The Italian Duke's Virgin Mistress

‘What the devil…? I told you not to move.’

Charley swung round. Raphael was coming towards her, carrying a first aid box.

‘I’ve rung the doctor, and he should be here soon, but in the meantime the burn needs to be covered by a dressing.’

Raphael was kneeling on the floor next to her now bare legs, apparently oblivious to the fact that she had removed her jeans and was now only covered by the lacy briefs which had been Lizzie’s Christmas present to her.

‘There’s really no need…’ she began, but Raphael stopped her.

‘On the contrary—there is every need,’ he told her.

She had removed her jeans, and now it wasn’t just the slender length of her legs that was distracting him from his self-imposed task, Raphael acknowledged. He had seen women wearing far more provocative and revealing underwear than the lacy briefs that Charley was wearing, but right now the fact that he was acutely aware of what lay beneath the barrier concealing her body from him was having a very unwanted effect on him physically. Angry with himself for allowing his body to overcome his self-control, Raphael worked quickly to open the medical kit and remove the necessary dressing, keeping his gaze fixed firmly on the burned flesh of Charley’s thigh, which had now begun to tremble slightly.

‘The pain is getting worse?’ he demanded.

Charley nodded her head. It was, after all, true that the pain was bad, but it was also true that it wasn’t the pain that was causing her body to tremble. Nor was it the reason that the trembling increased when Raphael placed the dressing on her bare flesh. Her reaction to his touch horrified her. She was behaving like an adolescent with a crush.

‘There—that should protect the burn until the doctor gets here to look at it properly.’

Charley nodded her head, managing a reluctant, ‘Thank you.’

She felt shivery and sick, her nerves jangling—and not, she suspected, purely because of her burned thigh. This time it was a relief when Raphael left her.

CHAPTER FOUR

IT WAS another lovely sunny morning, her second here in Italy, in Raphael’s palazzo, in what was in effect his bedroom, since he owned the palazzo. Goosebumps rose on her skin as though it had been touched, caressed. Helplessly Charley closed her eyes. It must be the painkillers the doctor had given her yesterday, after he had looked at her burn, re-dressed it and pronounced that she must spend the rest of the day in bed, not her wayward thoughts of Raphael.

She knew better this morning than to go and stand on the balcony in her sleepwear.

Instead of worrying about who owned the bed she slept in, what she should be doing was worrying about how she was going to manage without her jeans—the one and only garment she had with her to clothe the lower half of her body. She could hardly appear in public in the loose pyjama shorts she was currently wearing, although Raphael had said that he would speak to Anna on her behalf.

She owed Raphael a debt of gratitude for dealing with the situation so properly and promptly. The doctor had told her that the burn could have turned very nasty indeed if it had been left unattended, as she would have chosen to do left to her own devices. Luckily it was not so severe that she would need skin grafts, but he had warned her that she might end up with an area of flesh that would forever be vulnerable to heat and sunlight.

Charley looked at her untouched breakfast tray. She was too on edge to eat. She pushed her hand into her hair to lift it off her face. She had lost a great deal since coming to Italy: her hairband, her jeans, her pride and even some of her self-respect. And hadn’t she forgotten something? her conscience prodded. Charley defended her omission. Wasn’t the list she had just given herself long enough? Did she really have to add to it that she was also in danger of losing the protection she had put in place around and within herself to stop her from feeling the pain of not being good enough, not being woman enough to merit male attention?

She looked round the room, desperate to find something she could focus on that would enable her to avoid dealing with what was happening to her. The room must have been remodelled at some stage, because its Baroque decor belonged to a later age than the palazzo itself. The softly painted grey-blue wooden panelling was decorated with gilded swags and cupids, and heraldic arms were carved into the imposing bedhead. Her bathroom contained a huge claw-footed bath, in addition to a more modern shower, and the room’s walls were tiled in marble.

She heard someone knock on the bedroom door and, assuming it was the maid coming to collect her untouched breakfast tray, went to open the door for her—only to discover that the person standing outside the door was not a maid, but Raphael. As he stepped into the room and closed the door behind him Charley saw that he was carrying a large, not very deep square box, stamped with an international delivery service’s label, beneath his arm.

‘Are you still in pain?’ he asked. ‘Dr Scarlarti has left with me some more medication if that is the case.’

Charley wasn’t a fan of taking any kind of medication unless it was strictly necessary, so she shook her head, answering him truthfully, ‘The skin is still slightly sore, but no more than that.’

The fact that he was in her room fully dressed, whilst she was wearing little more than a vest top and a pair of shorts not intended for public view, was making her feel far more uncomfortable than the burn on her leg. Raphael, on the other hand, looked perfectly at ease—but then Charley suspected he was far more used to being in a bedroom with a member of the opposite sex than she was. Just looking at him was enough to tell her that he was a sexually experienced man who must have shared his life and his bed with any number of willing women.

She gave an involuntary glance towards the bed, where Raphael had deposited the box he had been carrying, unable to stop her imagination from providing her with an image of him on a wide double bed, with the woman he had just pleasured lying in his arms. Her body had started to ache with heavy, sensual longing, and a pulse was beginning to beat low down in her body. A fierce stab of envy whipped through her. Somehow she managed to drag her gaze away from the bed, but looking at Raphael wasn’t doing anything to banish either her inappropriate thoughts or the desire they were causing—far from it. How could she be experiencing something like this? It was humiliating—and dangerous.

It took Raphael’s crisp, ‘Why haven’t you eaten your breakfast?’ to bring her back to reality, turning her aching desire into prickly defensiveness.

‘I wasn’t hungry,’ she told him.

‘We’ve got a busy day ahead of us, and several acres of abandoned pleasure garden to walk through, provided your leg isn’t causing you any pain, and that’s something you won’t be able to do on an empty stomach. I’ll tell Anna to send up a fresh breakfast for you, and then you can meet me downstairs in say an hour’s time.’

‘I’ll have to ask Anna if she can find me something to wear first,’ she pointed out.

‘That won’t be necessary.’

‘I can’t go out like this,’ Charley protested, and then wished she had not as her words caused him to give a probing, prolonged look at her legs. It made her quake inwardly in recognition of how much and how foolishly one part of her wondered what it would be like to have that probing look transformed to one of slow, sensual exploration, followed by the even more sensual stroke of his touch against her skin. Such dangerous, reckless thoughts were not to be encouraged.