Bride in a Gilded Cage

Instinctively, as Rafael moved over her, Isobel opened her legs. She felt him push against her, where a curiously unsatisfied ache was building. She shifted restlessly, and then Rafael was sliding into her, so slowly and carefully that she could see beads of sweat on his brow.

Isobel moved to meet him, but Rafael drew back and growled. ‘No. This is going to hurt a little. Let me dictate the pace…’ He kissed her on the lips, still holding back, and said with a tortured-sounding laugh, ‘Even now you have to meet me full-on…’

‘Rafael,’ Isobel groaned, feeling that elusive peak beckoning again. ‘Please. I’m fine.’

With his next move he thrust into her fully, and Isobel gasped when she could feel every hard inch of him embedded inside her. Her mouth made an O as she looked up, but with a slight movement of her hips she told Rafael she was fine.

Ever so slowly he withdrew, before thrusting in again, and that elusive peak came closer and closer to Isobel, teasing her with every thrust that Rafael made, faster now. She wrapped a leg around his back and groaned as she felt him slide even deeper within her.

As if he couldn’t help himself his movements became more urgent. He thrust harder, deeper. Isobel’s arms were wrapped around him, her chest arched up into his. She could feel her nipples scrape along the tautly muscled wall of his chest.

Their breaths grew ragged, hearts nearly bursting out of their chests, and whatever Isobel had experienced before was eclipsed by a blinding flash of sensation so acutely pleasurable that she tensed all over. Rafael drove in and out, and Isobel was unbearably sensitised for a moment, before she came crashing down again. She could feel the ripples of her orgasm clenching and unclenching around Rafael as he, too, tensed for a long, tortured moment until she felt his warm release deep inside her.

Shattered, all Isobel could do was lie there, with Rafael’s deliciously heavy weight pinning her to the bed. After a couple of minutes she became aware of sweat-slicked skin, a musky smell, and damp hair clinging to her neck. A chill on her skin made her shiver slightly and Rafael moved, rolling off her, taking her with him, so that she lay sprawled over his chest, her body seemingly welded to his much harder one.

She felt a deep chuckle move his chest, and lifted her heavy head to look at him suspiciously. He just arched a brow, which spoke a multitude, and she ducked her head again, her face flaming.

This time when he moved he lifted the covers and rolled them both underneath, tucking Isobel close to his side. Rafael felt as though every one of his inner cells had shifted and regrouped into a new formation. Isobel was close against him, every inch of her lithe, graceful body touching his, and just thinking of that was making him harden all over again. He stifled a groan.

He felt her lift her head and ask, in a small, hesitant voice which sounded endearingly unlike her, ‘Is it…always like that?’

Sheer masculine pride puffed up Rafael’s chest, and a deep thrill ran through him to know that he’d been her first lover. He turned his head and pressed a kiss to where short tendrils of silky hair still clung damply to her forehead. ‘For us…yes.’

He thought he felt her lips smile against his shoulder, but almost instantaneously he felt her body grow heavy and slack and her breathing grow deep and even.

He couldn’t sleep. He felt as though his arms would have to be unwelded from where they held Isobel tight against him. He’d never felt like this before after making love with a woman. A face popped into his head and he all but sneered at the implication. Certainly never with her.

He shifted slightly so he could look down. All he could see was the smooth curve of Isobel’s cheek and those plumped, swollen lips. Her cheeks were still flushed. A dart of recrimination struck him; he’d never meant to rip her dress like that in the hotel, but something in her wide eyes as she’d looked at him with such innocent provocation had said, Look, don’t touch. And it had driven him over the edge of his endurance.

It was why he’d been so boorish earlier. He’d all but forgotten that he’d ever suspected her of being a virgin, too caught up in believing that she was experienced, teasing him, stringing him along, pushing him to his limits. When she’d covered her breasts with her arms downstairs he’d missed the tellingly vulnerable move, certain she was doing it again, and then he’d seen her tears…He could still feel the pain that had ripped through his chest.

His head fell back. All along she’d been innocent. And now she was tamed. His spitting hissing kitten with sharp claws was tamed at last. Rafael finally fell into a deep sleep with a smile on his face.

Isobel woke with a start, to find herself in an unfamiliar bed, with strange sensations running through a curiously aching body…and another very warm body stretched out beside her. With a split-second rush of memory it all came back, and heat spread outwards from her belly to envelop every part of her.

She groaned softly. Thankfully Rafael wasn’t holding her any more. She looked at him suspiciously, and couldn’t help the kick of her heart at seeing him looking so arrogantly satisfied and relaxed, big limbs spraw

led in abandon. The sheet was doing little to mask the evidence of his impressive manhood.

She blushed to remember how she’d encircled him with her hand, and how it had felt to have him thrust into her that first time. In a panic, she scrambled off the bed and stood, breathing heavily, sure he’d wake. But he didn’t, although he shifted slightly.

Isobel couldn’t believe it. It was as if all her precious intentions and resolutions to do all she could to make this man divorce her had taken a hike last night. She touched her mouth. It felt sensitive and swollen. She cringed now when she thought of how she’d clung to Rafael so desperately afterwards. It must have been like extricating himself from an octopus. And when she’d asked Is it always like that? Isobel cringed—he’d turned her brain to complete simpering bimbo mush.

Not even bothering to look for her underwear, she stole out of Rafael’s bedroom and back to her own, certain that he wouldn’t welcome waking with his wife wrapped around him like a vine.

Isobel could only have been asleep for about ten minutes when she woke again with a start, to see Rafael standing by her bed, naked as the day he was born. Heat drenched her in seconds and she gripped her sheet. ‘What is it?’

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

A little of Isobel’s fire came back even as she tried to ignore that gorgeous naked body. She felt a rush of liquid heat between her legs. ‘I’m sleeping. What does it look like?’

‘What are you doing in here? The last thing I remember is you in my bed, where you belong.’

His easy dominance made Isobel spit, her recent feelings of vulnerability still far too vivid. ‘I wanted to come back to my own bed. I wanted some space.’

Rafael reached down and plucked the cover from Isobel’s nerveless fingers, twitched it back to the end of the bed.

She gasped and scrambled for it. ‘How dare—?’