gazing up at him with instinctive appreciation as he settled her down on the ornamental sofa below one of the windows.
A caveman who only emerged around her, Raffaele adjusted, refusing to think. Even so, he didn’t do casual sex. Nor did he succumb to sudden impulses or give way to temptation. But, nevertheless, here he was with Vivi in his arms and a fire alarm wouldn’t have persuaded him to put her down again anywhere but on a horizontal surface. Some stuff didn’t need to be agonised over, some things between men and women weren’t complicated, he reasoned fiercely. Sex was just sex and their physical connection was remarkable and could well lead to them reaching agreement on the wedding her grandfather was demanding. Do you really believe that? a voice asked in his hind brain. And he knew he didn’t, but he didn’t much care either. Aroused to the point of pain, he was way beyond utilising logic.
For a split second, when he came down beside her, Vivi froze because her natural defences were suddenly all loudly screeching, ‘What are you doing?’
Raffaele, however, was more perceptive than she would’ve given him credit for because instead of grabbing her again he tilted her face up, scanning her anxious eyes. ‘Cold feet?’ he prompted, tensing at that prospect.
‘I don’t get cold feet,’ Vivi proclaimed with pride, feeling foolish about her momentary indecision. Insane curiosity was pulling at her because she badly wanted to know what intimacy would be like with him. If he was using her, she would also be using him and it was a plus that she would never have to see him again.
‘Madre di Dio... I hope not,’ Raffaele countered with heartfelt honesty, bending down to taste her mouth again with hungry, driving urgency.
Straight away the conflagration of heat came back and blew her away. Thought hung suspended while an expert hand disposed of the barriers between them. In fact, Vivi didn’t notice because Vivi was in a world of her own, a world of fiercely seductive physical need and sensation. He pushed her top out of his path and palmed her breasts, addressing his mouth to her straining pink nipples, and her temperature rose to an insane height, her body writhing of its own volition while he teased the tender flesh between her thighs with a skill that she was defenceless against. She gasped, moaned, clawed him down to her with an impatient hand, pale slender fingers locking into the crisp luxuriance of his short black hair.
Excitement gripped her in a heady wave as her hips rose in an arc of colossal craving, as if there were some distant point she would die if she didn’t reach. He crushed her parted lips, delved deep with his tongue, a shudder of violent arousal raking through his lean, powerful frame while she yanked at his tie, almost strangling him before he ripped it off for her. She needed to touch his skin, she needed to touch him so badly that not being able to actually hurt. While he kissed her, she struggled with his shirt until he tore it free, sending several buttons bouncing, unnoticed by either of them.
‘You’re burning me up,’ he groaned.
Vivi spread her hands wide on his lean bronzed chest, overpowered by the heat of his skin and his sheer muscular development as he leant over her obligingly. ‘You are hot,’ she whispered tongue-in-cheek.
And he got it, a sudden slashing grin banishing the often forbidding aspect of his lean, strong face, the febrile line of colour over his exotic cheekbones darkening. His thumb stroked across the most sensitive spot on her whole body and she jerked, suddenly mindless again, and his mouth engulfed hers. She wanted more, more, simply more. Nothing more elaborate distinguished her febrile thoughts. His sheer passion had shocked her and then delighted her but the excitement he evoked overwhelmed her.
Raffaele didn’t have a condom. She would be on the pill, he told himself, reluctant to take a break for a trip upstairs in case the impulsive beauty in his arms changed her mind—and it would kill him if she changed her mind! Of course, she would be on the pill or the implant or one of the other contraceptive options available to women, he assumed, tilting her slender thighs back with impatient hands and plunging into her with all the strength and energy of a man turned on to the point of madness.
A startling yelp escaped Vivi as a jolt of pain greeted that intimate invasion and she squeezed her eyes tightly closed, mortified by her outburst.
Raffaele had frozen in the act of penetration. ‘Did I hurt you?’
‘No, of course you didn’t,’ she declared, wanting to conceal her lack of experience, which struck her as deeply uncool at her age.
‘Then...er...why—?’ he began.
‘Got carried away by enthusiasm,’ Vivi lied but she could feel her face burning like hellfire at the fib. ‘That hurt,’ she mouthed in total silence as she buried her face in his neck, drinking in the achingly sexy scent of him with all the enthusiasm she had claimed because he smelled so incredibly good, all hot and musky with an undertone of designer cologne that was yummy.
‘Grazie a Dio... Thank God,’ Raffaele groaned in relief, shifting his lean hips in a motion that stirred up nerve cells that had run screaming from his initial thrust, sending instead an intriguing cascade of simmering sensation travelling through her lower body.
Her tension evaporated, liquid heat sizzling through her veins, lighting her up from inside out. He slid deeper into her and began to move and the hot, sweet pleasure began to gather in her pelvis, building and building like a fire being teased into flames. A kind of wonder gripped her as the frantic throes of arousal rose again and he released a guttural groan of satisfaction, muttering something indistinct in Italian, leaning down to crush her mouth under his again. For an instant she had thought in disappointment that he was done, that that was that, that all the fuss she had heard about was just stories to temp the inexperienced and then his pace picked up and the whole mood changed.
Raffaele rose over her, tipping her thighs back over his shoulders to pound into her in a raw demonstration of uncontrolled hunger. Her head fell back, the heat in her lower body spreading and mushrooming up inside her fast in a shocking surge that couldn’t be contained. Her heart started to race, breathlessness tightening her throat as the excitement climbed and her body clenched around him with an unbearable tightness. His urgency infiltrated every inch of her, dominating and controlling her in a way she had never dreamt, and then the heat exploded inside her and sent her flying. Contractions of pleasure convulsed her in an intoxicating wave that made her cry out in surprise and fall back, sated, in delirious delight, to revel in the aftershocks.
‘That was incredible,’ Raffaele said for her, brushing her tumbled copper curls back from her damp brow, his dark deep voice raw and breathless as he lifted back from her to release her from his crushing weight.
An odd little silence fell and Vivi lifted eyelids that felt heavy because she was in a drowsy daze after that insane surge of sensual pleasure. Raffaele was frowning down at her. ‘There’s blood on you...’
A deep flush of mortification swept up over Vivi’s expressive face, her consternation unhidden. She sat up in haste to hug her knees, her mane of curls tumbling round her like a cloak. ‘Is there?’ she tried to say coolly but her voice emerged as hesitant and awkward as she felt. ‘I was a virgin. I wasn’t expecting actual bl—’
‘A...virgin?’ Raffaele exclaimed incredulously, ready to argue with her statement and then freezing to logically consider the facts, not to mention her grandfather’s warning. A warning to which he had not paid the slightest heed, he acknowledged sickly, because he had discounted the older man’s view of his grandchild where it conflicted with his own convictions. To have his convictions suddenly proved utterly wrong when he least expected it wasn’t an experience that Raffaele had had very often in life and it absolutely knocked him sideways.
‘Yes, no big deal,’ Vivi dismissed hurriedly, scrambling off the sofa to gather up her clothing and pull it on at speed, while simultaneously attempting to shrug a careless shoulder.
‘It was a very big deal if you were still a virgin at your age,’ Raffaele contradicted without hesitation.
‘I was just never that into...er...sex,’ Vivi muttered in a quelling tone. ‘And don’t ask me why I’m