I didn’t even know I had it.” When he’d have slammed her body into his to cradle his arousal, Pia pushed back at his shoulders. “No, let me touch you as I please.”
“You’re playing a dangerous game, cara mia. It’s been two weeks and I know if I touch you, you’ll be wet for me.”
Pia blushed, the dampness between her thighs confirming his arrogant confidence. “Yes, well, we already agreed that you can melt me like an ice cream on a summer day with one look, si?” She ran her hands up his back and sank them under his collar.
She petted him as if he were her very own wild animal. He growled when she rubbed herself against him. On purpose. Heat blazed in his eyes.
She was playing a dangerous game, and yet she’d never felt more alive. “Stay still for me, won’t you, Raphael?”
His explicit Italian—about what he’d like to do to her instead—sent heat pooling in her lower belly.
Sinking her fingers into his hair, Pia kissed the corner of his mouth. The scratch of his stubble against her lips was heavenly as she peppered that arrogant jaw with soft kisses. “I don’t even know what I like and don’t like yet.”
“Let me participate and I’ll give you the different options, bella. You love experiments, don’t you?”
Laughter bubbled up her throat even as she nibbled on his lips as if he were her favorite treat. He tasted of wine and masculinity and seduction and it went straight to her head. And her buckling knees.
When she traced that lower lip of his that drove her wild, he sucked the tip into his mouth and released it with a pop. A whimper escaped her mouth, her nipples suddenly sensitive against her bra. On the next breath, his fingers crawled into her hair, held her tight, and he took over the kiss. Hard and demanding, he plunged his tongue into her mouth. Rising to her toes, angling her mouth, Pia gave back as good as she got.
Their teeth banged. Their lips nipped and bit.
His thigh lodged between hers, hard muscle rubbing against the apex of her sex. Just where she desperately needed it. “Dannazione, Pia.” His forehead leaned against hers, his warm breath feathering over her face. “Come to bed, cara mia. I will happily show you how much power you have over me. We could spend all day in bed and by nighttime, you would know whether you like me above you, or under you or behind you.
I will show you how to use that sweet, deceiving mouth to drive me to the edge. I will show you what I can do to you here—” he emphasized by rubbing at the spot that ached for his attention “—that will...”
A rush of wetness filling her sex, Pia drew a sharp breath. And stumbled away from Raphael. The man could seduce her just with words.
And like her, he was breathing hard. His pupils dilated, his nostrils flaring, as if he had just engaged in a physical fight. The front of his trousers was tented and when her gaze lingered there, his growl was feral.
Raphael undone—or at least close to—was the most glorious sight she’d ever seen.
Swallowing away the longing burning through every inch of her, she slowly wiped the moisture from her lips with the back of her hand. “I know you want to spend the day with Alyssa and I have to study. But I’ve been dying to see one of the cars you’ve restored,” she added. Proving to herself that she could affect him just as much as he did her was a small victory. But having won the battle, she wasn’t really interested in the war.
A vein pulsing in his jaw, he stared at her for so long that Pia wondered if she had pushed him too far. “Friday evening.”
When he passed by her without touching her again, her heart sank.
“And Pia?”
“Si, Raphael?”
“You will be my wife, and I know how to exact retribution.”
TORTURE BEGAN TO take on a new personal meaning for Raphael over the next month, thanks to his unofficial fiancée’s unwillingness to let him give them both what they desperately needed.
If he had thought Pia biddable, she had proved he was utterly wrong. Dio mio, under the naive, smiling, ready-to-please demeanor was a core of steely stubbornness.
When she’d said she wanted to spend time with him, she’d meant it. And not in his ex-wife or mama and sisters kind of way, where what they wanted was for him to show them off in their designer gowns, the latest of Milan’s haute couture fashion, at parties, and theaters. Where they could show off their connection with Raphael Mastrantino, CEO of Vito Automobiles, a man with powerful friends.
With them, it was always about the glitter he could add to their standing in society. It was the veneer of power that spread to them when they could claim a connection to him. It was what Raphael could provide and nothing else.
But with Pia, Dio, when she’d said she wanted to spend time with him, she’d meant she wanted time with him. Learning about him. The two of them hanging out with each other.
It had become Raphael’s favorite phase in all of the English language.
She had insisted that he show her the vintage car he was restoring currently. So Raphael had taken her to his house in Como one afternoon. What he’d expected was for her to ooh and aah over it, and then expect him to show her the sights of Como, the only village along the lake she hadn’t seen.
Instead, driven by Emilio, Pia had arrived in the cutest overalls he had ever seen. Uncaring of the fact that her hands could get greasy or that her hair would be messed up—though Pia’s hair was always messy and he loved it like that—she had crawled under the hood with him, asking him to explain what it was that he was currently doing.
Talking about the chassis and suspension while the scent of her curled in his muscles, her hot breath stroked his cheeks—he had never had a more diverting evening.
They had ended it with a glass of Chianti and mac ‘n’ cheese that Pia had cooked in his kitchen, having informed him that that was the extent of her culinary abilities.
Having never spoken to another soul at such length about his passion, Raphael had spent most of their dinner in quiet rumination and with a burning need to peel the overalls off her lithe body. To kiss and lick every inch of her silky curves.
Sharing even silence with Pia was wonderful.
They had ended the night, because she had a test early in the morning, with a soft kiss that had left him with blue balls. But also with a thread of quiet, incandescent joy he’d never known before.
Another time, she had invited him to sit through her class, and then made him model for her first face carved from wood, because as she had put it, he had classically handsome features with a bold nose and an arrogant chin that would lend itself to that particular type of wood.
He had sat still for almost an hour while the minx had worked with her hands, only to find her dissolving into giggles when he’d asked her to show him what she had so far.
“Mi dispiace, Raphael. I’m so bad at this, I’ve made you into a monster,” she had sputtered amidst her laughter. “I’ll ask Antonio to sit for me next time.” Of course he had said no, to which she had responded by crawling to him on her knees, tracing those blunt-nailed, callused fingers over his nose, temple and then over his lips. She had then taken his mouth in such an erotic kiss, swirling tongue and biting teeth and all, that Raphael had been harder than the block of wood, and said, “I can’t bear to ruin this gorgeous face, Raphael.”
Since he was busy with work and Allegra’s custody suit, and she was busy studying and carving and meeting the new friends she had made, all they could manage one week was two evenings spent together holed up in Gio’s study, which he had been far too happy to give up.
While Raphael had spread out his paperwork