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
