The lean fingers engaged in slowly disentangling her hair stilled. ‘That’s not even funny.’
She gritted her teeth. ‘I wasn’t trying to be—’
Rafaello cupped her elbows to hold her still in front of him. He gazed down at her with wondering eyes. ‘If you were Pinocchio, your nose would reach as far as the front door. A virgin? You? Even five years back, I wasn’t entirely convinced by the purity pleas but I gave you the benefit of the doubt. I could hardly argue.’
Glory breathed very deep. ‘What makes you so sure that I’m not?’
‘You’re too sexy,’ Rafaello responded without hesitation. ‘You move, you walk and you talk like a woman who knows her own body—’
‘I’ve lived inside it a long time—’
‘Virgins are a rarefied species. I’ve never met one your age—’
‘You ask every woman you meet, do you?’ Glory snapped, out of all patience and increasingly offended and angry rather than embarrassed. As she pulled her arms free Rafaello settled his lean, strong hands onto her rigid shoulders instead. ‘Well, it’s about time you woke up to the fact that there are quite a few women who don’t believe in putting sex on a level with having a takeaway—’
‘I don’t eat takeaways either. I am irredeemably attached to the gastronomic delights provided by my French chef. Tell me, are you trying to make me feel guilty about our arrangement? Is that why you’re suddenly telling whoppers the size of Jonah’s whale?’ Rafaello enquired with sardonic bite. ‘If I thought you were a virgin I’d run like hell. But I know you can’t be. I know it the way I know the earth is round.’
That seemed fairly conclusive. But he had hurt her. It hurt her even more to realise that he had even doubted her innocence five years earlier. He was such a cynic, but more than anything else he was revealing that he had always seen her just as other men saw her: in the most demeaning light. As a blonde bombshell, a sure thing, not too bright and bound to be promiscuous. But at least he had explained Fiona Woodrow’s presence to her satisfaction, hadn’t he?
Glory worried at her full lower lip with her teeth and looked up at him in sudden Stark appeal. ‘I just don’t want to be your mistress—’
‘You really ought to stop me taking your dress off, then. I warn you, once I catch a glimpse of delectable bare skin I will use every trick in the book to get you horizontal.’
So intent on her troubled thoughts had Glory been that she hadn’t noticed that he had unzipped her dress. Now she gazed down in frank confusion as he eased the garment slowly from her shoulders and down over her slender arms, exposing the pouting swell of breasts cupped in white lace. ‘Rafaello, n-no…’
‘I can put my hand on my heart right now and admit that nothing has ever turned me on harder and faster than your gorgeous breasts,’ Rafaello confessed with earthy male appreciation.
Conscious of him with every fibre of her being, Glory trembled. Unprompted, the dress drifted down over her hands and dropped to her feet. She recognized the burning hunger in his intent gaze and the most terrible physical weakness flooded her. All natural modesty was overborne by the realisation that he was admiring her, appreciating her. The wanton side of her nature adored that and thrilled to the reassurance that he liked what he was seeing. Then it was what she had always secretly sought from him. She had always wanted Rafaello to be her first lover, her last lover, her forever lover. Temptation was pulling at her hard. Why shouldn’t she pretend that something other than the cold arrangement he had offered had brought them together again? Hadn’t she spent five years fruitlessly seeking a male who could make her feel like Rafaello had once made her feel?
Rafaello gathered her up into his strong arms and carried her over to the huge bed. ‘I have been waiting a very long time to do this.’
As he threw back the bedspread and settled her down on the crisp white linen sheet Glory whispered, ‘Honestly?’
He plucked off her shoes and straightened with easy grace to stare down at her. ‘Per amor di Dio, how could you doubt that?’
Glory’s look collided with his stunning golden gaze and her heart started to pound. Yet, lying down, she felt so much more self-conscious than she had standing. Her bra and panties might cover a great deal more of her than most beachwear but never had she been more aware of her own body and never had she felt less clothed.
‘You’re the only woman who has ever denied me. A clever move, that…’ Rafaello was unbuttoning his shirt, a slanting smile on his beautifully shaped mouth. ‘Perhaps that’s why I want you so much, bella mia.’
Hurt tinged her growing apprehension. ‘It wasn’t a move. I wasn’t trying to be clever—’
‘Weren’t you?’ He cast off his shirt. ‘It doesn’t matter now.’
But it mattered to her that he should hold such an unrelentingly low opinion of her. Yet she could not retain that level of concentration, not when she was seeing Rafaello shorn of his shirt for the first time. Five years ago he had invited her to join him for a swim in the indoor pool up at the Park but she had made excuses not only because she couldn’t swim but also because she had feared that folk would say that Glory Little was really getting above herself. She had endured enough cracks about ‘mixing with the toffs’, had soon learned that people were, at the very least, uncomfortable watching the gardener’s daughter dating Benito Grazzini’s son and heir. The very last thing she would have risked was being seen swanning round the Grazzinis’ luxurious pool complex.
Now her mouth went dry as she focused on the hard, muscular planes of Rafaello’s chest and the taut flatness of his abdomen. He was absolutely gorgeous, just as she had known he would be. His bronzed skin, rippling muscles and the haze of crisp black curls sprinkling his pectorals were overpoweringly male and sexy. She discovered that she could not take her attention from him for a moment lest she miss the chance to admire a different angle of view. Her face burned with colour at that acknowledgement. Pulling he
rself up against the pillows, she more covertly scanned his narrow hips and long, powerful thighs as he shed his well-cut trousers.
‘I hope you’re planning to do the same for me,’ Rafaello drawled softly.
‘Sorry?’
Rafaello, clad solely in a pair of black silk boxer shorts, sent her a wolfish look of all-male amusement. ‘I can feel your eyes devouring me like fire.’
Glory reddened to the roots of her hair and ducked behind it, belatedly grateful that he had undone her plait and given her that amount of cover. ‘Obviously you’d like to think so—’
‘Lust can recognise lust,’ Rafaello assured her, stripping off his last garment with a level of cool she could not credit, for certainly she could not mirror his self-possession.