Emerald Mistress (17 page)

Ready colour flared over her cheeks and for an instant she could not recognise herself in the bold woman who had recklessly attempted to pull him back to her. But then in more ways than one Rafael Cavaliere Flynn was a revelation to her, she conceded, still all of a quiver from that sensational kissing session. No man had ever made her feel that hot with just a kiss. She was tingling, crazily aware of every sensitised inch of her own body.

They walked back through the yard to the house in silence. The night breeze was cool on her flushed skin. The silence didn’t bother her. She discovered that she had no doubts at all, and wondered if that was because she simply could not muster sufficient concentration to think straight. She wanted to laugh: she felt incredibly happy.

Rafael cupped her cheekbones and reclaimed her mouth to taste her again. Linking his fingers lightly with hers, he led her up the heavily carved staircase. Her heartbeat started to race. She tried hard to focus on her surroundings. Her bemused gaze registered majestic furniture, grand paintings and a treasure trove of
objets d’art
. Pushing open a door, he stood back for her to precede him.

They were in a bedroom, and she could not understand why that far from unexpected development should fill her with such immense self-consciousness.

‘You’re shy…’ Rafael breathed in wonderment. ‘I’m not accustomed to that quality in a woman.’

‘I’m not shy,’ Harriet asserted in a defensive rush. ‘Just not used to this situation…I mean, you…I mean—’

‘You can’t be afraid of me.’ Capturing her within the circle of his arms, Rafael kissed her absolutely breathless.

But his very ability to set her on fire with one kiss put him into a class of his own—and not one she had previously encountered.

‘I wanted you the first moment I saw you,’ he confided in a husky undertone.

‘Watch it…you sound romantic,’ she said breathlessly.

‘I don’t do romance. Reality is infinitely more exciting.’ He turned her round and slowly, carefully, ran down the zip on her dress.

Cooler air feathered her spine. He brushed aside the parted edges and lifted her copper hair to let his expert mouth circle the sensitive skin at the nape of her neck. A tight knot of wicked anticipation formed low in her tummy. She drew in a shallow fast breath.
The dress slithered to her ankles with a soft silken swoosh. He turned her back to face him. His intent gaze roamed with unabashed masculine admiration from the swollen pout of her soft pink lips to the burgeoning fullness of creamy breasts cupped in apricot lace.

‘You’re gorgeous…’

Harriet was trembling. ‘No, I’m not—’

‘You’re not listening…you’re gorgeous,
a mhilis
.’

Emboldened by that compliment, she resisted the urge to wrap concealing arms over her lush curves and stepped out of her shoes instead. He lifted her up into his arms and settled her down on the side of the bed. Stepping back from her he shed his jacket and tie with careless grace and let them lie where they fell.

‘You’re untidy,’ she said, half under her breath, only just managing to stop herself from picking up the discarded clothes that offended her ingrained preference for order.

An irreverent grin curved his handsome mouth. ‘I was a very spoilt child.’

‘I can imagine…servants to do everything.’

His frank smile of acknowledgement awakened the strangest sense of elation inside Harriet.

‘But it’s never too late to learn new habits,’ she told him.

‘You’ll have to work on me.’

Her mouth ran dry when his unbuttoned shirt fell open to reveal a muscular expanse of bronzed chest. She was entrapped. He was, without a doubt, magnificent. Until that moment she had never appreciated that a man could be beautiful too, and she couldn’t dredge her attention from him. The high-voltage charge of his sexuality enthralled her. Cheeks rosy pink, she snatched in a tremulous breath and finally forced herself to look away: there was nothing cool or sophisticated about gawping.

‘So untidiness freaks you out…what else?’ Rafael moved lazily towards her.

‘I can’t think…’ And it was true: at that precise moment she couldn’t.

His tongue tangled with hers in a taunting sensual invasion. His lips traced the delicate line of her jaw to the slender column of her throat, where a tiny nervous pulse flickered above her collarbone. ‘I don’t want you to think,’ he told her thickly. ‘I only want you to feel.’

She was all liquid anticipation and restive energy. Her remaining garments melted away without her registering their departure. He traced the lush swell of her breasts, buried his mouth in her sweet-scented skin with a hungry masculine enthusiasm that made her moan out loud in helpless response. He teased
the rosy crests of her pouting flesh until the sensitive peaks throbbed. Heat pooled low in her pelvis while tiny tremors of tension ran through her straining length. Desire tightened like a silken rope, pulling into an impossibly taut knot inside her. She had never known that desire could be a physical ache that hurt.

When he let her surface momentarily she gasped in oxygen in a great gulp, her entire body thrumming with response.

‘What is so surprising?’ Rafael had an intuitive grasp of her bemusement.

‘Nothing…’ But Harriet was in a state of amazement at the sheer strength of what she was experiencing. Embarrassment that she should have been so ignorant made her hide the truth that nothing had ever felt so good or so exciting as what he was doing to her. To discover at the age of twenty-eight that she had more capacity for enjoyment than she had ever dreamt possible was an enormous shock.

‘Was it just a line when you said you wanted me the first time you saw me?’ she asked him abruptly.

He dealt her an amused look. ‘I don’t do lines…you have the most divine shape.’

‘But I was wearing pyjamas with big flowers all over them!’ Harriet reminded him in helpless protest.

‘They clung in all the right places. You looked incredibly
sexy. Instantly I was hooked and hungry.’ Rafael ran a caressing forefinger very gently down the valley between her breasts. Super-sensitive to his every caress, she jerked in reaction, as though hot wires were tightening below her skin.

She met shimmering golden eyes framed by black spiky lashes and her heart jumped as though she had had an electric shock He shifted against her, all sleek bronzed muscle and lithe masculinity powered by masses of self-confidence. She was pretty sure he had never doubted himself in his entire life. He knew exactly what he was doing, where he was going and what he wanted and indeed expected when he got there: he fascinated her.

‘And Bianca?’ she prompted, although she had not planned to be so indiscreet.

‘It had already run its course between us. Nothing to do with you.’ Astute eyes lingered on her. ‘Your conscience must carry the weight of the world in it. You’re too vulnerable.’

‘I’m much tougher than I seem—’

‘The pig ruling your kitchen knows different.’

Laughing, she gave way to temptation and dragged him down to her again. She could not get enough of his beautiful mouth. He traced the hidden heart of her with an erotic skill that seduced her utterly. No more did she laugh or speak. More primitive
need had taken her over, and between one twisting, turning, frantic peak of arousal and the next she breathed in tight little gasps only when she could spare the energy.

‘Please…’

At the height of a tormenting pleasure that had reached an unbearable edge he pulled her under him and plunged into her yielding depths with strong, sensual power. Delight roared through her quivering body in a scorching wave. Eroticism personified, his powerful length stilled for an instant. He caressed her reddened lips with provocative expertise, letting the tip of his tongue dip into the moist invitation of her tender mouth.

‘You feel like you were made just for me,
a mhilis
,’ Rafael growled with raw satisfaction.

He was a very powerful lover. His hard pagan rhythm exactly matched her deepest need. Excitement controlled her. Sensation took over. She was lost in the hot, sweet storm of endless pleasure. He carried her to a wild explosive climax of feeling. She reached a shattering peak of glory and, with a cry of rapture, plunged over the edge into ecstasy. Aftershocks of exquisite sensation rippled through her before she slowly sank into voluptuous abandon.

Suddenly, and for the very first time in her life, she understood why the world she lived in seemed
obsessed with sex. Sex was everywhere, she thought in a daze, in every magazine and every film, a hot topic of discussion that had never interested her before. Never in her life had she talked about sex. She had concealed her prudishness as best she could while secretly wondering what all the fuss was about. Only now could she appreciate that until Rafael had educated her by example she had had no way of knowing what real passion was. True fulfilment had evaded her until that timeless, glorious instant of wondrous release from the earthly confines of her own body. Yet she had never suspected that there actually might be something more to discover. How could she have guessed that there was another entire dimension still to be explored when she had never experienced that truth for herself?

Rafael surveyed her with heavily lidded dark eyes almost screened by the density of his black lashes. With her copper hair spilling across the pillow and a slight flush on her cheeks she was amazingly pretty. Her skin was so fine, her eyes so clear and bright a blue. He liked her silence, the restful quality she always exuded, as if inviolable tranquillity sat at the very heart of her like an anchor stone. Her dazzled smile of contentment gave him an unexpected high. He knew he was good between the sheets, but she looked at him as though he was a god come to
earth. He almost laughed at that absurd thought. At the point where he usually moved away from his lovers, with a perfunctory gesture of affection, he curved an arm round her and gathered her back to him again.

‘I would say that a repeat encounter is definitely on the cards,
a thaisce
,’ Rafael mused, his rich, dark drawl languorous with satisfaction.

‘What does that mean?’ she whispered, gazing up at him and deciding that she would never tire of looking at his lean, vibrantly handsome features. He had remarkable bone structure, eyelashes that were amusingly longer than her own, and eyes of quite extraordinary depth and colour. Once he had seemed so distant from her, she acknowledged absently, but now he felt familiar.

‘That you’re a treasure.’

‘And the other?’

‘That you’re sweet. A most rare virtue in my experience.’

Harriet felt light-headed with happiness. She stretched with slow, newly sensual abandon, her limbs weighted with languor and contentment. She thought she could happily stay where she was for ever. Never had she been more relaxed or more in tune with the world. Feeling impossibly feminine, she rejoiced in every point of contact where her
softer curves yielded to the taut, hard muscles of his lean, tough physique. The very scent of his damp bronzed skin enchanted her. Her fingers splayed in a possessive curve across the washboard-flat expanse of his stomach. ‘Luke…’ she whispered.

And the instant she said it she knew her mistake, and was so utterly appalled by what she had accidentally said that she was struck dumb. She could not comprehend where Luke’s name had come from, or why it had leapt without prior thought from her tongue. In shock at her own indiscretion, she lay still as a statue, seized up by the horror and ghastly timing of her blunder. She felt Rafael tense against her, but the change in his body language was infinitesimal. Hope that he had somehow failed to pick up on her verbal bombshell surged through her. Perhaps her guardian angel had stepped in to distract Rafael’s attention at just the right moment.

‘I need a shower,’ Rafael murmured softly.

There was nothing in his intonation to persuade her differently and he detached himself from her with unhurried grace. Yet she felt the cold in him pierce her with the deep inner chill of his reserve and knew immediately that he had noticed. Of course he had noticed, she raged at herself in disbelief. He was not hard of hearing! He could scarcely have missed being called by another’s man’s name at such a very personal moment.

‘Rafael…I don’t know how it happened!’ she exclaimed, a sense of panic making words brim from her lips so fast that they almost ran together. ‘You probably imagine now that I was thinking about Luke, but I swear that I wasn’t! He hasn’t once crossed my mind today…of course I wasn’t thinking about him! Why would I be thinking about
him
when I’m with
you
?’

A broad bronzed shoulder shifted in the very slightest shrug of dismissal. His lean, strong face was impassive, his eyes dark as sloes and without a shade of gold. Cold fear spread inside her like an icy pool: she knew he wasn’t listening to her excuses.

‘Does it matter?’ Rafael enquired silkily.

‘Yes, it does matter—very much!’ Harriet gasped. ‘I’ve been clumsy and thoughtless, but please believe that it doesn’t mean what you think it does.’

‘Don’t presume to know what I think.’

Every scrap of colour ebbed from below her fair complexion. Her skin turned clammy, her tummy queasy. He was untouched, indifferent. He moved with the same measured grace into the bathroom and an instant later she heard a shower running. Her teeth were chattering, until she realised and clamped them together to still that nervous reaction, but she still felt icy cold and bereft. She was in shock, could not comprehend how it all could have gone so wrong
at such terrifying speed. One moment everything had been wonderful and the next it had been gone, like a mirage, leaving only a taunting memory behind…

His magnificent bronzed body rigid with raw, leaping tension, Rafael leant back against the limestone wall of the power shower area, which was big enough to host a party, and very slowly and carefully uncoiled his clenched fists. With absolute force of will he subdued his temper. Of course he was angry with her. That was only natural. After all, such a thing had never happened to him before. He had heard others tell tales of similar experiences and had felt secure in the belief that no woman would ever commit such an error of good taste in his radius. To be addressed by another man’s name in his own bed was deeply offensive. Her even more tactless attempt to cover her tracks had increased his annoyance. He was not a fool. Of course she had been thinking about Luke, possibly even closing her eyes in
his
arms and trying to pretend that
he
was her ex-fiancé! Cold rage and disgust lanced through him afresh.