A Prize Beyond Jewels

Nina gave a choked sob. She was on fire; she needed—oh, God—she needed—

She gasped her disappointment as Rafe’s mouth released her and he raised his head slightly, eyes dark as he gazed down at the red and swollen tips of her breasts.

‘So pretty,’ he murmured gruffly as he touched each of her swollen nipples in turn with the softness of his fingertips.

Nina could barely breathe as she waited to see what Rafe intended to do next. Hoping it was what she wanted him to do.

Rafe gazed his fill of Nina’s beautiful breasts, tipped by pretty peach nipples that had become red and engorged from the attention of his hands and mouth. Nipples that still begged for those attentions.

Attention he was more than willing to give her. Just as he longed to explore the silken folds between her thighs. He could smell Nina’s arousal now, creamy and yet with an added enticing spice. And he longed to lap up that creaminess, to drink in her essence even as his lips and tongue explored those swollen folds, and then he wanted to swallow her down, to be able to taste her in his mouth and throat for hours afterwards.

That Nina wanted those things too he was in no doubt as she looked up at him, green eyes dark with her arousal, a flush to her creamy cheeks, and her lips parted invitingly as she breathed raggedly.

And he couldn’t do it.

Oh, Rafe knew what the newspapers printed about him—almost on a daily basis when he was in New York, it seemed! That he had a parade of beautiful women passing through his bedroom, women he changed as often as he did his silk bed sheets. And up to a point that was true. There had never been a shortage of women whose bed he might share, for a night or, indeed, several nights or weeks.

Even so, Rafe had his own set of rules when it came to the women who briefly entered his life. He never offered false promises. He never cheated on the woman he was currently sleeping with. And when it stopped being fun, for either of them, he gently brought that relationship to an end.

Nina wasn’t like any other woman Rafe had ever known. She was more. So much more. And emotionally complicated, in a way Rafe had always chosen to avoid in the past.

She was much younger than those other women for one thing, had spent all of her twenty-four years sheltered by her overprotective father, and so lacked both the sophistication and cynicism that had allowed those other women to accept the few weeks of a relationship Rafe had to offer them.

There was also the fact, ridiculous as it might seem in the current circumstances, that he was here this evening at the invitation of Nina’s father, a man as dangerous as he was powerful, and with whom Rafe’s gallery was currently doing business. Rafe had never mixed business with pleasure.

And lastly, even more ridiculously, he and Nina hadn’t so much as been out on a date together yet.

‘Rafe?’ Nina questioned uncertainly as he stood silent and unmoving in front of her, his face set in grim lines as he looked down at her. She felt totally exposed with her gown down about her waist, her breasts still bared, swollen and aching from the touch of his lips and hands.

His jaw was tightly clenched, dark lashes shielding the expression in his eyes as he reached down to pull the straps of her gown back up her arms and into place on her shoulders. Nina was too taken aback by his actions to offer the least resistance when Rafe turned her away from him slightly so that he could refasten the zip up the length of her spine.

Telling her more clearly than any words that this encounter was over.

‘Have dinner with me tomorrow evening, Nina?’

She turned sharply back to face him, looking up at him searchingly, but was unable to read anything from the grimness of his expression. ‘Why?’ she finally breathed.

His brows rose. ‘Do you usually ask why when a man invites you out to dinner with him?’

Nina’s chin tilted defensively. ‘Only when that same man went out to dinner with another woman the previous evening.’

His mouth tightened. ‘I have no intention of seeing Jennifer Nichols again.’

‘Does she know that?’

‘Oh, yes.’ His mouth twisted derisively.

She gave a shake of her head. ‘I— Our lovemaking just now was—it was...an aberration, Rafe, for both of us, probably.’ Although she wasn’t sure it could be called ‘our’ lovemaking, when she had been the one half undressed and Rafe had remained as immaculately clothed as he had been when he first arrived this evening.

Well, perhaps not quite so immaculately. His hair was more than a little tousled from having her fingers running through it, and there was a smear of her peach lip gloss at the corner of Rafe’s mouth.

‘Don’t feel you have to invite me out to dinner because things got a little out of hand just now,’ she added firmly.