‘I can imagine…servants to do everything.’
His frank smile of acknowledgement awakened the strangest sense of elation inside Harriet.
‘But it’s never too late to learn new habits,’ she told him.
‘You’ll have to work on me.’
Her mouth ran dry when his unbuttoned shirt fell open to reveal a muscular expanse of bronzed chest. She was entrapped. He was, without a doubt, magnificent. Until that moment she had never appreciated that a man could be beautiful too, and she couldn’t dredge her attention from him. The high-voltage charge of his sexuality enthralled her. Cheeks rosy pink, she snatched in a tremulous breath and finally forced herself to look away: there was nothing cool or sophisticated about gawping.
‘So untidiness freaks you out…what else?’ Rafael moved lazily towards her.
‘I can’t think…’ And it was true: at that precise moment she couldn’t.
His tongue tangled with hers in a taunting sensual invasion. His lips traced the delicate line of her jaw to the slender column of her throat, where a tiny nervous pulse flickered above her collarbone. ‘I don’t want you to think,’ he told her thickly. ‘I only want you to feel.’
She was all liquid anticipation and restive energy. Her remaining garments melted away without her registering their departure. He traced the lush swell of her breasts, buried his mouth in her sweet-scented skin with a hungry masculine enthusiasm that made her moan out loud in helpless response. He teased the rosy crests of her pouting flesh until the sensitive peaks throbbed. Heat pooled low in her pelvis while tiny tremors of tension ran through her straining length. Desire tightened like a silken rope, pulling into an impossibly taut knot inside her. She had never known that desire could be a physical ache that hurt.
When he let her surface momentarily she gasped in oxygen in a great gulp, her entire body thrumming with response.
‘What is so surprising?’ Rafael had an intuitive grasp of her bemusement.
‘Nothing…’ But Harriet was in a state of amazement at the sheer strength of what she was experiencing. Embarrassment that she should have been so ignorant made her hide the truth that nothing had ever felt so good or so exciting as what he was doing to her. To discover at the age of twenty-eight that she had more capacity for enjoyment than she had ever dreamt possible was an enormous shock.
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sp; ‘Was it just a line when you said you wanted me the first time you saw me?’ she asked him abruptly.
He dealt her an amused look. ‘I don’t do lines…you have the most divine shape.’
‘But I was wearing pyjamas with big flowers all over them!’ Harriet reminded him in helpless protest.
‘They clung in all the right places. You looked incredibly sexy. Instantly I was hooked and hungry.’ Rafael ran a caressing forefinger very gently down the valley between her breasts. Super-sensitive to his every caress, she jerked in reaction, as though hot wires were tightening below her skin.
She met shimmering golden eyes framed by black spiky lashes and her heart jumped as though she had had an electric shock He shifted against her, all sleek bronzed muscle and lithe masculinity powered by masses of self-confidence. She was pretty sure he had never doubted himself in his entire life. He knew exactly what he was doing, where he was going and what he wanted and indeed expected when he got there: he fascinated her.
‘And Bianca?’ she prompted, although she had not planned to be so indiscreet.
‘It had already run its course between us. Nothing to do with you.’ Astute eyes lingered on her. ‘Your conscience must carry the weight of the world in it. You’re too vulnerable.’
‘I’m much tougher than I seem—’
‘The pig ruling your kitchen knows different.’
Laughing, she gave way to temptation and dragged him down to her again. She could not get enough of his beautiful mouth. He traced the hidden heart of her with an erotic skill that seduced her utterly. No more did she laugh or speak. More primitive need had taken her over, and between one twisting, turning, frantic peak of arousal and the next she breathed in tight little gasps only when she could spare the energy.
‘Please…’
At the height of a tormenting pleasure that had reached an unbearable edge he pulled her under him and plunged into her yielding depths with strong, sensual power. Delight roared through her quivering body in a scorching wave. Eroticism personified, his powerful length stilled for an instant. He caressed her reddened lips with provocative expertise, letting the tip of his tongue dip into the moist invitation of her tender mouth.
‘You feel like you were made just for me, a mhilis,’ Rafael growled with raw satisfaction.
He was a very powerful lover. His hard pagan rhythm exactly matched her deepest need. Excitement controlled her. Sensation took over. She was lost in the hot, sweet storm of endless pleasure. He carried her to a wild explosive climax of feeling. She reached a shattering peak of glory and, with a cry of rapture, plunged over the edge into ecstasy. Aftershocks of exquisite sensation rippled through her before she slowly sank into voluptuous abandon.
Suddenly, and for the very first time in her life, she understood why the world she lived in seemed obsessed with sex. Sex was everywhere, she thought in a daze, in every magazine and every film, a hot topic of discussion that had never interested her before. Never in her life had she talked about sex. She had concealed her prudishness as best she could while secretly wondering what all the fuss was about. Only now could she appreciate that until Rafael had educated her by example she had had no way of knowing what real passion was. True fulfilment had evaded her until that timeless, glorious instant of wondrous release from the earthly confines of her own body. Yet she had never suspected that there actually might be something more to discover. How could she have guessed that there was another entire dimension still to be explored when she had never experienced that truth for herself?
Rafael surveyed her with heavily lidded dark eyes almost screened by the density of his black lashes. With her copper hair spilling across the pillow and a slight flush on her cheeks she was amazingly pretty. Her skin was so fine, her eyes so clear and bright a blue. He liked her silence, the restful quality she always exuded, as if inviolable tranquillity sat at the very heart of her like an anchor stone. Her dazzled smile of contentment gave him an unexpected high. He knew he was good between the sheets, but she looked at him as though he was a god come to earth. He almost laughed at that absurd thought. At the point where he usually moved away from his lovers, with a perfunctory gesture of affection, he curved an arm round her and gathered her back to him again.
‘I would say that a repeat encounter is definitely on the cards, a thaisce,’ Rafael mused, his rich, dark drawl languorous with satisfaction.