Sandra Marton - The Scandalous Orsinis

She turned her back and cried harder.

It made him feel bad but, hell, she probably wanted him to feel bad. She was clever. Somewhere between the ceremony in San Giuseppe and their arrival here, he’d managed to forget that. Well, he wouldn’t forget it again. This was the woman who’d waylaid him on the road. Who’d kissed him as if she wanted to suck out his tonsils right before she went into her Petrified Virgin routine. Forget what he’d thought last night, that she was as much a victim as he was.

Still, he sure as hell didn’t want her crying over a couple of stupid accidents.

“Okay,” he said, “that’s enough. It’s only a kitchen.”

“I burned your fingers.”

“You didn’t burn them, I did.” He turned her toward him, held up his hand, flexed his fingers. “See? They’re fine. That ice did the trick.”

“I broke your toes.”

“Toe. Just one. The big one.” He looked down; so did she. He flexed his toes, forced himself not to wince. The damned thing probably was broken but he’d sooner have walked on nails that admit it. “See? It’s fine. Ice can do wonders.”

She gave a little hiccup and raised her face to his. Hell, he thought, his throat tightening, didn’t they teach women how to sob delicately in Weeping 101 anymore? Because there was nothing delicate about Chiara’s red eyes and runny nose. She was a veritable mess, as sorry a mess as the room and their marriage.

And yet she looked even more beautiful.

How could that be? Everything she had on was ugly. She wore no makeup. She’d wept her way into ruddy-faced disaster.

“Raffaele.” Her voice broke. More tears overflowed and trickled down her cheeks. “I am so sorry. For everything. For ruining your life, ruining your kitchen—”

“Hush,” he said, and then he did the only logical thing.

He cupped her face, brought his lips to hers and kissed her.

His head told him it was a mistake. You didn’t kiss a woman you intended to get rid of. You certainly didn’t kiss a woman who’d made it clear she was afraid of any kind of physical intimacy.

Except… except, she wasn’t struggling. Wasn’t gasping with fear or anger. No, he thought in wonder, no.

She was melting in his arms.

It happened so fast that it stunned him.

One second he was holding a weeping woman whose spine might have been fashioned of steel. The next, she was on her toes, leaning into him. Her arms were tight around his neck. Her heart was racing against his.

It was what should have happened early this morning, he thought.

And then he stopped thinking.

Her hands speared into his hair. She moaned, dragged his face down to hers. He whispered her name, slanted his mouth hungrily over hers, cupped her backside and lifted her up and into his straining erection. Her breath caught. He thought he’d frightened her but she moved against him, moved again, a tentative thrust of her lower body and it came as close as anything could to undoing him.

“Raffaele,” she whispered.

The word trembled on her lips, wafted over his.

“Chiara. My beautiful Chiara.”

His hands rose. Cupped her breasts. She cried out, said his name, made the sweet little sounds a woman makes when she wants a man.

He swept aside whatever remained on the granite counter, clasped her waist and lifted her onto it. Not like this , logic said, not here, not for her first time!

To hell with logic.

He wanted her, now. Needed her, now. He was dizzy with it, crazed with it, with wanting to kiss her, touch her, bury himself inside her.

Somehow he forced himself to slow down. He kissed her eyelids, her temples, her mouth. Sweet. Soft. Warm. Her lips clung to his. He felt the first delicate whisper of her tongue against his, and desire, hot and fierce, shot through him like an arrow.

“Raffaele? Raffaele. I want—I want—”

“Tell me,” he said hoarsely, between deep, hot kisses. “Tell me what you want, sweetheart.”

Everything, she thought. Oh Dio , she wanted everything.

Raffaele’s mouth, drinking from hers. The silken intrusion of his tongue. His thumbs tracing the arc of her cheekbones, her throat, her breasts. And, yes, what he was doing now. Undoing the endless row of jet buttons on her dress. Baring her flesh to him. The curve of her breasts, rising above her bra.

He kissed the hollow of her throat. Nipped lightly at the skin. She gasped; her head fell back. She would have fallen back, too—she was boneless—but he caught her shoulders, his strong hands supporting her as he brought her to him and kissed her again and again.

It wasn’t enough. None of it was enough. How could it be enough? She ached for him.

For his possession.

She sobbed his name. His eyes met hers. They were black with desire; the bones of his face stood out in stark relief. She knew what it meant.

For the first time, a frisson of fear slid greasily through her belly.

“Raffaele,” she said breathlessly, “Raffaele…”

He grasped the hem of her dress, bunched it in his big hands and raised it to the tops of her thighs. Stepped between them. Still watching her face, he laid one hand over that place between her legs, that temple of evil her mother had warned against.

She cried out.

“Raffaele,” she said, and he slipped his fingers under the edge of her underpants, and now she felt the wetness in that place, the heat, the throbbing of her pulse.

“Omylord,” a woman’s voice squealed. “Oh, Mr. Orsini! I had no idea—”

Chiara froze. Rafe went still.

“I’ll come back later, sir, shall I? Of course. That’s what I’ll do. I’m so sorry, sir…”

A low moan rose in Chiara’s throat. She shot into motion, a blur of energy as she jumped from the counter, then tried to fight free of Rafe’s arms as they swept around her.

“Easy,” he whispered.

She struggled against him but he refused to let go. She was saying something in Sicilian, saying it again and again in a low, anguished voice.

He thought it might be that she wanted to die, and his heart turned over.

“Chiara.”

She shook her head. Her eyes were screwed tightly shut, like a child’s, as if what she couldn’t see couldn’t hurt her. “Sweetheart. Look at me.”

Another shake of her head. Rafe sighed, brought her face against his shoulder. For all her offer to leave and return later, his housekeeper was still standing in the entrance to the kitchen, her eyes as round as her face, one hand plastered over her heart.

Rafe cleared his throat. “Good morning, Mrs. O’Hara,” he said pleasantly.

The woman bobbed her head. “Morning, Mr. Orsini. I am terribly sorry. I never meant—”

“No, of course you didn’t.”

He looked from his housekeeper to the woman in his arms. There were simple choices here. He could let Chiara go. She’d bolt and run and probably add this to her already distorted ideas of sex.

Or he could hold on to her while he played the scene through. It was, after all, only a minor embarrassment. Someone stumbling across a man and woman about to have sex? There was nothing original about it. Told in the right company, it would prove amusing.

He could feel Chiara trembling against him, her tears soaking his sweater.

Rafe paused. In his twenties, he’d gone bungee jumping. He remembered how it had felt, that gut-wrenching moment when he’d been about to jump off the bridge railing into the there’s-no-turning-back void.

“Mrs. O’Hara,” he said, “Mrs. O’Hara… I’d like to introduce you to my wife.”

IF YOU were an anthropologist doing field work, you might have put The Bar on a threatened-species list.

No rope at the door to keep out those who might offend the fashionistas. No VIP lists. No hot babes in spandex, no guys with more money than brains, no drinks with names that made a man laugh.