Was he saying what she thought he was saying? She just stared at him, not daring to trust what her ears were telling her. ‘Francesca—’
‘Forget about Francesca,’ he said impatiently. ‘I am blind to Francesca. I am blind to any woman who is not you.’
She took a wary step towards him. ‘Are you saying that you want me to stay even without a baby—?’
He threw out an angry hand. ‘Why do you need me to keep on saying it?’ he thrust out. ‘I want you to stay … because I want you to stay!’
‘H-how long?’
‘Dio, woman,’ he breathed savagely. ‘What are you trying to do to me?’ His silver-green eyes gave an aggressive flash. ‘For ever, okay? I want it all: the love, the ring, the marriage— the whole damn crazy package!’
‘Then why are you so angry about it?’ she cried out.
He squared his wide shoulders. Pale and tense, ‘It would not hurt you, Rachel, to give me some small encouragement to feel happy about loving you,’ he pushed out.
Then he turned his back to her and grabbed his nape with long angry fingers. Rachel hovered, wanting to go to him but still too scared to move.
Then, why are you scared? she asked herself. He had just said he loved her and she was standing here giving him every impression that she—
She closed the gap between them, running her arms around his waist and pressing herself in close to his rigid back. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘But I’ve loved you so much and for so long when I knew I didn’t have the right to feel like this!’
A sound ripped from his throat and he spun in her arms. His eyes were like twin black diamonds, still angry, possessive—real.
‘No—w-wait, I need to say this—’ she shivered out when she saw what was coming. ‘I knew that I had no right to fall in love with you after the way I had hit on you without giving a thought to the trouble I was going to cause! Then w-we thought we had made a baby so I used it as an excuse to stay and—’
‘We used it.’
‘But it just wasn’t fair of me to load you down with my foolish feelings when—No!’ she protested. ‘I’ve not—’
Finished …
What a waste of breath, Rachel thought as she fell into the kind of kiss that made words redundant.
By the time he lifted his head again, streaks of desire were burning into his cheekbones. ‘Any reason why we cannot continue this … discussion in bed?’ he said huskily.
What discussion? Rachel thought dryly as she wound her arms around his neck. ‘You want to … talk?’ she asked innocently.
His mouth twitched. ‘No.’
‘You perhaps want to say something about the way you unleashed your charms on another woman tonight?’
He tensed. ‘You want me to apologise—’
‘I want you to pay,’ Rachel told him. ‘At least you were saved from watching me act like that with Alonso.’
‘But I did see.’ He grimaced. ‘I watched the handsome bastard leap out of his car and take you in his arms. I watched him kiss you as if he had every right to do it, and I saw the adoring expression on your face as you looked up at him!’
‘It wasn’t adoring, it was shock!’ Rachel protested.
‘You let him kiss you.’
‘Italians are always kissing each other.’ She dismissed that accusation.
‘You let him drive you away in his flashy red car.’
‘It was either that or get caught in the street by a snooping reporter.’ Then she frowned. ‘Where were you when this was happening?’
His sigh was rueful. ‘Making a fool of myself over lunch with five important business associates, by just getting up and walking away,’ he confessed. ‘Then I got the call from Francesca and my day just continued downhill from there.’ He ran his fingers through her hair, his eyes hooded. ‘When you walked out of the restaurant I thought you were going to go to him.’
Rachel stared at him in blank disbelief. ‘Since when have you been so short on ego to think such a thing?’
‘Since I met you,’ he said. ‘You have a unique way of eating away at my ego.’
‘That’s such a lie,’ she denounced. ‘You’ve done nothing but bully me and want sex from me since we met!’
‘You hit on me, but not because you wanted me. And you taunted me with other lovers.’ He shrugged.
‘I’ve had one lover before you,’ she reminded him. ‘My one lined up against your many who have trailed themselves past me seems a pretty pathetic comparison to me.’
He touched his tongue to the corner of her sulky mouth. ‘I love you,’ he murmured. ‘Can we forget the others?’
Rachel sighed out a groan because he was right and harking on about old lovers had nothing to do with what they had here. ‘Just take me to bed and love me, Raffaelle,’ she begged.
He did not need asking twice. Their clothes fell away like rags for jumble. He pulled her against him, lips almost bruising in their intensity, his hands sliding possessively along her slender curves until he found the indentation of her waist, where he gripped and lifted her off the ground.
For a few clamouring seconds when her legs wrapped round him she thought he was going to do it standing right there with no preliminaries. Their mouths were straining and he was on fire, pumped up and ready for her. And she was pretty well much the same.
Then he turned and toppled them on to the duvet. What followed was the kind of fierce, fevered loving that staked absolute possession and claim. He gave her all of him and she took it greedily and gave back the same.
Afterwards they lay spread across the mattress, Rachel nothing more than a slender, soft, boneless creature lying beneath him, still lost in a wonderful, sensual world.
‘In all my life,’ Rafaelle murmured as he gently kissed her back down to earth again, ‘I have never known the power of what you can do to me.’
So, gravely serious, opening her eyes, Rachel smiled at him. ‘Hit on, trapped, taken over,’ she said approvingly.
His eyes began to glint. ‘Now you are asking for trouble,’ he warned and climbed over her to land lightly on his feet by the bed.
‘I didn’t mean it—!’ she cried out, sitting up jerkily.
He’d moved to the dressing table; now he was back by the bed. Stretching out beside her, he took hold of her left hand.
‘Oh, I forgot,’ she said, staring as the fake ring was removed from her finger.
