‘“Nice” is such a non-word,’ Rafael chided. He replaced his hand with his thigh which he moved rhythmically between her legs.
‘That’s not your ego talking, is it?’ she teased, half her attention focused on what was going on with her body, which was stirring into arousal even though they had barely stopped touching each other for the past few hours.
‘We males are a fragile breed,’ Rafael returned silkily.
‘Perhaps I should say that it was earth shattering.’
‘Now that is a definite improvement.’ He cupped one heavy breast and then bent so that he could lick her nipple, which stiffened in immediate response. When he began suckling on it she gave a stifled groan and began moving against him, and this time they made love with hunger and urgency, their hands and mouths uniting as they explored each other’s bodies. She did to him what he did to her, tasting him and enjoying his hardness, every inch of it.
She finally fell asleep and woke to a room flooded with sunlight and no sign of Rafael.
But there was a note. The note informed her that he would be in touch, and she carried it with her for the remainder of the day. Just having it on her made her heart sing. She literally felt light-headed with emotion and when, the following day, she picked up her telephone to hear his dark, velvety voice on the other end of the line, it was all she could do not to tell him just how very happy she was.
And events over the ensuing three months moved at the speed of light.
Rafael, she discovered, was not a man who did things in halves. He wanted her, and she was more than ready to accommodate him. Playing hard to get was not in her repertoire of feminine wiles, even when Anthea, who had viewed the proceedings with jaundiced eyes, told her that Rafael didn’t appear to be the sort of man who would feel comfortable wearing an apron and putting out the garbage.
‘He’ll never have to wear an apron!’ Cristina laughed. ‘Why would he?’
‘What a lucky man,’ Anthea said wryly. ‘Most women expect their guys to share the duties.’
‘I really enjoy cooking,’ Cristina told her, hurt by the implication that she was somehow lacking. True, she knew that she held very old-fashioned values, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, was it?
‘And have you done much of that?’
‘None,’ Cristina confessed. ‘I’ve offered, but—’
‘But he’s a man who prefers to dine out?’ In the time they had been working together they had become firm friends, and, although their ages were close enough, Anthea was streets ahead when it came to men. Normally Cristina would have paid great attention to what her friend said, but when it came to Rafael she would allow no criticism. Anthea, she thought, was jaded from the bad experiences she had had with men. She also was not privy to the man behind that forbidding mask: the man who treated her with respect and consideration, the man who made love to her, always making sure that her needs were met ahead of his, the man who, yes, guarded his thoughts, but still managed to laugh at the things she said, the man who’d told her that she was wonderfully uncomplicated, the man who had encouraged her football coaching, even occasionally taking time out to come and see her.
‘I’m just asking you to be careful.’ Anthea relented, seeing the anxious expression on her friend’s face. Cristina’s open, trusting nature was at once both a blessing and a curse, as far as Anthea was concerned. Yes, her heart was fashioned out of pure gold, but it was a heart that could easily be broken, and Anthea had visited too many dodgy characters in the past not to know that someone like Rafael Rocchi would not be in it for the long haul. Not with a girl like Cristina who, rich in her own right though she might be, was not the ornamental bauble he would eventually like to dangle on his arm.
She had even been on the Internet and found pages upon pages on him, including a wide variety of pictures which had almost universally featured him with just those ornamental baubles she had expected to find. She had kept all of that to herself, but in her head a very clear picture had been formed of the sort of man he was.
‘I mean,’ she suggested kindly, ‘Would it be the end of the world if you edged the conversation towards a future?’
Cristina, who had been mulling over that very question for the past couple of weeks, decided that yet again fate was at work, putting the thought firmly in the foreground.
She took more than usual care with her outfit that evening. Rafael had been away for the past three days, a flying visit to Boston. He was, he had told her over the telephone, really dying to see her. He was not averse to having long, sexy conversations with her on the phone, conversations that made her toes curls when she later recalled them. Cristina predicted that he would be in a very good mood when he came over.
They had planned on a meal out, as normal. After a flurry of trying different restaurants, they had now narrowed the field to a few of their favourites. Occasionally they skipped eating altogether, when the draw of the bedroom was simply too irresistible.
Today, however, Cristina had left work especially early to cook a meal. Fish, because she was still eternally watching her weight, and vegetables prepared exactly how she had been taught by their chef at home when she’d been growing up. Everything organic, of course, and everything bathed in a wonderful atmosphere thanks to some terrific smelly candles which she had found at a tiny little shop only round the corner.
As she took a last look at her reflection, liking the way the black dress cunningly hid what she still considered serious love-handles—never mind Rafael’s flattery to the contrary—she felt her stomach flip over with a sudden attack of nerves.
She had been blissfully happy. Rafael fulfilled every part of her. He was her sounding board and her soul mate, but Anthea’s blunt words of caution had managed to seep their way into her head, filling her with doubts. It seemed pretty early in the relationship for them to be discussing a future, but then again—and here she recalled yet more words of wisdom from one of the magazines she had devoured in the past—weren’t two people in love supposed to know early on whether they wanted to commit to one another or not? She was sure she had read somewhere that relationships could drift for years, going apparently nowhere, only for one of the partners to break it off and within weeks to be married to someone else.
When Cristina tried to think of life without Rafael, her mind went blank and she felt cold with fear.
That fear, she reasoned now, could only be assuaged if she took the bull by the horns and did as Anthea had suggested.
For a few seconds, waiting for Rafael, she was filled with self-righteous courage, but as soon as she heard him phone up to her, her stomach went back to its antics, and she was busily wondering whether the meal had been such a good idea by the time he knocked on her door.
All her thoughts were scattered to the four winds the minute she set eyes on him.
He had come directly from the airport, was still carrying his overnight bag, along with the black case. Outside the weather was beautifully mild for the middle of May, and he had cuffed the sleeves of his shirt to his elbows. He looked lean and bronzed and muscular, and she felt that familiar leap of excitement as she looked at him.
Then he bent and kissed her, taking his time as he always did, his mouth making promises he would fulfil later in bed.
Only after he had straightened did he glance behind her into the tiny hall.
‘What’s the smell?’
‘Smell?’ Anthea’s words of wisdom were fading fast as he stepped past her and glanced up the stairs in the direction of the kitchen. ‘Oh, that smell!’ She clapped her hand to her forehead in a casual gesture. ‘I thought I’d cook. I know we’d booked to go out to that Italian, but all this eating out that we do … I’m not sure I’m getting the right balance