meaning for Raphael over the next month, thanks to his unofficial fiancée’s unwillingness to let him give them both what they desperately needed.
If he had thought Pia biddable, she had proved he was utterly wrong. Dio mio, under the naive, smiling, ready-to-please demeanor was a core of steely stubbornness.
When she’d said she wanted to spend time with him, she’d meant it. And not in his ex-wife or mama and sisters kind of way, where what they wanted was for him to show them off in their designer gowns, the latest of Milan’s haute couture fashion, at parties, and theaters. Where they could show off their connection with Raphael Mastrantino, CEO of Vito Automobiles, a man with powerful friends.
With them, it was always about the glitter he could add to their standing in society. It was the veneer of power that spread to them when they could claim a connection to him. It was what Raphael could provide and nothing else.
But with Pia, Dio, when she’d said she wanted to spend time with him, she’d meant she wanted time with him. Learning about him. The two of them hanging out with each other.
It had become Raphael’s favorite phase in all of the English language.
She had insisted that he show her the vintage car he was restoring currently. So Raphael had taken her to his house in Como one afternoon. What he’d expected was for her to ooh and aah over it, and then expect him to show her the sights of Como, the only village along the lake she hadn’t seen.
Instead, driven by Emilio, Pia had arrived in the cutest overalls he had ever seen. Uncaring of the fact that her hands could get greasy or that her hair would be messed up—though Pia’s hair was always messy and he loved it like that—she had crawled under the hood with him, asking him to explain what it was that he was currently doing.
Talking about the chassis and suspension while the scent of her curled in his muscles, her hot breath stroked his cheeks—he had never had a more diverting evening.
They had ended it with a glass of Chianti and mac ‘n’ cheese that Pia had cooked in his kitchen, having informed him that that was the extent of her culinary abilities.
Having never spoken to another soul at such length about his passion, Raphael had spent most of their dinner in quiet rumination and with a burning need to peel the overalls off her lithe body. To kiss and lick every inch of her silky curves.
Sharing even silence with Pia was wonderful.
They had ended the night, because she had a test early in the morning, with a soft kiss that had left him with blue balls. But also with a thread of quiet, incandescent joy he’d never known before.
Another time, she had invited him to sit through her class, and then made him model for her first face carved from wood, because as she had put it, he had classically handsome features with a bold nose and an arrogant chin that would lend itself to that particular type of wood.
He had sat still for almost an hour while the minx had worked with her hands, only to find her dissolving into giggles when he’d asked her to show him what she had so far.
“Mi dispiace, Raphael. I’m so bad at this, I’ve made you into a monster,” she had sputtered amidst her laughter. “I’ll ask Antonio to sit for me next time.” Of course he had said no, to which she had responded by crawling to him on her knees, tracing those blunt-nailed, callused fingers over his nose, temple and then over his lips. She had then taken his mouth in such an erotic kiss, swirling tongue and biting teeth and all, that Raphael had been harder than the block of wood, and said, “I can’t bear to ruin this gorgeous face, Raphael.”
Since he was busy with work and Allegra’s custody suit, and she was busy studying and carving and meeting the new friends she had made, all they could manage one week was two evenings spent together holed up in Gio’s study, which he had been far too happy to give up.
While Raphael had spread out his paperwork on the vast mahogany desk, Pia had settled her textbooks around the sitting area. It was the most enjoyable quiet evening of his life. The sight of Pia with her glasses perched on her nose, studious concentration furrowing her brow, had driven him half-crazy.
The thought of spending the next fifty years in such close quarters with her was surprisingly exciting. He imagined looking up from his work to find her gaze on him with a slight smile, sitting in comfortable silence but with an ongoing sizzling awareness; the absolute knowledge that it wouldn’t make a difference to Pia if his assets grew another billion or not, or if he lost most of it with some bad decisions like his father. The trust that she would never stop looking at him as if he were the most perfect man she had ever met—it filled him with the desire to wrap his arms around her and never let go.
Locking the door against any servants, uncaring that he was dishonoring her under Gio’s roof, he had crossed the room, knelt in front of her, pulled her hair from the tight braid she had forced it into and drunk greedily from her welcoming mouth.
He’d meant to keep his word. He’d meant to let her come to him, to give her the time she’d asked for. And yet, her responsive moans had had him spreading her legs wide, pulling up the long skirt she had worn that day, and then kissing his way up the silky skin of her thighs, all the way to the damp center of her sex.
He had tasted her desire for him while she had sunk her fingers into his hair, gasping and moaning, scandalized by his actions and yet thrusting against his ministrations until she was falling apart against his mouth while digging her teeth into his lower lip. The most potent masculine satisfaction had surged through him when she had collapsed into his arms, limbs trembling.
Cheeks pink, breath serrated, hair in wild disarray and her eyes, those wide, deep brown eyes glittering with an emotion he didn’t want to give a name to. Dio, she’d been the wildest, the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
Fingers sinking in his hair, she had guided his mouth down to hers for a quick press. “I didn’t know I could feel so much pleasure that I could happily die from it.”
“You’re not dying until I have punished you for your no-sex rule,” he’d said, sinking his teeth into the rough cushion of her palm.
“Poor Raphael, it has been, what? Three weeks?”
A soft flick at the center of her palm with his tongue. Like a spark plug when combusted, she immediately slithered in his lap. “Five weeks and four days, you minx.”
She had crawled to her knees, stroked her palms up his chest, cheeks flaming pink and with the most mischievous grin said, “Raphael, can I...?”
He hardened into stone. Her hands on his thighs, yes, but the shy desire, her hesitation, got him every time.
“Can you what, cara mia?” If she had asked the world of him, he would have agreed.
Her face burrowed into his chest, her fingers drawing mesmerizing lines on the back of his neck. “I... I want to return the favor.”
He swallowed the jolt of lust that shot through him. “What favor?”
“I want to do to you what you did to me just now,” she had finally whispered at his ear. “I want to make you lose control too.”
How he hadn’t combusted right there, Raphael had no idea. Wedged against the taut curve of her buttock, his erection had twitched in his trousers at her innocent suggestion.
“Are you
