The Italian Duke's Virgin Mistress (12 page)

S
TILL
held in Raphael’s arms, Charley could feel the hard, urgent pulse of his arousal against her as she relaxed into him, stirring a new surge of eager desire within her body that had her moving languorously against him; satisfied and yet at the same time aware of the capacity within her to be aroused to fresh need—aware too of a deep inner ache that had not been quenched.

What she had just experienced was the beginning, not the end, and the movement of her body against his was sending Raphael a deliberate message to that effect.

Even so he still hesitated, forcing down the impulse to carry her over to the bed and spread the softness of her body there beneath his own, so that he could enter her and lose himself in her in the way his flesh ached for him to do, but then Charley moved against him, pressing closer to him, snapping the tautly strung fragility of his self-control.

As though he had given his need words and spoken them to her, Charley whispered vehemently, ‘Yes!’ and within seconds he had removed the last of their
clothes and they were on the bed, her body soft and eager beneath his hands.

This was wonderful, heaven, beyond anything she could ever have imagined. Raphael’s skin felt like oiled silk beneath her explorative touch, his torso narrowing down to a flat belly, his body ridged with muscles beneath the warmth of his skin, and the reality of his erection a thousand times more breathtakingly erotic than any artistic phallic images she had ever seen. She reached out and stroked her fingertips along its length in wondering delight, gasping in sharp pleasure as her touch transferred the delicate stroke of Raphael’s tongue-tip against her earlobe to the hard possession of his mouth against her nipple, his lips tugging on its pouting sensuality after its earlier pleasuring. Instinctively she closed her hand around him, her body shuddering as she felt the fierce pulse beating from his flesh into her own, and then arching on a spasm of sharp pleasure when his teeth grated delicately against the sensitive flesh of her nipple. Had she thought that she now knew desire? She had been wrong. What she had known had been merely the foothills of a far greater height.

Bending her head towards him, Charley whispered to Raphael.

‘I was right. You are the most wonderful lover.’

‘How can you know?’ he mocked her softly, kissing the valley between her breasts and then making his way up towards her mouth.

‘My body knows,’ Charley answered him, ‘and that is why it wants you so much.’

Ridiculous that a few words should have such an intense effect on him, Raphael knew. But they had. It was time. He couldn’t wait any longer.

Cradling Charley against his side with one arm, he reached towards the drawer in the bedside table with the other.

Guessing what he was seeking, Charley placed her hand on his chest and shook her head, telling him fiercely, ‘No. I want to feel you inside me—just you. Your flesh against mine as nature intended. Not—not a…a chemical barrier that isn’t you…I’m on the pill so we’re safe. I want to feel you inside me, Raphael,’ Charley repeated determinedly. ‘Just you—all of you…’ She was kissing him in between her words: eager, passionate little kisses that, like her touch on his body, showed him how much she wanted him.

He should ignore her pleas. He should behave sensibly. He should ignore the way his body had reacted when she had said she wanted him inside her. He should…

‘I want you so much,’ Charley whispered.

It was too much, and too late to stop himself now, with the soft weight of her in his arms, her body lying eagerly open to his possession, her muscles closing tightly around him as he slowly thrust into her.

Charley shuddered and gasped, and then sighed with exalted pleasure, her hands gripping Raphael’s shoulders as he moved slowly and carefully into her. Each sensation built on the pleasure of the one before it, as though she was climbing a set of steps. Her body protested, her muscles tightening to hold him where he
was when Raphael pulled back a little, but his next thrust reassured her body that he wasn’t leaving it, simply moving deeper and then deeper still, until she was moving with him, wrapping her legs around him, welcoming the increasing sensation of fullness and energy within her.

She was Eve and the apple—all the woman he could ever want, and impossible for him to resist. Her response to him was driving him both to want to conquer her and at the same time give all of himself over to her. His whole world had narrowed down to the bed and to her, one moment spread out beneath him, the next wrapped around him. The scent and sight of her, the sound of her pleasure, the feel of her skin under his hands, the hot, slick power of the way her body received and held him…

It was happening. It was coming. A flutter at first…but now the sensation gathered and gripped her. Charley sucked in a lungful of air and then tensed, her nails digging into the flesh of Raphael’s shoulders as she looked up into his face.

His skin was sheened with sweat, the muscles in his arms corded and locked.

She held nothing back, Raphael recognised, concealed nothing. He could see the ecstasy in her expression as well as feel the surging rhythmic contractions of her orgasm. His own body trembled and then shook, his throat arching and his whole body pulled as taut as a bow in that final second before he joined her in his own release into pleasure.

C
HARLEY
looked up from the weekly progress chart she had been studying. It was three weeks now since Raphael had brought her back to the
palazzo
and left her there. She pushed back her chair from the pretty, delicately painted wood desk. She had been uncertain at first how Raphael would feel about the fact that Anna had given her as her office the pretty little sitting room which she had told her had last been used by Raphael’s mother, but Anna had assured her that he wouldn’t mind, that he had told her simply to make sure that Charley had somewhere to work.

Three weeks: twenty-one nights of unbearable aching longing, and twenty-one days of fighting to keep Raphael out of her thoughts.

She had had three wonderful days with him in Florence. Those she would never, ever forget. Three wonderful days and three even more wonderful nights: days during which Raphael had shown her his Florence, and nights when he had shown her the power of her own sexuality.

He might not have been a demonstrative lover in public, holding her hand and pulling her to him as she had seen one young man doing with his girl in the Boboli Gardens the afternoon Raphael had taken her there, but he had showed his desire for her in other more subtle ways—via a certain look, a certain touch—and there had definitely been no holding back from showing her his desire when they were on their own.

On their final morning before they had left the city she had been lying in his arms, after Raphael had made love to her. He had kissed her and smoothed the hair back off her face, telling her, ‘You do understand, don’t you, that what has happened here between us in Florence must belong only to Florence?’

Yes, she had understood—but that hadn’t stopped her from asking him, almost begging him in desperation, even though she had already known what his answer would be, ‘Will we come back?’

‘No,’ he had told her, with a finality that had cut into her like a knife slicing into her heart.

She had known, of course, that that would be his answer. He had told her from the start not to want anything more than they had had. Then she hadn’t thought about the future—then she had been too driven by her desire for him to look deeper and see what was already growing beneath it. Then she hadn’t realised that she had fallen in love with him. Not then, but she did now.

It wasn’t Raphael’s fault. It was her own. But knowing that didn’t make her pain any easier to bear. She had tried to escape it by spending all her waking hours working. She was almost always the first at the
garden in the morning and the last to leave at the end of the day, returning to the
palazzo
to write reports late into the evening, but not even that could keep Raphael out of her thoughts. He was there all the time, overshadowing everything else, and Charley knew that he always would be.

The nights were worse than the days. She’d delay going to bed until the early hours, convinced that she would be so exhausted that she would sleep, and she did. But only for a while, waking up often to find her pillow wet with her tears, her body and her heart aching for Raphael.

Charley looked round the pretty, feminine salon. Whenever she imagined Raphael’s mother here, perhaps sitting at the desk where Charley herself worked, writing her letters, another image would appear: Raphael himself as a young boy. Her heart turned over inside her chest, a yearning spreading through her. Now she could understand, as she had never understood before, the need of a woman to conceive the child of the man she loved. To have that child as a living, breathing memorial of what they had shared, to be loved and cherished as a precious gift.

But of course there could be no such gift for her. Her all too brief span of time in the paradise that being Raphael’s lover had created for her was over. Raphael himself had closed the gates on their return.

Wearily Charley looked down at the desk. It was far too small really, for the amount of paperwork she had to deal with, but Anna had offered her this room so proudly that Charley hadn’t had the heart to tell the
housekeeper that she needed a working space that was more functional.

So far they were ahead of schedule with the work of clearing the garden in readiness for the actual renovation—although Charley suspected that sometimes the contractors would have preferred it if she didn’t put in such long hours, assessing the progress of everything. But working herself hard was the only way she had of trying to stop the pain of loving Raphael.

In a few minutes she would go downstairs and drive out to the site, and then this evening she would update her schedules for the week and input them into her computer, ready to send to Raphael with her report as she had done for the previous three weeks. So far, though, Raphael had not e-mailed her back—not even to say that he had received her reports. Because he was afraid that if he contacted her she would plead with him as she had done in Florence? It was Charley’s prayer that she would
never
humiliate herself and irritate Raphael by doing that.

There were moments when she longed for the comforting presence of her sisters, so that she could unburden herself to them and be comforted by them, but then there were other times when she simply couldn’t bear the thought of disclosing her pain and the reasons for it to anyone, because it was so raw.

‘All the statues have now been removed. Those that are only slightly damaged will be repaired in my workshops in Florence, whilst those that cannot will be measured and photographed so that exact copies can be made.’

Charley nodded her head as she listened to Niccolo giving her his progress report. It had been a long day, and now the warmth was dying out of the sun as it sank towards the horizon.

‘You’ll let me have a detailed report to pass on to Raphael?’

‘Of course. No work will be done until he has sanctioned it. As you know, we’ve already photographed each piece of statuary, and the location where it was found.’

Charley nodded her head again. She too had taken photographs of everything, meticulously numbering them and pinpointing the sites on her own personal plan of the garden. She wasn’t going to take any chances of being found wanting in her professional capacity, even if Raphael had found her not good enough to keep in his bed.

‘We are doing very well. Raphael will have every reason to be extremely pleased with our progress,’ Niccolo told her, as he left to return to Florence.

Half an hour later Charley too was ready to call it a day. The last rays of the setting sun were fading as she locked the heavy gates. It would be dark by the time she returned to the
palazzo,
where she would shower and eat and then start work on her evening’s paperwork.

Since it was Friday, once she had updated everything she could e-mail it to Raphael—her treat of the week, her only precious contact with him. Just thinking about e-mailing him made her stomach muscles cramp with a mixture of pain and longing—and the desperate hope that he would e-mail her back.

How pathetic she was, Charley derided herself contemptuously
. She looked towards the small Fiat Raphael had given her to drive, and then looked again in disbelief when she saw the sleek sports car parked next to it.

‘Raphael…’ Without thinking, desperate to get to him, she stepped into the road, oblivious to the car coming towards her until she heard the blare of its horn.

Raphael was out of the Ferrari in a flash, running faster than he had ever run in his life, grabbing hold of Charley and dragging her bodily out of the way as the car swerved to avoid her.

Charley felt the heat of its engine, the sting of the stones it threw up on her skin, and she heard the curses of the driver—but none of that mattered. All that mattered was that she was with Raphael. But he was shaking her, violently and almost painfully, over and over again, his face drained of colour, his hands hard on her arms as he demanded furiously, ‘Why didn’t you look before you crossed the road? Are you blind? What were you trying to do? Kill yourself?’

Charley had never seen him so angry. She could almost feel the heat and the power of his rage.

Shocked and frightened, more by her near-miss than by his anger, she trembled in his hold and begged him, ‘Stop it.’

Immediately Raphael thrust her away from him, so hard that she staggered, and then leaned on the side of his car.

Reaction had begun to set in, reducing her to a shaking bundle of jelly-legged awareness of the danger she had been in.

‘Get in,’ Raphael ordered her, yanking open the door.

‘I’ve got my own car,’ Charley reminded him, but the last thing she felt like doing was driving.

‘I’ll arrange for that to be collected later.’

She was in the car, still feeling shaky and sick, wanting Raphael to hold her tenderly and comfortingly instead of being angry with her.

Raphael drove them back to the
palazzo
at speed, without speaking to her, and Charley was glad to be able to escape from him once they were inside, hurrying up to her room, wincing as she heard the furious slam of his office door on her way upstairs.

Ten minutes later, standing under the warm sting of the shower, Charley began to feel slightly better. Her shock had receded, leaving her to admit that she had been careless, and that she was lucky that Raphael had acted so speedily to save her from going under the wheels of the car. That was what loving the wrong man did for you. It made you so desperate to be with him that you forgot everything else. She had to find a way to stop herself from loving him. She must.

Wrapping a towel round her wet body, she headed for the bedroom—and then came to an abrupt halt when she saw Raphael standing there, waiting for her.

He was still angry. She could see that immediately.

‘I’m sorry—’ she began, but he stopped her.

‘Sorry? Is that all you can say?’ he demanded harshly. ‘You damn nearly kill yourself and…’ He was reaching for her again, but Charley stepped back from him.

‘No!’ she uttered, panicking, not trusting herself to
let him touch her, knowing that if he did she would end up begging him to stay with her.

Her denial was too much for Raphael. His heart was still thudding with the agony he had felt when he had thought the car would hit her. Everything he had told himself and taught himself was forgotten. He was a man denied what was rightfully his, the woman who was rightfully his—the woman fate had devised for him and bequeathed to him, the woman whose only previous ‘no’ to him had been a plea for him not to leave her.

Charley could almost feel Raphael’s tension. It showed in his abrupt movements and in the dark grimness of his eyes, as though he was only just managing to hold back whatever it was that had turned them that colour. He looked…he looked like a man filled with suppressed anger, Charley recognised. And as he came towards her he was looking at her as though she was the source and the cause of that anger.

‘What is it?’ she asked apprehensively.

‘What is it? It’s
this,’
Raphael answered savagely, reaching for her, pulling her against his body and then bending his head to kiss her. Not as he had kissed her before, not as she had dreamed of him kissing her, but over and over again, as though he couldn’t stop. Fierce, hard, demanding kisses, filled with a raw and angry pent-up passion that seared through her, igniting inside her an answering, equally primitive need.

Charley lost all sense of time as she clung to him, riding out the storm, letting him take what he wanted, glorying in the hard, imprisoning hold of his hands on her body that made her his willing captive. But at last
she somehow managed to pull herself away from him to warn him, ‘Anna will be bringing my supper.’

‘Not now,’ he told her, pulling her back towards him, his hand finding her bare thigh beneath her towel and caressing it, making her quiver with a thrill of yearning pleasure. ‘I told Anna we are not to be disturbed. Your hunger for your supper will, I am afraid, have to go unsatisfied, because my hunger for you cannot bear any further delay.’

His hand had reached the top of her thigh; his voice was thick with emotion. Her heart was pounding with wild, out-of-control euphoria. He wanted her. Raphael wanted her.

Charlotte pressed herself closer to him in eager delight, another thrill running through her when he groaned and kissed her fiercely, the open agony of his longing matching everything that she herself felt.

Their mutual need was like a fireball, consuming them. Raphael was shedding his clothes as he caressed her with increasing urgency and intimacy. There was no time for the slow sensuality of leisurely love play, and no need either, Charley acknowledged. How could there be when she had spent the last three weeks aching for him? An ache that had become a tumultuous clamour of pulsing need, possessing the whole of her body even before she had seen how his hunger for her had brought Raphael to full and thick readiness. It was the sight of that readiness that sent her over the edge and into a place of wild, visceral need.

She could see the hot look of male urgency glittering in Raphael’s eyes as he parted her naked thighs, the
heat of his hand against her sex making her moan. The sound changed to a fevered gasp of almost too heightened pleasure when his fingers stroked the eager waiting length of her sex.

‘I’ve lain awake night after night thinking of you like this—sweet and hot, wet and ready for me.’

Just the sound of his voice was enough to make her body convulse with longing.

There was no time for them to reach the bed—no thought in her head other than the need to have Raphael deep within her, filling her, completing her, driving her with each wonderfully powerful thrust of his body closer to the epicentre of the storm within her…Her legs wrapped around Raphael, her fingernails digging deep into his shoulders. His hands protected her back from the hardness of the bedroom door as they coupled wildly and fiercely. Charley could feel her body’s possessive hunger for him as her muscles tightened around him, demanding that he take her deeper, harder, faster. Words formed by her aching need were gasped against his shoulder, his sweatdampened throat. She could smell the aroused heat of his body, taste his need in the salty tang of his skin.