He couldn’t stop the words spilling out. That initial shock was infusing him all over again.
‘My son, Sam, my flesh and blood. He’s a Falcone. Dio. How could you have played God like that? What gave you the right to believe you had the answer? That you alone could decide to just cut me out of his life?’
Sam seemed to tense even more, her chin going higher. Those spots of red deepened, highlighting her delicate bone structure. ‘Do I need to remind you again that you practically tripped over your feet in your hurry to get out of the clinic that day? You could barely disguise your relief when you thought there was nothing to worry about. You just assumed the worst. It didn’t even occur to you to question whether or not I’d actually had a miscarriage, because you didn’t want a baby.’
Rafaele coloured, his conscience pricked by the reminder of how eager he’d been to get away from those huge bruised eyes, the raw emotion. The shock. The awareness that Sam had strayed too far under his skin.
Tightly he admitted, ‘I never had any intention of having children. But you gave me no reason to doubt the inevitable conclusion of what we’d both believed to be a miscarriage.’
Sam choked out, ‘You were quite happy to wash your hands of me, so don’t blame me now if I felt the best course was to leave you out of my decision-making process.’
Rafaele looked at Sam across the few feet that separated them and all he could see was her eyes. Huge, and as grey as the rolling English clouds. She was sucking him in again but he wouldn’t let her. She’d wilfully misdirected him into believing she’d miscarried when all the while she’d held the knowledge of their baby, living, in her belly.
He shook his head. ‘That’s just not good enough.’
Sam’s voice took on a defensive edge. ‘I was hardly encouraged to get in touch and tell you the truth when I saw you with another woman only a week after that day.’
She was breathing heavily under her shirt and he could see her breasts rise and fall. A flash of heat went straight to his groin and Rafaele crushed it ruthlessly. He focused on her face and tried to forget that he actually hadn’t slept with another woman for about a year after Sam had left, despite appearances and despite his best efforts. Every time he’d come close something inside him had shut down. And since then...? His experiences with women had been anything but satisfactory. To be reminded of this now was galling.
He narrowed his eyes. ‘Don’t you dare try to put this on me now, just to deflect your own guilt.’
But the guilt that had struck Rafaele wouldn’t be banished, much as he wanted it to be. Damn her! He wouldn’t let her do this to him now. She’d borne his child. His son. And said nothing.
Sam’s voice was bitter. ‘God forbid that I would forget what our relationship was about. Sex. That was pretty much it, wasn’t it? Forget conversation, or anything more intimate than being naked in bed. It wasn’t as if you didn’t make that abundantly clear, Rafaele, telling me over and over again not to fall for you because you weren’t about that.’
‘But you did anyway, didn’t you?’ Rafaele couldn’t keep the accusing note out of his voice and he saw Sam blanch.
‘I thought I loved you.’ Her mouth twisted. ‘After all, you were my first lover, and isn’t it normal for a virgin to develop an attachment to her first? Isn’t that one of the helpful warnings you gave me?’
Rafaele saw nothing right then but a memory of Sam’s naked and flushed body as she’d lain on his bed before him, her breasts high and round, her narrow waist, long legs. Skin so pure and white it had reminded him of alabaster—except she’d been living, breathing, so passionate. And she’d been innocent. He’d never forget how it had felt to sink into that slick, tight heat for the first time. It was his most erotic memory. Her gasp of shock turning to pleasure.
She continued, ‘But don’t worry. I soon got over it and realised how shallow those feelings were. Once I was faced with the reality of pregnancy and a baby.’
‘A reality,’ Rafaele gritted out, angry at that memory and at how easily it had slipped past his guard, ‘that you decided to face alone.’
Reacting against her ability to scramble his thought-processes, Rafaele changed tack.
‘Was it a punishment, Sam? Hmm?’ He answered himself. ‘Punishment for my being finished with you? For not wanting more? For letting you go? For not wanting to have a baby because that’s not what our relationship was about?’
Rafaele couldn’t stop the demon inside him.
‘I think the problem is that you fell for me and you were angry because I didn’t fall for you, so you decided to punish me. It’s so obvious...’
SAM CLOSED the distance between them, her hand lifted and she hit Rafaele across the face before she even registered the impulse to do so. She realised in the sickeningly taut silence afterwards that she’d reacted because he’d spoken her worst fears out loud. Here in this awful, stark, echoey room.
With a guttural curse, and his cheek flaring red where Sam had hit him, Rafaele hauled her into his arms and his mouth was on hers. He was kissing her angrily, roughly.
It took a second for Sam to get over the shock, but what happened next wasn’t the reaction she would have chosen if she’d had half a brain cell still working. Her reaction came from her treacherous body and overrode her brain completely.
She started kissing him back, matching his anger with her own. For exposing her. For saying those words out loud. For making her feel even more ashamed and confused. For being here. For making her want him. For making her remember. For kissing her just to dominate her and prove how much she still wanted him.
Her hands were clutching Rafaele’s jacket. She tasted blood and yet it wasn’t pain that registered. It was passion, and it sent her senses spiralling out of all control. Rafaele’s hands were bruisingly hard on her arms and tears pricked behind Sam’s eyelids at the tumult of desire mixed with frustration.
She opened her eyes to see swirling green oceans. Rafaele pulled away jerkily and Sam could hear nothing but the thunder of her own heartbeat and her ragged breathing. She was still clutching his jacket and she let go, her hands shaking.
‘You’re bleeding...’
The fact that Rafaele’s voice was rough was no comfort. He was just angry, not overcome with passion.
Sam reached up and touched her lip and winced when it stung slightly. Her mouth felt swollen. She knew she had to get out of there before he saw something. Before he saw that very close behind her anger in that exchange had been an awful yearning for something else.
‘I have to go. They’ll be wondering where we are.’ Her insides were heaving, roiling. She was terrified she might be sick again, and this time all over Rafaele’s immaculate shoes. She couldn’t look at him.
‘Sam—’
‘No.’ She cut him off and looked at him. ‘Not here.’
His jaw tightened. ‘Fine. I’ll send a car for you this evening. We’ll talk at my place.’
Sam was too much in shock to argue. Too much had happened—too much physicality. Too much of a reminder that he aroused more passion in her just by looking at him than she’d ever felt in her life with anyone else. She simply didn’t have it in her right then to say anything other than a very reluctant, ‘Fine.’ She needed to get away from this man before he exposed her completely.
* * *
That evening,