LITMIR.BIZ

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had with Gio.

      He had been pushed and shoved to this step by Gio, by circumstance, even unknowingly by Pia, but he wasn’t going to doom their relationship from the beginning.

      Pia, he knew, didn’t give two hoots about VA or the stock or Gio’s fortune. The last thing she needed was to know what Gio had offered Raphael.

      “I wanted to get away for a while. I thought I could go back to the States and tie up some loose ends. I told him it was just temporary—”

      “Because you wanted to avoid me after what I did?” This more than anything angered him. “Did you think of how Gio felt at that? Do you always run away if it gets hard, Pia? Isn’t that what you did when that man cheated you?”

      She paled as if he’d struck below the belt. She tilted her chin in that stubborn way of hers. “I wasn’t running away. I needed a break. It was hard to be around you knowing that every minute you spent with me was under sufferance.”

      “That’s—”

      “Please, no lies. The one thing I know I’ll always have from you is honesty. Don’t take that away from me now. You can barely stand to look at me when we’re together.” Pain flashed through her eyes, the raw intensity of it skewering Raphael where he stood. “You... I forced you to give me what you didn’t want to. I clearly can’t take a message.”

      “Dio mio! Is that what you think? When will you understand that—?”

      “You’ve made it clear that I’m nothing but another millstone of responsibility around your neck. Another person who’s dependent on you, another duty you perform even though you resent the hell out of it.

      “I’m not angry with you. I see all the responsibilities you shoulder, how seriously you take them. I just can’t bear to be one of them. I don’t know how to make Gio believe that I can look after myself.”

      He reached her and ran a finger over her jaw. She had such soft skin and he wondered if she was like that all over. “And what if saying no to you was the hardest thing I ever did. That even if you hadn’t waylaid me, I wouldn’t have been able to go through with it with... Ava. That every time I close my eyes, I feel that velvety, swollen center of yours between my fingers. That every time I hear your voice, it reminds me of your soft moans and throaty cries. That every morning, I wake up with an erection and that I get myself off like an uncouth teenager by picturing you bare and writhing beneath me, begging me to take you.” She stared at him with such wide eyes, such naked lust that Raphael was tempted to take her right there.

      He brought her hand to his abdomen and then down below where his hard-on was throbbing painfully. “I can’t breathe your scent without getting hard like this. Do you believe me now, tesoro?”

      Liquid longing filled her eyes. She bent her forehead to his shoulder and breathed hard while her hand shaped him.

      Raphael buried his face in her hair, something more than lust driving him. Tenderness, he realized. He wanted this. He wanted her. And not just for one night or for a short affair, as he’d thrown at her cheaply. The thought of Pia ever sharing this intimacy with any other man drove him out of his mind.

      She was his, whether she knew it right now or not. “For the first time in my life, I want to be selfish. I want to take you for myself and damn the consequences. You don’t know how many times I had to remind myself that you’re my godfather’s granddaughter.”

      Pia stepped back, heart pounding a hundred times a second. She could still feel the shape of him in her palm, could feel the tension radiate from him. Stark and etched with want of her, only for her, he was the most beautiful man she’d ever known. “But I’m not just his granddaughter. I’m Pia, Raphael. And I wish—”

      He covered her mouth with his palm and pulled her to him. “Pia, look at me. Listen to me, cara mia.” Roughly, he pushed his hand through his hair. “Sophistication or beauty or whatever you think you lack—none of the women I know could hold a candle to you.” A frustrated hiss left his mouth. “It is exactly why it’s hard to take you.”

      The words came so simply, so easily then. “But you’re not taking, Raphael. I’m giving myself. Isn’t that my decision?”

      A hard curse fell from his mouth, harsh in the silence. Clasping her cheeks, Raphael swooped his mouth down on hers.

      Hard. Hungry. Hot.

      Thumb on her chin, he pressed and Pia opened with a deep groan that reverberated through every nerve ending.

      She’d been dreaming of this fevered desire between them, of seeing that dark glitter in his eyes, of the handsome, gorgeous, sophisticated Raphael wanting her beyond any other woman.

      All the reasons she shouldn’t be desperately clinging to him were reduced to ashes. All the misgivings and doubts she’d harbored about feeling so much for him evaporated into mist by the heat between them. The rasp of his hair-roughened wrists under her palms, the rapid beat of his pulse against her skin, short-circuited her last rational thought.

      His thumbs pressing oh, so firmly against the corners of her mouth, again and again, he dipped his mouth over hers, never resting, never fully giving her what she wanted.

      On the next dip, he swiped the seam of her lips with his tongue and Pia melted into his body. Her hands rose to his shoulders, pleading with her touch. Wrapped around his nape, conveying her need for more, she sank blissfully into the rough swathe of his hair, an intimacy she’d been craving for so long.

      A fine tremor ran through his body. “Let me taste you, cara mia. Let me show you how much I want this, no, how much I need you.”

      Pia opened her mouth under his, his words lighting a fire in her very blood.

      The taste of him exploded in her mouth. Her lips stung when he rubbed his against hers and then cooled them off with a lick. His teeth sank into the cushion of her lower mouth, sending sharp arrows of pleasure down her body, and then he soothed the hurt with a puff of air.

      Again and again, he plunged his tongue inside her mouth, a silky slide against her own, an erotic invitation to play with him one moment, a divine promise the next.

      “Raphael, I...oh, please,” she sobbed when he pulled his mouth away from hers.

      Tall and arrogant, he stared down at her with glittering eyes. His nostrils flared, his customarily mocking mouth swollen lush.

      She would have dropped to the floor like a puddle of feelings if his hands hadn’t anchored her. Even there, his hold was less tender and more aggressively possessive.

      A sharp laugh fell from his mouth. “I can give no sweet words. I will make no promises, Pia. Do you still want me?”

       CHAPTER TEN

      KNEES SHAKING, PIA drank him in. His black shirt unbuttoned to his chest, jeans hung low on his hips, he was a dark fantasy come to life. His rough hair stood up, thanks to her fingers, but it was his penetrating stare that took her breath away.

      The depth of desire in it singed her skin.

      His gaze was more questioning and combative than anything her imagination could have conjured.

      But this was Raphael, so ruthless and yet so tender at times. There was nothing sweet and romantic about him. Nothing sensitive and cajoling about him.

      His gaze swept over the naked length of her legs, the pulse skittering wildly at her neck. Her sex clenched, hard and sudden, at the masculine possessiveness written across every inch of his proud face. “No words, cara mia?”

      And the truth of him as he stood there, as he stared at her with absolute desire etched into taut features, darkening those deep-seated eyes was more real, more telling than any sweet words he could have given her. She hadn’t felt a millionth of this wonder, this ever-present thrum before.

      Months

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