“You are perfection,” he said, kissing her hard. His tongue lashed her mouth as his body moved with hers; it was a moment of total ownership – for both of them. Each commanded the other; his body moved for hers and hers for his.
He dragged his mouth along her cheek, down to the sensitive flesh at the base of her neck and he sucked on the pulse point there until she groaned and then he thrust hard inside of her and she jerked, pushing down, grinding against him, needing more; needing him to move quickly, to ease, or fan, the flames that were licking her anew.
He understood, but torturing her with the slow, drawn-out release of passion was too tempting. Her release would be all the better for making her wait a little longer.
He dropped his mouth to her nipples and rolled one between his lips, then clamped his teeth down on it with just enough pressure to make her cry out sharply. His fingers squeezed the other.
She was saying his name, over and over again. Rafe. Rafe. Rafe. It was a pulse in the night; a throb of need that was as much a part of him as her. Her muscles squeezed him with each thrust, tormenting his tip.
He was so deep inside her, buried in her... She moaned as he pushed into her again and everything began to explode. Pleasure was a hot spring and she was at its centre. She pulled her arms free of the makeshift prison of his hand and dug her fingers into his shoulders.
And then he was with her, crying out as he tipped over the edge, chasing her to heaven, feeling every squeeze of her body, every tremble that rocked her, and he kissed her as they exploded, tasting her sweetness and then, when he dragged his mouth to her neck again, the salty tang of sweat as it beaded on her frantic flesh.
The apartment was immaculate and they, against the wall, were the perfect contradiction to that: they were in a vortex of primal, animalistic passion. Both as savage as the other, completely overtaken by instinct and need rather than sense and civility.
“Wow.” Ivy blinked her enormous dark eyes. Her body was quivering and her breath was burning. “Wow,” she said again, shaking her head from side to side. Her hair was a bird’s nest at the back from the way she’d been dragging it over the wall.
His smile was slow to unfurl and it spread hot delight through her gut. “Wow,” he agreed, dragging his thumb over her swollen lips. He eased her to the ground and at the moment his body left hers, she made a keening sound of complaint that he answered with a small laugh.
“It’s not over,” he promised.
Her eyes flared wide. “It’s not?”
“No, Ivy. That was definitely just the beginning for us.”
*
It wasn’t fair to make comparisons.
Steve and she had been each other’s first lovers.
Their experience was limited. And though he’d never rocked her world, it had always been … nice.
“Leave it off.”
She paused, midway through lifting her dress back in place. Her eyes locked with his across the room and she felt an instant zap of power and passion. A familiarity that was borne of only the shortest acquaintance. How strange to know so little about someone and feel that they literally understood you from the inside out.
Intense experiences were bonding, though, and that had been as intense as hell.
Her eyes stayed latched to his as she continued to slide the dress upwards, holding the straps in place and then sauntering towards him. He stared at her, his expression unreadable. His lips twisted in a ghost of a smile.
“Or put it on.” He shrugged his broad shoulders and his muscular chest rippled. “That just gives me the pleasure of removing it again soon.”
Her mouth went dry but she smiled and reached for her champagne, drinking it gratefully. It was still cold. She padded barefoot towards the doors that must lead to the balcony. As she got closer, she could see that the outdoor space was larger than she’d appreciated. There was a table that would comfortably seat twelve, two wicker lounges with deep, cream coloured cushions, and a spa in one corner.
“This place is insane.”
He laughed. “I suppose so. I don’t really think of it.”
Ivy’s job was great. She’d worked her way up and she was in a high-level position at a leading media company. Her salary was way above what she thought fair, and her home was lovely. A pang of something sharp jabbed her as memories of house-hunting with Steve besieged her. The feeling of delight when they found ‘the one’ and gleefully plotted out which rooms they’d use for what… right down to a nursery for their prospective, one-day-when-the-time-is-right children.
Yes, her lifestyle was good, but it was nothing compared to this. “What do you do?”
“Do?” He arched a thick, dark brow.
“Professionally,” she prompted, her hand lifting to the door and opening it without realising what she intended.
“I do many things,” he said simply, but in a way that was as charismatic as it was confusing.
He followed her as she stepped outside, flicking a switch on the wall that gave life to the dozens of bobbing fairy lights strung across the balcony. Ivy gasped.
It was like a little slice of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, right there in front of her. “How can you not think this beautiful?”
He shrugged. “Like I said, you would find my home in Spain beautiful.”
“I find this… stunning.” She breathed in. At this height, the air was thick and cool. Autumn was upon them but the night was still comfortable. She sat on one end of the sofa, revelling in the unfamiliar sense of awareness that his sensory invasion had sparked.
“Mmm,” he grunted noncommittally, his eyes raking her face. “Do you go to the casino often?”
She shook her head. “God, no. It’s not really my scene. Tonight was my first time.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “What is your scene, then?”
“Oh.” She’d walked right into that one. “I’m more of a homebody.”
He dropped his gaze slowly, deliberately, raking his eyes over her body with the kind of inspection that made her feel he could see every single inch of her. And he probably could. “I find that almost impossible to believe.”
“Seriously? You don’t know me. I’m … way more comfortable in my pyjamas with Netflix going all night.” She shook her head. “An insatiable appetite for crime drama is my vice. Law and Order. SVU. The Practice. Love them all.”
“And this is how you spend your Friday nights generally?”
She bit down on her lip. “You think that’s sad?”
“I think it’s a waste,” he corrected, gravelly appreciation in his voice.
She shrugged. “Lisette’s into this stuff. When I’m out I tend to be more into restaurants and art. But, you know, she’s over from Vegas and has her own ideas about what constitutes a good time.” The way Ivy said it with a little roll of her eyes made him warm, for some reason.
“The casino would have been pretty tame after the Vegas scene.”
“But a hell of a lot more thrilling than the night I had planned.”
“Which was?” He prompted.
“Oh, there’s this exhibit that’s just opened in Camden.” She and Steve had planned to go together. The thought made her voice crack, just a tiny bit, but she ploughed on regardless. “Rare, first edition books. Then champagne at the Tate Modern and Dim Sim on the South Bank.”
“Less thrilling,” he grinned. “But very ‘you’, I suspect.”
She tilted her head to her side. “And you are often at that casino, or bars like it, right?”
He nodded thoughtfully. “I conduct a lot of business from that sort of place.”
She wrinkled her nose and he noted that it made her look years younger. “You know, when you say it like that, you sound like some kind of high-end drug dealer or pimp or something.” And then, stricken. “Which you’re not, I presume?”
His smile was wry. “No. Though the fact you thought so is somehow flattering. I feel like I have way more street credibility than I’d realised.”
/> “Even in a ten-thousand-pound suit,” she agreed with her own laugh, curling her legs up underneath her and rubbing her thumb over her toenail distractedly.
“By business, I meant contract negotiations. Entertaining. All very white-collar, non-criminal enterprise. Sorry to disappoint.”
Her tummy flared with passionate awareness. “Oh, nothing about you is disappointing, believe me, Rafe Santoro.”
CHAPTER THREE
SHE’D NEVER LIKED tea with milk. The very idea of adding boiling water to cow’s milk turned her tummy, even as a child when Nanny Anderson had made little cups each morning for Ivy to sip.
Ivy liked it plain, and weak. Just a few seconds of submersion and then the teabag was removed. Nanny Anderson had taught her economy, too, so for many years Ivy would hang the tea bag over the sink, drying it for a second, third and fourth use.
Steven had always laughed at that. “Tea bags cost about four pence a pop. I think you can afford to waste a few.”
“That’s not the point,” Ivy had grinned. At the time, she’d never really noticed that he talked about ‘you’ more than he did ‘we’. It was one of the many things she got stuck on when she examined their relationship.
Back then, though, she’d used enough ‘we’s for both of them.
We’d love to have you for dinner. Oh, we love Game of Thrones. We don’t really eat spicy food, even though Ivy in fact had loved chilli at one time in her life. At what point had she stopped thinking of herself as a person, and started to see herself only as Steve’s adjunct? As someone who didn’t have a full life unless he was in it?
She moaned, low in her throat, as a warm, strong hand cupped her breasts, fanning her flesh with heat and awareness. Her lips tickled into a smile and she flipped over.
Disorientation fogged her mind for a second as the last cobwebs of her dream disappeared.
“I fell asleep,” she said quietly, her eyes latched to Rafe Santoro’s. He looked down at her and something strange lodged in her throat. Desire flooded her body.
“I noticed.” The words were a drawl, tinged with humour. His hands dragged lower, over her flat stomach.
“What time is it?”
“Midnight.”
“Mmm,” she smiled. “Still early.”
“Are you hungry?” He asked. “We didn’t eat dinner.”
His fingers were light and yet somehow demanding. They drew little swirls across her flesh and it was like the gentlest of breezes. She dragged her lip between her teeth and shook her head from side to side.
“Not yet.” She blushed to the roots of her hair when she realised what she’d said.
“Not yet?” He teased, moving closer, so that she felt his warm breath tantalisingly close to her mouth.
She dared herself to be brave; to be honest. “I want to have my way with you again and then we’ll eat.”
His laugh joined hers and it was the sexiest rumble she’d heard. It curled her toes and lifted her heart. It was silenced – all the laughter stopped – the second his lips pressed against the sensitive flesh at the top of her thigh. He was so close to her that she held her breath. Waiting. Hoping.
And he didn’t disappoint.
His tongue against her nerves was impossible for Ivy to compare to any other feeling. It was so intimate and so heaven-sent. She was immediately awash on the sea of desire. He kissed her expertly, and she cried out as the sweet, sensual invasion almost brought her to tears. On the brink of orgasm, he paused for a moment and she opened her mouth to object, but he was back, his arousal thrusting inside of her, hard and so big, giving her what she hadn’t known she needed again.
She arched her back and writhed beneath him, her nipples taut – everything taut. Her nerves were stretched beyond breaking point. She was balanced on a tightrope high above the city and with his next movement she dropped, crashing at velocity, flying through the sky, weightless and crazy with the feeling.
“You’re so sexy when you come,” he whispered in her ear.
She found it to be a bizarre thing to say – an observation that surely wasn’t true. She didn’t want to think about what she looked like while in the throes of passion, face scrunched, hair messed – but as he moved inside of her and her body tried to cope with the wave of sensations, it was easier to believe what he was saying. To let the words knot inside of her and give her the sense that she was, in fact, in some way, some manifestation of a Sexual Goddess. A wind-up one, that only he seemed to know how to operate.
His hands found her wrists and he pinned them beside her as he moved and his mouth came to her breasts now. He was all over her body and she had never felt so pleasured or turned on.
“Everything about you is sexy,” she heard herself murmur, lifting off the bed a little – no easy feat when he was holding her arms – and pressing her lips to his chest. She felt him shudder beneath her kiss and she dragged her mouth lower, to the nipple that was nestled in coarse chest hair. She flicked it with her tongue and then pressed her teeth together around it, lightly, but enough to make him groan and thrust harder into her, almost like a punishment, or an assertion of power.
Mmm, she liked that idea. She pushed higher off the bed, freeing her arms, and pressed her hands to his shoulders. He hadn’t expected the challenge and so when she pushed, hard, he fell to his side, momentarily breaking their connection. His eyes were wide in his face and she smiled, as she straddled him and took him deep inside, moving her hips in time with the ancient rhythm that was pulsing through her.
His hands gripped her hips, his fingers digging into her soft flesh but not controlling her. She was in charge and it was a heady, addictive sensation. She dropped her mouth to his, kissing him, running the tip of her tongue across his lower lip before dragging it lower, to flick his pulse point, before peppering kisses across his powerful, warm chest.
He groaned and then, his hands on her hips moved her faster, dragging her deeper, until she felt she was out of control and weak and needing from him something she didn’t know, couldn’t express. He guided her effortlessly, his eyes shuttered as passion danced around them, wrapping them in a mist of need.
She cried his name into the air as her orgasm burst over her and he pushed up, freeing himself from restraint, riding the wave with her, his breathing as tortured as her own.
She collapsed against his chest, tired yet exhilarated, exhausted and full of adrenalin.
It was the third time they’d made love.
No. Scratch that. She was silly to think of it in those terms. This wasn’t love; it wasn’t sweet. It was savage animal sex. And it was the best thing she’d ever felt. She pushed up a little and smiled down at him.
“The cat who got the cream,” he murmured, lifting a hand and pushing her dark hair back from her face, looping it over one shoulder.
“Yep.” Her expression was full of happiness. “Now I’m hungry.”
He grinned. “For…?”
“Something.” She shrugged, and fell back against him again. He shifted her slightly, pulling her to his side, so that she lay with her head on his chest and his hand continued to stroke her hair, gently.
“That was…new,” she said, shy in a way that surprised her. It annoyed her too. She was a sensible, confident woman. Why was she talking like a fourteen-year-old? Because this was new. Because she had no idea how any of this worked. “No one’s ever done that before,” she clarified softly.
The admission surprised him. “You can’t be serious.”
“Completely serious,” she whispered, knowing she’d come too far to take the words back.
His eyes narrowed. “And what did you think?”
She smiled, just a small flicker. “I think that’s pretty obvious.”
He arched a brow.
“I like it. A lot. Though maybe you’re just some kind of world-champion at oral sex. I shouldn’t say I like ‘it’ so much as I really bloody liked you doing that.”
His laugh was a rumble. “Semantics.”
“So how is it possible that you’ve never had a guy do that?” He shifted once more, so that he could see her, and she shrugged her shoulders. A small lift that conveyed her uncertainty.
“My ex really wasn’t into it. He found it off-putting.”
“Your ex was an idiot,” Rafe said with confidence.
Ivy dropped her gaze. She didn’t know if she agreed with him or not.
“Why did you break up?”
Panic burst inside of her. That sense that she was being strangled came to her. Sometimes it was almost impossible to believe they had broken up. It was a bad dream she was caught in the middle of. “His aversion to oral sex,” she said with a lightness that hid her broken heart.
He ignored her attempt at humour. “This was recent?”
“Six months ago.” Six months wasn’t recent, but it felt like yesterday. “I’m starving,” she lied. Steve – thoughts of Steve – were making her feel guilty. As though she’d cheated on him or something. A crazy, idiotic idea, given that he was engaged to another woman.
He appeared to let the conversation drop. “Then let’s do something about that, mmm?”
He reached across the bed and grabbed his iPhone, loaded up an app then handed it to her.
An array of restaurants was featured. She scanned them. “What do you feel like?”
“Whatever,” he said with a shrug, his skin so tanned that she could almost feel sunshine when she touched him. “You choose dinner; I’ll choose breakfast.”
Her heart ratcheted up a notch. Breakfast? She wouldn’t be here for breakfast. That’s not how this worked; nor what it was.
She hid her doubts behind a smile. “Can it be called dinner at this hour?”
Bedding his Innocent Mistress Page 3