by Maisey Yates
“Because I want you,” he said.
He reversed their positions, bringing her to a seated pose over the top of him, so that she was astride him. “If you’re so concerned for my knee, you can always do it this way.”
He heard rustling, and he knew she had taken off her shirt. Then her bra. He put his hands on her hips, felt the waistband of her jeans and where it bordered soft skin.
“Quite casual attire for a palace,” he remarked.
“Yes, well. Some dresses were purchased for me, but today it’s awfully cold.”
“I should like you to wear a dress for me.”
“Would you?” He heard a smile in her voice.
“Yes. Because I should like very much to remove one from your body again. To push a skirt up over your hips and take you that way.”
“I didn’t realize this had become a standing arrangement.”
“I didn’t realize that you talked so much.”
She huffed out a laugh. “I feel I should be offended by that.”
“But you aren’t. Because you’re too turned on. You want me too much to be angry with me.”
“You’re very arrogant,” she said, but she wiggled her hips in a way that let him know he was correct.
“Yes,” he responded. “Very arrogant. But at this point in my life would you like my ego to be any more wounded than it already has been?”
She pressed a quick kiss to the corner of his mouth. “No.”
She pressed a firm hand to the center of his chest, then braced herself as she lifted up away from him. She wiggled, and he figured that she was trying to get out of her jeans. So he thought he would make himself useful.
He gripped her hips with both hands, then took hold of the waistband of her jeans, lifting her slightly as he pulled them down her thighs. She squeaked, then began kicking them the rest of the way off.
Then she took her position back over the top of him. She began to work his shirt, pulling it from his body, then shoving his pants down the rest of the way. Leaving them both naked.
He slid his hands up from her hips, letting them glide over the indent to her waist, and up farther to her breasts. He skimmed his thumbs over her tightened nipples, then tested their weight in his hands.
Visions of pale skin, curved lines and silk bled through the black in his mind. Bright pops on dark velvet, laced through with the sounds of her bliss. And somehow he could envision it all.
She gasped, a sound of sweet benediction that he let wash over him like a baptism. He felt new. In this moment. Didn’t feel quite so stained by the past. By the anger that had consumed him in the solarium. By the anger that had consumed him for years.
He moved his hands back down to her hips, tilted her forward slightly and settled her over the head of his aching arousal. She gasped, rocked herself forward experimentally, then back again, taking part of him in, then settling herself down, inch by excruciating inch.
She pressed her forehead against his, her breath warm against his lips as she shuddered, rolling her hips, pleasure like a lightning strike that started at the base of his spine and shot upward. She was electric. And he could only absorb that energy.
Then he lost control. Lost the ability to simply lay there, at the mercy of her electrical storm. He gripped her hips, bucking upward, bringing her down hard onto him. She gasped, then sobbed, grabbing hold of his shoulders, her fingernails digging into his flesh.
Pleasure and pain wrapped themselves around his mind, a bold red slash he could visualize, cutting down through his soul.
“Tell me,” he ground out. “Tell me you want this. Tell me it’s good.”
“It is,” she moaned.
He would give anything to see the desire written across her face. To see how it looked when her lips parted as she sounded her pleasure.
But he shut that down. Because it was no use wanting that. No use thinking about it. Instead, he focused on the feel of her skin beneath his hands. The way those soft hips gave beneath his touch. The sounds she made when she breathed. The way her breath increased when he did something she liked particularly. The soft hitch in the back of her throat.
And he could smell her. Sex, desire, mixed together with flowers and Charlotte. He was lost in that. In the way all of his senses lit up when he was with her like this. He could feel. Deeply. Exquisitely. That slick glide of her body around his erection. The way the pads of her fingertips felt on his skin, and the little half-moon fingernails digging in. He imagined she was leaving marks behind. He would never see them with his eyes. But he could feel the shape of them. The depth. Could see it in his mind as a color. Could hear, somehow. The sound of her indrawn breath. A gasp of need.
He reached between them, slid his fingertips along her inner thigh until she shook. Until he found the sensitive notch of flesh at the apex of her thighs and rubbed in a circular motion until he felt her begin to pulse around him. Until he felt her release hold on her control and give in to the powerful orgasm that shook her entire body.
But he wasn’t done. Not even close.
He’d come once already. He would not leave this unequal.
He reversed their positions, uncaring now about the way the brocade bedding bit into his wound. It only added to all this. It felt like a knife. Tasted like metal. More feelings. More.
He craved it all.
Rafe pulled back, then rocked forward slowly, tormenting them both with long, slow strokes.
He lowered his head, nuzzled her neck, just beneath her chin, and down to her breasts. Then he took one sweet nipple into his mouth, sucked hard, before turning his attention to the other one.
She was everything beautiful. Ripe and luscious, and all that he wanted. All that he needed.
Light danced across the darkness of his vision, streaks of heat pouring down over his veins. She made him see light. More than that, she made him feel it. All the way down into his soul. Touching the darkness that went deeper than blindness.
And after that, he had no control left. He needed her to come again. Needed to do something to make amends for what had happened earlier. But he couldn’t hold back. Not anymore.
“Come for me,” he said, the words fractured. “Please,” he said, begging now, and he didn’t even care.
He felt her arch beneath him, her entire body going stiff as she cried out, her second release like a raging storm, catching him up in the tide, consuming them both. His own orgasm was torn from him, as painful as it was pleasurable. And when it was over, he felt like he had lost something vital of himself, and replaced it with something just as essential. He had no idea what that feeling could possibly be. That intense feeling of loss, of surrender, coupled with a satisfaction like he had never known.
She curled up against him, a warm, soft weight of her body playing havoc with him. With his sense of time and space. He knew that it was early in the day. And yet he very much wanted to stay in bed. Very much wanted to allow the post-sex lethargy to carry him under. To hold her against him.
To embrace the darkness that surrounded him, always, and allow it to create a kind of intimacy between them. A closeness. To allow her to steal the careful control he exerted over his world. If only for a few hours.
His routine had become very important to him over the past few years. To train his internal clock so that he didn’t make mistakes about when he went to bed, and when he woke up. He was dependent upon alarms and timers, but he also had worked very hard to instill the feeling of time into himself.
He didn’t care right now. He cared about nothing but the way she felt, draped over him, pressed against him.
And so, he let himself drift off to sleep.
* * *
When Charlotte woke it was late in the afternoon. She was surprised that she had slept for so long. And even more surprised that Rafe was asleep by her side.
Carefully, she slipped out from beneath the covers, quietly moving to collect her clothes. She felt raw. Raw and fragile, and she needed to go away to clear her h
ead. She knew that, given the circumstances of what had occurred between them earlier, her hiding from him might not be received very well.
If he sent someone after her, she would go speak to him. She just needed a little bit of time. She needed...something.
“To not fall in love with him?” She whispered those words to herself after she closed the door to his bedroom behind her and began to walk as silently as possible down the corridor.
Yes, she would really appreciate not falling in love with him. Not again. Because Rafe—as he was now—did not seem to be the kind of man who understood love.
The way he had behaved with her in the solarium...
She should be angry. But then, in order to be angry she’d have to convince herself she had been forced. And she had made her choice. He had given her the chance to turn away, but she had wanted to meet his challenge head-on. Had been determined that she would get her own back by stealing his opportunity to punish her. By proving to him just how much she wanted him.
And then...then they had gone to his bedroom. And what had happened there had been nothing short of soul shattering.
Rafe wanted control. And honestly, she could understand. She wanted some too. Which put them dangerously at odds, since he seemed to think that in order to control any aspect of this he had to control her entirely.
She went back into the solarium and saw the mess had been cleaned up. Saw that the couch had been moved back to the position it was in before she had foolishly adjusted it.
And she stood there, realization of what she had done—not earlier, but just now when she had left his room—washing over her.
She looked around, hoping that she could find a member of staff. She walked outside the solarium, toward the kitchen, where she saw Della.
“Della,” she said. “Do you have a first-aid kit?”
“Yes,” the older woman said.
“I need one. For Mr. Costa. He was injured earlier. Because I was an idiot and I moved the furniture.”
“I’ll get you one. Would you like me to see to him?”
Charlotte shook her head. “No. I think that I should.”
“For the record,” the housekeeper said, “I think it is good for Mr. Costa to not have everything go his way.”
“I think he’s had quite enough not go his way,” Charlotte said, her heart clenching.
Della shrugged. “In some ways. But not in all ways. Wait here.”
CHAPTER TEN
WHEN RAFE WOKE, he was disoriented, and there were cool, delicate hands against his skin.
“What...”
“I’m bandaging your leg.” Charlotte, of course. His body had recognized her before she’d even spoken to him. “Don’t be difficult.”
“Why did you assume that I would be difficult?”
“Because difficult is your only setting as far as I can see, Rafe Costa.” He felt something sticky and cold against his skin. It had to be medicine. She was tending him. He wanted to be angry. Angry that she was treating him like this again.
But she was touching him. And he could not find it in him to be enraged when she was touching him.
“You have to be at least as hard as life, don’t you think?”
“No,” she answered. “I don’t think.”
“And why do you disagree with me?”
“Because. That just makes me think of banging two rocks together.”
He laughed, then winced as she added yet more medicine to his knee. “That is how you get a spark, is it not?”
“Sure. But what’s the point of it? I mean, in the end, all you’re doing is sitting there banging two hard things together. There’s no nuance in that. There certainly isn’t any joy. There’s more to life than just getting through. At least...Rafe, I hope so much that there would be. Because I have spent a very long time just getting through. I was never able to just become hard. I insulated myself. Like somebody wrapping a heavy coat around themselves and walking through a storm. But I want more than that for myself now.”
“And you think I’m offering you nothing more than survival? I would think that my castle was better than a storm.”
She sighed heavily, then smoothed a bandage over his skin. “I didn’t lack luxurious surroundings when I was growing up. We’ve already discussed this.”
“Yes. You compared this experience to growing up with your father. And yet I find that it is not so. I have never threatened your safety.”
He was surprised when a cool hand touched the side of his face. “But it’s not freedom, is it?”
“And what would you do with freedom, cara mia?”
“I’m not going to take your children away from you. At a certain point, you will have to trust that.”
“Trust is not a simple thing for me.”
“Why not?”
She moved back to his knee, removing her hand from his face.
“We grew up in poverty, Mother and I. After we were thrown out of my father’s house.”
He felt her stiffen. “What?”
“My father threw us out of his house. When his wife returned.”
It was silent, her hands moving over his knee, brisk, cool and certain. He wanted to know who else she had bandaged. Another man? He would kill him. Children? Imagining her with children made it feel like his chest was breaking open.
“I didn’t know about any of this,” she said softly.
“No,” he said, keeping his tone casual. “Because I didn’t tell you.”
“Well. You should have. What did we talk about five years ago, Rafe? How is it we know so little?”
“We were blinded by lust.” He laughed. “And now I am just blind.”
“I still feel a fair amount of lust,” she said, humor lacing her tone.
He reached up, searching for her face. He took hold of her, sliding his thumb over her cheekbone. “Good.”
“But you were telling me about your father.”
He let his hand fall back down to his side. “The topic of lust is more interesting.”
“And lust is the reason we don’t know each other.”
“My father was a rich man. A married man. He had a house in Rome. And until I was four we lived there. He was not often in, and I had the run of the house. Master of the manor, as it were. But then, he came and told us his family would be moving in. And that meant we had to go.”
“He just sent you away with no...provision made for you or anything?”
Rafe shifted beneath her touch, uncomfortable with the topic. He did not like to think about this. Did not like to reflect on it at all. “He was...not deeply involved in my life, you understand. Even when I lived in his home. I was raised primarily by nannies, and I was all the better off for it. But...I loved the house. It was beautiful. And it had so many lovely things in it. I loved to look at them. I was particularly transfixed by a large fish made from carnival glass. It was a whole rainbow of color and movement.” He smiled slightly, remembering the trinket. Blue with flashes of purple and green. “I didn’t ask to take any toys with me when we left. I asked for that damned fish.”
“Oh, Rafe...”
“My father picked it up from the side table where it sat and held it out to me, and as I reached for it, he let it fall. It smashed into a million pieces on the marble floor. Blue, purple, green and destroyed beyond repair.”
As he had been in that moment. A small boy, broken, utterly and completely by the rich man who’d fathered him.
“Rafe...how could he...how...?”
“Are you honestly questioning how a father could harm his own child like that? Your father tried to sell you into marriage.”
“I know. It says something about me, I guess, that this still shocks me.”
“That you are much better than most of the world,” he said, his voice rough. “And that our children are lucky to have you.”
He did his best not to visualize his father’s home. He still remembered it in such detail, and memories were often more invasive now tha
t he didn’t have the sight of the world around him to distract him from images of the past.
Still, he could see the marble floors, the rugs he had sat cross-legged on when he was a boy. The large bed he’d sprawled in, like a king. And then after that...
Sleeping on the streets. The beautiful fish smashed to pieces. All his toys gone. His stomach always aching from hunger.
He shoved those thoughts away.
His own children would want for nothing. Of that he could make sure. He had the power now. All of it. And he would not use his power to harm the ones in his care.
But wasn’t Charlotte in his care? And wasn’t he holding her against her will now?
“You will not leave me,” he said, the words much more a rough command than the question he’d intended.
“Rafe, I don’t know what I want from life. All of this...the twins... Twins, Rafe. I just...I can’t think past them. And here in the castle, at least it’s quiet. And I’ve had a lot of time to myself. It feels like time is standing still here, and in some ways that’s good. But one thing I can promise you is this: I will never take your children from you.”
“And you?” he asked.
She shouldn’t matter. It should be all about the children, and yet, here in his bed he found keeping her was just as important somehow.
“I...I’ll stay. For the babies.” She added the last part quickly.
But all that mattered was that she had promised to stay.
“My friend, Prince Felipe, is having a party next week.”
“What?”
“Was I unclear?” he asked.
“Well, no. But it was an abrupt subject change.”
“Not at all,” he said, sitting up. “You said you would stay with me. And if you promise to stay with me, then I do not have to keep you here. That means we can go away to Felipe’s country and attend his wife’s art gallery.”
“Oh, well that’s very generous of you,” she said. He did not miss the sarcasm in her tone.
“I’m not pretending I’m generous. I’m informing you of the change of plans.”
“This is your friend who also owns a castle? The reason you had to buy yours?”
