Читать книгу Modern Romance Collection: February 2018 Books 5 - 8 - Kelly Hunter, Kate Walker - Страница 15

CHAPTER SIX

WIDE EYES DRESSED with the longest lashes searched and studied his face unblinkingly as Raphael waited. Dappled in the sunlight, she looked exquisitely innocent. Desire was a permanent drumbeat in his blood anytime he was near Pia. But it wasn’t just that anymore.

She had a way of looking at him that made him feel bare. Of making him speak of things he’d never mentioned to anyone. Of looking deep beneath his words and showing him a side of himself he’d never seen before.

The shame of his father’s suicide was a wound that had festered for too long. And yet, beneath it, he recognized the pain of betrayal he hadn’t seen until now.

He had worshipped his father and overnight, his hero had both abandoned and betrayed him. But in memory, his father had lingered on in what he had felt then was the epitome of weakness.

“Take care, Pia,” he whispered. Until now, he’d let Gio coerce him. But the feeling of losing control made him snarly. “Is it any wonder Giovanni wants you tied up to some man as protection? You stare at me as if you mean to gobble me up.”

“Not any man, just you,” she replied, and then blushed furiously. “It’s good to know that you care about your daughter.”

Instead of mollifying him, her apparent approval riled him. Damn it, the woman turned him inside out. “Because you assume I’m an uncaring monster?”

Another step forward by him and another backward by her. “All indications said so.”

“Stop backing away.” The comment hissed out of him in a low growl.

“Stop crowding me. Stop...” A panicked gasp fell from her mouth. “This is a bad idea on so many levels.”

Every time he came near, he could see the pulse fluttering madly in her neck. See her breaths hitch in and out. Feel warmth arc between them.

But despite the attraction, he was beginning to believe she wanted nothing to do with him. The thought rankled.

He’d never been vain, but no woman had ever resented his attentions. Not since he had become taller and broader than any boy he had known in his teens. Not since he had remade his family’s fortune ten times over. Not since he’d become one of the most powerful men in Milan. “What is a bad idea?” he asked, closing the distance between them once again.

“Why would Gio involve Enzo and Stefano even indirectly if he knew how much you loathed him? You were right, he...”

“Manipulated us, si,” Raphael finished for her.

It burned Raphael that Gio would use Stefano to rope him in, but Pia was right. Unless Raphael did something to calm Gio down, his schemes would only get wilder. No measure would be unacceptable if Gio thought he was doing it for their good.

If he thought it would push Raphael into taking Pia off his hands.

“Then you know why we can’t—”

“Let Gio think he’s been successful. Let the whole world think you’ve beguiled me,” said Raphael.

“How do you think I feel knowing that he went through this elaborate charade to...coerce you into this with me? As if I were useless inventory he wanted to move? As if I were a pawn to entice the mighty King?”

“He’s manipulative, si, but it doesn’t mean he’s not worried.”

Shaking her head, she backed away. “But I don’t like—”

Before she could utter another word, Raphael caught her upper arms, tugged her toward him. “I told you what I would do if you did that,” he said with a growl before he touched his lips to hers in a soft buss.

He only meant to shock her, he told himself. To show her that being attracted to him wasn’t the end of the world. That her idea was indeed the perfect solution for now.

Except all his reasons flew away the minute her mouth stilled under his.

Her hands caught on his chest. The long lashes cast crescent shadows on her cheeks. But it was her wide eyes that snagged Raphael. The slumberous desire in them. The soft mewl of pleasure that fell from her mouth as her palms moved and settled over his chest. His heart thundered like a wild beast under her palms, her body’s warmth slowly infiltrating his.

One kiss... All he wanted was one kiss.

One taste of the tantalizing lushness of her mouth. One taste to see if she was as sweet as she sounded.

One moment with the woman who stared at him like no other did. As if he were her deepest fantasy.

“Raphael...” Her entreaty incensed him. How dare she walk into his domain and turn him upside down?

Fingers curled around her nape, he tilted her face and slid his tongue over her trembling lower lip.

She moaned into his mouth—a tremulous whimper that heated his blood. And shuddered. Her body softened and his hardened. Fitting his mouth flush against hers, he moved it this way and that. Heat stirred from that soft friction and her fingers became stiff against his chest. Digging and pressing. Grasping.

He kissed her mouth again and again, a soft slide, a hard press, teasing and taunting, somehow controlling the feral hunger blooming in his blood. “Open your mouth, tesoro,” he pleaded, every muscle curling in heated anticipation.

Her body arched into his touch even as she said, “They’re watching...please...”

And yet, she pressed closer, until her small breasts were plastered against his chest. Until her thigh was encased between his own. He stroked his hands up and down her back, soothing those infinite tremors, willing her to take the leap. Mindless hunger consumed him. “Give in, bella. Kiss me.”

And merciful God above, she did.

Slowly. Softly.

Like a whisper of a butterfly’s wing, she pressed a tentative kiss at the corner of his mouth, flicked his lower lip with the tip of her tongue. From one corner of his mouth to the other, she kept kissing him until it felt like there was a hot poker inside of his own body. Until the control he was exercising spewed hot shivers all through him.

Again and again, standing on her toes, sinking her hands into his hair, pulling him down... All he’d done was touch a spark to dry tinder and she’d exploded. His body’s hunger deepened. His need deepened.

With a growl, Raphael stopped her explorations. Holding her still, he plunged his tongue into her mouth, again and again, the kiss turning instantly carnal. He licked the warm cavern of her mouth, curled the tip of his tongue against hers, begging her with his caresses.

He was pleading her for surrender, for he instinctively knew only sweet entreaty would do with Pia. She wasn’t delicate inside, only outwardly. That sweet innocence of her spirit, he would do anything to keep it intact.

Shuddering, she returned the pressure, her tongue touching his in tentative strokes. His moan imploded, reverberated through his own body as the kiss grew urgent. He kissed her hard and fast, his need only increasing the more he took. Sweet and hot, she was like a drug he’d never known.

Christo, she was responsive, ravenous as he was.

He dug his teeth into her lower lip and tugged. She whimpered. The sound was so soft, so much of submission and surrender.

His erection, already incredibly hard, lengthened against the cushion of her soft thigh. Flipping them, he held her against the wall, pulled her leg up until it was wrapped around his hip. Groaning at the indescribable sensation, he cupped her behind with his hands and pressed her against him tighter. Rocked himself into her groin gently.

Pleasure balled at the base of his spine, warmth seeping through her clothes to touch his skin. God, he wanted to be inside her before he took another breath; he wanted to move inside her while she stared at him with those wide eyes...

There was the sound of a cough, a whispered snarl from Gio. Raphael backed away as if burned. A curse flew from his mouth. His breath burned in his lungs, his body raging to finish what they’d started.

Dio mio, when had he been so aroused from just a kiss? With his daughter in the other room, with his mother and sisters and half of bloody Milan watching? When had his hunger ever betrayed him like that?

Breathing hard, he counted to ten, his erection no less painful at the end.

Eyes big in her gamine face, Pia remained flat against the wall where he’d pinned her with his body. Hair wild from his fingers, mouth bruised from his kisses, eyes wide.

A fierce satisfaction filled him to see the marks of his passion on her. To see her—He cursed again.

Damn it, this wasn’t one of his sophisticated lovers who knew the rules. This wasn’t a woman who wanted Raphael for one quick screw or even a short affair. By her own admission, she didn’t even know her own sexuality, as explosive as it was.

She looked so bewildered and so innocently seductive that it doused the heat running through his veins and replaced it with a strange unsettling feeling. As if he’d opened a door to something much more complex than a kiss.

“Pia?”

She ran a tentative finger over her lower lip and a groan vibrated in his chest. “I feel...as if...” She wrapped a trembling hand around her nape, moved it forward over her neck, placed her palm over her heart. “My heart is thundering. Frank never kissed me like that. No, he tried. It just never felt like that. As if I were sinking and flying at the same time.”

He fisted his hands, her words balling into pleasure at the base of his spine.

“Why did you stop?”

Christo! That was the question she asked? “Because I was this close to taking you against the wall. And I heard Gio—”

“Taking me...” Her gaze took in his balled fists, the muscle jumping under his jaw, moved to his groin and noted the evidence... “Oh.” Liquid longing peered out of her gaze.

He closed the door with a slam on prying ears, his temper getting the better of him. “Don’t look at me like that.”

“Look at you like what?” Slowly she pushed up from the wall, a faint tremble to her movements. The passion cleared from her face, her jaw lifting in that stubborn way. “Why are you looking at me like that? As if I’ve done something wrong?”

“It was just a kiss, Pia.” It hadn’t been just a kiss. In thirty-four years, he had never lost his mind like that. He’d never wanted to take a woman against a wall, propriety be damned. He’d never been so desperate to protect and possess someone as if his breath depended on it.

“Was it? Because it feels—”

“Si, it was just a kiss.” He bit out the words so forcefully she flinched. “A show for Gio and my mother and all of Milan.” Ignoring her pale face, he continued on, the ruthless bastard that he was. “I have kissed a hundred women just like that and done a lot more besides. It’s lust, nothing more, nothing to be upset about. Nothing to weave dreams about.

“Just because you react like dynamite to a spark when I touch you, it doesn’t mean we would suit,” he added for good measure.

Color fled her cheeks and he fisted his hands. Could he do or say nothing right with this woman?

Christo, this was Gio’s precious granddaughter. Touching her when he had no intention of going any further, kissing her when he knew she was innocent, but even more than that, there was something about Pia that got under his skin, that lingered long after she was gone.

There was something about her that made Raphael want, something in her gaze when she looked at him—as if she could see more than what he was: a ruthless, hardened cynic.

* * *

How dare he kiss her, then act affronted because she liked it? Dear God, she could still feel the sharp pulses between her legs. Could feel his warm breath on her cheek, his fingers on her buttocks.

That kiss had been such pure pleasure that she couldn’t feel the ground now. And yet, Raphael seemed determined to flatten her with reality.

A show? Who was he kidding?

“We’re both responsible for that kiss turning into something else,” she said, her voice vibrating with hurt and anger.

“Si.”

“Then you’re unhappy because I enjoyed it more than you think I should?”

“I lost control. And it won’t happen again.”

“The kiss or losing control?” Pia demanded, her heart already taking a beating. How could she forget the impression of the hard column of flesh that he’d pressed against her belly? Had that been part of the pretense too? When he opened his mouth, she held him off. “Stop talking before you say something I can’t forgive.”

Eyes flaring, he looked away. In profile, his face was tight with control. His impressive chest rose and fell.

“Are you all right?”

“No. I’m not all right.” She wished she could lie, but what was the point? Just as she couldn’t become beautiful or sophisticated, she couldn’t play games either.

Oh, why had she involved him in this farce in the first place? She’d thought she’d somehow resist her attraction to him, but she hadn’t counted on finding such a complicated man beneath. He was tying her up in knots—and that was when he wasn’t kissing her. “I don’t kiss a man as if my life depends on it, and then coolly wipe it from my mind.”

When he reached for her hands, Pia shied them away. A tic beat violently under his jaw.

He didn’t want to have kissed her, yet he didn’t like it if she turned away from his touch. What did he want from her?

“You have to. I won’t let it spiral like that, but if we have to keep this pretense up some intimacy will be required.”

Understanding dampened the scorching trails his body had left across hers. This was how he usually had his affairs. Except she hadn’t followed the script. “I can’t just separate it like you do. I can’t turn it off when it’s inconvenient.”

His eyes flared. “Convenient? Nothing about my life has been convenient since you decided to storm into it. First, he had all of Milan tripping over themselves to get to you. Then, he puts you in my way by involving the damned Castillaghis in this whole thing. Do I worry about the threats my ex is making about Alyssa or do I worry about which man’s trap you’ll fall into next? My whole life has been turned upside down because of your presence. Damn Gio and damn...”

Pia flinched at the vehemence in his words. Did he really resent her presence in his life so much? Tears prickled at the back of her eyes and she shut them away.

Perhaps sensing how she’d retreated from him, he took a deep breath, ran a hand over his eyes. Whatever he claimed, it was clear that the kiss hadn’t left him unaffected.

He reached her and traced a finger against her jawline. The tenderness in the gesture stole her breath just as much as the kiss had done. Made her long for something that he clearly wasn’t going to give. “You kiss me like you can’t stop, you snarl at me for turning your life upside down, and then you touch me as if I’m precious. I don’t understand you, Raphael.”

“How is it that a smart science teacher can’t figure out cause and effect?”

“Cause and effect?” she repeated stupidly, blinking up at him.

“No good can come of this. I will never marry again, much less love again. And you, even after what that man did, you still have stars in your eyes. I kiss you because I can’t help it.” A ragged growl punctured his words. “I kiss you because everything about you drives me crazy. All I can think of when I wake up or go to bed or when I take myself in hand is how good it would be to move inside you. How good it feels when you come alive in my arms. But all I want from a woman is one night, a short, torrid affair at best. You’re not offering that, are you?”

She shook her head automatically, and he snorted. “I didn’t think so.”

With one searing glance at her mouth, he walked away, leaving Pia quaking as if she’d been through an earthquake.

An affair with Raphael—even one night with him—letting his strong body cover hers, welcoming that hardness into her body, letting him see her at her most vulnerable... Heat flushed from every pore. Her body trembled just at the images, hungered for what she knew would be unbearable pleasure.

But it was her heart, drumming even now, that she was afraid of.

Frank had only chipped it. Raphael, given a chance, would crush it.