As he waited for her at the top of the stairs he reached into his pocket and produced a small oblong package, which he handed to her, telling her, when she looked uncertainly at him, "Scent. Later on you can choose your own, but for now this will have to do. No Italian woman considers herself properly dressed without her favourite perfume, and I"m aware that you don"t wear any."
Aware too, Raphael acknowledged inwardly, that the scent she always carried with her that was simply her own was becoming dangerously embedded in his senses. He had been glad of the shadows on the landing when she had come out of her room; he might have seen the clothes the saleswoman had chosen hanging on their rail, but the effect of the blending of different fabrics and textures of the outfit she was now wearing, and the way they both concealed and yet at the same time subtly hinted at the curves of her body, was one of sensual promise. And he would not be the only man to think that, Raphael knew. The feeling that speared through him was viciously sharp. Jealousy? He did not want other men to look at her with desire? He had no right to feel like that, Raphael told himself grimly.
Scent! She had not thought of buying any herself. Charley"s fingers trembled as she removed the wrapping, just as they would have done if this had been a lover"s gift-which of course it was not.
The liquid in the small gla.s.s bottle was the colour of warm amber. Very carefully Charley removed the top, breathed in the scent, and immediately fell in love. It transported her to summer gardens filled with fat, blooming heavy-petalled roses, their sweetness spiced with something alluringly exotic that made her think of Eastern harems and velvet nights.
She"d expected Raphael to choose her something modern and practical, but this surely was a scent designed for a woman who luxuriated in her sensuality-a scent she would wear in bed at night to clothe her naked body in temptation for her lover.
"If you don"t like it-" Raphael began.
"I do," Charley a.s.sured him, determinedly dabbing it on her throat and wrists in proof of her claim. "It"s heavenly-but there"s no label on it."
"It"s from a parfumier who blends his own scents." His manner was off-hand and dismissive, making Charley feel reluctant to pursue the subject, although she loved the scent so much she desperately wanted to know where it had come from. She already knew that when the bottle was empty she would want to replace it.
Charley had only just dabbed the scent on her wrists and throat, but already Raphael could smell its sensual mix of promise and pa.s.sion and Charley herself. He had had to smell several different scents before he had found the one he had eventually chosen. Even though he had been aware of its sensuality, he hadn"t, he admitted to himself now, been prepared for the effect it would have when mixed with the warmth of Charley"s skin. His mother had always worn a rosebased scent, less sensual and more floral. He pushed away that memory. He didn"t know why Charley"s presence was making him think so often of his mother, and nor did he want to know.
CHAPTER NINE.
IT MIGHT be over now, but Charley had had the most wonderful evening ever. The conversation had been every bit as intoxicating for her as the wine that had filled her gla.s.s. To be amongst people who were so knowledgeable about their craft, so filled with pa.s.sion for all that it represented, and who treated her as their equal, had made her feel so complete and comfortable with herself that every minute of the evening had been a joy. The whole evening had been the most exhilarating and wonderful experience. Antonio and Niccolo were both in their early fifties, and their wives, Charley guessed, in their late forties, mothers of grown-up families. They had treated Charley with kindness, complimenting her on her appearance and asking her about her own family circ.u.mstances, issuing invitations for her to join their own family get-togethers whilst she was working in Italy, so that she would not feel alone. And Niccolo had a.s.sured Raphael that he was interested in the project, and would be willing to have his teachers and students involved in it. A coup in which Charley hoped she had played her part.
Now, though, they were back at the apartment, and Raphael hadn"t said a word to her-his silence on the drive back a continuation of his behaviour towards her during the evening. Because he had been watching her? a.s.sessing her? Testing her to see if she was up to the job of managing his project?
With her new-found confidence, instead of giving in to her anxiety she met it head-on.
"Something seems to be wrong. If it"s because of the garden and my job, and you"ve changed your mind..."
She was not allowed to get any further. Raphael swung round and told her harshly, "It isn"t because of the garden, or your job. It"s because of this."
If he"d been fighting his desire for her only this evening he would have been able to control it. But he hadn"t. He"d been fighting it for day after aching day, night after sleepless night, minute by minute, second by second, until the sheer weight of what he was trying to hold back was such that all it had taken was that one small extra burden of her question to tear down the walls he had built against her effect on him. In the few seconds of time it took him to reach for her a whole world of sensual images and longings flashed through him-an unstoppable avalanche of self-destruction he was powerless to stop.
Charley could hardly believe it. She was where she had so longed to be: in Raphael"s arms, in his hold, his mouth hard on hers, her senses bursting into life. For a brief handful of seconds she was sharply aware of the soft darkness of the hallway, the smell of Raphael"s cool cologne-scented skin contrasting with the heat they were generating, the rustle of their clothing, the soft sounds of pleasure she herself was making under Raphael"s kiss and the sharp click of her heels touching the floor, because she"d raised herself up on tiptoe in order to get as close to him as she possibly could. And then she was aware of nothing other than the feel of Raphael"s mouth on her own, the thrust of his tongue between her lips, and the surge of delight that invaded her body speared through her with a fierce urge to respond to him, to match him touch for touch and breath for breath.
This surely more than anything else was what she had been born for-what her senses had been designed for, what her inhibitions wanted to yield to. Curling her tongue against Raphael"s in sensual pleasure, she pressed closer to him, feeling her b.r.e.a.s.t.s flatten against the hard muscular wall of his chest, knowing that her legs trembled as she leaned into him, knowing that inside herself she was softening and aching and wanting.
Her body"s goal was Raphael"s possession of it, and hedonistically, recklessly, perhaps even dangerously, she was welcoming every single sensation and thought that took her closer to that goal.
Lost in the heavy, pulsing need to give everything that she was, everything that she had, to the urgency driving through her, the sudden raw sound of Raphael"s "No!" as the harsh denial was ripped from his throat shocked her into frantic disbelief.
When Raphael released her and stepped back she swayed towards him, barely able to stand, her body s.h.i.+vering with rejection and the piercing, throbbing ache of denial, totally unable to comprehend why, having aroused her desire for him, he had now plunged her into such an aching agony.
"No? You can"t say that. Not now-not after you"ve shown me that you want me and...and made me want you."
She was so untutored in guile, so honest in what she thought and felt. Her words ripped into him, tearing apart the barrier he had tried to put between them.
"Want you?" Raphael laughed bitterly.
Until tonight, until he had seen her standing on the landing earlier, he had thought he had won, that he had subdued his desire for her-but all he had done was damp it down, and over the course of the evening, as he had watched her, it had leapt into fresh life like a wild fire, devouring everything that stood in its way.
"No, I do not want you," he told her with brutal honesty. "What I feel for you is no mere wanting. I wish to G.o.d that it were. I hunger for you. I ache for you and I crave you. But, since I have a rule of never mixing my business and my personal lives, those needs shall have to go unsatisfied. We will return to the palazzo in the morning, and then I shall leave for Rome."
He was walking away from her, heading for the stairs. Charley licked her suddenly dry lips, and then, before she could change her mind, she ran after him, pus.h.i.+ng past him on the stairs. She stood in front of him, spreading her arms so that he couldn"t get past.
"Sometimes rules have to be broken," she told him breathlessly. "Sometimes things happen that we shouldn"t try to control-things we are meant to experience , even if their pleasure is short lived." She looked up at him. "I want you to make love to me, Raphael. I want to know your hunger and your ache and your desire, because I feel them too."
In the half-light of the hallway the shadows lent his face a haunted harshness, giving him the look of a man who belonged to another age, tormented and driven beyond his own limits.
"There can be no future for you with me," he told her harshly.
"I am not asking you for a future."
"Then what are you asking me for?"
"Tonight," Charley told him softly. "Tonight and nothing between us-nothing to stop us sharing the honesty of what we feel. When you said what you did earlier today, about my clothes and about my...my elegance, you started a process that has set me free to be myself. I want you to complete that process, Raphael."
Charley could hear the increased pressure of his breathing even though he hadn"t moved.
Holding his dark, unreadable gaze, she continued. "I want you to take me and hold me. I want you to complete what you have begun, Raphael."
His breathing had become a harsh sound of constraint, his chest openly rising and falling with the pressure he was exerting over himself.
Charley let her own voice drop and soften to a husky, sensual whisper.
"I want us to break your rules, Raphael. I want us to have what we can have together tonight." She took a step towards him and waited, her heart pounding. Never in a thousand lifetimes had she imagined herself behaving like this with such s.e.xual boldness, but now that she knew Raphael shared her desire she was prepared, whatever she had to risk, her whole body thrilling at the thought of what they could share.
When he reached out and circled her wrists with his hands, his fingers long and strong as steel when they snapped around her flesh, Charley"s antic.i.p.ation turned to dread. He was going to deny her-move her out of his way and step past her. His grip forced her arms down to her sides and held them pinioned there.
"One night?" he said softly. "Do you really think that one night will be enough to sate the hunger you have aroused in me?" And then he was kissing her, fiercely and demandingly, and her own desire was leaping up inside her to meet the challenge of his.
CHAPTER TEN.
THEY had reached the top of the stairs and they were still kissing, but Charley had no awareness of them having moved, no awareness of anything other than the heat of Raphael"s mouth on her own and the need inside her that he was feeding.
Now, though, he had stopped kissing her. His hold of her wrists was slackening, his thumbs finding the excited race of her pulse and tormenting it with small circling caresses.
"There can be no future in this," he warned her, as he had done before, emphasising the words as he spoke them.
"I don"t want a future," Charley told him, and believed it. "I just want tonight and you."
Raphael could feel the wild fire of unleashed pa.s.sion surging through his body. It was too much. He couldn"t deny her-or himself. The urge to hold her body against his own, skin to skin, roared through him, but somehow he held on to a final strand of self-control-for her sake as much as his own.
"Very well, but there is one condition I must make-one a.s.surance I shall need from you."
Charley waited. What was he going to say? That she must not fall in love with him? She knew that without him needing to tell her.
Raphael expelled the air from his lungs and breathed in slowly.
"There must be no risk of there being any consequences to our actions in the form of a child."
Why did his words strike against her heart like a sledgehammer blow? She certainly hadn"t been thinking of conception or children when she had so boldly begged him to break his rule.
"Naturally I shall take precautions myself to ensure..."
"There"s no need." Charley stopped him. "I"m on the pill." It was the truth, even if the reason she was taking it was because the anxiety of the last year had meant that she needed to take it to correct her monthly cycle.
"Very well, but I must warn you that should you conceive the pregnancy will have to be terminated."
Shock jolted through her, icy cold, in instinctive rejection of what he was demanding.
But it wasn"t his child she wanted, she reminded herself, it was Raphael himself. And she did want him-desperately.
He should stop this right now, Raphael urged himself. It wasn"t too late. He could turn away-refuse what she was offering him. Refuse? When his body ached like h.e.l.l for her, and his senses were already antic.i.p.ating every single pleasure they would give one another? He was beyond stopping himself, beyond listening to any inner warning voices, beyond even questioning just why this woman of all women should have the power to overturn all the boundaries he had set in place.
Charley moved uncertainly, a sharp point of light from the heavy chandelier that hung from the ceiling throwing the soft curves of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s into relief. Her nipples were pus.h.i.+ng against the fabric of her clothes, tight and erect, their message of s.e.xual arousal making Raphael"s own flesh harden. He released Charley"s wrist and lifted his hand to her body, rubbing the pad of his thumb against the cresting flesh, feeling his own body react to the visible shudder that gripped Charley as she moaned softly in response to his caress. It was too late to turn back-too late to do anything other than give in to the need driving through him.
"This way."
Raphael was taking her to his bedroom. A new quiver of sensation ripped through Charley. Somehow the thought of Raphael making love to her in his bed rather than her own added an extra layer of sensuality and delight to what she was already feeling.
Elegant and smart, like photographs she had seen of seriously expensive boutique hotel bedrooms, Raphael"s bedroom was decorated in shades of offwhite, dark grey and aubergine, with heavy silk curtains striped in those colours to match the linens on the large double bed.
Not that Charley was in the right frame of mind to appreciate the decor, nor indeed had the time, for no sooner had Raphael switched on the low-level lighting, and she had stepped inside, than he closed the door and took her back in his arms.
The touch of his hand on her breast, expertly finding the hard rise of her nipple, made her shudder with fresh delight, but Charley"s conscience was beginning to intrude on her pleasure. Reluctantly she broke the kiss to admit to him, "There"s something I ought to tell you."
"What?"
"Well..." Charley wrinkled her nose. "The truth is that I haven"t had much previous experience. I don"t want to disappoint you..."
She could see his chest rise and then fall again. Had she put him off?
"Much or any?" Raphael questioned her.
He was too astute. She had known that before.
"Any," she admitted, before asking him, "Does that change things and put you off?"
"Do you want it to?"
"No!" Charley told him vehemently.
"The pleasure we shall give each other and share will be unique to us, exclusive to us, as it is with any lovers. But, like any man, I dare say my ego will enjoy knowing that I cannot be compared to a previous lover and found wanting."
Charley was so relieved that she burst out truthfully, "I can"t imagine any woman ever thinking that about you."
Raphael exhaled slowly, recognising that deep down inside himself he had already suspected he would be her first lover. His heart slammed into the wall of his chest. He wanted to take hold of her right now, slide the clothes from her body and give in to his desire to take them both to a place where all that mattered was their shared need for one another.
The realisation rolled over him that he wanted her as he had never wanted any other woman-as he had never imagined wanting any woman-but all he said to her was, "I shall do my best to be worthy of your faith in me." He was unable to stop himself from adding under his breath, "I just hope that my self-control is up to the challenge."
His self-control? Charley trembled under the eager antic.i.p.atory tightening of her body. She felt, she thought dizzily, as though sensually, s.e.xually, her desire for him had bloomed into a peak of lush, ripe readiness. Almost magically she was free of all restraints and inhibitions, just as though she had been reborn into the full flowering of her own s.e.xuality. Because of Raphael. And not just because she wanted him, but because he had shown her that she could be free of the damaging beliefs of her past, that she could be whatever she chose to be.
Her body was singing with excitement and joy, aching deliciously and oh, so tormentingly with a thousand aches that instinctively she knew would meld into one piercingly intense surge of need beneath Raphael"s touch.
She looked up at him and smiled.
"It isn"t your self-control that I want," she told him simply.
Raphael felt the breath shudder through his lungs, the savage thrust of his desire cras.h.i.+ng through his barriers.
"You shouldn"t say such things to me," he warned her as he closed the distance between them.
"Why not?" Charley whispered the words against his lips. She was trembling so violently that she had to hold on to him for support.
"Because it"s dangerous, because you are dangerous-dangerously enticing, dangerously sensual, dangerously tempting me to forget all the reasons why I should not be doing this," Raphael whispered back.
His hands were moving over her, angling her within his hold so that he could shape and knead the soft fullness of her breast as he kissed her. Pleasure rushed through her-pleasure, excitement, and a need that had her finding his tongue with her own and caressing it, twining with it. Wild shudders of firework explosive delight showered her when Raphael stopped her, to turn her explorative caress into the shockingly deep thrust of his tongue within the softness of her mouth, his tongue and his hand against her breast working to a rhythmic beat that produced an aching echo of its urgency deep inside her. Helplessly Charley pressed closer to him, her hands moving feverishly over his chest and then his shoulders, frustrated by the barrier of his s.h.i.+rt.
As though he knew how she felt, he moved his lips to her ear, demanding, "What is it you want?"
"I want to touch you, all of you, without your clothes," Charley answered him immediately, her voice unsteady with the intensity of her longing.
"Then take them off for me."
Undress him? A shock wave of raw need stormed through her, and then her fingers were tugging at his tie, trembling over his s.h.i.+rt b.u.t.tons, only her longing to feel his bare skin against her own preventing her from being distracted by the way he was caressing her tight nipple whilst he held her shoulder with his free hand and slowly kissed his way along the side of her neck. At last she had his s.h.i.+rt unfastened, tugged out of the waistband of his suit trousers, and she was free to bury her face against the warm, muscular expanse of his chest with its soft covering of dark hair, breathing in the scent of him, pressing frantically hungry kisses on his bared skin, so completely lost in the pleasure of what she was at long last free to do that she was oblivious to the fact that Raphael had stopped kissing her and touching her, and was simply holding her whilst he struggled to control his breathing.
This was so much more than he had been prepared for-so much more than he had understood he could ever feel or want. Charley"s open and uninhibited pleasure in what she was doing was undermining his self-control like the tide stealing away sand. Raphael cupped the sides of her head, arching his throat back in mute offering to the searing, scalding pleasure of her lips caressing his skin. An uncontrollable shudder of male pleasure seized him in its grip.
"Enough," he told Charley rawly. "Now it"s my turn to undress you."
Where she had been all fingers and thumbs, all out-of-control excitement and delight, Raphael was skilled. His touch was sure and knowing as he dealt with the layers of her clothes until she was standing in her underwear-the delicate silk and lace lingerie that had been delivered with her new clothes.
In one of the mirrors set on either side of the bed above the bedside tables Charley could see the pale s.h.i.+mmer of her almost naked body, glowing and pearlescent in the subdued lighting of the room, the slenderness and delicacy of her bone structure made more fragile by the solid muscularity of Raphael"s torso beside it.
"We look so different," she told him, her voice husky, softened by desire.
"But together we will make a perfect whole," Raphael answered her.