‘One night?’ he said softly. ‘Do you really think that one night will be enough to sate the hunger you have aroused in me?’ And then he was kissing her, fiercely and demandingly, and her own desire was leaping up inside her to meet the challenge of his.
CHAPTER TEN
THEY had reached the top of the stairs and they were still kissing, but Charley had no awareness of them having moved, no awareness of anything other than the heat of Raphael’s mouth on her own and the need inside her that he was feeding.
Now, though, he had stopped kissing her. His hold of her wrists was slackening, his thumbs finding the excited race of her pulse and tormenting it with small circling caresses.
‘There can be no future in this,’ he warned her, as he had done before, emphasising the words as he spoke them.
‘I don’t want a future,’ Charley told him, and believed it. ‘I just want tonight and you.’
Raphael could feel the wild fire of unleashed passion surging through his body. It was too much. He couldn’t deny her—or himself. The urge to hold her body against his own, skin to skin, roared through him, but somehow he held on to a final strand of self-control—for her sake as much as his own.
‘Very well, but there is one condition I must make—one assurance I shall need from you.’
Charley waited. What was he going to say? That she must not fall in love with him? She knew that without him needing to tell her.
Raphael expelled the air from his lungs and breathed in slowly.
‘There must be no risk of there being any consequences to our actions in the form of a child.’
Why did his words strike against her heart like a sledgehammer blow? She certainly hadn’t been thinking of conception or children when she had so boldly begged him to break his rule.
‘Naturally I shall take precautions myself to ensure…’
‘There’s no need.’ Charley stopped him. ‘I’m on the pill.’ It was the truth, even if the reason she was taking it was because the anxiety of the last year had meant that she needed to take it to correct her monthly cycle.
‘Very well, but I must warn you that should you conceive the pregnancy will have to be terminated.’
Shock jolted through her, icy cold, in instinctive rejection of what he was demanding.
But it wasn’t his child she wanted, she reminded herself, it was Raphael himself. And she did want him—desperately.
He should stop this right now, Raphael urged himself. It wasn’t too late. He could turn away—refuse what she was offering him. Refuse? When his body ached like hell for her, and his senses were already anticipating every single pleasure they would give one another? He was beyond stopping himself, beyond listening to any inner warning voices, beyond even questioning just why this woman of all women should have the power to overturn all the boundaries he had set in place.
Charley moved uncertainly, a sharp point of light from the heavy chandelier that hung from the ceiling throwing the soft curves of her breasts into relief. Her nipples were pushing against the fabric of her clothes, tight and erect, their message of sexual arousal making Raphael’s own flesh harden. He released Charley’s wrist and lifted his hand to her body, rubbing the pad of his thumb against the cresting flesh, feeling his own body react to the visible shudder that gripped Charley as she moaned softly in response to his caress. It was too late to turn back—too late to do anything other than give in to the need driving through him.
‘This way.’
Raphael was taking her to his bedroom. A new quiver of sensation ripped through Charley. Somehow the thought of Raphael making love to her in his bed rather than her own added an extra layer of sensuality and delight to what she was already feeling.
Elegant and smart, like photographs she had seen of seriously expensive boutique hotel bedrooms, Raphael’s bedroom was decorated in shades of off-white, dark grey and aubergine, with heavy silk curtains striped in those colours to match the linens on the large double bed.
Not that Charley was in the right frame of mind to appreciate the decor, nor indeed had the time, for no sooner had Raphael switched on the low-level lighting, and she had stepped inside, than he closed the door and took her back in his arms.
The touch of his hand on her breast, expertly finding the hard rise of her nipple, made her shudder with fresh delight, but Charley’s conscience was beginning to intrude on her pleasure. Reluctantly she broke the kiss to admit to him, ‘There’s something I ought to tell you.’
‘What?’
‘Well…’ Charley wrinkled her nose. ‘The truth is that I haven’t had much previous experience. I don’t want to disappoint you…’
She could see his chest rise and then fall again. Had she put him off?
‘Much or any?’ Raphael questioned her.
He was too astute. She had known that before.
‘Any,’ she admitted, before asking him, ‘Does that change things and put you off?’