As Raffaele lowered his tousled dark head in the direction of the most intimate part of her, Vivi froze. ‘No, I don’t want that!’ she gasped, hot with embarrassment at the very thought of it.
Vivi closed her eyes, telling herself she could get through anything and that presumably he would know what he was doing. That was one advantage of an experienced lover, she told herself even as every nerve cell in her body rose up in anger at the very idea of Raffaele being with another woman. Seriously, what was that reaction about? she asked herself in bewilderment. She didn’t own him. Theirs was a temporary marriage of convenience and once their baby was born...
A sudden burst of intense pleasure blurred her active brain and a startled gasp was wrenched from her. In the compelling timeless moments that followed, crashing waves of sensation gripped her slender length, building and building to a peak of rapture that was spellbinding. Her hips rose and the heat in her pelvis mushroomed up to grip her entire body. A tiny shriek escaped her and she saw stars as the tension broke and she reached a breathtaking climax. Raffaele grinned down at her and crushed her mouth under his as the after quakes of pleasure still cocooned her. Her arms came up and locked to him, some need in her responding to that urge to hold him close and unnerving her.
‘You’re amazing, tesoro mio,’ Raffaele growled, sliding her thighs back, moving over her.
Nobody had ever called Vivi amazing before and her eyes literally prickled with tears, tears of gratification that shook her. But before she could even think about that, Raffaele was hauling her legs round his waist and sinking into her with delicious force. It felt exquisite, it felt like everything she had been waiting for as her body expanded to take him, and the glorious friction of his every movement took her by storm. Her heart raced and she could feel his movement and it felt like the most intense bond ever. Little ripples of pleasure gathered again at her core and she gasped for breath, her body rising and falling against his, exhilaration shooting through her in wave after wave as he plunged deeper into her, inflaming every sense. Vivi was sensually enthralled as the sweet tension began to gather and tighten in her pelvis again, her excitement climbing, all control wrested from her as he ravished her with pleasure. Another orgasm rocked her like a blazing star igniting inside her pelvis, paroxysms of liquid hot delight sending radiant tendrils though her entire being. She cried out, feeling him shudder over her, the locked-tight tension of his lean, strong body as he too reached the same peak and it broke over him.
Sliding free of her, Raffaele disconcerted Vivi by tugging her back into him and closing both arms round her. ‘As we’ve just demonstrated,’ he intoned, ‘giving this marriage a chance can work.’
And that fast, Vivi was shot from the blissful aftermath of relaxation to wanting to pound both her fists into Raffaele, because she could hear the smile in his voice and couldn’t bring herself to look up and actually see that smile. When had she decided to forget what Raffaele was really like? He always had an agenda and he had just used sex to entrap her in an arrangement she had already refused to consider.
She should’ve had more control, should’ve said no, should’ve looked beyond the moment, she told herself with self-loathing. Only she never managed to do any of those sensible things when Raffaele was involved, did she? He always caught her unprepared because he was calculating, clever, usually working towards a goal.
‘It was just sex,’ she muttered uncomfortably. ‘Meaningless.’
Raffaele gritted his teeth on an angry response. ‘It’s not meaningless because you’re my wife. This is a beginning,’ he informed her arrogantly.
‘But I didn’t agree to trying to stay married,’ Vivi almost whispered, because having that conversation while lying naked in bed with him felt very very uncomfortable. ‘I think that’s silly. We agreed to stay married until the baby’s born and surely that’s enough.’
Raffaele shifted position and lifted up to gaze down at her. ‘What have you got to lose, Vivi? Whatever happens, we’ll be together for the next few months,’ he pointed out levelly. ‘If it works, it works, if it doesn’t, it doesn’t.’
‘It’s never going to work between us,’ Vivi assured him.
Shimmering dark golden eyes held her evasive gaze fast. ‘But you could at least give us a chance...it’s not going to cost you anything to try.’
Vivi lost colour and closed her eyes tight against the intrusion of his. He made trying sound so reasonable, was making her feel bad for refusing. But then he didn’t know, couldn’t possibly understand that she was trying to protect herself from getting hurt. Just suppose it worked for her but not for him? Where would that leave her? Just suppose Raffaele was being a manipulative nasty guy? This was, after all, a man who had been willing to go to quite extraordinary lengths purely to marry her and make a profit even though he already appeared to be wealthy beyond avarice. Wasn’t it entirely possible that Raffaele felt that if he had to be stuck with a wife for the next six months and more, it might as well be a wife who also shared his bed? Wasn’t it possible that he was only trying to use her?
Or was that her paranoia talking? Raffaele had to have many more sophisticated options than her available if all he wanted was sex, she reasoned more calmly. Even though he was now ostensibly married, there would still be willing women on offer because he was rich and young and very, very good-looking. Also, incredible in bed, she added and felt her face burn. So why would he want to simply use her for that physical outlet? No, she finally decided, the odds were that Raffaele was serious when he suggested giving their marriage of convenience the chance to become something more real. And if Raffaele was making a genuine offer, cowardice—the fear of being hurt—wasn’t a good enough excuse for her to employ as a defence.
Vivi breathed in deep and opened her eyes, colliding with his intent dark golden stare. ‘Everything in this household is way over the top—too fancy for me,’ she admitted uncomfortably.
‘You can make changes,’ Raffaele said easily, startling her with that immediate response. ‘The palazzo hasn’t had a proper mistress since my mother died over twenty years ago and it’s running on the same lines now as it ran under my grandmother. Nothing has been altered.’
‘Arianna’s mother didn’t change anything?’ she asked in surprise.
‘She was always too busy chasing her next high or she was in rehab or she was shopping,’ Raffaele said drily.
‘You really didn’t like your stepmother.’
‘There was nothing to like. She had no interest in the man she married, his son or even her own daughter. She wanted the money, the lifestyle, nothing else. I remember her screaming at my father that Arianna was a dreadful accident.’
Vivi grimaced and said nothing, registering, however, that Raffaele’s rich, privileged childhood had not been as idyllic as she had naively assumed. If he had made false assumptions about her, she acknowledged ruefully, she had been equally guilty of making similar assumptions about him based on superficialities like wealth and background.
‘Why didn’t he divorce her if she was so awful?’
‘He believed marriage was for ever, but I also suspect that he couldn’t bring himself to face the fact that he’d made a hideous mistake remarrying so quickly after my mother’s death. He was lonely, still grieving, not in the right state of mind to make such a major decision. I don’t think he even appreciated that women as corrupt as Arianna’s mother existed in the world. He’d married young, he couldn’t have been very experienced with women.’
‘So, I could make changes here if I wanted