Ten minutes later, standing under the warm sting of the shower, Charley began to feel slightly better. Her shock had receded, leaving her to admit that she had been careless, and that she was lucky that Raphael had acted so speedily to save her from going under the wheels of the car. That was what loving the wrong man did for you. It made you so desperate to be with him that you forgot everything else. She had to find a way to stop herself from loving him. She must.
Wrapping a towel round her wet body, she headed for the bedroom—and then came to an abrupt halt when she saw Raphael standing there, waiting for her.
He was still angry. She could see that immediately.
‘I’m sorry—’ she began, but he stopped her.
‘Sorry? Is that all you can say?’ he demanded harshly. ‘You damn nearly kill yourself and…’ He was reaching for her again, but Charley stepped back from him.
‘No!’ she uttered, panicking, not trusting herself to let him touch her, knowing that if he did she would end up begging him to stay with her.
Her denial was too much for Raphael. His heart was still thudding with the agony he had felt when he had thought the car would hit her. Everything he had told himself and taught himself was forgotten. He was a man denied what was rightfully his, the woman who was rightfully his—the woman fate had devised for him and bequeathed to him, the woman whose only previous ‘no’ to him had been a plea for him not to leave her.
Charley could almost feel Raphael’s tension. It showed in his abrupt movements and in the dark grimness of his eyes, as though he was only just managing to hold back whatever it was that had turned them that colour. He looked…he looked like a man filled with suppressed anger, Charley recognised. And as he came towards her he was looking at her as though she was the source and the cause of that anger.
‘What is it?’ she asked apprehensively.
‘What is it? It’s this,’ Raphael answered savagely, reaching for her, pulling her against his body and then bending his head to kiss her. Not as he had kissed her before, not as she had dreamed of him kissing her, but over and over again, as though he couldn’t stop. Fierce, hard, demanding kisses, filled with a raw and angry pent-up passion that seared through her, igniting inside her an answering, equally primitive need.
Charley lost all sense of time as she clung to him, riding out the storm, letting him take what he wanted, glorying in the hard, imprisoning hold of his hands on her body that made her his willing captive. But at last she somehow managed to pull herself away from him to warn him, ‘Anna will be bringing my supper.’
‘Not now,’ he told her, pulling her back towards him, his hand finding her bare thigh beneath her towel and caressing it, making her quiver with a thrill of yearning pleasure. ‘I told Anna we are not to be disturbed. Your hunger for your supper will, I am afraid, have to go unsatisfied, because my hunger for you cannot bear any further delay.’
His hand had reached the top of her thigh; his voice was thick with emotion. Her heart was pounding with wild, out-of-control euphoria. He wanted her. Raphael wanted her.
Charlotte pressed herself closer to him in eager delight, another thrill running through her when he groaned and kissed her fiercely, the open agony of his longing matching everything that she herself felt.
Their mutual need was like a fireball, consuming them. Raphael was shedding his clothes as he caressed her with increasing urgency and intimacy. There was no time for the slow sensuality of leisurely love play, and no need either, Charley acknowledged. How could there be when she had spent the last three weeks aching for him? An ache that had become a tumultuous clamour of pulsing need, possessing the whole of her body even before she had seen how his hunger for her had brought Raphael to full and thick readiness. It was the sight of that readiness that sent her over the edge and into a place of wild, visceral need.
She could see the hot look of male urgency glittering in Raphael’s eyes as he parted her naked thighs, the heat of his hand against her sex making her moan. The sound changed to a fevered gasp of almost too heightened pleasure when his fingers stroked the eager waiting length of her sex.
‘I’ve lain awake night after night thinking of you like this—sweet and hot, wet and ready for me.’
Just the sound of his voice was enough to make her body convulse with longing.
There was no time for them to reach the bed—no thought in her head other than the need to have Raphael deep within her, filling her, completing her, driving her with each wonderfully powerful thrust of his body closer to the epicentre of the storm within her… Her legs wrapped around Raphael, her fingernails digging deep into his shoulders. His hands protected her back from the hardness of the bedroom door as they coupled wildly and fiercely. Charley could feel her body’s possessive hunger for him as her muscles tightened around him, demanding that he take her deeper, harder, faster. Words formed by her aching need were gasped against his shoulder, his sweat-dampened throat. She could smell the aroused heat of his body, taste his need in the salty tang of his skin.
The end came quickly and almost violently, in a series of frantic mini-orgasms for Charley that built in intensity until Raphael tensed and made an agonised sound of release against her skin, his completion within her inciting a final orgasm that took her to new heights and held her there, whilst her body convulsed on wave after wave of pleasure.
Drained and trembling, Charley unwrapped her legs from Raphael’s body, too weak to stand unsupported on her own, simply leaning into him as he held her, their hearts pounding together in the aftermath of what they had shared.
They had eaten, showered, made love again—this time with Raphael slowly building her desire with sensuality and an awareness of her needs that had brought tears of emotion to her eyes.
‘Stay with me,’ Charley whispered as Raphael held her protectively in the curve of his body, and they both knew that it wasn’t just for tonight that she wanted him to stay.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
A SHADOW blotted out the morning sunlight warming her face, causing Charley to murmur a protest in her sleep. Just as she had done earlier, when he’d eased her out of his arms so that he could shower and dress, Raphael noted. The morning light fell harshly against the planes of his face, revealing a certain gauntness and weariness of spirit. He shouldn’t have come here last night—shouldn’t have left the safety of Rome even though it had become an imprisoning barren waste of aching. He had no right to take what he had given his vow to himself not to.
The temptation to simply walk away whilst Charlotte slept was almost overwhelming, but he made himself overcome it, leaning down to place his hand on her body—not on her bare rounded shoulder; he was far too raw to be able to trust himself to touch her skin to skin. Instead he placed his hand gently on the spot where her arm lay beneath the bedclothes.
Charley woke up immediately, her sleepy gaze sharpening into focus, delight brimming in it as she sat up, exclaiming, ‘Raphael!’
Everything about her demeanour spoke openly and joyously of her feelings. Raphael could see her love for him in the way she smiled at him, hear it in the upward lilt of her voice, fee
l it in the softly sensuous yearning movement of her body towards him.
He drew in a sharp breath and stepped back from the bed, turning away from her to look towards the window as he told her, ‘I shall be returning to Rome in half an hour, but first I need to talk to you about last night.’