, to have dozed off. She had forgotten to slip the engagement ring back on, but she would when they were back in London and maybe—who knew?—he might even talk to her about a country house. Not, naturally, as their main property, but something of a bolt hole. He knew that she had fabricated that whole nonsense about wanting to set up premises out of London—a fairy story to try and sow seeds of a possible cause for break-up in his mother’s head—but there was probably something of a grain of truth there. She was not the sort of girl who belonged in the urban jungle.

  The car ate up the miles back to London, and it was only when they slowed up to accommodate the weight of Sunday evening traffic getting into the city that Cristina opened her eyes, surprised that she had actually managed to nod off after all.

  She must have been more tired than she had imagined, because closing her eyes had been the only ploy she could think of to avoid talking to Rafael. She didn’t regret making love with him one last time, but she knew that the next conversation she would have with him was not going to be a comfortable one. He was in a buoyant frame of mind; one quick glance at his contented profile confirmed that, as did the jazz CD playing softly in the background. When he felt relaxed and happy, he had once confided to her, he liked to listen to music, and jazz music at those times was his preferred favourite.

  ‘You’re awake,’ Rafael said, surprising her because she hadn’t even been aware that he was looking at her. He looked across at her and his lips curved into a smile of pure sensuality. It was enough to make any woman do that impossibly Victorian thing of swooning.

  ‘How much longer before I’m home?’ was her response, and Rafael frowned, momentarily taken aback by a certain coolness in her voice. Immediately and generously, however, he put that down to simply waking up in a grumpy mood.

  ‘Half an hour at the most,’ he said. ‘But why don’t you come back to my place? We can carry on where we left off earlier…’ Just the thought of that was enough to put a smile on his face.

  Cristina watched that sexy smile, and felt a sinking despair inside her. She had to remind herself that she was doing the right thing. It wasn’t even just that marriage, for her, was so much more than a sensible conclusion. There was also that niggling suspicion that if he didn’t love her, if he could never love her, then what would happen when the lust tapered off? Would he begin to regret his decision? Worse, would he seek entertainment elsewhere? Would he justify infidelity by telling himself that he had never promised her love, that his bargain had been to take care of her, provide for her and the children which he had already mentioned he wanted, and nothing else? He was very hot on making sure that no woman he dated ever got the wrong message. That way, she later thought, he could break their hearts without compunction.

  ‘I don’t think that would be a very good idea, Rafael,’ she murmured unhappily.

  ‘Don’t tell me that you’re going to start back on that bandwagon?’ he said tensely. He put his foot on the accelerator, switched off the music, which was now getting on his nerves, and stared ahead, swerving down a side road to escape the build up of traffic. ‘I thought all that had been sorted out!’

  ‘You mean because we had sex in your car?’

  ‘Don’t be crude.’

  ‘I’m not being crude. I’m being honest.’

  For the second time, Rafael felt himself back on the treadmill, walking fast but going nowhere. This time, though, he wasn’t going to argue the toss. There was only so much any reasonable man, such as himself, was prepared to take. He had already argued his case and he wasn’t going to treat her to a repeat performance. He told himself that, suitable though she was for the role of his wife, there were plenty more fish in the sea. His mother would, naturally, be disappointed. She had taken an instant liking to Cristina, but then again his mother would not be the other half of the partnership.

  He also told himself that it would be futile hitching his wagon to a woman who wanted declarations of love. It wouldn’t be long before the demands would begin—the complaints that he wasn’t attentive enough, the petulance and sulks. He thought of his ex-wife. Well, Cristina probably wouldn’t go down the road of throwing money down the drain on expensive trinkets, but who knew whether or not the infidelity would set in?

  ‘Fine.’ He shrugged in casual dismissal. Her distinguished converted Georgian house was now in view, and he turned down the wide, elegant street to pull up directly in front of her block.

  ‘Fine?’

  ‘Look, I’ve told you the parameters of this whole arrangement. If you can’t accept it, then you can’t accept it. You’re right. If you want to chance your future on a man who can promise you everything you want, then feel free to pursue the dream. As you pointed out, it’s no good being tainted by my take on marriage.’ Rafael grimly wondered what sort of man she had in mind to fill the woolly, candy-floss fantasies in her head. Some limp-wristed nerd who would help her arrange flowers in her shop and promise her happy endings that would never materialise?

  ‘However—’ he gave her a lazy, assessing look ‘—it’s going be tough finding Mr Right when you’re in love with me, isn’t it?’

  Cristina felt her whole body begin to burn as those amazing eyes bored into her, making a mockery of feelings that she held precious, she thought. He was beyond cynical. Was that why he had pursued her with such confidence, had felt so guaranteed of success? She had been careful not to mention the ‘love’word, but of course he would have known how she felt!

  She wondered whether it had turned him on, knowing how powerful the effect he had on her was. Hadn’t she read somewhere that that was sometimes how it worked? You could physically be attracted to someone, at least for a while, not because they were your type, but because they were so mad—keen on you that it was an irresistible tug on the ego. Of course, after a while, it just became boring.

  She belatedly wished to high heaven that she hadn’t exchanged experience for magazine articles.

  ‘No.’ She held her head high. ‘Why should it?’ Good question indeed, and he looked very interested in hearing what she had to say by way of response. She could have hit him! She actually could have resorted to physical violence and swung her handbag at him, wiped that smug half-smile off his face.

  She scrabbled around to think of a suitably cutting reply, which was something of a struggle, because cutting replies didn’t come easy to her. Eventually she said, frowning into the distance, ‘I fell in love with a man who isn’t capable of loving me back. Next time, I’ll choose carefully. I’ll go for the guy who wants to put me first, someone who doesn’t think that marriage is some kind of maths equation that can be solved on a piece of paper, someone who isn’t scared of emotional commitment, someone who—’

  ‘I get the message,’ Rafael cut in, the faintest tinge of colour darkening his aristocratic cheekbones. ‘And where do you think this paragon of saintliness is going to reside—aside from in your own imagination, of course?’

  Cristina was finding it difficult to believe that this was the same man who had taken her breath away. ‘I really feel sorry for you, Rafael,’ she said with heartfelt sincerity. She opened the car door, ready to flee to the soothing calm of her little apartment.

  ‘And that w
ould be because…?’ Why the heck was he feeling that he was losing the battle even though he was winning the war?

  ‘Because…’ she looked back over her shoulder ‘…what dreams do you have left if you don’t dream of love and happiness? That’s the one thing all the money in the world can’t buy.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  SIX weeks later, and that parting shot could still make Rafael scowl when he thought about it.

  Fortunately for him, he had dusted himself off that whole sorry business with, he liked to think, the ease born of experience. In fact, as he looked across the dinner table at the sexy blonde sitting opposite him, he couldn’t help but smile to himself and wonder whether Cristina was enjoying a similarly happy situation. Or was she, as he liked to imagine, curled up on that squashy patterned sofa in her apartment with a hot cup of cocoa and only her moral high ground for company?

  ‘Share the joke with me?’

  Rafael snapped out of that pleasant train of thought and focused on Cindy. Long-limbed, long-haired, full-lipped Cindy, all the way from America and every inch the advertising executive. She worked for a small but very upwardly mobile company which was now beginning to expand globally, and Rafael had met her at one of the many social events which he had crammed into the past few weeks, ever since the end of his relationship with Cristina. Initially he had found the constant round of parties, openings, dinners and theatre evenings a nightmare of boredom, but he had forced himself to attend them because, as far as he was concerned, he had become lazy in Cristina’s company. He’d been happy to do very little including—and he shuddered to think about it—sitting in front of the television and indulging her passion for certain soap operas.

  ‘I always smile when I find myself sitting opposite a beautiful woman,’ Rafael said smoothly. ‘You haven’t eaten your fish. No good?’

  ‘A girl has to…’ Cindy patted her non-existent stomach and smiled ruefully. ‘You know, watch her calorie intake, especially in my job. You’ll never believe this, Rafael, but…’ She leaned forward and whispered in a shocked undertone, ‘Anyone even a teeny weeny bit overweight never gets through to the second round of interviews! You must never repeat that! But it’s more or less a given.’