by Tara Pammi
Would it be so bad though?
Giovanni, sensing victory, went in for the kill shot. “You’re a fool if you don’t see that I offer everything you want, Raphael.” He stood up, and again, Raphael was hit with how old and frail—no, how ill Gio looked. “But I’ll not have you chasing her away.”
Shock hounded away concern. Damn it, his priorities were all skewed. “What are you talking about?”
“She’s talking of returning to the States for a short trip. That she...whatever it is, it’s because of you. You owe me this, Raphael. You owe me the peace I would get knowing that Pia is safe in your hands. Before—”
Raphael never got a chance to reply, for Giovanni collapsed midway through the sentence. Heart jumping into his throat, Raphael barely caught him before Gio hit the ground.
And while he watched the paramedics carry Gio out, Raphael knew everything had changed. With his attraction to Pia getting out of hand every single day, with Giovanni’s mad schemes spilling over into his health, with the sharks that would forever circle Pia whatever measure he took, there was only one solution.
His fate was sealed and so was Pia’s and he would be the one to make the stars fall from her eyes.
Because he could never give her what she wanted, and now he would be preventing her from finding it with anyone else.
CHAPTER NINE
RAPHAEL’S APARTMENT WAS located in a trendy, upscale area of Milan’s fashion district. The lights and fanfare of the canal district were visible from the tenth-floor apartment. Yet there was utter privacy too.
After the harrowing week at the hospital with Gio, the quiet and the ultraluxury didn’t sit well with Pia. Both of them had spent the whole week in the hospital, keeping a silent vigil by the side of the man they adored.
She hadn’t argued when he had commanded that she would rest at his apartment for the night.
They both knew she needed the break. At least they’d learned that the heart attack had been a mild one, and that Gio’s diet was the primary culprit.
She poured herself a glass of Chianti from the wine rack and walked through the open, contemporary plan. She wished Raphael had stayed but he’d barely showed her to a room before he’d made his escape.
Maybe he was afraid she’d pounce on him again.
A harsh laugh escaped her as she remembered asking him if he was also afraid that she was stealing his share from Gio’s wealth. Clearly, Raphael had his own fortune to manage and didn’t need Gio’s. She explored the steel and chrome kitchen, the state-of-the-art gym, two balconies, a humongous study with a dark mahogany table in the center with a picture of Alyssa and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves with mostly books on automobiles and engineering, a sitting room and two guest bedrooms.
She took a long shower in the attached bathroom of the guest room, only realizing then that she didn’t have any fresh clothes. Delving into the closet provided a white dress shirt, pressed and folded and a couple of packages of women’s new underwear. The bra was two sizes two big. Trying hard to rein in her riotous curiosity, Pia donned the underwear and the shirt which fell to her thighs. And knew it was Raphael’s.
Instant comfort surrounded her at the faint scent of him. But it was unbearable too. Because nothing had changed.
She still wanted him. And not just for a quick screw, as he had called it. Even with things awkward between them, she couldn’t help but soak in the warmth and strength of his presence over the last week.
Efficient and ruthless as ever, he’d chased away the hordes of Gio’s relatives that had descended on the hospital with one look. When one had called him a backstabber, Raphael had simply shrugged it away.
He’d been fierce, as if he could hold Gio to this earth by the sheer force of his will. He had let her borrow his strength, his conviction. He’d even made her smile when he’d snarled that the old goat was far from done manipulating the pair of them.
But Pia knew him now. She saw what no one else did under that ruthless exterior. Gio’s attack had shaken him. She could feel something eating away at him, not that he would talk about it. And least of all with her.
He’d made it perfectly clear he wanted nothing to do with her.
As she sank into a deep slumber, Pia could think of no other man she’d want by her side protecting her.
No man she wanted to know more. No man she wanted to risk her heart with.
* * *
Raphael had just finished his quickly put together 2:00 a.m. dinner, and poured himself a glass of red wine when he heard soft steps behind him.
Dannazione, he had tried not to wake her...
Closing his eyes, he stayed where he was, with his back to her. But he could see her reflected in the glass panes in front of him.
Clad in his white shirt, which fell tantalizingly to her thighs, she was rubbing sleep-mussed eyes behind him. He should have trusted his instincts and stayed at the hospital.
But he’d given his answer to Gio tonight and the knowledge of it was like the continual strike of a spark plug to fuel.
“Raphael?” Her husky voice floated toward him across the kitchen.
Swallowing the last of his wine as if it were water, he turned.
Her hair created a vaguely golden halo around her face, her long, long legs—toned and nicely tanned, bare from her thighs down—hit him hard. All these days, he had watched her, wanted her, with a desire that grew stronger by the minute. He’d held off because he had no intention of taking her when he didn’t want a relationship. No intention of being roped into anything he didn’t want.
Now there was nothing to hold him back. Nothing to stop him from possessing her.
“Sorry I disturbed you. Go back to sleep,” he said, not quite meeting her eyes.
She shook her head and a mass of hair fell forward. It was an utterly feminine gesture he was sure she didn’t even realize she’d made. He kept the marble island between them, as if physical distance could somehow negate the hot pounding of blood in his veins.
“I had already woken up. For a few minutes, I couldn’t remember where and why.” She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand.
That she felt so comfortable with him to stand in his apartment in the middle of the night, half-dressed, when she’d always been like a skittish horse around him, it denoted a level of trust he’d never wanted. “And then I had this sick, twisted feeling in my tummy. I thought I had lost Gio and you were... Then it all came crashing down and I jerked awake.”
She leaned back against the wall, which made the shirt pull up. Another inch of toned thigh was displayed and his body tightened another notch. Her pose made those small high breasts of hers jut forward.
Alluring and sexy and like a gift for him to unwrap. He swallowed hard.
He needed to go to bed and so did she. Separately. And yet he couldn’t help asking, “I did what in your ghastly nightmare, Pia? What could be so much worse than walking away when you were trembling from the orgasm I gave you?”
“You were screaming at me that it was all my fault. That I... I killed Gio.”
Reaching her, careful not to touch her, he said, “You’ve had a strenuous week.”
She dragged her fingers over her face, leaving impressions, “Oh, God, what are we going to do?”
“We’re just going to sleep for about forty-eight hours.” The image of sleeping with her—their limbs tangled, her lithe body pressed against hers—hit him with a fierce longing.
“I couldn’t sleep with all these thoughts swirling in my head. Would you tell me the truth if I asked you, Raphael?”
He instantly became wary. “If I can,” he said reluctantly.
He’d always been the protective type with his sisters and even with Allegra. After everything she’d done, it was he who had finally dragged her to the rehabilitation program. Whether he believed she’d get through it was a different matter.
But with Pia, he was aware of all of his shortcomings. It was as if she constantly held up a mirror for him and he
couldn’t bear to see what it would show. He didn’t want to hurt her. He didn’t want to do anything that would break her pure spirit.
He couldn’t stay away from her either. Not anymore. Suddenly, he felt as if he could breathe again.
“Did I cause Gio’s attack?”
“Pia—”
“No, please. You don’t know. But I...a few hours before the attack, I told him I wanted to...to take a trip.”
He stayed silent, not trusting himself to pour out the whole terrible argument he’d had with Gio.
He had been pushed and shoved to this step by Gio, by circumstance, even unknowingly by Pia, but he wasn’t going to doom their relationship from the beginning.
Pia, he knew, didn’t give two hoots about VA or the stock or Gio’s fortune. The last thing she needed was to know what Gio had offered Raphael.
“I wanted to get away for a while. I thought I could go back to the States and tie up some loose ends. I told him it was just temporary—”
“Because you wanted to avoid me after what I did?” This more than anything angered him. “Did you think of how Gio felt at that? Do you always run away if it gets hard, Pia? Isn’t that what you did when that man cheated you?”
She paled as if he’d struck below the belt. She tilted her chin in that stubborn way of hers. “I wasn’t running away. I needed a break. It was hard to be around you knowing that every minute you spent with me was under sufferance.”
“That’s—”
“Please, no lies. The one thing I know I’ll always have from you is honesty. Don’t take that away from me now. You can barely stand to look at me when we’re together.” Pain flashed through her eyes, the raw intensity of it skewering Raphael where he stood. “You... I forced you to give me what you didn’t want to. I clearly can’t take a message.”
“Dio mio! Is that what you think? When will you understand that—?”
“You’ve made it clear that I’m nothing but another millstone of responsibility around your neck. Another person who’s dependent on you, another duty you perform even though you resent the hell out of it.
“I’m not angry with you. I see all the responsibilities you shoulder, how seriously you take them. I just can’t bear to be one of them. I don’t know how to make Gio believe that I can look after myself.”
He reached her and ran a finger over her jaw. She had such soft skin and he wondered if she was like that all over. “And what if saying no to you was the hardest thing I ever did. That even if you hadn’t waylaid me, I wouldn’t have been able to go through with it with... Ava. That every time I close my eyes, I feel that velvety, swollen center of yours between my fingers. That every time I hear your voice, it reminds me of your soft moans and throaty cries. That every morning, I wake up with an erection and that I get myself off like an uncouth teenager by picturing you bare and writhing beneath me, begging me to take you.” She stared at him with such wide eyes, such naked lust that Raphael was tempted to take her right there.
He brought her hand to his abdomen and then down below where his hard-on was throbbing painfully. “I can’t breathe your scent without getting hard like this. Do you believe me now, tesoro?”
Liquid longing filled her eyes. She bent her forehead to his shoulder and breathed hard while her hand shaped him.
Raphael buried his face in her hair, something more than lust driving him. Tenderness, he realized. He wanted this. He wanted her. And not just for one night or for a short affair, as he’d thrown at her cheaply. The thought of Pia ever sharing this intimacy with any other man drove him out of his mind.
She was his, whether she knew it right now or not. “For the first time in my life, I want to be selfish. I want to take you for myself and damn the consequences. You don’t know how many times I had to remind myself that you’re my godfather’s granddaughter.”
Pia stepped back, heart pounding a hundred times a second. She could still feel the shape of him in her palm, could feel the tension radiate from him. Stark and etched with want of her, only for her, he was the most beautiful man she’d ever known. “But I’m not just his granddaughter. I’m Pia, Raphael. And I wish—”
He covered her mouth with his palm and pulled her to him. “Pia, look at me. Listen to me, cara mia.” Roughly, he pushed his hand through his hair. “Sophistication or beauty or whatever you think you lack—none of the women I know could hold a candle to you.” A frustrated hiss left his mouth. “It is exactly why it’s hard to take you.”
The words came so simply, so easily then. “But you’re not taking, Raphael. I’m giving myself. Isn’t that my decision?”
A hard curse fell from his mouth, harsh in the silence. Clasping her cheeks, Raphael swooped his mouth down on hers.
Hard. Hungry. Hot.
Thumb on her chin, he pressed and Pia opened with a deep groan that reverberated through every nerve ending.
She’d been dreaming of this fevered desire between them, of seeing that dark glitter in his eyes, of the handsome, gorgeous, sophisticated Raphael wanting her beyond any other woman.
All the reasons she shouldn’t be desperately clinging to him were reduced to ashes. All the misgivings and doubts she’d harbored about feeling so much for him evaporated into mist by the heat between them. The rasp of his hair-roughened wrists under her palms, the rapid beat of his pulse against her skin, short-circuited her last rational thought.
His thumbs pressing oh, so firmly against the corners of her mouth, again and again, he dipped his mouth over hers, never resting, never fully giving her what she wanted.
On the next dip, he swiped the seam of her lips with his tongue and Pia melted into his body. Her hands rose to his shoulders, pleading with her touch. Wrapped around his nape, conveying her need for more, she sank blissfully into the rough swathe of his hair, an intimacy she’d been craving for so long.
A fine tremor ran through his body. “Let me taste you, cara mia. Let me show you how much I want this, no, how much I need you.”
Pia opened her mouth under his, his words lighting a fire in her very blood.
The taste of him exploded in her mouth. Her lips stung when he rubbed his against hers and then cooled them off with a lick. His teeth sank into the cushion of her lower mouth, sending sharp arrows of pleasure down her body, and then he soothed the hurt with a puff of air.
Again and again, he plunged his tongue inside her mouth, a silky slide against her own, an erotic invitation to play with him one moment, a divine promise the next.
“Raphael, I...oh, please,” she sobbed when he pulled his mouth away from hers.
Tall and arrogant, he stared down at her with glittering eyes. His nostrils flared, his customarily mocking mouth swollen lush.
She would have dropped to the floor like a puddle of feelings if his hands hadn’t anchored her. Even there, his hold was less tender and more aggressively possessive.
A sharp laugh fell from his mouth. “I can give no sweet words. I will make no promises, Pia. Do you still want me?”
CHAPTER TEN
KNEES SHAKING, PIA drank him in. His black shirt unbuttoned to his chest, jeans hung low on his hips, he was a dark fantasy come to life. His rough hair stood up, thanks to her fingers, but it was his penetrating stare that took her breath away.
The depth of desire in it singed her skin.
His gaze was more questioning and combative than anything her imagination could have conjured.
But this was Raphael, so ruthless and yet so tender at times. There was nothing sweet and romantic about him. Nothing sensitive and cajoling about him.
His gaze swept over the naked length of her legs, the pulse skittering wildly at her neck. Her sex clenched, hard and sudden, at the masculine possessiveness written across every inch of his proud face. “No words, cara mia?”
And the truth of him as he stood there, as he stared at her with absolute desire etched into taut features, darkening those deep-seated eyes was more real, more telling than any sweet words he could have
given her. She hadn’t felt a millionth of this wonder, this ever-present thrum before.
Months with Frank couldn’t measure up to a moment with Raphael.
“I know you, Raphael, and I want you,” she said simply.
With rigid movements that spoke of his control, he picked her up.
Pia wrapped her hands around his neck, touching the base of his head with the tips of her fingers. Every inch of him was a pleasure point to her seeking, searching fingers.
She hid her face in his chest. Heat from his skin filtered through his shirt, and warmed her cheek. The thundering beat of his heart matched hers and calmed something inside of her.
Her breath fled her body afresh when he crossed into his bedroom to Raphael’s vast bed and laid her down. Dark gray sheets and curtains made the room utterly masculine. His gaze drinking her in, he pulled his shirt off in one smooth movement.
The strong column of his throat and the width of his shoulders made her chest rise and fall. Taut, gleaming olive skin stretched tight over lean musculature greeted her. Sparse hair covered his defined chest, arrowing down over his abdomen and disappearing into his jeans.
Low-slung, those pants revealed narrow, defined hips.
But it was the front of his pants, showing unmistakable evidence of his desire, that caught Pia’s rabid attention. His shape and size was clearly identifiable even like that.
A rush of wetness slid between the folds of her sex. Pia crossed and uncrossed her legs, a restless slithering in her skin as she heard his rough exhale.
“What does looking at me do to you?”
She jerked her head up. Heat built in her chest and began flowing up her neck and cheeks. His fingers fluttered over the waistband of his jeans and intense curiosity thrummed in her blood.
She was about to work up the courage to touch him when he spread her legs shamefully wide and stepped between them. The naked glory of his chest muted any words Pia was capable of uttering.
With a hard pressure, Raphael pulled at the base of her neck. “What happened when you looked at my arousal, Pia?” He breathed the question into the crook where her neck met her shoulder.