His Virgin Bride

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE drive back to The Villa Fiorenza took only a few minutes, but Emma suddenly found she didn’t want the evening to be over. Rafaele had relaxed over dessert and coffee, chatting to her about his work as a share trader, telling her some amusing anecdotes about some of the people he’d met and the places he’d visited. She knew she was being a fool for letting her guard down around him, but for some reason the cold breath of common sense couldn’t seem to penetrate the warm mantle of complacency that had settled around her in his company.

As he led the way to the front door of the grand old house Emma could smell the pungent clove-like scent of night stocks from the massive herbaceous border running along one side of the property. The purple and white pendulous blooms of sweetly scented wisteria hung in a fragrant arras from the trellis on one of the walls, and the melodious twinkle of the wind chimes hanging in the summer house carried over the garden on the slight breeze, setting an atmosphere that was as intoxicating as a mind-altering drug.

‘Why don’t we take a nightcap out to the arbour?’ Rafaele said once they were inside. ‘It is too nice a night to be indoors.’

‘That sounds lovely,’ Emma said, wondering if he had somehow read her mind. She had been thinking how nice it would be to sit out in the garden, breathing in the fragrant air and looking up at the peepholes of stars and planets in the dark blue blanket of the sky.

A few minutes later she followed him out to the summer house, minus her heels, the soft, slightly damp carpet of the springy lawn tickling the soles of her bare feet.

Rafaele handed her a cognac and patted the swing seat beside him. ‘You look like a nymph or a sprite,’ he said with a smile.

Emma returned his smile with a warm one of her own. ‘I love nights like this,’ she said, curling her toes as she sat on the seat next to him. ‘I love the sounds and smells of a garden late at night. It’s like another world out here.’

He placed his foot against the frame of the arched doorway to set the swing in motion. The gentle rocking motion brought their bodies closer together on the seat. Emma could feel the strong length of his thigh within a breath of her own, her shoulder brushing against his upper arm. Her skin tingled as he laid his left arm over the back of the seat, his fingers within touching distance of the nape of her neck. It would be so easy to turn and face him, to reach up and stroke her fingers over the lean planes and angles of his face, to explore the contours of his sensual mouth.

‘You have not touched your cognac,’ he said, looking at the glass she was cradling in her hands.

‘I haven’t got much of a head for alcohol,’ Emma confessed. ‘The wine we had at dinner has already addled my brain.’ And my common sense, she thought wryly as she placed her untouched glass on the nearest ledge.

The long silence was measured by the sound of crickets chirruping in the background, the soft plop of a frog landing in the lily pond sounding like a distant gunshot.

Rafaele turned to look at her. ‘Did you ever bring my father out here?’ he asked.

Emma couldn’t read his expression, his face was in shadow, but she sensed tension in the question. ‘Yes…a couple of times,’ she answered. ‘He found it peaceful and the fresh air was good for him after being confined indoors for so long.’

Another silence slipped past.

In spite of the darkness Emma could feel the slow burn of his gaze as it held hers. ‘What are you thinking about, Emma?’ he asked.

She self-consciously tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. ‘I was thinking how we’re probably going to be eaten alive by mosquitoes,’ she said with a rueful tilt of her mouth.

The white slash of his smile cut across his shadowed face. ‘Or what about gnats?’

She screwed up her mouth at him. ‘Do gnats bite?’

‘I am not sure,’ he said as he set his glass to one side before turning back to face her.

Emma sat very still as he lifted his hand to her face, his index finger tracing over the curve of her top lip. She couldn’t breathe; she couldn’t even speak, so mesmerising was his feather-light touch. She watched as in slow motion his head came down, his mouth so close she could feel the warmth of his breath skating over her lips. She sucked in a sharp little breath as his lips pressed against hers, once, twice, and then the third time with increasing pressure.

His mouth was like a brand, searing her lips with the imprint of his, stirring her senses into a frenzy of heady excitement. The first slow and yet determined stroke of his tongue against the seam of her lips sent her pulse skyrocketing, the rasp of his masculine jaw with its stubbly growth against the tender skin of her face making her feel utterly feminine in a way she had never felt before.

He explored every corner of her mouth in a leisurely fashion, the drugging movements of his mouth on hers making her forget all about her reasons for not getting involved with him. Desire began to pulse hot and strong in her veins with each thrust of his tongue against hers, the erotic promise in his kiss unmistakable.

His teeth nibbled at the fullness of her bottom lip in tiny, tantalising tug-and-release bites that made her legs turn to water. Her feminine core melted, she could feel the dew of desire anointing her intimately, her breasts swollen and aching for the attention of his hands and lips and tongue.

He pulled her to her feet, her legs hardly able to keep her upright as his mouth lifted off hers to blaze a fiery trail of kisses along the sensitive skin of her neck, each hot blast of his breath inciting her need of him to fever pitch. She was melting in his arms, discovering a passionate facet to her personality she would never have believed had existed until now. Where was her self-control? Where was her level-headedness and cool composure? They seemed to have been swept up in the conflagration of her senses under the sensual mastery of his touch.

His lower body ground against hers, leaving her in no doubt of his arousal. It was thick and hard against her, making her body tremble all over with a clawing need for fulfilment.

His mouth came back to hers with renewed fervour, the pressure of his kiss increasing as his erection burned with insistent force against her traitorous flesh. She could feel the hollow ache of her body, the tight walls of her womanhood preparing for the onslaught of his thickened presence. She felt as if she would die if he didn’t bring to completion what he had started. Her body was crying out for release from this sensual torment. There was no part of her that wasn’t sizzling from the heat of his touch. He was like a fire in her blood; somehow he had circumvented her firewall of common sense and turned her into a desperate wanton, a slave to the passion he had awakened.

Rafaele lifted his mouth off hers to look down at her with eyes dark with desire. ‘Let’s take this inside—or shall we get it over with right here on the floor?’

Emma flinched as her conscience gave her an unwelcome but timely nudge. No wonder he thought she was his for the asking. She had practically melted in his arms. Shame flooded her cheeks and to disguise it she stepped out of his hold, her expression full of cold disdain. ‘You might not have liked him much, but at least your father had much more class than you,’ she said with a cutting edge to her tone. ‘He would never have dreamed of insulting me the way you have done.’

His eyes became diamond hard. ‘What is wrong, Emma? Are you expecting a little more finesse? I thought you would be used to doing it rough since you have been servicing my father. He would not have been too fussy about where he had you. Or maybe he got sentimental in his old age and whispered sweet nothings in your ear.’

‘That’s a disgusting thing to say!’ Emma said, her face fire-engine red.

‘What about it, Emma?’ he said. ‘How about we get down and dirty while we are married? You are up for it, I can tell.’

She gave him a paint-stripping glare. ‘I wouldn’t dream of tainting myself with the likes of you.’

His smile was deliberately taunting. ‘I can afford you, Emma. If it is more money you want I have plenty of it. I have ten times the wealth of my father.’

‘I want nothing from you,’ she bit out. ‘I would rather die.’

‘You are such a transparent liar,’ he said. ‘If the way you kissed me is anything to go by I can almost guarantee it will not be long before we end up sharing much more than this villa.’

‘I did not kiss you,’ Emma said through tight lips. ‘You kissed me. You took me completely by surprise.’

His eyes began to glint. ‘Ditto. You totally rocked me. I had no idea how passionate you are behind that schoolmarmish façade you are so fond of displaying to the world. But it is all an act, isn’t it, Emma? That is how you got my father’s attention, wasn’t it? You reeled him in like a minnow on a line.’

Emma felt like slapping him, but in truth she was frustrated at herself for falling under his sensual spell so incautiously. How could she have been so stupid? He had wined and dined her, setting the scene for seduction, and she had fallen for it so readily. It made her feel so foolish but also very hurt.

Deeply hurt.

He had no feelings for her. He despised her. How could she have been lulled into thinking anything else? Tears suddenly blurred her vision and desperate to keep them hidden, she pushed past him with a hastily muttered goodnight.

‘Emma?’ He caught up to her in a couple of strides and tipped her face to one of the fingers of light coming from the villa. He frowned as he dabbed at a rolling tear with the blunt pad of his finger. ‘Tears?’ he asked, sounding surprised.

Emma shoved his hand away and glared at him. ‘You must think I’m so naïve,’ she bit out. ‘You think you can just crook your finger and have me dive head first into your bed, don’t you?’

‘It was just a kiss, Emma,’ he said in a dry tone.

‘It was not just a kiss!’ she railed at him.

‘What was it then?’

‘It was a blatant attempt to seduce me, that’s what it was,’ she said with a livid grey-blue glare.

‘If I was serious about seducing you, Emma, you would be flat on your back by now and letting the neighbours know in no uncertain terms how much you were enjoying it,’ he said with a smug little smile.

Emma opened and closed her mouth at his audacity. ‘I can’t believe you just said that!’

‘I said it because it is true,’ he said. ‘I am not going to play games with you, cara. I am prepared to bed you any time you like. But that is all I am offering, so you had better be clear on that. No strings, just good old-fashioned bed-wrecking sex. Take it or leave it.’

She threw him a caustic look. ‘I’ll leave it, thank you.’

‘Fine, but if you change your mind just let me know,’ he said. ‘I think we could be dynamite together.’

‘I won’t be changing my mind,’ Emma said, with perhaps not as much conviction as she would have liked. His evocative comments had unravelled her resolve to an alarming degree. Her body was on fire just thinking about the pleasure he was promising. She was in no doubt of his ability to be as good as his word. She could see the smouldering look in his dark eyes. She could still feel the imprint of his lips on hers. Her mouth was tingling even now, the tiny nerves beneath her skin leaping and jumping from the passionate pressure of his. What was it about this man that made her feel so out of control? Was it because she had decided he was off limits? Was some perverse part of her determined to have him in spite of her convictions?

He had made it more than clear what he wanted. He was attracted to her certainly, but only as a means to an end. Once he got what he wanted she would be discarded, just as he had discarded his numerous other mistresses.

It hurt Emma to realise how much she wanted it to be different. How had that happened in such a short space of time? She had hated him the first time she had met him and yet it was difficult to dredge up such intense feelings now. There was something about him that drew her in like a moth to a deadly flame. He intrigued her, he excited her and he made her feel things she had never felt before. She truly wondered if she would ever be the same now she had tasted his potent passion on her lips. Would every kiss she received from this point on be measured by the heat and fire of his? Would any future lover of hers fall short of his blistering benchmark? Would she always feel short-changed and frustrated as a result?

‘I’m going inside,’ she said, turning away again.

His hand stalled her. ‘Wait.’

Emma felt the steel bracelet of his fingers and suppressed a tiny shiver. She looked up at his face, her breath catching at the back of her throat at the intensity of his dark gaze as it meshed with hers. ‘I-I can’t do this, Rafaele…’ she said. ‘It’s not right.’

His thumb found her pulse, the drumbeat of her heart beating against his skin. ‘But you want to, don’t you, Emma?’ he asked softly.

Emma compressed her lips to stop them from trembling, her heart pumping so hard she could feel it against her sternum. It would be so easy to throw caution to one side and step into his arms. It would be so easy to press her still-swollen lips to the sculptured curve of his.

It would be all too easy to fall in love with him…

‘Go on, admit it,’ he said. ‘You want me just as much as I want you.’

She drew in a prickly breath. ‘I want a lot of things I can’t have, Rafaele,’ she said. ‘Wanting something doesn’t make it right.’

The hard look came back into his eyes. ‘Is it because of my father?’ he asked. ‘Do you still have feelings for him even though he is dead?’

Emma frowned at him. ‘Why must you persist with this?’ she asked. ‘Just let it go, for God’s sake.’

‘Damn it, Emma,’ he growled. ‘I hate the thought of you with him. It sickens me to my stomach. I cannot get it out of my mind. I keep seeing him pawing at you like some animal.’

She gave him an ironic look. ‘Isn’t that what you’ve been doing to me?’

His brows snapped together and his hand fell away from her wrist. ‘Is that what you think?’ he asked.

Emma wished she hadn’t said it. The anger was coming off him in waves. The air crackled with it, the tension building to an intolerable level. ‘No…no, of course not,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry…I shouldn’t have said that.’

‘No, you should not,’ he said through tight lips. ‘You were with me all the way, Emma. You were hot for it.’

She felt her face fire with colour at his blunt crudity and her own traitorous transparency. ‘You know, I was really starting to like you earlier this evening, but now I think I will stick to my first impression of you,’ she said with a blistering glare.

He gave her a mocking smile, but anger was still glittering in his eyes. ‘And what might that be?’

She pulled in a tight little breath. ‘You’re an unscrupulous, selfish bastard who uses people without conscience.’

‘And do you know what my impression of you is, Emma?’ he threw back.

‘That’s hardly necessary considering you’ve used every available opportunity to tell me,’ she said with bitterness sharpening her tone. ‘A tart, a whore, a slut, the list goes on and on.’

‘You are a clever little cat with an eye on the main chance,’ he said as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘You want it all, don’t you, Emma? That’s what you are counting on, isn’t it? That I will walk away before the year is up and by doing so hand you the lot.’

‘I don’t want you to walk away from what is rightly yours,’ she said. ‘I’m trying my best to do the right thing by you. I admit there are certain advantages for me, but I’m not interested in taking your inheritance from you.’

‘But you want the money.’

‘Yes, but not for the reasons you think,’ she said.

Rafaele looked into her grey-blue eyes and wondered if she was being straight with him. He wasn’t used to trusting people, but he found he wanted to trust her. She was getting under his skin in a way he had never believed possible.

He hadn’t thought a kiss could reveal so much. He had kissed a lot of women in his time, but no one had affected him quite as Emma did. The shy hesitancy of her responses had been totally enthralling. He could still taste her sweetness in his mouth. He could still feel the soft press of her slim body against his; it had left a branding outline on his flesh.

His desire for her was even now pulsing through his blood. He could feel it charging through his veins, making him hard at the thought of sinking into her velvet warmth. He had never wanted a woman more than this one. She awakened every primal desire in his body. Her sensual allure was totally bewitching, which was no doubt why his father had fallen under her spell.

But he wasn’t a fool like his father. He would have her on his terms and his terms only, even if it took him every bit of the next twelve months to achieve it.

‘What do you want the money for?’ he asked.

‘It’s for my sister, Simone.’

He frowned. ‘Your sister?’

She nodded. ‘She lost her husband when my niece was a baby. She has never dated anyone else until recently, but it turned out to be a total disaster. He left her with massive debts. He fraudulently used her name for a loan with a dodgy creditor who was making some nasty threats about repaying it.’ She gave a jagged little sigh and continued, ‘I sent the money I got when I married you to her.’

Rafaele kept his eyes on her. ‘It all seems rather convenient, does it not?’ he said. ‘It seems to me that my father’s death came at rather a good time for you and your sister.’

Her grey-blue eyes flared with shock or was it anger? He couldn’t quite make up his mind. ‘Are you suggesting I did something to hurry up your father’s death?’ she asked.

‘You stood to gain by it, though, did you not?’

Her face paled. ‘I told you, I had no idea what was in your father’s will. This is your home, Rafaele. I think deep down your father wanted you to have it.’

‘He went a strange way about it,’ Rafaele growled.

‘Yes, but sometimes the things we have to work the hardest for are the things we end up valuing the most,’ she said. ‘Perhaps your father was trying to tell you something.’

‘My father was always trying to tell me something,’ he said bitterly. ‘Like how I was the one who should have died that day, not Giovanni.’

Emma stared at him with wide, shocked eyes. ‘Surely he didn’t say that?’

He gave her a grim look. ‘He did not need to. It is true. I should have been the one to die.’

She put a hand to her chest. ‘Oh, Rafaele…’

‘I was the older brother, I was supposed to protect him, but instead I killed him.’

Emma felt her stomach give a sudden lurch. The atmosphere between them had changed. She hesitantly pressed him for more details. ‘W-what happened?’

His eyes looked soulless and bleak. ‘I was teaching Giovanni to play cricket… It was his turn to bat. I didn’t think I had thrown the ball too hard, I was always so careful, but somehow it hit him on the temple and he fell like a stone.’

Emma gasped. ‘No one could blame you for that. No one,’ she insisted hoarsely.

‘Perhaps some would say I was just a child myself and could not be held responsible,’ he said. ‘But I did not see it that way and neither did my father. I spent the next eight years apologising for my existence. Every time my father looked at me I saw the hatred and disappointment on his face.’

Emma felt her heart tighten at what he had gone through. She could see the pain etched on his face, the deep grooves at the side of his mouth and the almost permanent lines on his forehead making her realise he was not the shallow, selfish man she had first thought. He was a deep and complex man, a man who had been cruelly hurt by the vicissitudes of life, a man who had locked away his heart to avoid further pain. A man almost crushed with a guilt that should never have been laid upon his shoulders.

A man she was one step closer to falling in love with…

‘Thank you for telling me about it,’ she said softly. ‘I can only imagine how painful it must be to do so. It explains a lot…about everything…’

‘This place is full of my guilt, Emma,’ he said, waving his hand towards the giant shadow of the house to the left of him. ‘Even the floorboards creak with it. My father left Giovanni’s room the way it was to drive home the point.’

Emma bit her lip. ‘Maybe you’re reading too much into that,’ she said. ‘A lot of parents find it very hard to let go after the death of a child. Getting rid of their things is like saying they didn’t exist. It’s a way of holding on to them for as long as possible.’

‘For twenty-three bloody years?’ he asked.

She let out a little sigh. ‘I guess everyone has their own time frame.’

‘Stop defending him, Emma,’ he ground out. ‘He wanted me to suffer.’

‘You were ten years old, Rafaele. Just a little boy. You were not to blame. It was an accident. Can’t you see that?’

‘Do you know what it is like, Emma?’ he asked, his dark gaze almost black with pain. ‘Do you know what it’s like to be holding your dead brother’s body in your arms, begging God or whoever is out there to breathe life back into his lungs until your throat is red raw from screaming?’

Emma felt a sob catch at the back of her throat. ‘I-I’m so sorry…’

He raked a hand through his hair. ‘I would have given anything to save him. We had already been through so much with the loss of our mother. He looked to me for everything, but in the end I killed him.’

Emma couldn’t speak. The anguish on his face was too heart-wrenching. She wanted to reach out and hold him to her, to offer what comfort she could, to help him move on from the pain of the past.

‘After we came home from Giovanni’s funeral my father didn’t speak to me for months afterwards. He could barely be in the same room as me. I was packed off to boarding school and on the rare occasions when my father was here at the villa when I was on holiday he kept himself busy with his latest mistress, usually a young woman not much older than me. After I finished school I left the country. I had no reason to think he was anything but relieved when I finally packed my bags and left.’

Emma put a hand on his arm. ‘Rafaele…you need to forgive yourself,’ she said. ‘You can’t carry that guilt for ever. Your father was wrong to put that on you, but perhaps he was feeling guilty himself. Why wasn’t he out there playing cricket with his young sons? Have you ever thought of that?’

‘I have thought about it a lot,’ he said. ‘But even if he did feel marginally responsible he never let on. I do not even know where he was the day Giovanni died. He would never say. All I know is it seemed an eternity before he got back…’

Emma brushed her tears away with the back of her hand. ‘I’m so sorry…so very sorry…’