Unwrapping the Castelli Secret

by Caitlin Crews

  It was so very easy to hate herself, lecture herself on the importance of abstinence, call herself an addict. But heroin didn’t feel pain in return. Heroin didn’t hurt.

  It was infinitely harder to tilt her head closer and to press her lips into the hollow between his pectoral muscles, like the apology she didn’t dare utter. That she was afraid to admit she wanted to speak out loud at all.

  Rafael sighed, or perhaps it was a groan, and tore the rest of his shirt off without her having to ask. And then he stood there, bared to the waist, even more perfect than he’d been all these years inside her head.

  She couldn’t read the look on his face then, nor define what rose in her in response. What tore at her and threatened to rip her apart, and it was all there in the dark gold of his eyes. In the constriction in her chest, making her wonder if she’d ever really breathe again.

  “Turn around,” he ordered her. She froze, but he only stared back at her implacably, his eyes too dark and too bright. “Do not make me repeat myself.”

  She obeyed without quite meaning to, turning so her back was to him and she faced the scrolled height of the nearby settee.

  “Rafael—” she began, but cut herself off on a sharp intake of breath when he came up hard behind her, that mighty chest of his pressed into her back, making her feel dizzy with need.

  That endless, delirious, life-altering need.

  “These are your choices, Lily.” His mouth was close enough to that sensitive place just behind her ear that she could feel the tickle of it, a sharp, impossible electricity that seemed to bolt straight through her to linger in her core. She was surrounded by him, sex and scent and strength, and she didn’t know what she felt. Who she was anymore, when she was with him. What the hell she was doing. But she also couldn’t seem to stop. “You can walk away right now, go to sleep, dream of all the ways we’ve wronged each other so we can tear bigger chunks from each other in the morning. I won’t blame you if you do.”

  She felt as if she couldn’t breathe, but that was her, she understood, making that rough sound. That harsh breathing a little too close to outright panting.

  “Or...?” she asked, in a voice that hardly sounded like hers.

  But it was. She knew it was.

  So did Rafael.

  And he was hard and hot and perfect behind her. “Or you can bend over that settee and hold on tight.”

  * * *

  Rafael expected her to bolt. To take a breath and then hurl herself away from him. Run screaming from him. Maybe some part of him wanted her to do exactly that.

  Maybe he didn’t know which one of them he was trying to scare.

  He heard the deep, shuddering breath she took. He braced himself for her to walk away. Told himself that he would let her. That he had no other choice.

  “And...” She shifted from one foot to the other. “And what happens if I do that?”

  He didn’t pretend he didn’t know which that she meant. Triumph lashed at him, more potent than the whiskey he’d tossed back, and he smiled. Hard.

  His hand smoothed down the length of her side, all that silken heat and the tattoo he knew waited for him beneath her dress. She bucked slightly against him, then went too still, as if she couldn’t control herself any better than he could.

  And he found that made all the difference. It clarified things.

  It didn’t matter how messy this was. What they’d lost. How they’d lied.

  It didn’t make her any less his.

  Nothing could.

  “Bend over, Lily,” he ordered her, as gruff as he was certain, and he was animal enough to enjoy the trembling reaction he could see her fight to repress when he said it. “Now.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  LILY STEPPED AWAY from him, and Rafael found he hardly breathed as she stood there for a moment, as if she hadn’t quite made up her mind. Not quite yet. She shifted her weight again and he heard the faint rustle of her skirt like a shout before she twisted around to look over her shoulder at him.

  Her eyes were so blue. Like that fathomless California sky. He’d thought he’d never see them again, that marvelous color. He’d had to content himself with memory. He’d had to settle for lesser blues, minor marvels.

  He wasn’t going to settle again.

  Rafael had a thousand things he wanted to say to her, but none of that mattered when what they boiled down to was the same thing: she was his. No matter the distance, the years. The hurts lodged and the lies told. What she thought of him, them, the past, the future they’d have to work out now that there was Arlo to consider. That was all noise.

  Lily was the sweet, deep quiet at the center of all of that.

  She was his.

  He saw her breathe in, then let it out. He saw her decision flash in her gorgeous eyes, a resolve that lifted her chin again and made every part of him clench tight in anticipation and a spark of something much too close to fear—

  She turned away from him again and took another step, then bent herself forward, gripping the back of the settee the way he’d told her to do.

  Lust and need and a deep kick of pure triumph punched into him then. So hard it hollowed him out. He wanted her so badly in that moment that if he touched her, he imagined he’d simply implode. And that wouldn’t do at all.

  So instead, he made her wait.

  He went back over to the bar and poured himself another drink. He took his time with it, watching her intently.

  “Do not move,” he ordered her, more silk than reprimand, when he saw her shift as if she meant to straighten. “It is your turn to wait, Lily. I waited for five years with no hope that you would ever return. You’ve waited five seconds so far and you know exactly where I am. You can suffer the unknown a little while longer, don’t you think?”

  “I didn’t know you were into torture,” she retorted, and he could see her defiance in the way she braced herself against the ornate little settee, too fussy to be a couch. The way she tilted her head to one side, sending all that heavy, slippery strawberry blond hair of hers cascading over one shoulder. “Is that a new hobby?”

  “You have no idea,” he murmured.

  “You could simply kiss me like a normal person,” she pointed out, almost chattily, as if she wasn’t standing there in a remarkably provocative position, awaiting his pleasure. “Or is that too pedestrian for a Castelli heir in a Venetian palazzo?”

  “Ogni volta che ti bacio dimentico dove sono.” Every time I kiss you I forget where I am. He hadn’t meant to say that.

  But the truth was, he didn’t simply want this woman. He admired her. He craved her sharp tongue as much as he wanted to feel the wet heat of it against his skin. He had never managed to reconcile himself to the loss of her. He had been made a different man entirely by her loss—and he didn’t know, now, how to pull those different pieces of himself together into one again. If that was even possible.

  He set his drink back down untouched and roamed back toward her, eyeing the picture she made as she waited there with the dress the color of the sea all around her and her exquisite form within it like some kind of mythical creature, too perfect to be believed. Yet this was Venice, after all. It was easier to believe all things were possible in a city that should not exist, propped up like so many dreams nailed fast to alder trees and left in the sea for centuries.

  But Lily was here again, wasn’t she? She lived, as his brother had pointed out to him. She had not died in that car accident. This was not a dream, despite the many, many times he’d had dreams just like it. Rafael could call this—her—a miracle if he chose, and he told himself he would worry later over the vicious little details that had made it all possible.

  Much later.

  He leaned over her, into her, caging her where she stood with his hands on either side of hers. She shuddered in th
at deep, luxuriant way that seemed to roll all the way through her and then into him, and when he bent to press his mouth to the nape of her neck, they both sighed.

  She was so warm, so delicately fragrant. He could smell that particular scent that was only hers, a sultry blend of her skin and her sex, and layered over that the hints of bathing products and stylist’s tools, cosmetics and the faint touch of something not quite slate that made him think of the snow outside.

  And the skin beneath his lips was so soft. So very soft. She shivered, and he wanted to inhale her. All of her.

  “La tua pelle e’ come seta,” Rafael murmured, right there against that sensitive spot at her nape, knowing full well she couldn’t understand him. Enjoying that fact, if he was honest. Your skin is like silk.

  “Why can’t I turn around?” Her voice was little more than a breath.

  He smiled against her skin. “Because this way, there can only be honesty between us. No harsh words to confuse the issue. No lies or make-believe memories. You will either respond to me or you won’t.”

  “You don’t seem worried that I won’t,” she said, almost ruefully.

  He grazed her lightly with his teeth and heard the sharp little noise she made in response, music to him the way it always had been, and he leaned in closer and indulged himself.

  “No,” he said against her soft, warm skin, “I’m not.”

  Rafael laid a trail of fire down the length of her neck, then across the delicate ridges of her finely wrought shoulder blades. He explored one with his mouth, his hands, then the other. He kept her caged there by his much larger body, drinking in every little sweet and helpless sound she made—far more intoxicating than any whiskey.

  And only when he’d relearned every sweet inch of her upper back did he pull back. She was shuddering again, her head low between her shoulders, breathing as hard as if she’d been running.

  “You might want to brace yourself, cara,” he told her, making no attempt to hide the sheer male satisfaction in his voice. “I’m only getting started.”

  He heard a hitch in her breath and it took him a moment to realize it was a laugh. Low, husky. Infinitely sensual. It wrapped around him and pierced his bones, shaking through him like a quiet little tsunami.

  “Promises, promises,” she taunted him softly.

  She was lethal. Rafael would do well to remember that.

  He reached out then and found the hidden zipper closure of her dress, unhooking it and then beginning to pull it down, exposing the long line of her spine and the acres of her soft skin. His mouth watered, but still he unzipped her, letting the dress fall from her mouthwatering curves to foam around her feet, effectively caging her there in yards and yards of fabric so soft to the touch that the only thing that could possibly be softer was her.

  She was like a feast spread before him, and he let himself breathe her in, exposed at last to his view. His own personal miracle. He took in the wavy tangle of her strawberry blond hair, the elegance of her lovely back and the scrap of scarlet he’d shoved out of his way at the party that was, from this angle, a mere hint of fabric circling her hips and then disappearing between the high, proud curves of her bottom. Then he took his time on the way back up, lingering on that tattoo he’d believed he’d never see again, that tattoo that had proved she was who he knew her to be at a glance, that tattoo that marked her his Lily forever.

  He touched her there, tracing the winding black lines that curled this way and that, the tendrils reaching down almost to the top of her thong panties at the bottom and then nearly to what would have been her bra line, had she been wearing one, at the top. Then he worked his fingers over the delicate lily blossom some stranger had lovingly drawn into her skin, the arched petals and the sweet bud within, as if he was painting her with his possession.

  “Rafael...” Her voice cracked on his name, and he smiled at the raw need in it. “Please.”

  “Please, what?” he asked. “I’ve hardly begun. And I think this tattoo is yet another lie you’ve told.”

  She shook her head, lifting herself up but still, he noticed, maintaining her position. Staying where he’d put her, and he didn’t know what made him want her more, her obedience or her need. Both.

  “A tattoo is the opposite of a lie,” she said, still in that breathy, needy way of hers that was messing with his resolve. “It’s ink on skin and unchangeable.”

  “And if you hated it as much as you claimed you did,” he murmured as he leaned in closer, then sank down so he could set his mouth against the center bud of that pretty red blossom, “you would have had it removed by now.”

  He heard her shudder out another breath that was edging toward a sob, and he continued to taste that delicate flower while he let his hands wander, smoothing their way over her hips and then testing the sweet curves of her bottom. And only when he could feel her shake did he tease his way into the hidden hollow beneath, where she was molten and hot and more than ready for him.

  Rafael knew her body better than his own. He knew her taste, her shape. He knew exactly how to touch her to drive her slowly, slowly insane. And if it killed him too, well—resurrections were going around. He was certain he’d survive, somehow, if only to find her again. He stroked his way into her heat, tracing her folds and the center of her need until she was surging back to meet him.

  “Tell me something,” he said darkly, moving as he spoke from the sweet tattoo to the sweep of her spine, relearning that perfect curve, that tempting shape. “How many men did Alison have in those five years?”

  He could feel her stiffen at that, but he had two fingers deep inside her, and there was only one truth that had ever mattered between them. It didn’t matter what he said to her, or what lies she told. It didn’t matter how furious she was with him or what she’d done. What he’d done with all those other women, for that matter, or how much he regretted every one of them. He could feel her, molten and sweet, clenching tight around him even so.

  This was the only truth. This heat. This need. This was who they were.

  “You’re a hypocrite,” she panted out, sounding as desperate as she did furious, and yet her hips moved in wild abandon, meeting every stroke. “You must know that.”

  “I have never claimed otherwise,” he said, his voice rough. “Especially not to you. But that doesn’t answer my question, does it?”

  “What does it matter?” she demanded, and then she let out a small cry when he changed his angle and drove deeper within her. Harder.

  “How many?”

  He felt her shudder beneath him, and he stopped pretending he was anything but an animal where this woman was concerned. Or that he’d ever been anything else. Or would ever be anything else. Five years apart, thinking she was dead, hadn’t changed this. Nothing could.

  “Tell me,” he gritted out at her.

  “None, Rafael,” she cried out as he pressed hard against the center of her hunger with one hand and stroked deep with the other. “There has never been anyone but you.”

  And there never will be, he thought, feeling something clawed and fierce inside him, fighting its way out through his rib cage.

  “For that,” he said, moving up higher and setting his mouth against her ear, exulting in the way she bucked and writhed beneath him, “you get a reward.”

  Then he twisted his hand and hit her in precisely the right spot, and held her as she broke apart.

  And he was only getting started.

  * * *

  Lily hardly registered it when he lifted her, sweeping her out of the dress that was now crumpled on the floor and up into his arms. But she did feel the change in temperature when he strode through the doors of the great room and out into the hall, holding her high against his bare chest.

  She should have been cold, she knew, but what she felt instead was something like cherished, in nothi
ng but her thong with her hair trailing over his arm. Safe, a small voice inside her whispered. The way it always had when she was with this man—the very last man who could ever be considered even remotely safe.

  But Lily hooked her arms around his neck and didn’t ask herself any questions.

  Rafael shouldered his way through another set of doors, and Lily only had a moment to take in a sitting room lit by cheerful little lamps made of colorful glass before he’d walked straight through it and into a majestic bedroom set high above the Grand Canal. She saw the glittering lights of the old buildings outside and the snow that fell all around, and then the world narrowed down to the canopied four-poster bed that dominated the richly patterned room. Paintings framed in gold graced the solemn red walls, there was a dancing fire in the massive fireplace on the far wall, and there was Rafael in the center of everything.

  He set her down at the side of the great bed, his expression unreadable. Her hair hung around her in a great mess, and she was naked while he still wore the bottom half of his dark suit. Lily thought that any one of those things should have bothered her, but they didn’t.

  She could sense all the things she ought to have felt dancing all around her, just out of sight. As if, were she to turn her head fast enough, she’d see them there, waiting to pounce. But she didn’t turn her head. She couldn’t seem to tear her gaze away from Rafael’s.

  “You remember me,” he said then, after what felt like a very long while.

  It could have been an accusation—but it wasn’t. He lifted his hand and held it out and she matched it with hers, laying it against his in that small space between them, so they were palm to palm.

  “Yes,” she said softly, aware that it sounded like a vow in the quiet of the vast room. “I remember you. I remember this.”

  It was easier to remember the wild highs and the dark lows, she knew. All the sex and the lies, the betrayals and the fights. But that hadn’t been the sum total of what had passed between them. The truth was, Lily didn’t like to remember the other part. It still hurt too much.