LITMIR.BIZ

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anything less than that,” Rafael muttered. And then something else in gruff Italian. “Mi appartieni.”

      Or that was what she thought he said, it was so fierce and low. You belong to me. And then he swung her around so her back was against the nearest wall. She had a glimmering moment to take in the nearly savage look on his dark face, and then his mouth was on hers.

      And all hell broke loose.

      This wasn’t a moment of shocked surprise on the street. This was nothing but need, pure and greedy and entirely, exultantly mutual.

      Lily couldn’t pretend otherwise. She didn’t bother to try.

      This was fire. This was passion. Their history and that electric perfection that charged so hot and bright between them, an instant conflagration. Lily burned. She wrapped herself around him, she forgot herself completely and she let him set them both alight.

      Rafael kissed the way he did everything. With sheer, uncompromising ruthlessness and devastating skill. He took over her mouth, tasting her again and again, shoving her back into the wall and using it to keep her exactly where he wanted her. He made a low noise as he kissed her, over and over, as if he couldn’t get enough. As if it would never be enough.

      As if there was no word for enough in either one of their languages.

      He held her face between his hands, and he angled his head, blasting the kiss straight into another level of sheer, dizzying sensation. Lily felt her knees go weak and her whole body seem to shake, and still she met every thrust of his tongue, tasting him and taking him in her turn, each kiss as drugging and impossible and wildly delirious as the next.

      She must have dreamed the taste of him a thousand times since she’d walked away from that life, from him, but the reality was better. So much better.

      Rafael shifted, his hands moving from her face to test the shape of her breasts through the smooth fabric of her bodice, and she knew from the appreciative noise he made precisely when he found the stiff peaks. But then it was her turn to cry out when he covered them with his palms and pressed into them, rough and greedy and infinitely knowing, making her throw her head back and arch into his touch for more of that delicious pressure.

      He followed her mouth with his, as if he was unwilling to lose her taste for even a moment, and she didn’t know which one of them strained toward the other. Who moved, who touched. Who took, who gave. It was all a wild, brilliant tangle of sensation. Need and longing and their age-old ability to drive each other mad, like an explosion that kept going off. And off. Without end.

      She had to pull away from that hard, clever mouth of his for a moment to breathe, or at least to try. The hall they stood in was still as dark and deserted as before, but the lights and music beckoned just there, just out of reach through that far-off arch, so many people right there who could walk in on them at any moment—

      The way it had always been. Desire and the risk of discovery, all knotted together and hidden away where only they could see it, feel it, succumb to it.

      And then she forgot about their past, about the party and the people and the whole damned world, because his hands were on her long skirt and then beneath it, and he was urging her leg over his hip with those sure, hard hands, his mouth an open fire against her neck.

      Lily didn’t think. She burned.

      She wrapped her arms around his neck and she gripped him with her leg as he reached between them, and then his gaze found hers. Dark and wild. She felt her mouth drop open. She saw his jaw clench tight as he dealt with his trousers. And then his fingers were moving her panties to one side and the thick, blunt head of his hardness was probing her entrance.

      She shook. Everywhere. She shook and she shook and she’d forgotten it, this glorious shaking from the inside out. She’d forgotten how visceral this was, how necessary. Like breath.

      Only better.

      “I told you,” he gritted out. “One kiss. That’s all it ever takes.”

      And then he thrust deep inside her. Hard and deep and true.

      Perfect and Rafael, after all this time.

      Lily fell to pieces, shattering into a thousand fragments at that glorious fit, and only then did he move. Each thrust wilder and deeper than the last. The fever of it, the wild and glorious dance, catching her up when she would have come down and winding her tighter and tighter all over again.

      As if all of this need was new.

      As if they were.

      He slid a hand down to her bottom to lift her against him, pulling her higher until she crossed her legs around him and gripped his shoulders, and then he leaned her back against the wall, braced them with his other hand and hammered himself into her.

      Lily loved it. She more than loved it. It was coming home, drenched in fire. It was Rafael. It was them.

      Again. At last.

      And when she threw back her head and came apart again, biting her lip to keep from screaming though her throat ached, he groaned out her name against the side of her neck and followed.

      * * *

      Rafael had no idea how long they stood there like that.

      His breath came so hard it almost hurt, he rested his forehead against hers while he tried to catch it and he understood that he had not felt this rightness in so long he’d begun to think he’d imagined the whole thing. Her. The way they moved together, the sheer and blazing poetry of their lovemaking that had been the only thing he’d thought about some years.

      If anything, he’d minimized her effect on him. Her power over him. The beauty of this wild flame that still danced so brightly between them.

      He was already hardening again inside her, and he moved his hips experimentally, but it was still the same. That desperate heat. That wildness like a thirst, that all these years later he still had no earthly idea how to quench. He still didn’t want to do anything but drown in it. In her.

      Lily had never been anything but a revelation to him. That hadn’t changed.

      But she pushed against him. Then again, harder, and he realized she’d gone stiff in his arms.

      “Let me down,” she said, her voice thick and something like dangerous, edgy and tight.

      Rafael angled himself back, little as that appealed, and then helped her lower her legs to the floor. He bit back a satisfied smile when she sagged slightly, then gripped the wall, as if her knees were precarious beneath her.

      But he felt his amusement fade when he met her tormented gaze.

      “Lily,” he began, reaching over to brush her cheek, not entirely surprised that she was trembling uncontrollably. He could feel it like a series of earthquakes, rippling over her, through her. He felt the same in him. “Cara, surely—”

      “I can’t do this again!” she threw at him. She made a sharp sound as if she was in pain, or as if she hadn’t meant to speak. Her eyes were much too dark, and he tucked himself back in his trousers as he studied her expression, as she splayed out a hand over her middle as if she ached while her dress fell back into place all around her as if they’d never touched at all. He found he hated it. “I can’t do this!”

      “Lily,” he said again, but it was as if she couldn’t hear him. As if there was a storm enveloping her where she stood, only a few inches away from him and yet somewhere else entirely.

      “Look where we are!” she hissed at him. She slashed a hand in the direction of the party down the hall, her face contorted and moisture leaking down her cheeks from behind the demimask she still wore. “We might as well have put on a show in the center of the dance floor! Anyone could have seen us!”

      He made an impatient noise. “No one did.”

      “You don’t know that. You hope that. And it’s as childish and immature

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