‘Is there running water and a bathroom?’
‘Of course.’
‘Then stop being precious,’ she urged him. ‘We won’t be roughing it. Whisk the average woman off to a sunny valley in Italy, show her a picture book farmhouse with all the necessities of life and she’ll consider herself spoilt.’
‘You’re the first woman I’ve brought here, a mhilis.’
The pleasure of being the first was drowned out by her sudden awareness that she wanted to be the only woman he ever brought. Dismayed by that unwelcome knowledge, she tensed. As if he felt the distance in her, he pressed a kiss down on her parted lips, and she reached up to hold him to her, desire running like liquid fire through her taut frame.
He closed his hand over hers and walked her up the stairs. A gentle breeze cooled the wide landing. The shutters had been flung wide in the big front room. The big wooden bed was adorned with painted panels of pretty flowers and made up with plump pillows and crisp white linen sheets.
‘It feels like a hundred years since I touched you. I was planning to go slow, but I’m too hungry for you to wait that long.’ With that roughened admission Rafael hauled her to him with strong hands and devoured her mouth with fiery urgency.
Her heart leapt and her pulses raced like he had punched in a special code that set her alight. He reached below her T-shirt and battled with her bra to find the swollen peak of a sensitive nipple and make her moan in sensual shock below his marauding mouth. She shivered and knotted her fingers in his luxuriant black hair. Her hunger equalled his, and she could not hide it. She was wild for the sweet hot force of his body into hers.
‘If we had stayed in the car I would have ended up on a charge of public indecency,’ Rafael groaned, peeling off her clothes and his own with a masculine impatience that thrilled her. As each fresh expanse of pale skin was revealed he would pause to explore that part of her with the expertise and single-minded concentration of a highly sensual lover.
‘If you make me wait any longer, I’ll die,’ she told him helplessly, breathless and squirming against the pale linen, tormented by the hunger he had roused and honed into an unbearably tight knot of need.
Through slumberous dark eyes, Rafael surveyed her. ‘I want to give you endless pleasure.’
‘Just pleasure will do.’ Her hips shifted up to him in a tiny pleading movement. She was hot, aching.
He took her by surprise, entering her hard and fast. A shockwave of delight possessed her. Before she could recover he withdrew, and slammed back into her again. His fierce passion gave a raw edge to their lovemaking. Lost in that wild excitement, she reached a tumultuous climax of shattering pleasure. In the aftermath she experienced pure joy. Secure in his arms, she felt so happy that tears pricked below her eyelids.
Rafael kept her spread beneath him and shifted with earthy satisfaction against her damp responsive heat. Dazed with pleasure, she gave him a languorous smile. He pressed his mouth softly to her brow. The very smell of her skin intoxicated him. The feel of her, the way she fitted against him, was amazing. That fast he wanted her all over again, and he closed his hands over hers to hold her doubly imprisoned in his arms while he kissed her.
‘Again?’ she gasped in astonishment when he let her up for air.
‘Again,’ he said thickly.
Much later he slept, and she lay awake watching him. His black lashes almost hit his cheekbones. He looked fabulous from every angle, she decided. Against the white linen, his bronzed skin was rich as gold, a sleek covering for the lean, hard, muscular power of his masculine frame. She loved to look at him. She was on a high of satisfaction and self-discovery. She let her lips drift down to a broad shoulder in a whisper soft expression of affection. She couldn’t keep her hands off him.
She wondered when she had fallen in love with him, and marvelled that she had been able to hide that truth even from herself. She knew she wanted to own him body and soul, and that that was a terrifying ambition pretty much destined to lead to disappointment when she hit ground level again at some time in the future. But she saw no reason why reality should intrude just then and spoil things. She intended to live the utmost out of every day she spent in Umbria.
CHAPTER NINE
MUNCHING A PIECE of bread fresh from the oven, and savouring the aromatic taste of herbs, Harriet lay back on the lounger and sipped her red wine. She wondered lazily what had happened to her earnest desire to work all the time, and to feeling horribly guilty when she enjoyed herself instead.
Above her an ancient cedar spread a wide arc of shade that protected her from the late afternoon sun. From the terrace beyond the infinity pool that shone like a mirror she could see the fields of ripening golden corn and tobacco on the far side of the valley and, nearer, the orchards and vines heavy with fruit and the silvery green groves of olive trees.
It was a moment of perfection and she knew it—a moment when happiness had no bounds and felt like the summer sun, captured inside her. Her body was heavy from the sweet pleasure of Rafael’s lovemaking. A smile kept on sliding over her ripe pink mouth. One week had drifted into two. Two weeks, she thought absently. Where had it gone? It had passed by in an idyllic haze of endless drenching sunshine and a lover like no other.
Every day a glorious selection of freshly prepared dishes and newly baked bread appeared as if by magic in the homely farmhouse kitchen. A pair of sisters, Donata and Benedetta, took care of the house, and so scrupulously observed their privacy that Rafael and Harriet had scarcely seen them. Their brothers, who farmed the land, were equally discreet.
Rafael and Harriet had left the fattoria on only a few occasions. In the cool of the evening he had taken her to medieval hill towns, to wander through steep narrow streets and dine at tiny restaurants that catered to only a handful of customers. He knew all the special places to eat and to shop. If she looked at anything he wanted to buy it for her, so she had been forced to point out that that was rather inhibiting for someone who wasn’t a gold-digger.
‘But I like giving,’ Rafael had complained without hesitation. ‘You’re inhibiting me.’
So she had accepted the gold necklace adorned with an exquisitely fashioned St Francis, which he’d given her to commemorate her only requested visit to Assisi and the basilica there, and a gold watch that had literally walked out of the jewellery shop into his pocket because it was so ‘her’, according to him. Told that there was an embargo on further expensive presents, he’d given her a hand-painted scarf so fine it could have passed through the proverbial wedding ring, a handbag of such exquisite workmanship it was a work of art and much too fancy for actual use, and a little carved crystal horse that her eyes had only lingered on for a split second in a shop window. Enough, she had groaned, and had persuaded him to concentrate his desire to give on his sister instead.
Tomorrow would be their last day—absolutely their last. And Rafael was as reluctant as Harriet to leave Italy. But it seemed appropriate that they would finally share a day with other people, as Rafael had accepted an invitation for both of them to attend the wedding of one of his cousins. Since her arrival, the only other person Harriet had spoken to had been Una. The teenager rang her every couple of days, and phoned Rafael on alternate days, making a cheeky game of never, ever asking a nosy question, or mentioning that they were actually in Umbria together.
That evening Rafael and Harriet strolled through the oak woods behind the house. ‘I have a favour to ask,’ Rafael murmured. ‘As you know, Flynn Court is in the process of renovation. I have any number of professionals at my disposal, but I must confess that I was very disappointed with the results of a similar programme at my other house in Kildare.’
‘But why? From what I saw of the interior, it was perfect.’
‘Exactly. It was like a museum. I want the Court to remain a warm and welcoming place, rather than a showpiece. It’s very much a private dwelling, where I will only ever entertain my closest friends. Would you be willing to act as an advisor on the redecoration?’