LYNNE GRAHAM - Millionaires - Rafaello's Mistress / Damiano's Return / Contract Baby

‘I’m going to drive you crazy with desire, cara .’ It was both threat and promise combined.

‘You already got there,’ Glory framed unevenly, torn between exhilaration at her own intoxication and fear at the effect he was having on her.

Rafaello tipped her back and rearranged her to his satisfaction, fanning out her honey-blonde hair over the pillows when it caught beneath her shoulder. ‘I’m only beginning …’

He tugged up her knees and lifted her to extract her from her panties in one smooth movement. And the very smoothness with which he did that jolted her into wondering how many other women it must have taken to develop that amount of expertise. That hurt enough to make her think, but then that arrogant dark head lowered. He captured a rosy nub between his lips and proceeded to torment her sensitive flesh without conscience. Before very long the stroke of his wicked tongue and the glide of his even white teeth had reduced her to a level where concentration was an impossible challenge.

‘I already knew you had a perfect body,’ Rafaello groaned, scanning her hectically flushed face with earthy male approval. ‘But I had no idea that you might also be every man’s fantasy of the perfect lover, bella mia .’

Challenged to speak as well as respond, Glory blinked up at him, feeling she must have misheard him. ‘A … fantasy?’

‘You heat up fast.’ Rafaello extended, running an appreciative hand down over a slender thigh and employing a judicious knee to deftly separate it from its partner.

Glory tensed, not so sure a fast heat-up rate was a compliment to be cherished. Suddenly she was feeling very vulnerable, apprehensively aware of the boldness of his arousal as he shifted against her hip, wondering if there was even the remotest hope of waves beating on distant sunny seashores in store for her. Or whether something like the one or two more disturbing experiences she had heard other women share with blunt amusement might be her lot instead.

‘If you hurt me, I’m not doing this again,’ she warned him tautly.

‘ Accidenti? ’ Rafaello dealt her a startled appraisal. ‘ Hurt you? I’m not going to hurt you. I’ve never hurt a woman in my life!’

Grateful for that reassurance, Glory put up no objection to the sensually tender kiss he seemed to use to soothe her with action as much as words. Indeed, within a very short space of time she forgot her apprehension. True, she tensed when he let his fingers roam through the tangle of blonde curls at the apex of her slender thighs, but then he reached a place so impossibly sensitive to his skilful attentions that thinking about what came next was quite beyond her. She had never dreamt that she was capable of feeling what she felt then. Sunk into mindless pleasure and writhing uncontrollably with a hunger that felt wicked, greedy and utterly devouring, she ached and burned to a height of excitement that felt unbearable.

When she could no longer stand that gnawing ache for satisfaction Rafaello seemed miraculously to understand. But, just as he was hauling her under him with a degree of wild, needy impatience that she found even more exciting in the mood that she was in, he paused and stretched away from her to yank open the drawer in the bedside cabinet.

Entirely in the grip of her shameless, feverish hunger, Glory listened to him mutter a fierce imprecation in Italian and regarded him with blank eyes.

‘Are you OK?’ Rafaello ground out, staring down at her with what looked remarkably like a prayer in his gorgeous eyes.

He was asking her permission, she thought, which, considering that he was trembling with eagerness against her, seemed very considerate and sweet.

She raised her hand and let her fingertips trail in a caress beneath the taut line of his shapely mouth. ‘Yes … of course.’

With an air of intense relief Rafaello claimed another passionate kiss and slid his hands beneath her hips to tip her back. She felt the hot, urgent probe of his shaft against her most tender flesh and she was so driven by the tormenting ache for fulfilment he had roused in her, she urged him on in a movement as old as time itself by rising up to him and wrapping herself round him. He answered that invitation with a driving thrust. For the first instant, she was shocked by the sensation of invasion, and, for the second, overwhelmed by responsive pleasure to that incredible intimacy. Then came a sharp, stabbing pain that wrenched her from her sensual spell with a vengeance, and she cried out.

Rafaello stilled and gazed down at her with an expression of shattered disbelief. ‘You can’t be …’ he whispered half under his breath.

There was no mistaking the level of his shock at the discovery that she had not been lying about the precise extent of her experience. Stunned golden eyes gazed down into hers.

Something perilously akin to smugness eased the dying remnants of physical discomfort Glory was suffering. She liked the idea that she had shattered his image of her and proven it to be false.

‘I’ll stop …’ Rafaello gritted, taking her aback with that decision in turn.

Glory closed both arms round him, let her fingers delve through the thick silk of his black hair, scanning the lean, strong features so close to her own. ‘Might as well finish,’ she mumbled, hot-faced, telling herself that she didn’t want him thinking she was a tease by calling a halt at what could not be said to be a good moment for him.

‘ Si … bella mia, ’ he muttered with a flattering amount of appreciation. ‘ Per meraviglia … stopping now would kill me!’

Generosity felt very good at that point. While she was resigning herself to enduring the rest of it for his sake while striving to explain to herself why she should feel so self-sacrificing all of a sudden, Rafaello took her even more by surprise. He surged into her with an immense gentleness that she found incredibly touching and then, to her astonishment, even more enjoyable. Her eyes opened very wide.

‘I’ll make it good,’ Rafaello swore with roughened tenderness.

Her heart started accelerating to a hammer-beat again and everything she had been feeling before that brief instant of pain returned to her tenfold. Suddenly she was with him again, losing the power of thought and then control, arching up to match his fluid thrusts, discovering a pagan rhythm all of her own. Her breath coming in shallow pants, she gave herself up to the powerful excitement building higher and higher within her. He drove her, gasping, to a dizzy peak and nothing could have surpassed the sheer wondrous sensation that gripped her writhing body with an ecstasy of pleasure.

Glory drifted back to the land of the living to find herself still plastered as close to Rafaello as an extra layer of skin. Finding no fault whatsoever with that discovery, she snuggled even closer and could not control the dreamy smile stretching her mouth. Paradise was being in his arms, she decided, breathing in the hot, damp, sexy scent of him as if he was a drug she needed to survive. She felt amazingly tender and affectionate towards him and only just resisted an urge to smother him in loving kisses.

Rafaello tensed. ‘Quit snuggling,’ he told her drily.

Glory froze as if the roof had come down on top of her. Before she could even react to that apparent rejection that just seized her up with pain, Rafaello rolled her flat onto her back against the pillows and leant over her. He brushed her tumbled honey-blonde hair back from her brow, dropped an unexpected kiss on her reddened mouth and smiled down at her.

It was that glorious smile that finally convinced her that she had misread his signals. When he had urged her to quit he had been teasing, and her heart went crazy when she recognised the easy humour curving the relaxed line of his sculpted mouth. ‘You have really shocked me,’ he confided huskily.