by Tara Pammi
One taste of the tantalizing lushness of her mouth. One taste to see if she was as sweet as she sounded.
One moment with the woman who stared at him like no other did. As if he were her deepest fantasy.
“Raphael...” Her entreaty incensed him. How dare she walk into his domain and turn him upside down?
Fingers curled around her nape, he tilted her face and slid his tongue over her trembling lower lip.
She moaned into his mouth—a tremulous whimper that heated his blood. And shuddered. Her body softened and his hardened. Fitting his mouth flush against hers, he moved it this way and that. Heat stirred from that soft friction and her fingers became stiff against his chest. Digging and pressing. Grasping.
He kissed her mouth again and again, a soft slide, a hard press, teasing and taunting, somehow controlling the feral hunger blooming in his blood. “Open your mouth, tesoro,” he pleaded, every muscle curling in heated anticipation.
Her body arched into his touch even as she said, “They’re watching...please...”
And yet, she pressed closer, until her small breasts were plastered against his chest. Until her thigh was encased between his own. He stroked his hands up and down her back, soothing those infinite tremors, willing her to take the leap. Mindless hunger consumed him. “Give in, bella. Kiss me.”
And merciful God above, she did.
Slowly. Softly.
Like a whisper of a butterfly’s wing, she pressed a tentative kiss at the corner of his mouth, flicked his lower lip with the tip of her tongue. From one corner of his mouth to the other, she kept kissing him until it felt like there was a hot poker inside of his own body. Until the control he was exercising spewed hot shivers all through him.
Again and again, standing on her toes, sinking her hands into his hair, pulling him down... All he’d done was touch a spark to dry tinder and she’d exploded. His body’s hunger deepened. His need deepened.
With a growl, Raphael stopped her explorations. Holding her still, he plunged his tongue into her mouth, again and again, the kiss turning instantly carnal. He licked the warm cavern of her mouth, curled the tip of his tongue against hers, begging her with his caresses.
He was pleading her for surrender, for he instinctively knew only sweet entreaty would do with Pia. She wasn’t delicate inside, only outwardly. That sweet innocence of her spirit, he would do anything to keep it intact.
Shuddering, she returned the pressure, her tongue touching his in tentative strokes. His moan imploded, reverberated through his own body as the kiss grew urgent. He kissed her hard and fast, his need only increasing the more he took. Sweet and hot, she was like a drug he’d never known.
Christo, she was responsive, ravenous as he was.
He dug his teeth into her lower lip and tugged. She whimpered. The sound was so soft, so much of submission and surrender.
His erection, already incredibly hard, lengthened against the cushion of her soft thigh. Flipping them, he held her against the wall, pulled her leg up until it was wrapped around his hip. Groaning at the indescribable sensation, he cupped her behind with his hands and pressed her against him tighter. Rocked himself into her groin gently.
Pleasure balled at the base of his spine, warmth seeping through her clothes to touch his skin. God, he wanted to be inside her before he took another breath; he wanted to move inside her while she stared at him with those wide eyes...
There was the sound of a cough, a whispered snarl from Gio. Raphael backed away as if burned. A curse flew from his mouth. His breath burned in his lungs, his body raging to finish what they’d started.
Dio mio, when had he been so aroused from just a kiss? With his daughter in the other room, with his mother and sisters and half of bloody Milan watching? When had his hunger ever betrayed him like that?
Breathing hard, he counted to ten, his erection no less painful at the end.
Eyes big in her gamine face, Pia remained flat against the wall where he’d pinned her with his body. Hair wild from his fingers, mouth bruised from his kisses, eyes wide.
A fierce satisfaction filled him to see the marks of his passion on her. To see her—He cursed again.
Damn it, this wasn’t one of his sophisticated lovers who knew the rules. This wasn’t a woman who wanted Raphael for one quick screw or even a short affair. By her own admission, she didn’t even know her own sexuality, as explosive as it was.
She looked so bewildered and so innocently seductive that it doused the heat running through his veins and replaced it with a strange unsettling feeling. As if he’d opened a door to something much more complex than a kiss.
“Pia?”
She ran a tentative finger over her lower lip and a groan vibrated in his chest. “I feel...as if...” She wrapped a trembling hand around her nape, moved it forward over her neck, placed her palm over her heart. “My heart is thundering. Frank never kissed me like that. No, he tried. It just never felt like that. As if I were sinking and flying at the same time.”
He fisted his hands, her words balling into pleasure at the base of his spine.
“Why did you stop?”
Christo! That was the question she asked? “Because I was this close to taking you against the wall. And I heard Gio—”
“Taking me...” Her gaze took in his balled fists, the muscle jumping under his jaw, moved to his groin and noted the evidence... “Oh.” Liquid longing peered out of her gaze.
He closed the door with a slam on prying ears, his temper getting the better of him. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Look at you like what?” Slowly she pushed up from the wall, a faint tremble to her movements. The passion cleared from her face, her jaw lifting in that stubborn way. “Why are you looking at me like that? As if I’ve done something wrong?”
“It was just a kiss, Pia.” It hadn’t been just a kiss. In thirty-four years, he had never lost his mind like that. He’d never wanted to take a woman against a wall, propriety be damned. He’d never been so desperate to protect and possess someone as if his breath depended on it.
“Was it? Because it feels—”
“Si, it was just a kiss.” He bit out the words so forcefully she flinched. “A show for Gio and my mother and all of Milan.” Ignoring her pale face, he continued on, the ruthless bastard that he was. “I have kissed a hundred women just like that and done a lot more besides. It’s lust, nothing more, nothing to be upset about. Nothing to weave dreams about.
“Just because you react like dynamite to a spark when I touch you, it doesn’t mean we would suit,” he added for good measure.
Color fled her cheeks and he fisted his hands. Could he do or say nothing right with this woman?
Christo, this was Gio’s precious granddaughter. Touching her when he had no intention of going any further, kissing her when he knew she was innocent, but even more than that, there was something about Pia that got under his skin, that lingered long after she was gone.
There was something about her that made Raphael want, something in her gaze when she looked at him—as if she could see more than what he was: a ruthless, hardened cynic.
* * *
How dare he kiss her, then act affronted because she liked it? Dear God, she could still feel the sharp pulses between her legs. Could feel his warm breath on her cheek, his fingers on her buttocks.
That kiss had been such pure pleasure that she couldn’t feel the ground now. And yet, Raphael seemed determined to flatten her with reality.
A show? Who was he kidding?
“We’re both responsible for that kiss turning into something else,” she said, her voice vibrating with hurt and anger.
“Si.”
“Then you’re unhappy because I enjoyed it more than you think I should?”
“I lost control. And it won’t happen again.”
“The kiss or losing control?” Pia demanded, her heart already taking a beating. How could she forget the impression of the hard column of flesh that he’d pressed aga
inst her belly? Had that been part of the pretense too? When he opened his mouth, she held him off. “Stop talking before you say something I can’t forgive.”
Eyes flaring, he looked away. In profile, his face was tight with control. His impressive chest rose and fell.
“Are you all right?”
“No. I’m not all right.” She wished she could lie, but what was the point? Just as she couldn’t become beautiful or sophisticated, she couldn’t play games either.
Oh, why had she involved him in this farce in the first place? She’d thought she’d somehow resist her attraction to him, but she hadn’t counted on finding such a complicated man beneath. He was tying her up in knots—and that was when he wasn’t kissing her. “I don’t kiss a man as if my life depends on it, and then coolly wipe it from my mind.”
When he reached for her hands, Pia shied them away. A tic beat violently under his jaw.
He didn’t want to have kissed her, yet he didn’t like it if she turned away from his touch. What did he want from her?
“You have to. I won’t let it spiral like that, but if we have to keep this pretense up some intimacy will be required.”
Understanding dampened the scorching trails his body had left across hers. This was how he usually had his affairs. Except she hadn’t followed the script. “I can’t just separate it like you do. I can’t turn it off when it’s inconvenient.”
His eyes flared. “Convenient? Nothing about my life has been convenient since you decided to storm into it. First, he had all of Milan tripping over themselves to get to you. Then, he puts you in my way by involving the damned Castillaghis in this whole thing. Do I worry about the threats my ex is making about Alyssa or do I worry about which man’s trap you’ll fall into next? My whole life has been turned upside down because of your presence. Damn Gio and damn...”
Pia flinched at the vehemence in his words. Did he really resent her presence in his life so much? Tears prickled at the back of her eyes and she shut them away.
Perhaps sensing how she’d retreated from him, he took a deep breath, ran a hand over his eyes. Whatever he claimed, it was clear that the kiss hadn’t left him unaffected.
He reached her and traced a finger against her jawline. The tenderness in the gesture stole her breath just as much as the kiss had done. Made her long for something that he clearly wasn’t going to give. “You kiss me like you can’t stop, you snarl at me for turning your life upside down, and then you touch me as if I’m precious. I don’t understand you, Raphael.”
“How is it that a smart science teacher can’t figure out cause and effect?”
“Cause and effect?” she repeated stupidly, blinking up at him.
“No good can come of this. I will never marry again, much less love again. And you, even after what that man did, you still have stars in your eyes. I kiss you because I can’t help it.” A ragged growl punctured his words. “I kiss you because everything about you drives me crazy. All I can think of when I wake up or go to bed or when I take myself in hand is how good it would be to move inside you. How good it feels when you come alive in my arms. But all I want from a woman is one night, a short, torrid affair at best. You’re not offering that, are you?”
She shook her head automatically, and he snorted. “I didn’t think so.”
With one searing glance at her mouth, he walked away, leaving Pia quaking as if she’d been through an earthquake.
An affair with Raphael—even one night with him—letting his strong body cover hers, welcoming that hardness into her body, letting him see her at her most vulnerable... Heat flushed from every pore. Her body trembled just at the images, hungered for what she knew would be unbearable pleasure.
But it was her heart, drumming even now, that she was afraid of.
Frank had only chipped it. Raphael, given a chance, would crush it.
CHAPTER SEVEN
ANY DOUBTS PIA had about Raphael’s promise were proved unnecessary over the next few weeks. Any momentary, crazy belief she might have had in his matter-of-fact statement that he wanted her despite his legendary will, shredded in the freezingly polite way he treated her.
Forget kissing. He didn’t even touch her unless it was for an audience. Even then, he barely held her arm with the tips of his fingers as if she would contaminate him. Even his accusations had felt more personal than this.
The news that Raphael Mastrantino was dating Giovanni Vito’s granddaughter swept through society faster than the heat wave that had descended on Milan.
If Pia had thought she’d garnered too much attention as Gio’s American granddaughter, it was nothing compared to the glances and whispers thrown her way as the woman who’d caught Raphael’s interest. His public possessiveness had fended off any other man’s interest, exactly as she’d intended.
Giovanni, while he said he was delighted with this turn of events, was strangely toned down.
Pia, however, hadn’t foreseen how torturous their little facade would be to her. Or that the more she saw of Raphael, the more she found a man worth admiring.
He was the perfect son, the perfect brother, the perfect boss, although a little distant, if all the things Pia had heard at an office party were to be believed. From Gio, she knew he was the perfect godson. As one woman had explained in lurid detail at another party, unaware that Pia stood behind her, he was a perfect lover.
No, scratch that, the woman had been aware that Pia was there and had taken a petty satisfaction in making sure Pia overheard.
In front of Milan and Gio and his family, he was the attentive boyfriend or lover or whatever the hell it was that they were pretending to be. Every day, he sent her flowers or candy or some other treat. When she’d asked if he’d bought her a subscription for a gift club for the next few years, he’d snarled something in Italian.
She’d had her answer, which festered. She was nothing but a painful chore for him, an item on his damned to-do list.
Between a huge deal VA was cooking with a manufacturing company in Japan and his time with Alyssa, he was hardly available anyway. Their pretense was barely a blip in his life. Whereas for Pia, every carefully orchestrated touch was torture. Every moment she spent in his company, she was caught between wanting to run away and desperately wanting more.
As if that wasn’t enough, Raphael came to see Gio most evenings. Sometimes, it was a quick chat under Gio’s watchful eye.
Sometimes, they dined outside with the spectacular view of the setting sun drawing pink and orange mirages on the lake. If there was enough light or if Gio petulantly demanded that he hadn’t seen enough of them together that week, Pia joined them. She brought out a piece of wood and worked on it quietly while listening to Raphael relay the news and politics of Vito Automobiles.
He spoke with a deep, confident voice, his Italian soothing to her ears. Even though she only understood a few phrases, Pia heard his passion for his work, his affection for Gio in the way he relayed tidbits about people they both knew.
She could just sit there and listen to his voice endlessly.
Pretending that all the hours she spent in his company gave her rights over him, while pretty much every woman snidely commented that it was the Vito Heiress that had snared him, grated like salt on a wound. As if she didn’t know that Raphael wouldn’t have looked at her twice if not for the fact that she was Gio’s granddaughter.
On one such scheduled outing, she’d persuaded Raphael to bring Alyssa along. She adored that little girl, and to her shame, Pia desperately needed a buffer—there was only so much one-on-one she could take with Raphael before she did something crazy.
Raphael had returned after a week-long trip and any hopes she’d had that she would be over him were dashed to tiny bits when she saw him striding up the pathway with a squirming Alyssa on his shoulder and his mouth stretched in carefree laughter.
They spent the next two hours with Alyssa at a gelateria in Menaggio, another one of the picturesque villages lining up Lake Como. Pia held a chubb
y, sticky and sleepy Alyssa in her arms while Raphael parked the car in front of his mother’s house.
When he asked to take her back, Pia shook her head, loving the feel and weight of the little girl. Despite her mother’s absence in her life, Alyssa was such a darling little girl that Pia couldn’t help but fall in love with her.
And every time she was with Raphael and Alyssa, Pia couldn’t fight the rightness of it. Couldn’t fight the longing that drowned her. As if she were the piece of the puzzle that he and the little girl were missing.
But it was ridiculous. Even if he asked her, she didn’t want to be with a man like Raphael, did she? Ruthless, rigid...
Raphael leveled the strangest look back at her.
“Show me the way,” Pia said in a husky voice. Only when she followed him down a quiet corridor did she realize that the house was empty and her only buffer was snoring slightly.
“I’ll get her into her pj’s,” she said to Raphael.
Again, that intense, almost searing look.
“You can trust me with her, Raphael,” she burst out, a tight knot in her throat. “I adore her.”
His mouth tightened, as if she’d threatened his very safety. “My mother should have been here. She knew I had plans tonight.”
“You don’t want me in Alyssa’s life,” she said, busying herself by looking through the drawers for clean pj’s. It wasn’t personal, she told herself. But it was a lie.
She wanted things personal between them. She wanted him to tell her private things, things he never confided in anyone. She wanted him to tell her what his ex had done that he didn’t trust any woman anymore.
She wanted their facade to be true. She wanted to be the woman that Raphael forsook any other woman for, that Raphael broke all his rules for.
“I get that. Believe me, I do. I think you’re a wonderful father. She won’t wake up. And you can go call your mom while I settle her down.”
Instead of reassuring him, her words made him look even more forbidding. With a short stiff nod, he walked out of the room.
By the time, Pia had cleaned up and changed Alyssa, the sun was beginning to set. Making a face, she pulled her damp T-shirt off her chest.
