The Italian's Future Bride

‘You hit on me, but not because you wanted me. And you taunted me with other lovers.’ He shrugged.

‘I’ve hadone lover before you,’ she reminded him. ‘Myone lined up against your many who have trailed themselves past me seems a pretty pathetic comparison to me.’

He touched his tongue to the corner of her sulky mouth. ‘I love you,’ he murmured. ‘Can we forget the others?’

Rachel sighed out a groan because he was right and harking on about old lovers had nothing to do with what they had here. ‘Just take me to bed and love me, Raffaelle,’ she begged.

He did not need asking twice. Their clothes fell away like rags for jumble. He pulled her against him, lips almost bruising in their intensity, his hands sliding possessively along her slender curves until he found the indentation of her waist, where he gripped and lifted her off the ground.

For a few clamouring seconds when her legs wrapped round him she thought he was going to do it standing right there with no preliminaries. Their mouths were straining and he was on fire, pumped up and ready for her. And she was pretty well much the same.

Then he turned and toppled them on to the duvet. What followed was the kind of fierce, fevered loving that staked absolute possession and claim. He gave her all of him and she took it greedily and gave back the same.

Afterwards they lay spread across the mattress, Rachel nothing more than a slender, soft, boneless creature lying beneath him, still lost in a wonderful, sensual world.

‘In all my life,’ Rafaelle murmured as he gently kissed her back down to earth again, ‘I have never known the power of what you can do to me.’

So, gravely serious, opening her eyes, Rachel smiled at him. ‘Hit on, trapped, taken over,’ she said approvingly.

His eyes began to glint. ‘Now you are asking for trouble,’ he warned and climbed over her to land lightly on his feet by the bed.

‘I didn’t mean it—!’ she cried out, sitting up jerkily.

He’d moved to the dressing table; now he was back by the bed. Stretching out beside her, he took hold of her left hand.

‘Oh, I forgot,’ she said, staring as the fake ring was removed from her finger.

The real one glittered and flashed as he slid it on to her finger. They lay there beside each other while he held up her hand. ‘Hit on, trapped and marked as mine for ever,’ he said turning her own words back on her with some very satisfied-sounding additions.

Then the fake ring spun in the air as he tossed it carelessly away.

‘Did I tell you I love you?’ Rachel said softly.

He rose above her, eyes dark and slumberous in his golden face. ‘Tell me again,’ he commanded.

‘Love you,’ she obliged and sealed it this time with a warm clinging kiss.

‘And you will be my wife?’

Warm, dark, golden, gorgeous—she placed a finger on the thoroughly kissed fullness of his lower lip, loving the very possessive sound ofmy wife .

‘Tomorrow.’ She nodded gravely.

‘Even though you get Daniella as a stepsister-in-law?’

‘You get worse from me,’ Rachel said. ‘You get a fully paid-up member of the paparazzi as your brother-in-law.’

‘Stung again—’he sighed ‘—you are going to have to work very hard to make it worth my while.’

The kiss she laid on his mouth worked very hard to make it worth his while.

‘By the way,’ she murmured a long time later, flickering innocent blue eyes up to look at him, ‘you forgot to use any protection…’