One Night In Collection

by Various Authors

  He must have taken them with him. To stop her from making a bid for freedom? He had to be crazy if he thought her mad enough to run out there where the paparazzi waited— with or without her shoes!

  She did find a bathroom, though, which she was sincerely glad about, since she had not been near one for hours and hours. It smelled of Raffaelle Villani: clean and tangy, with a hint of spice.

  Nice, she thought as she washed her hands in the basin. The kind of expensive scents you expected to surround a super-elite male. Then she supposed she must also smell super-elite right now, bearing in mind that her body had been pampered by a whole range of expensive products Elise had provided along with the expensive hairstyle and dress.

  She caught sight of herself in the bathroom mirror then and was actually taken aback because she hardly recognised herself—that sleek blonde thing with dead straight hair and heavy make-up.

  Well, she thought grimly as she viewed the thick licks of mascara that lengthened her eyelashes and made her eyes look bluer than they really were, everyone just loved to tell her that she had the potential to look almost as good as Elise if she’d only take time with her appearance. Now it seemed they’d achieved their dearest wish, only—

  She was not and had never wanted to be Elise, had she? And that person she could see in the mirror was just someone pretending to be something she was not.

  The fraud, in other words—the fake.

  The pink lipstick had all gone by now, she saw, but her lips still looked fuller than she was used to seeing them. Fuller and sexier because of too many hot kisses shared with a complete stranger.

  A stranger who was in for a big shock when he eventually got to meet the real Rachel Carmichael.

  Releasing a sigh, she turned away from the mirror and went back into the bedroom to search for that other item that had gone missing—her bag with her cellphone inside it.

  It wasn’t in the bedroom so she let herself into the hallway, then walked down it and into the living room. The dress did not feel so indecently short now that her ankles were no longer elevated by four-inch heels, she noticed as she walked.

  She heard the bag before she found it because her phone was already ringing. It had to be Mark—who else? she mocked grimly as she followed the sound and found the bag lying on the floor by the sofa she’d last sat down upon.

  Her half-finished glass of vodka stood alongside it. As she bent to get her bag there was a moment when she considered picking up the glass first and downing what was left in true Dutch courage style before she told Mark what had happened.

  In the end she didn’t need to tell him. Pushing her hair behind her ear, she put the phone to it.

  ‘Rachel, what the hell are you doing in Raffaelle Villani’s apartment?’ Mark’s voice all but pounced.

  ‘How did you find out where I am—?’ she asked.

  ‘Because it’s all over the bloody Internet!’

  A sound from behind her made her turn to find Raffaelle Villani propping up the living room doorway. His shirt sleeves were rolled up now, revealing tanned muscular forearms sprinkled with just enough dark hair to make her wonder where else on his body it might be.

  Her stomach muscles quivered. Her mouth went dry. Fluttering down her eyelashes, ‘It’s nothing for you to panic about,’ she said huskily into the phone. ‘I—I’ve been explaining the—situation to R-Raffaelle.’ The name fell uneasily from her lips and she caught the way one of his eyebrows arched in mocking note of that. ‘He—he’s being very understanding about it as—as I told you and Elise he would be once he’d heard all the facts.’

  There was a short silence. ‘I’m coming to get you.’

  ‘No—!’ Rachel pushed out. ‘It—it’s better that you stay away from here.’

  ‘Because I’m the press? Because between the two of you— you’ve come up with this crazy engagement announcement that is flying round Europe as we speak?’

  That far, that quickly—? Rachel swallowed.

  ‘I’m your brother first, Rachel,’ Mark was saying angrily. ‘And if that bastard is—’

  ‘Well, it’s just a bit too late to remember that, Mark!’ she cut in. ‘After the way you left me standing tonight, I wish I didn’t have a brother!’

  ‘I thought you were right behind me until I reached my car.’ He had the grace to sound uncomfortable. ‘When I did think to look back, the rest of my cronies were piling out of the hotel and I couldn’t see you anywhere, so I assumed you’d disappeared in the other direction.’

  ‘And, happy with that very stupid idea, you just went home without me to post your scoop.’ Wasn’t that just typically Mark?

  ‘I had a deadline,’ he grunted.

  I had a life, Rachel thought angrily. ‘Well, it’s too late to come at me with the brotherly concern now.’

  ‘Yeah, you’re right.’ He sighed. ‘Sorry, Rachel. So he’s okay with all of this, then?’

  Straight from apology back to business, Rachel noticed. ‘Yes,’ she said.

  He sucked in a breath. ‘So when are you coming back here?’

  ‘Coming back?’ She looked at Raffaelle Villani. He was standing there, waiting to hear her answer as much as Mark was.

  And she knew suddenly that she was going nowhere. She owed it to this man to play the game the way he had decided it would be played.

  ‘I’m not coming back,’ she said to Mark, but it was this other man’s wry tilt of his dark head that held her attention.

  ‘We—we’re still talking through our options,’ she added. ‘So I’m staying here f-for now.’

  ‘Just talking?’ Mark asked silkily.

  She couldn’t answer, not straight away anyway, because there was something about the way Raffaelle was looking at her now that—

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  But the gap had been too long for her streetwise, cynical half-brother. She heard him let out a long breath of air. ‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ he said grimly. ‘He isn’t the kind of man you want to become mixed up with.’

  Great advice, she thought, after the event. ‘I’ll call you— tomorrow,’ was all she said.

  ‘I had better go and ring Elise to tell her she can stop worrying.’

  And that was Mark, Rachel noted bleakly, back to prioritizing in his usual way—his twin always being a bigger priority for him than she ever could be.

  ‘Okay,’ she murmured. ‘Tell her I—’

  ‘Great,’ he cut in. ‘Got to go now, Rachel. I need to change my copy before it goes to print. Do you have any idea how much you’ve messed me about by making that announcement tonight?’

  The phone went dead. Rachel stared at it. And, for the first time since this whole wretched evening began, she felt the thick push of weak tears hit her eyes and her throat.

  Raffaelle watched as she continued to stand there with the cellphone in her hand. She’d gone pale again and if her body language was speaking to him then it was telling him that she had just been tossed aside like a used bloody pawn.

  Anger pumped at his chest. He wanted to kick something— her twin siblings, for instance.

  ‘What did you expect?’ he demanded brusquely. ‘A full rescue, complete with armour and swords? You are not the main player on this chessboard, cara—Elise is.’

  ‘I know that,’ she whispered and sank down on to the sofa.

  He breathed out a sigh. ‘At least her unborn child will get to know its rightful father.’

  He’d meant that to sound comforting but it had come out sounding harsh. She winced, pressing her lips together and dipping her head. Her hair slid forward, revealing the vulnerable curve of her slender white nape.

  Raffaelle brought his teeth together, his tongue sitting behind them and tingling with a mixed-up desire to taste what he could see and the knowledge that it was at real risk of being bitten off if he did not take more care about what he said.

  With a reluctance to let his mood soften, he pushed himself away from the door and walked towards
her. She heard him coming and stiffened her spine. When he leant down with the intention of picking up her glass to offer it to her, she actually shuddered.

  ‘Please don’t start dragging me around again,’ she choked out.

  Was that what he had been doing—?

  Yes, that was what he had been doing, Raffaelle realised, and straightened up with a jerk. ‘I’m—sorry,’ he said.

  ‘Everyone is sorry.’ She laughed tensely. ‘Doesn’t help much though, does it?’

  He couldn’t argue with that so he threw himself down on the sofa beside her and released another sigh. ‘Beginning to feel more like the real victim now, cara?’ He could not seem to stop the taunts from coming. ‘It is a strange feeling, don’t you think—being kind of frustratingly helpless? If we then start to wonder how our present lovers are going to feel when the news hits the stands, the sense of frustration really begins to bite.’

  ‘You have a lover?’ Her chin shot up, her slender neck twisting to show him blue eyes stark with horror and the glittering evidence of held-in tears. His inner senses shifted, stirring awake from what had only been a very light slumber anyway.

  ‘Do you?’ he fed back.

  ‘Of course not!’ she snapped. ‘Do you really think I would have got involved in any of this if I had a lover who could be embarrassed by it?’

  ‘Whereas I was not allowed to make that choice,’ he pointed out. ‘So stop feeling sorry for yourself,’ he finished coolly. ‘You are still less the victim here than I am, so—’

  ‘And you are just so loving being able to keep saying that to me!’ Rachel got to her feet, restless, tense without knowing why.

  Then she did know and she turned on him. ‘So who is she—?’ she speared at him as if she had the right to ask such a question.

  Which she didn’t, as the mocking glint in his eyes told her.

  But it did not stop her stupid brain from conjuring up some other leggy blonde creature with a very expensive pedigree draping herself over him while he lounged in much the same way he was now—all long limbs and tight muscles and rampant sex appeal waiting to be adored because it was his due.

  She took in a short breath, despising the heat of jealousy she could feel burning in her chest, as if a few angry kisses and a sham announcement had given her exclusive rights of possession over him!

  It did not, but nor did it stop her crazy imagination from imprinting her own image of him. Her heart began pounding out a suffocating rhythm. This time she couldn’t even look away! And to make it so much worse, having been crushed against him more times than was decent, she could even smell his sexy scent in her nostrils, feel the warmth of his mouth and the possessive touch of his hands on her—

  ‘There is no one—fortunately …’

  His deep voice slunk into her brain but she had to blink to make herself hear the words he’d spoken—then blink again to make herself understand what they meant.

  He meant that there was no other lover in his life right now. Her mouth fell dry and her legs went hollow.

  ‘I was just curious as to whether you had a man hanging about in the wings of this charade, ready to jump out and cause me more trouble.’

  ‘Well, there isn’t,’ she confirmed and spun away, hating to hear him make that sardonic denunciation of her character because she knew he had every right to suspect her of every underhand trick there was going.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘So I can sit here and enjoy looking at my newly betrothed’s fabulous legs without worrying if I am encroaching on someone else’s territory.’

  The aforementioned legs tingled. She moved tensely. ‘We are not betrothed—’

  ‘And the way the neat shape of her derrière is teasing me as it moves inside that tight little dress …’

  Rachel swung round. ‘Is this your idea of having fun, just to get your own back on me?’

  ‘With compliments?’ he quizzed innocently.

  ‘Those are not compliments!’

  ‘You don’t like me to tell you that I like what I see—?’

  ‘No—!’ she lashed out.

  ‘But it’s okay for you to look me over as if you cannot believe your good fortune, is it?’

  Rachel froze as a guilty blush ran right up her body and into her face. ‘I w-was not—’

  ‘Are your breasts your own?’ he cut in on her insolently.

  Her mouth dropped open in complete disbelief that he had actually voiced that question. ‘How dare you ask me that?’ she seethed.

  ‘Easily,’ he replied cynically. ‘They look real, but who can tell by just looking these days—’

  ‘They are real!’ she choked out. ‘And I’ve had enough of this—’

  ‘No, you haven’t.’

  With only that small hint that something was coming, he sat forward and snaked an arm around her waist, then tumbled her down on to his lap.

  Her cry of alarm doubled as a shimmering gasp when she found herself contained inside all of that long-limbed, hard-muscled strength.

  ‘W-what do you think you’re doing?’ Her clenched fists pushed at his shoulders.

  The gleam in his eyes mocked her. ‘The way you keep looking at me, count yourself lucky that I lasted as long as I did.’

  Oh, God, she’d been that obvious? ‘You said y-you wouldn’t do this—!’

  ‘You are no longer helpless.’

  He caught hold of her chin and pushed it upwards, his eyes hiding beneath half-lowered eyelashes as he waited for her lips to part with her next cry of protest—then he pounced, dipping his dark head to match the full pink quivering shape of her mouth with his.

  So they’d kissed in anger. They’d kissed in a terrifying state of untrammelled lust. They’d kissed to shock and to subdue. But this—this was different. This contained so much hungry, frustrated, heated desire that it stirred her up more turbulently than any kiss she’d experienced in her entire life.

  He explored her mouth so deeply that the feeling of being taken over completely drained her of the will to fight. Her clenched fists stopped pushing and opened to begin stroking in tight, tense, restless movements that only stopped when she found the warmly scented skin at his nape.

  One of his arms held her clamped against him, the other stroked the length of her silk-covered thigh. Her dress had rucked up and the higher his hand glided the more she had to brace her inner thighs to try to contain what was happening there. And her breasts were tight, the nipples two stinging pinpricks pressing against the solid wall of his chest through his shirt.

  Her fingers became restless again, one set moving to his satin cheekbone, then down in a delicate tremor to the corners of their straining mouths. He muttered something as he caught hold of her fingers and fed them down between them, until she was covering the hard ridge of aroused flesh pushing at his trousers. Frenzy arrived, a hot feverish frenzy of mutual desire that had been bubbling beneath the surface ever since their first kiss. Now it quickly spiralled out of control.

  He caught hold of her hair and pulled her head back, his mouth deserting hers to wreak a trail of hot kisses down the arching stretch of her throat.

  She was writhing with excitement, her skin alive to every brush of his lips and flickering lick of his tongue. A simple tug and the strap holding up her dress slipped off her shoulder. As clear air hit the thrust of her breast his mouth was continuing its delicious torment across its swollen quivering slope until he claimed the nipple with a luxurious suck.

  An explosion of pleasure swept down from her nipple to low in her body, making her shudder, making her scythe out hot breaths as she clung to him.

  Then his mouth came back to hers again and his tongue stung deep. Her deserted nipple was pulsating in protest at the loss of his exquisite suckling. She groaned into his mouth. He responded by lifting her up and bringing her back down straddling him without breaking the deep hot-mouthed kiss. She felt the thickness of his erection and couldn’t stop herself from pressing into it. He encouraged her by clasping the tight
mounds of her behind, now fully exposed because her dress was bunched to her waist. Flaming heat ignited between her thighs and she rocked her lower body, her fingers clutching at his silk-black hair.

  When he stood up with her she didn’t bother to protest. She knew what he was doing and where he was taking her. How he made it there without staggering she didn’t know because his breathing was shot and his mouth had still not given up possession of hers.

  The bed felt soft beneath her as he laid her down on it and she clung to his neck in case he decided to straighten and leave her, but he did no such thing.

  Her dress was shimmied down her body. He stripped it from her legs with the deftness of a man who knew the easiest way to undress a woman without interrupting what was already happening with their mouths. There was no bra to remove— this dress was not the kind that permitted the wearing of one— and her stockings held themselves up, which left only her panties as a flimsy barrier to her complete nudity, but they stayed in place because he was now busy with his shirt.

  She wanted to help; it was a feverish need that sent her fingers frantic as they tugged at shirt buttons, while his slipped lower to deal with his trouser-clasp and zip …

  An impatient rustle of clothing, the fevered hiss of their breath, the heated scents from their bodies and the urgent touch of their fingers on newly exposed eager flesh …

  And that deep drugging kiss just did not stop throughout all of it, not as she explored his muscle-packed contours or throughout each quivering gasp she made of pleasure when he explored her softer rounded flesh.

  The impatient tug he gave at his shoes to remove them coincided with the reckless way that she dragged off his shirt.

  Hot, taut satin skin adorned her hungry fingers once again, coated with a layer of male body hair. She scraped through it with her fingernails and felt him shudder with pleasure, her skin livening with excitement when she finally felt the full power of his naked length come to settle alongside her own. He was big and hot and amazingly, beautifully, magnificently built. Greedy for more, she rolled tight in against him and he accommodated her with a shift of his body that brought her into full contact with every part of his front.