his sculpted lips, sentencing himself to silence once he appreciated that fighting with Vivi was only going to make his goal of marrying her more difficult to achieve.
Vivi spun, blue eyes violet with rage. ‘And we all know, of course, what kind of company you think I am.’
‘You were telling me about your employment in the brothel.’
‘The brothel was at the back in an attached building that I never had access to. It had a separate entrance. How was I supposed to know it was there?’ Vivi demanded, emptying her glass and setting it down with a sharp little snap at the end of the polished table. ‘I worked in the modelling agency, which was a legitimate modelling agency.’
‘Legitimate? A place with a photographer who persuaded Arianna to take her clothes off for the camera for glamour photos?’ Raffaele scoffed with disdain. ‘Do I really look that stupid?’
‘You may not look it but you are!’ Vivi flashed back without hesitation. ‘Arianna made an unwise decision but that was her call, not mine. She didn’t discuss stripping for the camera with me at any time. All I did was make the stupid appointment for her.’
‘And did you get commission for luring her into the studio?’ Raffaele derided.
‘Good grief, Raffaele... I was a receptionist, not a pimp!’ Vivi gasped. ‘I didn’t lure her anywhere. Why would I have?’
‘Because those naked photos were a means of profit in unscrupulous hands,’ Raffaele told her grimly. ‘I had to buy them back at a hugely inflated price to protect Arianna because the contract she unwisely signed had small print she didn’t bother to read.’
Vivi nodded reluctantly, frustrated that she seemed to be getting nowhere with him when it came to the matter of her own lack of involvement in his sister’s misfortunes at the agency. ‘Well, I’m sorry about that but it’s still got nothing to do with me. I was just one of the administrative staff.’
‘Why can’t you just come clean?’ Raffaele raked at her in a raw undertone. ‘I’m not going to tell tales to your grandfather. You were not a receptionist, you were one of the models doing escort work on the side.’
‘A model?’ Vivi exclaimed in angry disbelief, her hands coiling into furious fists. ‘I’ve never modelled in my life!’
‘Well, then, if you’re sticking to that story,’ Raffaele murmured in a silky purr that ran down her spine like a spectral caress, ‘perhaps you’d care to explain how the press managed to capture you on camera wearing a designer outfit that they priced as having cost thousands of pounds? How did a humble receptionist afford clothes that expensive?’
Vivi frowned and rolled her eyes at him again. ‘She didn’t. Everything I wore once belonged to your sister. She cleared out her wardrobe and insisted on giving me her cast-offs. As we’re almost the exact same size, it was wonderful for me because, fresh from university, I didn’t own many clothes and Arianna was sick of seeing me in the same dress when we went out.’
Raffaele had lost colour. ‘I don’t believe you.’
‘Phone her and ask if you must have verification,’ Vivi urged angrily. ‘My goodness, Raffaele, can’t you accept and believe anything I tell you?’
‘You were wearing second-hand clothing?’ Raffaele pressed incredulously.
‘I buy second-hand stuff in charity shops all the time...or I used to,’ Vivi muttered in the spirit of honesty integral to her outspoken nature. ‘Are you always so prejudiced against people who have less money than you? Do you always think the worst of them?’
‘I am not prejudiced,’ Raffaele bit out grittily.
‘Oh, yes, you are!’ Vivi hurled back, stalking up to him to poke a forefinger right into his shirt front. ‘If I cut you in half, I’d find prejudice running right through you in a seam of gold. According to your view of the world, only rich people have principles and self-respect. You thought the worst of me without good reason.’
‘I had good reason,’ Raffaele framed wrathfully. ‘And don’t touch me again.’
‘It was just a tiny little poke!’ Vivi’s forefinger stabbed his chest again because she couldn’t resist the temptation. ‘Stop being so blasted stuffy!’
Raffaele’s eyes flashed like a storm warning laced with lightning and he grabbed her up against him. ‘I’ll show you stuffy.’
‘Fighting words!’ Vivi scorned.
And then his mouth crashed down on hers and the world went dark and she teetered in her high heels, legs suddenly as boneless as grass stalks. His tongue pierced the moist interior of her mouth and set off a cascade of sensations that made her every skin cell tingle with excitement. Her eyes slid closed, her whole body gripped by an elemental force of pleasurable anticipation. She tried to fight it off, for an instant she even tried to pull back but her limbs were boneless, her body overheated and desperate to be crushed to the hard, unyielding strength of his.
‘What are we doing?’ she muttered shakily, briefly coming up for air.
‘What we should have done the minute you arrived,’ Raffaele growled, knowing he was dangerously out of control but unexpectedly enjoying that sensation of risk.
‘What cave did you come out of this morning?’ Vivi sniped while locked to him like a second skin, innately aware of every muscular and powerful line of his big body.
Raffaele stared down at the sultry reddened line of her full mouth and the warning voices in the back of his head receded into silence. He wanted her. He wanted her as he had never wanted any woman before and he wasn’t in the mood to deny himself. And colliding with those violet eyes clouded with passion as he went in to taste her mouth again, he knew that she wanted him just as much.
Good grief, he could kiss, Vivi conceded in a daze. Her head swam while her body craved the simple pleasure of being touched. Not something she had ever allowed herself to feel before but then she hadn’t been tempted before. Now wildly conscious of the heat gathering at the heart of her and the tightness of her nipples, she was trembling, stunned by the effect he had on her. An explosion of heat mushroomed up inside her as he worked her mouth, penetrating, withdrawing, setting up a chain reaction through her quivering length.
A lean hand probed beneath her skirt and she stopped breathing as he touched her. Without her volition her thighs locked round his hand and she gasped, stroked in that one place that drove her absolutely crazy, her lips parting beneath his as his fingers tugged away the crotch of her knickers and located the dampness she couldn’t control. Her body jackknifed in his hold and she jerked, gasping in response.
‘You’re incredibly sexy,’ Raffaele husked.
And Vivi gazed up at him, helplessly impressed by any form of compliment from Raffaele. The space between her legs was pounding out a drumbeat of craving stronger than anything she had ever felt and she couldn’t think straight, she couldn’t think beyond that terrible unrelenting hunger assailing her. ‘So are you,’ she muttered dazedly.
‘I have never wanted any woman the way I want you,’ he admitted in a driven undertone.
Vivi’s eyes gleamed with satisfaction because there was a wonderful symmetry about that admission. He wanted her as much as she wanted
