Modern Romance - The Best of the Year

Sam gasped and grabbed onto Rafaele’s shoulders, unable to look away from that glittering, possessive green gaze. His fingers moved in and out, and her body started to clench around them, the anticipation building to fever-pitch.

On some level Sam rejected this. She didn’t want to splinter apart while Rafaele looked on. She took his hand away from her and said roughly, ‘No—not like this. I’ll come when you come.’

Rafaele smiled and it was fierce. The smile of a warrior. He took her mouth in another devastating kiss and her wetness was on the fingers that he wrapped tight around her hips. Rafaele thrust deep inside her in one cataclysmic move and swallowed her scream of pleasure, his hand holding her steady when she went so taut with excitement that she thought she’d splinter apart there and then, despite her brave words.

But slowly, inexorably, expertly, Rafaele drew her back from that brink and then, with slow, measured, devastating thrusts of his body into hers he rewound that tension inside her until it built up higher and higher all over again.

Sam wrapped her legs around Rafaele’s waist, her ankles crossed, her feet digging into his hard backside, urging him on, begging without words for him to go deeper, harder. Pushing her away from him slightly, but supporting her with an arm around her, he thrust harder and deeper.

Sam’s head went back. Her eyes closed. She couldn’t take it—couldn’t articulate what she needed. She needed to come so badly, but Rafaele was relentless. She knew she was only seconds from begging. Overwhelmed, she felt tears prick her eyes—and then Rafaele thrust so deep it felt as if he touched her heart.

Eyes flying open, tendons going taut all over her body, Sam came in a dizzying, blinding crescendo of pleasure so intense she couldn’t breathe. She gasped and felt Rafaele thrust deep again, sending her spiralling into an even higher dimension of pleasure. His body jerked between her legs and she felt her endless pulsating orgasm milking him of his essence, which was a warm flood inside her.

In the aftermath of that shattering crescendo Sam barely knew which way was up. Her legs were still locked around his slim hips. Rafaele’s head was buried in her neck and she had the strongest urge to reach out and touch his hair, but when she lifted a hand it was trembling too much.

His chest was heaving and damp against hers. Her breasts were tender. Rafaele was still hard inside her, his strength ebbing slowly. And then suddenly he reared back, eyes wild, making Sam wince as he broke the connection between their bodies.

‘Protection. We didn’t use protection.’

Sam looked at him and went icy, before reason and sanity broke through. Relief was tinged with something bittersweet. ‘No,’ she breathed, ‘It’s okay, I’m...safe.’

She bit her lip, suddenly acutely aware of how she was balancing precariously on the desk with Rafaele’s eyes on her. She felt raw, as if a layer of skin had been stripped off her body. She clenched her hands.

‘Are you sure?’ he demanded.

Sam forced herself to look at Rafaele. Her mouth twisted. ‘Yes. I’m sure. My period just finished.’

He sighed deeply. ‘Okay.’

Sam couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her voice. ‘You believe me, then?’

He paused in reaching down to grab some clothes and looked at her. ‘I believe you. I don’t think you’d want to repeat history any more than I would.’

The words shouldn’t have hurt her. Much as his earlier words shouldn’t have hurt her. But they did. Sam didn’t want to question why.

Grimacing slightly when her muscles protested, she stood shakily from the desk and took her shirt and bra from Rafaele’s outstretched hand.

She couldn’t look at him. Face burning, she turned away to put on her clothes and castigated herself. She was repeating history right here, right now. Making love with him in his office exactly like she used to. She could remember what it had been like to go back onto the factory floor, feeling exhilarated and shamed all at once, as if a brand on her forehead marked her as some sort of fallen woman. The boss’s concubine.

She pulled on her pants and trousers with clumsy fingers, aware of Rafaele just feet away, dressing himself, sheathing that amazing body again.

When she was dressed he said coolly from behind her, ‘Shall we go?’

Sam steeled herself and turned around to see Rafaele looking hardly rumpled, his hair only slightly messy. She knew she must look as if she’d just been pulled through a hedge backwards. The tang of sex was in the air and it should have sickened her, but it didn’t. It made her crave more.

‘Yes,’ she said quickly, before he could see how vulnerable she felt.

* * *

Rafaele burned with recrimination as he negotiated his car out of the factory in the dark with Sam beside him, tight-lipped. His recrimination was not for what had happened; he’d do that again right now if he could. His recrimination was for the way it had happened. He’d behaved like a teenage boy, drooling over his first lay with finesse the last thing on his mind.

When she’d asked him just now if he believed her, his reaction had been knee-jerk and not fair. He was already repeating history with bells on, and he knew he wouldn’t have the strength to resist her even if he wanted to.

It had been a miracle that he’d had the control to make sure Sam had come first—but then he recalled how ready to explode she’d been when he’d just touched her with his fingers. Just like that he was rewarded with a fresh, raging erection and had to shift to cover it in the gloom of the interior of the car.

He’d taken Sam on his desk. He’d only ever let one other woman get to him at work—the same woman. Until he’d met Sam his life had been strictly compartmentalised into work and pleasure. That pleasure had been fleeting and completely within his control. As soon as he’d laid eyes on her, though, the lines had blurred into one.

He could still remember the cold, clammy panic that last weekend four years ago at finding himself waking in his own bed with Sam wrapped around him like a vine. Far from precipitating repugnance, he’d felt curiously at peace. Until he’d realised the significance of that and that peace had been shattered. He’d postponed an important meeting that weekend to spend it with Sam. He’d even turned off his phone. Had not checked e-mails. He’d gone incommunicado. For the first time. For a woman.

It had been that which had made something go cold in his chest. Realising how far off his own strict path he’d gone.

Even now he was aware of that, but also aware of Sam’s slim supple thighs in her black trousers next to him. Albeit slanted away, as if she was avoiding coming any closer than she had to in the small, intimate space.

Dio. If she was his he’d make her wear skirts and dresses all the time, so that all he’d have to do would be to slide his hand— If she was his. Rafaele let the car swerve momentarily and very uncharacteristically as that thought slid home with all the devastation of a stealth bomb.

He could feel Sam’s quick glance of concern and imagine her frowning.

‘Sorry,’ he muttered, and regained control of himself. He could see from the corner of his eye that Sam had crossed her arms over her breasts. She was so tense he fancied she might crack in two if he touched her.

Her silence was getting to him, making his nerves wind tight inside him. He wanted to provoke her—get her to acknowledge what had just happened. What it possibly meant to her. Was the same round of unwelcome memories dominating her head?

Injecting his voice with an insouciance he didn’t feel, Rafaele asked, ‘Don’t tell me you’re already regretting what happened, cara.’

She snapped at him, ‘Is it that obvious?’

Rafaele’s mouth tightened in rejection of that, despite his recent thoughts. ‘It was inevitable and you know it. It’s been building between us from the moment we saw each other again.’

He glanced at Sam and their eyes met. A jolt of electricity shot straight to Rafaele’s groin.

She hissed at him, ‘It was not inevitable. It was a momentary piece of very bad judgment. You were obviously feeling frustrated—maybe it’s because you’ve been forced to move to the suburbs so you can’t entertain your mistress.’

Rage was building inside Rafaele and he responded with a snarl, ‘I don’t have a mistress at the moment.’

Sam sniffed. ‘Maybe not, but I’m sure there’s been a number in the last four years.’

And not one of them Rafaele could remember right now. But if he was a painter he could paint Sam’s naked body with his eyes closed. He recalled seeing Sam bite her lip and how he’d let slip ‘I’ve missed this.’ He’d also told her that no one had come close to her in four years. Then he’d all but admitted that he’d used other women to try and forget her. His belly curdled.

He ground out, ‘Are you expecting me to believe that you’ve been celibate for four years?’ He glanced at her and saw her go pale in the gloom. ‘Well? Have you?’

Sam stared straight ahead. Stonily. ‘Of course not. There was someone...a while ago.’

For a second Rafaele only heard a roaring in his ears. He saw red. He almost gave in to the impulse to swerve the car to the kerb. He’d fully expected her to say of course not, and his own hypocrisy mocked him. But, he told himself savagely, he hadn’t given birth to a baby.

He was aware that irrational emotions were clouding his normally perfectly liberal views and it was not something Rafaele welcomed.

‘Who was he?’ he bit out, knuckles white under the skin of his fingers on the wheel. Just the thought of Sam even kissing someone else was making him incandescent.

‘He was a colleague. He’s a single parent too...we bonded over that.’

Rafaele felt as if a red-hot poker had been stabbed into his belly. In a calm voice, belying the strength of his emotions, Rafaele said, ‘You were a single parent by choice, Samantha. You are not a single parent any more.’

Rafaele struggled to control himself. He wanted to demand Sam tell him more—how many times? Where? When?

As if sensing his intense interest, Sam blurted out, ‘It didn’t amount to anything. It was just one time. We went to a hotel for an afternoon and to be perfectly honest it was horrible. It felt...sordid.’

She clamped her mouth shut again and Rafaele realised he was holding his breath. He let it out in one long shuddery breath. His hands relaxed. Even though he still wanted to find this faceless, nameless person and throw him up against a wall.

From the moment Sam had stepped into his office earlier he’d been on fire. The culmination of weeks of build-up. The inferno inside him had been too strong to ignore. Feeling Sam in his arms, her mouth under his, opening up to him, pressing herself against him... He’d been thrusting into the tight, slick heat that he’d never forgotten right there on his desk before he’d even really acknowledged what was happening. He’d been in the grip of something more powerful than his rational mind.

They hadn’t even used protection. Sam was the only woman that had ever happened with, and the result of that was probably being put to bed right now. He looked at Sam again and saw that she was still pale, a pulse throbbing at the base of her neck. She’d uncrossed her arms finally and her breasts rose and fell a little too quickly, giving her away. They were stopped in traffic and he reached over and took her hand, gripping it when she would have pulled away.

He forced her to look at him and her eyes were huge. Rafaele saw something unguarded in their depths for a split second, but then it was gone and he crushed down the feeling of something resonating deep inside him. The jealousy he felt still burned in his gut.

He wanted to hate Sam for ever appearing in his life to disrupt his ordered and well-run world. A world where nothing had mattered except rebuilding Falcone Industries and ensuring that he would never be ruined like his father. Sam had jeopardised that for a brief moment in time and now it was happening all over again. But he found that he couldn’t hate her for that any more because Milo existed. And because he wanted her.

‘Let me go, Rafaele,’ Sam breathed.

Never resounded in his head before he could stop it. He kept his gaze on hers, slightly discomfited that it wasn’t harder to do so. Usually he avoided women’s probing looks. But not this one. Something solidified within him. He couldn’t not have Sam again after that passionate interlude. It was an impossible prospect.

‘No, Sam.’

He lifted her resisting hand and brought it to his mouth, pressed his lips to her palm. Her scent made him harder. His tongue flicked out and he tasted her skin, fancying he could distinguish her musky heat—or was that just her arousal he could smell?

Frustration at the prospect of the weekend ahead gripped him. He couldn’t make love to her in the house. Not while his son lay sleeping. The thought of Milo waking and witnessing how feral Rafaele felt around Sam was anathema after his own experience of being that small and witnessing his father’s breakdown.

Sam’s eyes grew wide. Glittering. Pupils dilating. They were distracting him. Making him regret that he couldn’t make love with her again for at least a few days. It would not happen in his office again. Never again. But they weren’t done—not by a long shot.

‘I’m not letting you go. Not until this is well and truly burnt out between us. I let you go too soon once before and I won’t make that mistake again.’

The lights went green and Rafaele let Sam’s hand go. He turned his attention to the road again and the car moved smoothly forward.

* * *

Sam clasped her tingling hand and turned her head, staring straight in front of her. Her whole body was still deeply sensitised after what had happened and yet she already felt ravenous for more. His words sank in: I let you go too soon. He’d said something earlier about trying to eclipse her memory... His admission made her heart race pathetically.

And why on earth had she spilled her guts about her one very sad attempt at another relationship? To score points? To try and convince Rafaele that he hadn’t dominated her life so totally?

But that was what she had attempted to do with the perfectly nice and normal Max. He’d caught her at a particularly vulnerable moment one day. Sam had seen a random newspaper report documenting the launch of a new Falcone car and there had been a picture of Rafaele with his arm around some gorgeous blonde model.

More than upset, and disturbed that she was still affected by him and the memories which would not abate after so much time, Sam had recklessly taken Max up on his offer of dinner. After a few weeks of pleasant but not earth-shattering dating Sam had felt a need to try and prove to herself that her memory of Rafaele was a mirage. That surely any other man could match him in bed and then she would not feel such a sense of loss, that she’d never experience such heights again.

It had been her suggestion to meet in a hotel one afternoon. As if they were both married and having an affair. But she’d thought it practical, considering their children were in their own homes, being minded. And Sam hadn’t felt at all comfortable with introducing Max to Milo...even though he’d been hinting that the time to do so had come.

The afternoon had been awkward and horrendous from the first moment. Completely underwhelming. Disgusted with herself, because she had known that she’d acted out of weakness, Sam had called it off there and then.

Something very dangerous and fragile fluttered in the vicinity of her heart, where she’d blocked off any emotions for Rafaele a long time ago. Sam had fancied for a second that he had appeared jealous when she’d mentioned Max...which was ridiculous. What right had he to be jealous? He’d given up that right when he’d been with a woman less than a week after letting her go.

Sam took a deep breath and tried to crush the nebulous and very dangerous feeling growing within her. She would be the biggest fool on this planet if she was to read anything into Rafaele’s possessive gesture and demeanour just now. As he’d said himself, he was only interested in whatever this was between them until it burnt out.

As Sam knew to her cost it was far more likely to burn out for him than for her, and she’d be left picking up the pieces again—except this time it would be so much worse because they were forever bound together now through Milo, and she had a very sick feeling that she was in danger of falling for him all over again. Or, more accurately, that she’d never stopped.

She went cold inside to think that perhaps part of her reluctance to tell him about Milo had been to avoid this very selfish scenario.

Rafaele smoothly drove the car into the space outside her front door and Sam blinked. She hadn’t even been aware of the journey. Just then a curtain moved and Sam saw Milo’s small face appear, wearing a huge grin. Her heart clenched hard. She could imagine him declaring excitedly, ‘Daddy’s home!’ as he’d been doing for the past few days according to an approving Bridie, who seemed to see nothing but good in Rafaele’s appearance in their lives.

It was Friday. They had a weekend to get through now, and Sam had no expectation that Rafaele would be sneaking in through her bedroom door at night to pick up where they’d left off. She knew from experience that he liked to keep her a secret, on the periphery of his world.

Sam took a deep breath and schooled her features, hoping that Rafaele would never guess the extent of her turbulence around him, or that even now she ached between her legs for one of his hands to press against her and alleviate her mounting frustration.

The fact that she was back in a place she’d clawed her way out of four years before was not a welcome revelation. At all.

CHAPTER SEVEN

ON SUNDAY SAM was folding laundry in the little utility room off the kitchen. Rafaele had taken Milo swimming on his own earlier, and since they’d come home they’d played with Milo’s cars in the sitting room. Now he was putting him to bed.

She’d felt like a cat on a hot tin roof all weekend. Lying in bed at night, aching with frustration. Locking her muscles to avoid walking down the hall to Rafaele’s room to beg him to make love to her. She refused to give herself away so spectacularly. And she’d been right. He’d treated her coolly all weekend, clearly reluctant to draw what had happened in his office into the domestic sphere.

Sam was only good enough within an environment which suited him. Nothing had changed. The bitterness that scored her shocked her with its intensity. Her emotions were see-sawing all over the place.

What hadn’t helped was the little surprise Rafaele had had lined up when they’d woken that morning. The sleek supercar Rafaele had been using since he’d appeared in their lives had been replaced, probably by some hardworking minion, with a far more sedate family car.

‘What’s this?’ Sam had asked faintly from the front door as Rafaele had deftly strapped Milo into his car seat to take him swimming.

He’d cast her a quick dry glance. ‘It’s a car, Sam. A more practical car, I think you’ll agree, for a child...’

Sam had felt as if she’d just tipped over the edge of a precipice. All she’d been able to think about after they’d left, with an ecstatic Milo in the back, was of how Rafaele—one of the most Alpha male men she’d ever met, if not the most—had segued from playboy with a fast car into man with a child and a safety-conscious car without turning a hair. And somehow that had made Sam more nervous than anything else. She was too scared to look at all the implications and what they might mean...

She heard a noise then and tensed as she sensed Rafaele’s presence behind her in the kitchen. She felt far too vulnerable to face him right now.

‘I want you and Milo to come to Milan with me.’

Sam went very still for a moment, and then proceeded to fold a sheet as if he hadn’t just dropped a bomb from a great height. Irritation with herself, with him, at the sexual frustration clawing at her insides, laced her voice. ‘What are you talking about, Rafaele? We can’t just go to Milan with you.’

Sounding impatient, Rafaele said, ‘Sam, I can’t talk to your back.’ His voice changed and grew rougher. ‘As delectable as it is. And your bottom in those jeans... Dio, do you know how hard it’s been not to touch you all weekend?’

That made Sam whirl around, her blood heating instantaneously and rushing to every erogenous zone she had. She dropped the sheet from nerveless hands.

Despite her own craving need all weekend she hissed, ‘Stop it. You can’t talk to me like that. Not here, with Milo in the house.’

Rafaele was leaning against the doorjamb, far too close. His eyes narrowed on her, taking in her jeans and shirt. Grimly he admitted, ‘I know. That’s precisely why I restrained myself.’

Something gave way inside Sam at hearing him admit that his concern for Milo had been uppermost. It made her feel exposed, vulnerable. Between her legs she throbbed almost painfully.

Sam picked up the sheet and thrust it at Rafaele’s chest. ‘Here’s some fresh linen for your bed.’

Rafaele caught the linen when it would have dropped to the ground again. His mouth had gone flat and tight.

‘Well? Did you hear what I said about Milan? I want you and Milo to come with me this week.’

The thought of going back to the scene of the crime made Sam’s emotions seesaw even more. She turned around again and blurted out, ‘It’s not practical, Rafaele. You can’t just announce—’

‘Dio, Sam.’

Sam let out a small squeak of surprise at Rafaele’s guttural voice and saw the linen she’d just shoved at him sail over her head to land back on the pile haphazardly. Then she felt big hands swing her round until she was looking up in his grim face.

‘Sam, I—’ He stopped. His eyes went to her mouth and then he just said, ‘Dio!’ again, before muttering something else in Italian and then pulling her into him.

His mouth was on hers, branding her, and she was up in flames in an instant, every point of her body straining to be closer to his hard form.

With a moan of helpless need and self-derision Sam submitted to the practised and expert ministrations of Rafaele’s wicked mouth and tongue. Some tiny morsel of self-preservation eventually impinged on the heat and gave Sam the strength to pull free. She looked up into Rafaele’s face and almost melted there and then at the sight of the feral look in his eyes. She put a hand to his chest, but that was worse when she felt his heart pounding.

‘We can’t. Not here...’

Rafaele smiled, but it was humourless. ‘Maybe we’ll have to book a hotel as you’re partial to that kind of thing.’

That gave Sam the impetus to move, and she scooted out of the small space and rounded on Rafaele, arms crossed over the betraying throb of her breasts. Her voice was low with anger. ‘You have no right to judge me when you were jumping into bed with someone new barely a week after I left Italy.’

Rafaele frowned. He looked volcanic. ‘What the hell are you talking about? I wasn’t with anyone.’

Sam emitted a curt laugh and tried to hide the flare of something pathetic within her. Hope. ‘Well, that’s not what it looked like—you were photographed all over the place with some Italian TV personality.’

Rafaele opened his mouth to speak but Sam put up a hand, stopping him.

Fiercely, she said, ‘I don’t care, Rafaele.’ Liar.

Irrational guilt over her own liaison made her even angrier.

‘Even if I had told you about Milo, it wasn’t as if we were going to become some happy family. You told me what you thought of marriage and how you never wanted it in your life.’

Sam stopped, breathing heavily, and saw how Rafaele’s face had become shuttered. Clearly he didn’t like to be reminded of that.

‘I seem to recall you agreeing fervently, Sam. Something about how seeing your father weep over your mother’s picture had made you dread ever investing so much in one person only to lose them and be lonely for the rest of your life?’