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
