Читать книгу The Platinum Collection: Affairs To Remember - Эбби Грин - Страница 16

CHAPTER SIX

TWO WEEKS LATER Sam was trying to concentrate on test results and threw her pen down in disgust when her brain just refused to work. She got up from her desk in her decent-sized office at the factory and paced, rolling her head to ease out kinks as she did so.

It felt as if an age had passed since that day at the stately home. Within a few days Milo had been tentatively calling Rafaele Daddy, much to Bridie’s beaming approval, Rafaele’s delight and Sam’s increasing sense of vulnerability.

Bridie had also paved the way for Sam to go to work with Rafaele every day, assuring her that she had nothing to worry about where Milo’s care was concerned. So in the past two weeks a routine had developed where Rafaele took Milo to playschool, either with or without Sam, and then they left for work and returned in time for Milo’s supper. Sam had put her foot down, though, and insisted that she still only do a half-day on Wednesdays as that had been her routine with Bridie.

And also she felt the need to establish some control when it felt as if Rafaele had comprehensively taken everything over. They’d even come home one evening to find a chef in the kitchen and Rafaele saying defensively something about it being unfair to expect Bridie to cook for them as well as taking care of Milo.

Needless to say Sam could see that Bridie was not far behind Milo in the hero-worship stakes. Most evenings now Rafaele tucked Milo into bed and read him a story, making Sam feel redundant for the first time in a long time.

In the middle of all this change and turmoil was the sheer joy Sam felt at being back working on research within an environment where the actual cars and engines were only a short walk away. The scale of Rafaele’s English factory had taken her breath away. It proved just how far he’d come even in three and a half years. Professionally she would have given her right arm to be part of this process, and now she was overseeing a group of mechanics and engineers, focusing their expertise on the most exciting developments in automotive technology, thanks to Rafaele’s unlimited investment.

But overshadowing everything was the fact that she was working for Rafaele. Back in a place where she’d never expected or wanted to be. She felt as if she was that girl all over again—that naive student, obsessed with her boss. Watching out for him. Aware of him. Blushing when their gazes met. It was galling and humiliating. Especially when Rafaele appeared so cool and seemed to be making every effort to steer well clear of Sam. Only addressing her in groups of people. Never seeking her out alone.

Even on their car rides to the factory and back their conversation centred mainly around Milo or work.

Her hands clenched to fists now, even as her whole body seemed to ache. She was glad. She was. She didn’t want history to repeat itself. Not in a million years. It had almost been easier when Rafaele had hated her; now that they were in this uneasy truce it was so much more confusing to deal with.

Sam noticed the clock on the wall then, and saw how late it was. Normally Rafaele’s assistant would have rung to inform her that he was leaving by now. Giving up any pretence that she could continue to work while waiting, Sam decided to pack up and find him herself. She would inform him she was going home. He’d offered her one of the cars if she wished, so now perhaps it was time to assert some more independence from him.

Heading for his office, she saw it was quiet all around, most of the other staff and the main engineers and mechanics having left. His own secretary’s desk was clear and empty in the plush anteroom of his office.

She hesitated for a second outside his door and then knocked. After a few seconds she heard him call abruptly, ‘Come in.’

* * *

Rafaele glanced up from his phone call, frowning slightly at the interruption, and then when Sam walked in his whole body reacted, making a complete mockery of any illusion of control over his rogue hormones. She stopped in her tracks and made a motion to leave again, seeing he was on the phone, but everything within him rejected that and he held up his finger, indicating for her to wait.

She closed the door behind her and he couldn’t stop the anticipation spiking in his blood. For two weeks now Rafaele had thought he was doing a good job of avoiding her. But it didn’t matter how much space he put between them; he saw her everywhere. Worst of all was in the house at night—that cosy, domestic house, with his son sleeping just down the hall—when all he could think about doing was going into Sam’s room, stripping her bare and sinking deep between her long legs.

His body was hardening even now, shaming him with his lack of control. The person on the other end of the phone continued talking but they might as well have been talking the language of the Dodo for all Rafaele heard. His gaze travelled down Sam’s back and legs hungrily, taking in her slim build and the sweet lush curve of her buttocks as she turned away to look at a model of one of the first cars he’d designed.

When she turned back slightly he could see the profile swell of her breasts and immediately a memory came back, of spilling drops of Prosecco onto one pebbled nipple, making it grow hard— Sweat broke out on Rafaele’s upper lip. This was untenable.

Abruptly he terminated the phone conversation, giving up any pretence of control. Sam had turned around to face him and he asked, more curtly than he’d intended, ‘What do you want?’

Her face flushed and Rafaele pushed down the lurch of his conscience. Damn her and the way she did that, making him feel like a heel.

‘I just...it’s after six. We usually leave before now.’

The we struck him somewhere forcibly. He stood up and saw how Sam’s eyes widened. His body reacted to that look and he cursed her again.

He reacted viscerally. ‘I think this is a mistake.’

She frowned. ‘What’s a mistake?’

‘You...here.’ Dammit, he couldn’t even string a coherent sentence together. The longer she stood there, the more he was imagining her naked, opening up to him, giving him the release he’d only ever found with her. Seeing her here at the factory these past two weeks had been giving him moments of severe déjà vu.

She was still frowning, but had gone still. ‘Me...here... What exactly do you mean, Rafaele?’

Why was it that the way she said his name in that soft, low voice seemed to curl around his senses, making everything even more heightened?

He gritted out, through the waves of need assailing him, ‘I shouldn’t have insisted you work here. It was a bad idea.’

The unmistakable flare of hurt made her eyes glow bright grey for a moment, reminding Rafaele uncomfortably of another day, in another office, four years before.

Stiffly she said, ‘I thought I was doing everything you wanted—we set up the research facility here in one week. I know it still needs more work, but it’s only been two weeks—’

Rafaele slashed a hand, making her stop. ‘It’s not that.’

Sounding wounded, she said, ‘Well, what, then?’

Rafaele wanted to laugh. Could she not see how ravenous he was for her? He felt like a beast, panting for its prey.

He smiled grimly. ‘It’s you. Uniquely. I thought I could do this. But I can’t. I think you should go back to the university...someone else can take over here.’

Sam straightened before him and her eyes flashed—but with anger and something more indefinable this time.

‘You insisted on turning my world upside down, Rafaele, and now, just because you can’t abide the sight of me, you think you can cast me out again? It seems as if you rather overestimated your desire for control, doesn’t it? Well, if you’ve quite decided where it is you want me then don’t worry. I’ll be only too happy to get out of your way.’

* * *

Sam was quivering with impotent rage. She wanted to go over and slap Rafaele. Hard. It could be four years ago all over again. With nothing learned in the meantime. She was standing before Rafaele in his office and he was basically rejecting her. Again.

And, like before, Sam was terrified she’d crumple before him, so she fled for the door. But when she tried to open it with clammy hands it slammed shut again, and she squealed with shock when she felt a solid, hard presence behind her.

She whirled around to find her eye level at Rafaele’s broad chest and looked up. Emotion was high in her throat. Her eyes were burning. ‘Let me out of here, now.’

The hurt that had gripped her like a vice in her belly at hearing him say so starkly that he basically couldn’t stand to see her every day was still like acid.

‘You’ve got it wrong,’ he gritted out, jaw tight, seemingly oblivious to what she’d just said. His hand was snaking around her neck under her hair, making her breath catch. His eyes were like green gems. Glittering.

Sam swallowed the pain, determined he wouldn’t see it, but she was acutely aware of how close he was—almost close enough for his chest to touch her breasts. They tightened, growing heavy, the nipples pebbling into hard points.

‘Got what wrong?’ she spat out.

‘I didn’t overestimate my desire for control... I overestimated my ability to resist you.’

Sam blinked. But now Rafaele’s chest was touching her breasts and she couldn’t think straight. His hand tightened on her neck and his face was coming closer. Her lips tingled in anticipation. All the blood in her body was pooling between her legs, making her hot and ready.

Fighting the intense desire not to question this, Sam put her hands on Rafaele’s chest. ‘Wait...’ she got out painfully. ‘What are you doing?’

Rafaele’s breath feathered over her mouth, making her fingers want to curl into his chest. She couldn’t seem to take her eyes away from his, green boring into grey, making reality melt away.

Sam struggled to make sense of this, when only moments ago she’d believed he wanted her out of his sight because something about her repulsed him. ‘But you don’t...you don’t really want me.’

He asked, almost bitterly, ‘Don’t I?’

Confusion filled Sam—and a very treacherous flame of hope. She fought it desperately, fearing exposure. She pushed against him but he was like steel. ‘Let me go, Rafaele. I won’t be your substitute lover just because you’re turned on for five seconds. I don’t like to repeat mistakes.’

Rafaele laughed again and it was unbearably harsh, scraping over Sam’s sensitised skin like sandpaper.

‘Five seconds? Try four years, Sam—four years of an ache that never went away, no matter how much I tried to deny it...no matter how many times I tried to eclipse it...’

His voice had become guttural, thick. Sam couldn’t fully process his words, but somewhere deep inside her they did resonate, and she felt something break apart—some resistance she’d been clinging onto.

‘I want you, Sam, and I know you want me too.’

And then his mouth was on hers and it was desperate, forceful. Like before, but not. Without the intense anger and recrimination behind it. And once again, like a lemming jumping over a cliff to certain death, Sam couldn’t help but respond. And she couldn’t deny the fierce burst of primal pleasure within her, deep inside where she’d locked it away.

But the kiss didn’t stay forceful. Rafaele drew back, breathing harshly, and Sam followed him, too much on fire to be embarrassed by how much she wanted him. He wanted her, and the knowledge sang in her blood. She had nothing to be ashamed of.

Rafaele bent close again, and when he pressed a hot kiss to her neck Sam felt his hand do something behind her. She heard the snick of the lock in the door. It should have made alarm bells ring in her head. It should have reminded her of similar heated moments in the past. But it didn’t. Or she wouldn’t let it. She was weak and she’d ached for this for too long. Long nights when Milo hadn’t wanted to sleep and she’d walked up and down, breasts sore from breastfeeding, but aching, too, for another far more adult touch.

Rafaele straightened and with an enigmatic look took Sam by the hand. For a second she felt absurdly shy and bit her lip. Rafaele stopped and reached out, freeing her lip with his thumb.

He muttered, ‘Dio, I’ve missed that.’ And Sam’s insides combusted.

He drew her over towards the desk and then turned to take Sam’s bag off her shoulder, along with her jacket. They fell to the floor. Sam felt the back of the desk against her buttocks. Her legs were wobbly.

Rafaele cupped her face and jaw with his hands and then his mouth was on hers again, hot and hard, firm but soft. Demanding and getting a response that she had no control over. Her tongue stroked along his. She was desperate to taste every inch of him, revelling in the spiralling heat inside her. She was vaguely aware of her questing hands going to his chest, exulting in the feel of rock-hard muscle, her fingers finding buttons and opening them so that she could reach in and explore, feel that hair-roughened skin.

Rafaele’s hands moved down, coming to her buttocks, kneading them, and then lifting her so that she rested on the desk. He came closer, wedging himself between her legs so that his belt buckle was hard against her belly. Below, the most potent part of his anatomy was also hard, right there between her legs, constrained by their clothes and making her want to strip everything between them away.

One of his hands clasped her head, tilting it so that he had deeper access. His tongue was mimicking another part of his anatomy now, and his hips were moving against her, making her squirm and whimper softly as the fever of desire rose within her.

Suddenly Rafaele pulled away and Sam looked up through a heat haze, aware of her heart pounding and her ragged breath. Rafaele’s shirt hung half open.

‘I need to see you,’ he said thickly, and began to undo the buttons on her shirt.

As the backs of his hands brushed against her breasts she shivered minutely at the exquisite sensation, already imagining him touching them with his hands...his mouth and tongue.

Her shirt was drawn off and her bra dispensed with in an economy of movement, and then he just looked at her for a long moment, with an enigmatic expression that made butterflies erupt in Sam’s belly. About to scream with the mounting tension, she felt Rafaele’s hand finally cup her breast and shards of sensation rushed through her body. She tensed and arched her back, subconsciously begging him...and he needed no encouragement.

Cupping the full mound of firm flesh, Rafaele bent his head and surrounded that tight peak in moist heat. The feel of his intense hot sucking made Sam cry out.

Blindly, while Rafaele’s mouth was on her breast, Sam reached for his belt and undid it, her hands and fingers clumsy. She pulled it free of his trousers and it dropped to the floor, but before she could put her hands to his fly he was standing up again and helping her, pushing his trousers down, leaving him bared to her hungry gaze. Dear Lord. He was as magnificent as she remembered. Thick and long and hard. For her.

Sam felt hot, as if she was on fire. She moved her numb fingers to Rafaele’s shirt buttons, wanting to finish undressing him. Her breath was loud in the quiet of the office. All that mattered to Sam was getting Rafaele bared to her, and when she finally pushed his shirt open and off his shoulders she breathed in deeply, her hands smoothing over hard musculature roughened with dark hair, nipples erect and hard.

Unable to resist the lure, Sam explored with her tongue around those hard pieces of puckered flesh, aware of Rafaele’s hand on her head. He sucked in a breath, making his broad chest swell. He was so sensitive there. Sam moved her mouth up now, stretching her whole body, trailing kisses and tasting with her tongue along his throat, discovering the hard resoluteness of his stubbled jaw grazing her delicate skin.

Her hands on his head drew him down. She was searching for his mouth again, like a blind person looking for water in a desert. Sucking him deep into her own mouth, Sam could feel his erection strain against her, and she dropped one hand to put it around him, feeling him jerk with tension.

‘Sam...’

She almost didn’t recognise his voice. It sounded so tortured. Sam tore her mouth away from his to look up and she was dizzy with need and lust. It was just them and this insane desire. He was so firm in her hand, so strong, and her mouth watered when she remembered how she’d tasted him before, how she’d sucked that head into her mouth, her tongue swirling and exploring around the tip, her hand pumping him the way he’d shown her...

She didn’t even realise her hand was moving rythmically until he tipped up her chin with his fingers and said, ‘I need to be inside you.’

Sam’s sex throbbed. ‘Yes,’ she breathed, lifting her hips to help Rafaele when he went to pull her trousers and panties off. She was vaguely surprised she still had them on, that they hadn’t melted off her before now.

Rafaele took himself in his hand—an unashamed and utterly masculine gesture. Sam was sitting on the desk naked, legs spread like a wanton, but she couldn’t drum up any concern. She wanted him inside her so badly. Rafaele ran his hand down over her quivering body, teasing her until she bit her lip. He pushed her legs apart further and looked at her.

He stroked one hand up her inner thigh and let it rest for a moment at the tantalising juncture before his long fingers explored the wetness at her core—and then in one move he thrust them inside her.

Sam gasped and grabbed onto Rafaele’s shoulders, unable to look away from that glittering, possessive green gaze. His fingers moved in and out, and her body started to clench around them, the anticipation building to fever-pitch.

On some level Sam rejected this. She didn’t want to splinter apart while Rafaele looked on. She took his hand away from her and said roughly, ‘No—not like this. I’ll come when you come.’

Rafaele smiled and it was fierce. The smile of a warrior. He took her mouth in another devastating kiss and her wetness was on the fingers that he wrapped tight around her hips. Rafaele thrust deep inside her in one cataclysmic move and swallowed her scream of pleasure, his hand holding her steady when she went so taut with excitement that she thought she’d splinter apart there and then, despite her brave words.

But slowly, inexorably, expertly, Rafaele drew her back from that brink and then, with slow, measured, devastating thrusts of his body into hers he rewound that tension inside her until it built up higher and higher all over again.

Sam wrapped her legs around Rafaele’s waist, her ankles crossed, her feet digging into his hard backside, urging him on, begging without words for him to go deeper, harder. Pushing her away from him slightly, but supporting her with an arm around her, he thrust harder and deeper.

Sam’s head went back. Her eyes closed. She couldn’t take it—couldn’t articulate what she needed. She needed to come so badly, but Rafaele was relentless. She knew she was only seconds from begging. Overwhelmed, she felt tears prick her eyes—and then Rafaele thrust so deep it felt as if he touched her heart.

Eyes flying open, tendons going taut all over her body, Sam came in a dizzying, blinding crescendo of pleasure so intense she couldn’t breathe. She gasped and felt Rafaele thrust deep again, sending her spiralling into an even higher dimension of pleasure. His body jerked between her legs and she felt her endless pulsating orgasm milking him of his essence, which was a warm flood inside her.

In the aftermath of that shattering crescendo Sam barely knew which way was up. Her legs were still locked around his slim hips. Rafaele’s head was buried in her neck and she had the strongest urge to reach out and touch his hair, but when she lifted a hand it was trembling too much.

His chest was heaving and damp against hers. Her breasts were tender. Rafaele was still hard inside her, his strength ebbing slowly. And then suddenly he reared back, eyes wild, making Sam wince as he broke the connection between their bodies.

‘Protection. We didn’t use protection.’

Sam looked at him and went icy, before reason and sanity broke through. Relief was tinged with something bittersweet. ‘No,’ she breathed, ‘It’s okay, I’m...safe.’

She bit her lip, suddenly acutely aware of how she was balancing precariously on the desk with Rafaele’s eyes on her. She felt raw, as if a layer of skin had been stripped off her body. She clenched her hands.

‘Are you sure?’ he demanded.

Sam forced herself to look at Rafaele. Her mouth twisted. ‘Yes. I’m sure. My period just finished.’

He sighed deeply. ‘Okay.’

Sam couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her voice. ‘You believe me, then?’

He paused in reaching down to grab some clothes and looked at her. ‘I believe you. I don’t think you’d want to repeat history any more than I would.’

The words shouldn’t have hurt her. Much as his earlier words shouldn’t have hurt her. But they did. Sam didn’t want to question why.

Grimacing slightly when her muscles protested, she stood shakily from the desk and took her shirt and bra from Rafaele’s outstretched hand.

She couldn’t look at him. Face burning, she turned away to put on her clothes and castigated herself. She was repeating history right here, right now. Making love with him in his office exactly like she used to. She could remember what it had been like to go back onto the factory floor, feeling exhilarated and shamed all at once, as if a brand on her forehead marked her as some sort of fallen woman. The boss’s concubine.

She pulled on her pants and trousers with clumsy fingers, aware of Rafaele just feet away, dressing himself, sheathing that amazing body again.

When she was dressed he said coolly from behind her, ‘Shall we go?’

Sam steeled herself and turned around to see Rafaele looking hardly rumpled, his hair only slightly messy. She knew she must look as if she’d just been pulled through a hedge backwards. The tang of sex was in the air and it should have sickened her, but it didn’t. It made her crave more.

‘Yes,’ she said quickly, before he could see how vulnerable she felt.

* * *

Rafaele burned with recrimination as he negotiated his car out of the factory in the dark with Sam beside him, tight-lipped. His recrimination was not for what had happened; he’d do that again right now if he could. His recrimination was for the way it had happened. He’d behaved like a teenage boy, drooling over his first lay with finesse the last thing on his mind.

When she’d asked him just now if he believed her, his reaction had been knee-jerk and not fair. He was already repeating history with bells on, and he knew he wouldn’t have the strength to resist her even if he wanted to.

It had been a miracle that he’d had the control to make sure Sam had come first—but then he recalled how ready to explode she’d been when he’d just touched her with his fingers. Just like that he was rewarded with a fresh, raging erection and had to shift to cover it in the gloom of the interior of the car.

He’d taken Sam on his desk. He’d only ever let one other woman get to him at work—the same woman. Until he’d met Sam his life had been strictly compartmentalised into work and pleasure. That pleasure had been fleeting and completely within his control. As soon as he’d laid eyes on her, though, the lines had blurred into one.

He could still remember the cold, clammy panic that last weekend four years ago at finding himself waking in his own bed with Sam wrapped around him like a vine. Far from precipitating repugnance, he’d felt curiously at peace. Until he’d realised the significance of that and that peace had been shattered. He’d postponed an important meeting that weekend to spend it with Sam. He’d even turned off his phone. Had not checked e-mails. He’d gone incommunicado. For the first time. For a woman.

It had been that which had made something go cold in his chest. Realising how far off his own strict path he’d gone.

Even now he was aware of that, but also aware of Sam’s slim supple thighs in her black trousers next to him. Albeit slanted away, as if she was avoiding coming any closer than she had to in the small, intimate space.

Dio. If she was his he’d make her wear skirts and dresses all the time, so that all he’d have to do would be to slide his hand— If she was his. Rafaele let the car swerve momentarily and very uncharacteristically as that thought slid home with all the devastation of a stealth bomb.

He could feel Sam’s quick glance of concern and imagine her frowning.

‘Sorry,’ he muttered, and regained control of himself. He could see from the corner of his eye that Sam had crossed her arms over her breasts. She was so tense he fancied she might crack in two if he touched her.

Her silence was getting to him, making his nerves wind tight inside him. He wanted to provoke her—get her to acknowledge what had just happened. What it possibly meant to her. Was the same round of unwelcome memories dominating her head?

Injecting his voice with an insouciance he didn’t feel, Rafaele asked, ‘Don’t tell me you’re already regretting what happened, cara.’

She snapped at him, ‘Is it that obvious?’

Rafaele’s mouth tightened in rejection of that, despite his recent thoughts. ‘It was inevitable and you know it. It’s been building between us from the moment we saw each other again.’

He glanced at Sam and their eyes met. A jolt of electricity shot straight to Rafaele’s groin.

She hissed at him, ‘It was not inevitable. It was a momentary piece of very bad judgment. You were obviously feeling frustrated—maybe it’s because you’ve been forced to move to the suburbs so you can’t entertain your mistress.’

Rage was building inside Rafaele and he responded with a snarl, ‘I don’t have a mistress at the moment.’

Sam sniffed. ‘Maybe not, but I’m sure there’s been a number in the last four years.’

And not one of them Rafaele could remember right now. But if he was a painter he could paint Sam’s naked body with his eyes closed. He recalled seeing Sam bite her lip and how he’d let slip ‘I’ve missed this.’ He’d also told her that no one had come close to her in four years. Then he’d all but admitted that he’d used other women to try and forget her. His belly curdled.

He ground out, ‘Are you expecting me to believe that you’ve been celibate for four years?’ He glanced at her and saw her go pale in the gloom. ‘Well? Have you?’

Sam stared straight ahead. Stonily. ‘Of course not. There was someone...a while ago.’

For a second Rafaele only heard a roaring in his ears. He saw red. He almost gave in to the impulse to swerve the car to the kerb. He’d fully expected her to say of course not, and his own hypocrisy mocked him. But, he told himself savagely, he hadn’t given birth to a baby.

He was aware that irrational emotions were clouding his normally perfectly liberal views and it was not something Rafaele welcomed.

‘Who was he?’ he bit out, knuckles white under the skin of his fingers on the wheel. Just the thought of Sam even kissing someone else was making him incandescent.

‘He was a colleague. He’s a single parent too...we bonded over that.’

Rafaele felt as if a red-hot poker had been stabbed into his belly. In a calm voice, belying the strength of his emotions, Rafaele said, ‘You were a single parent by choice, Samantha. You are not a single parent any more.’

Rafaele struggled to control himself. He wanted to demand Sam tell him more—how many times? Where? When?

As if sensing his intense interest, Sam blurted out, ‘It didn’t amount to anything. It was just one time. We went to a hotel for an afternoon and to be perfectly honest it was horrible. It felt...sordid.’

She clamped her mouth shut again and Rafaele realised he was holding his breath. He let it out in one long shuddery breath. His hands relaxed. Even though he still wanted to find this faceless, nameless person and throw him up against a wall.

From the moment Sam had stepped into his office earlier he’d been on fire. The culmination of weeks of build-up. The inferno inside him had been too strong to ignore. Feeling Sam in his arms, her mouth under his, opening up to him, pressing herself against him... He’d been thrusting into the tight, slick heat that he’d never forgotten right there on his desk before he’d even really acknowledged what was happening. He’d been in the grip of something more powerful than his rational mind.

They hadn’t even used protection. Sam was the only woman that had ever happened with, and the result of that was probably being put to bed right now. He looked at Sam again and saw that she was still pale, a pulse throbbing at the base of her neck. She’d uncrossed her arms finally and her breasts rose and fell a little too quickly, giving her away. They were stopped in traffic and he reached over and took her hand, gripping it when she would have pulled away.

He forced her to look at him and her eyes were huge. Rafaele saw something unguarded in their depths for a split second, but then it was gone and he crushed down the feeling of something resonating deep inside him. The jealousy he felt still burned in his gut.

He wanted to hate Sam for ever appearing in his life to disrupt his ordered and well-run world. A world where nothing had mattered except rebuilding Falcone Industries and ensuring that he would never be ruined like his father. Sam had jeopardised that for a brief moment in time and now it was happening all over again. But he found that he couldn’t hate her for that any more because Milo existed. And because he wanted her.

‘Let me go, Rafaele,’ Sam breathed.

Never resounded in his head before he could stop it. He kept his gaze on hers, slightly discomfited that it wasn’t harder to do so. Usually he avoided women’s probing looks. But not this one. Something solidified within him. He couldn’t not have Sam again after that passionate interlude. It was an impossible prospect.

‘No, Sam.’

He lifted her resisting hand and brought it to his mouth, pressed his lips to her palm. Her scent made him harder. His tongue flicked out and he tasted her skin, fancying he could distinguish her musky heat—or was that just her arousal he could smell?

Frustration at the prospect of the weekend ahead gripped him. He couldn’t make love to her in the house. Not while his son lay sleeping. The thought of Milo waking and witnessing how feral Rafaele felt around Sam was anathema after his own experience of being that small and witnessing his father’s breakdown.

Sam’s eyes grew wide. Glittering. Pupils dilating. They were distracting him. Making him regret that he couldn’t make love with her again for at least a few days. It would not happen in his office again. Never again. But they weren’t done—not by a long shot.

‘I’m not letting you go. Not until this is well and truly burnt out between us. I let you go too soon once before and I won’t make that mistake again.’

The lights went green and Rafaele let Sam’s hand go. He turned his attention to the road again and the car moved smoothly forward.

* * *

Sam clasped her tingling hand and turned her head, staring straight in front of her. Her whole body was still deeply sensitised after what had happened and yet she already felt ravenous for more. His words sank in: I let you go too soon. He’d said something earlier about trying to eclipse her memory... His admission made her heart race pathetically.

And why on earth had she spilled her guts about her one very sad attempt at another relationship? To score points? To try and convince Rafaele that he hadn’t dominated her life so totally?

But that was what she had attempted to do with the perfectly nice and normal Max. He’d caught her at a particularly vulnerable moment one day. Sam had seen a random newspaper report documenting the launch of a new Falcone car and there had been a picture of Rafaele with his arm around some gorgeous blonde model.

More than upset, and disturbed that she was still affected by him and the memories which would not abate after so much time, Sam had recklessly taken Max up on his offer of dinner. After a few weeks of pleasant but not earth-shattering dating Sam had felt a need to try and prove to herself that her memory of Rafaele was a mirage. That surely any other man could match him in bed and then she would not feel such a sense of loss, that she’d never experience such heights again.

It had been her suggestion to meet in a hotel one afternoon. As if they were both married and having an affair. But she’d thought it practical, considering their children were in their own homes, being minded. And Sam hadn’t felt at all comfortable with introducing Max to Milo...even though he’d been hinting that the time to do so had come.

The afternoon had been awkward and horrendous from the first moment. Completely underwhelming. Disgusted with herself, because she had known that she’d acted out of weakness, Sam had called it off there and then.

Something very dangerous and fragile fluttered in the vicinity of her heart, where she’d blocked off any emotions for Rafaele a long time ago. Sam had fancied for a second that he had appeared jealous when she’d mentioned Max...which was ridiculous. What right had he to be jealous? He’d given up that right when he’d been with a woman less than a week after letting her go.

Sam took a deep breath and tried to crush the nebulous and very dangerous feeling growing within her. She would be the biggest fool on this planet if she was to read anything into Rafaele’s possessive gesture and demeanour just now. As he’d said himself, he was only interested in whatever this was between them until it burnt out.

As Sam knew to her cost it was far more likely to burn out for him than for her, and she’d be left picking up the pieces again—except this time it would be so much worse because they were forever bound together now through Milo, and she had a very sick feeling that she was in danger of falling for him all over again. Or, more accurately, that she’d never stopped.

She went cold inside to think that perhaps part of her reluctance to tell him about Milo had been to avoid this very selfish scenario.

Rafaele smoothly drove the car into the space outside her front door and Sam blinked. She hadn’t even been aware of the journey. Just then a curtain moved and Sam saw Milo’s small face appear, wearing a huge grin. Her heart clenched hard. She could imagine him declaring excitedly, ‘Daddy’s home!’ as he’d been doing for the past few days according to an approving Bridie, who seemed to see nothing but good in Rafaele’s appearance in their lives.

It was Friday. They had a weekend to get through now, and Sam had no expectation that Rafaele would be sneaking in through her bedroom door at night to pick up where they’d left off. She knew from experience that he liked to keep her a secret, on the periphery of his world.

Sam took a deep breath and schooled her features, hoping that Rafaele would never guess the extent of her turbulence around him, or that even now she ached between her legs for one of his hands to press against her and alleviate her mounting frustration.

The fact that she was back in a place she’d clawed her way out of four years before was not a welcome revelation. At all.