She brought her gaze back to his, her mouth dry, her heart hammering like a piston in a faulty engine. Time seemed to stand still as she looked into that green-and-brown gaze. His lashes were thick and plentiful; his pupils were wide and inky black.
A girl could get lost in those eyes if she wasn’t careful. ‘You have a towel crease.’ Could you not have thought of something a little more sophisticated to say?
His mouth slanted, making his eyes crinkle up at the corners in a staggeringly gorgeous way. ‘Where?’
‘On your forehead.’
* * *
His thumb moved slowly over the underside of her wrist as he kept her gaze tethered to his. It was the slightest, barely moving stroke, but it caused a tsunami of sensations to erupt like bubbling lava beneath her skin. She was acutely aware of how close she was to him. She was standing between his open thighs in an erotic enclosure that should have terrified her but somehow didn’t.
His eyes went to her mouth. Stayed there. Burned there. Tingled there.
Tempted there.
He brought his gaze back to mesh with hers. ‘Do you ever smile, Miss Archer?’
Lily moistened her parchment-dry lips. ‘Sometimes.’
His thumb located her pulse and measured it. ‘You’re not very relaxed, are you?’
‘I’m not the one who just had a massage.’
His smile tilted his mouth again. ‘It was a good massage. Very professional.’
‘Thank you.’
He slowly released her wrist. Lily could still feel where his fingers had been long after she had brought her arm back close to her side. It was like a hot brand that had somehow transferred its molten heat all the way to her core. She could feel it swirling there in a tide of longing. Needs she had ignored for years shifted, stirred, stretched. She felt the movement of it in her blood, the way her heart picked up its beat to keep pace with the heady rush of primal, earthy desire.
‘Can you push my chair a little closer?’
Lily took a skittering breath. ‘Of course.’ She brought the chair to him. The towel draped over his lap did little to hide the unmistakable evidence of his erection. Her gaze seemed to be drawn to it like a magnet. She gulped. Was it getting bigger?
She finally managed to tear her eyes away. ‘I’ll just...go and let you get dressed.’ She turned and bolted for the door, almost knocking herself out in her haste to open it.
Raoul watched her leave with a smile lingering on his mouth. She was an intriguing mix of sassy-smart mouth and shy schoolgirl. He couldn’t make up his mind which persona he liked best.
You like her?
He looked down at the bulge of his erection. Yeah, it seems I do.
He pushed back from where his mind was heading, a frown rapidly replacing his smile. He didn’t want an affair with anyone until he could be physically whole again. He could not bear the thought of a pity lay. He could just imagine the utter humiliation of it. Could there be a crueller punishment than to reduce a playboy to that?
He was used to taking the lead in sex. He enjoyed sex. He had a strong drive but he knew how to contain it. He was a good lover. He wasn’t selfish or self-serving; he wasn’t averse to the odd quickie up against a wall or kitchen worktop, but only if the woman was with him all the way.
His gut twisted at the thought of never experiencing that primal power again. Even if he could perform he would be confined to doing it in bed. He wouldn’t even be able to carry the woman to the bedroom. He would be old before his time.
He swore savagely as he reached for his clothes. If he still believed in God he would have cursed him, too. He had never been a violent person—not like his grandfather, who could fly off the handle at a moment’s notice—but right now he wanted to punch his fist through the nearest wall in frustration. His mood soured like milk that had been left all day in the sun. It curdled his sense of humour; it made rancid every remotely positive thought that entered his head.
You have to get through this.
How? He wanted to shout it until his voice cracked. How am I supposed to get through this?
Raoul eased himself off the table, but just as he was about to lower himself into his chair it moved out of reach. He made a grab for it but he only managed to push it further away. Anger and frustration surged like an erupting volcano inside him.
This is not my life.
I don’t want to be like this.
He considered calling Lily to help him, but pride forestalled him. Surely he could get back in the damn chair without her help? It was only a step or two away. He held on to the table for balance, willing his right leg to move the short distance. He gritted his teeth and stretched out his hand. Almost there....
Raoul took a half-shuffle, half-hopping step with his right leg but his left leg wouldn’t come to the party. It folded under him like a wet noodle and he landed in a crumpled heap on the floor, banging his forehead for good measure against the metal footplate of the wheelchair. The curse he let out cut through the air like a blade.
‘Are you all right?’ Lily called from the other side of the door.
He ground his teeth as he eased himself up on one elbow. ‘I’m fine.’
The door opened and her eyes went wide as she came in. ‘What happened?’
‘What do you think happened?’ He glared at her. ‘I thought it’d be fun to look at the ceiling from this angle.’
She crouched down beside him, her slate-blue gaze concerned as she reached out to brush his hair back from his forehead. ‘You’ve cut your forehead.’ Her touch was as gentle as a feather and it made his skin lift up in goose bumps.
‘Lucky me. A towel crease and a cut.’
She got up from the floor to fetch a tissue from a box next to the oil dispenser. She came back to him, kneeling beside him again, the tissue neatly folded into a square as she pressed it like a compress to his forehead just above his right eye.
His gaze meshed with hers.
A timeless moment passed.
Raoul could smell her fragrance—a light, flowery scent that was understated and yet utterly, powerfully feminine. Her eyes were like dark pools, fringed by sooty black lashes that curled up at the ends like a child’s. Her skin was flawless, like smooth cream or priceless fine porcelain, her lips soft and a dark pinkish-red, just ripe for tasting.
He could feel her warm, vanilla-scented breath on his face. Her breathing had quickened, but then so too had his, along with his blood. It stuttered and then roared through his veins as his latent desire took a foothold and then pressed the pedal down—hard.
He slid his left hand beneath her silky ponytail. He heard the rapid little uptake of her breath and felt her hand still on his forehead, but she didn’t pull away. Her lashes lowered over her eyes as she darted a quick glance at his mouth. He saw her moisten her lower lip, then the top one, with the tip of her tongue.
He applied the gentlest pressure to the nape of her neck to bring her closer to his slowly descending mouth.
He didn’t kiss her straight away. He played with her lips with little pushes, little rubs and little teasing tastes, letting their breaths mingle and mate. She made a soft little sound, not a gasp, not a sigh, but something in between. Her lips were unbelievably soft and warm and tasted like the first harvest of sweet summer strawberries. He felt the shy hesitancy of her touch as one of her hands came to rest against his chest.
He covered her mouth with his, applying the slightest pressure, waiting for her to come back at him with the signal she wanted more.
She did.
He felt it in the way her lips softened against his, yielding to his subtle increase of pressure, opening like a flower to the first slow stroke of his tongue. He swallowed her little whimper and took the kiss deeper, tasting her moist sweetness, familiarising himself with the contours of
her mouth, cajoling her tongue into seductive play with his.
She was tentative at first, holding back as if she was frightened of letting herself get out of control. But then the fingers of her hand resting on his chest suddenly curled into his T-shirt and her mouth became an urgent force against his.
He tasted hot female desire. It caused a firestorm in his blood, making him hard, thick and hungry for the slick, wet cocoon of her body.
He flicked his tongue against hers in an age-old rhythm that made her whimper in primal response. She moved against him, seeking more of him, her hands going to his hair, her fingers splaying across his scalp and then digging in as her mouth fed greedily off his.
He had never experienced a more explosive kiss.
It made every nerve in his spine—including the damaged ones—tingle in response. His groin was on fire. He felt like a teenager at his first sexual encounter. His control was shot.
He wanted her and he wanted her now.
And given the way her mouth was nipping and sucking at him, she wanted him, too.
But reality suddenly reared its head and its hand and slapped Raoul across the face. What was he thinking? How could this go to the next step? He couldn’t even get up off the floor, let alone sweep her off her feet and into the nearest bedroom.
Besides, she was the hired help—the physical therapist who was supposed to get him back on his feet, not have him flat on his back while she rode him to Sunday and back.
His insides suddenly knotted.
Had Rafe set him up? Was Lily Archer and her holistic remedies his older brother’s idea of getting him back into the saddle?
Raoul pulled back from her mouth with a muttered curse. ‘OK, time to stop.’
She blinked at him for a moment. She looked vague, disoriented, shocked. ‘Y-yes... Yes, of course.’ She bit her lip and shifted her gaze, blinked another couple of times. Frowned. Frowned harder.
He watched as she scrambled ungainly to her feet, tucking a wayward strand of hair back behind her ear where the rest of her ponytail was confined. Her cheeks were pink, her mouth swollen, her gaze still averted. If he were to put money on it he would say she was currently feeling a little out of her depth, but he was not the gambler Remy was, and his money was staying right where he could keep an eye on it.
‘Did my brother pay you to do that?’ he asked.
Her bluer-than-blue eyes came back to his wide, startled. ‘What?’
He pinned her with a look. ‘I know how his mind works. He’s keen for me to get back to normal as soon as possible. Is that what he paid you to do? To test the equipment, so to speak?’
Her saw her slim throat move up and down over a swallow and her cheeks fired up another notch. ‘I think you’ve got the wrong idea about me.’
‘I don’t need a bloody sex therapist,’ he bit out as he hauled himself up against the massage table. ‘And I certainly don’t need a pity screw to make me feel like a man again.’
There was a ringing silence.
‘Excuse me...’
He turned his head to see her dashing out as if there was a fire in the room.
But then, in a way, there was.
His desire.
CHAPTER SIX
LILY WAS BEYOND mortified as she left the room, but angry, too. How dared he suggest she was here other than in her professional capacity? What sort of woman did he think she was? She knew the clinic had a bit of a reputation for being innovative in some of its methods but his assumption was nothing short of ridiculous! As if there was any amount of money that would induce her to sleep with anyone.
It wasn’t going to happen.
Not for love nor money.
How could she be intimate with a man with those scars all over her arms and thighs? She could just imagine the look of horror, disgust and revulsion once her scarred flesh was uncovered.
The sad irony was that before her twenty-first birthday party she had been confident in her body, but that night had totally destroyed her self-esteem and taken away every scrap of her self-respect.
The cutting had been a way to release the emotional torment. It had been her way of controlling the shame that resided inside her body at having been taken advantage of by a man she had thought she could trust. Even though the rational part of her acknowledged she hadn’t deserved to be treated like that, and the man in question had been very drunk, the emotional part flayed her with recrimination. She should have been more careful. She should have stayed with her friends. She shouldn’t have drunk that fourth drink.
She should have told someone.
That was the one thing Lily had never been able to bring herself to do. How did you tell one of your closest friends that her older brother had lured you into another room and forced himself on you while everyone else had been partying next door?
So she had kept silent, and the pain and shame had burrowed deep inside her.
Which made what Raoul Caffarelli thought of her so totally laughable. Even in her partying days she had never been the type to sleep around. She’d only had two relationships—one when she’d been nineteen, which had lasted four months, and another when she’d been twenty that had lasted six. She hadn’t felt emotionally ready for a full-on physical relationship.
Throughout her childhood she had watched her mother go from one ill-advised relationship to another, which had made Lily careful in her choice of partner. She often wondered if she had been a bit more streetwise if she might have been able to prevent what happened to her. Her judgement had been skewed by youthful complacency and familiarity.
But she was older and far wiser now.
And angry.
It was good to be angry because it stopped her thinking about that kiss.
How had it happened? One minute she’d been holding a tissue to Raoul’s cut forehead, the next she’d been clutching at him as if his mouth was a lifeline. His lips had been like velvet on hers, warm and teasing, commanding and yet controlled. The seductive activity of his tongue had sent shivers rolling down her spine like runaway firecrackers.
You enjoyed it.
Yes, but that’s beside the point. Kissing a client—especially one as dangerously, deliciously, lethally attractive as Raoul Caffarelli—was totally out of the question.
N.O.
No.
No!
Lily walked out into the gardens rather than hide away in her room. She needed fresh air and exercise to clear her head and to stop her body from its traitorous impulses. It had been years since she had thought about sex. She had become accustomed to pushing it from her mind because of the shame she always associated with it. But for some reason Raoul’s kiss had not made her feel shame, but an intense desire to feel more of his touch.
He had been so gentle.
That had been so utterly disarming. If he had crushed her mouth to his and groped her with his hands she would have shoved back from him and given him a piece of her mind, if not a stinging slap across the face.
But she had been completely ambushed by his mesmerising lip play, the slow but sure stroke of his tongue, his measured pace, as if he’d known she would not like to be rushed or pressured.
It had made the hard, tight, locked away part of her soften and loosen. She had melted under the slow but sure seduction of his very experienced mouth.
She didn’t like to think of how experienced he was. She knew enough about him to know he was a playboy, who before his engagement had moved from partner to partner with astonishing haste.
The sun was hot on Lily’s head and shoulders as she traversed the expansive lawn that fringed the field where some magnificent-looking thoroughbreds were grazing. Their coats were like high-gloss satin, their powerful hindquarters shivering and their tails flicking every now and again as they shook off a fly.
&n
bsp; It was a beautiful property with its rolling fields and lush pastures. But she wondered how Raoul was going to manage his arm of the family business while he was confined to a wheelchair. Breeding horses was a very hands-on affair. Attending sales and trials and track meetings would be next to impossible, or at least very difficult—maybe even dangerous. Horses were flighty creatures and thoroughbreds particularly so. It would be difficult for Raoul to have any sort of control over them when he was unable to stand.
One of the horses lifted its head from the grass and looked at Lily with big, soft, intelligent eyes. It blew some air out of its velvety nostrils and came over to the fence, idly swishing its tail as it went.
Lily held out a flat hand and the horse wobbled its soft mouth against her palm in search of a treat. ‘I haven’t got anything for you. I’ll have to ask Dominique for an apple.’ She stroked the mare’s diamond shaped white blaze and then up behind her pointed ears. ‘You’re a beauty, aren’t you? I wonder how many races you’ve won.’
‘That’s Monsieur Caffarelli’s favourite brood mare,’ a young boy of about fifteen or sixteen said as he came over from the nearby stables. ‘Her stable name is Mardi.’ He stroked the mare’s gleaming shoulder. ‘In her day she won all but two of her starts, didn’t you, old girl?’
The mare gave the stableboy an affectionate nudge with her head before blowing out her nostrils again.
Lily smiled and gave the mare another stroke. ‘She’s gorgeous.’
‘Do you ride?’ the boy asked.
Lily dropped her hand from the horse’s forehead, her smiling fading. ‘Not in ages. I used to ride at a friend’s country estate just about every weekend or during the holidays but we...we sort of lost touch over the years. I’m not sure I’d be very confident now.’
For months after her birthday party she had tried to keep her friendship with Georgina Yalesforth going but in the end the prospect of running into Georgie’s older brother Heath had been too upsetting. One of the worst things about it was Heath had seemed to have no memory of what had occurred that night. When she’d next seen him, a few weeks after her birthday, he’d acted as he had always acted towards her—teasing and friendly in a big-brotherly way. All she could conclude was that he had been so heavily inebriated that night that—like so many other binge drinkers—he had no memory of what he’d done or who he’d done it to.
Never Underestimate a Caffarelli Page 7