The Innocent’s Secret Baby(38)
And he was cross that he was considering otherwise—that he was still considering asking her to stay.
Raul shot her an angry glance as she watched him dress, but she didn’t see it. Lydia was too busy watching as he pulled on black jeans over his nakedness.
He looked seedy and unshaven, and he was on the edge of hardening again, and she fought not to pull up her knees as lust punched low in her stomach.
He pulled on black boots, although it was summer, and then turned to reach for his top. She saw the nail marks on his scarred back and the injury toll from yesterday started to surface.
She was starting to feel sore.
Deliciously so.
‘Go back to sleep,’ Raul suggested.
He went to walk out, but his resident squatter did what she always did and niggled at his conscience. And so, rather than stalk out, he went over and bent down and gave her a kiss.
* * *
They were arguing, Lydia knew.
And she liked it.
His jaw scratched as he fought with himself to remove his mouth and get out, and then her tongue was the one to part his lips.
And that perfunctory kiss was no more.
Hellcat.
She made him want.
He was dressed and kneeling on the bed, kissing her hard, and she was arching into him.
His hand was rough through the sheet, squeezing her breast hard, and she wanted him to whip the sheet off.
Her hand told the back of his head that.
Lydia wanted him to unzip himself and to feel rough denim.
And so he stopped kissing her and stood.
Raul liked her endless wanting.
And he liked it that he wanted to go back to bed.
And that was very concerning to him.
Yes, he needed to think.
‘Why don’t you go back to sleep?’ Raul suggested again, his voice even and calm, with nothing to indicate the passion he was walking away from.
Apart from the bulge in his jeans.
She gave a slightly derisive laugh at the suggestion that she might find it possible to sleep as he walked to the door.
Raul took the elevator down and, as he always did on a Sunday, drove the speedboat himself. He took it slowly. The sky was a riot of pink and orange, and there was the delicious scent of impending rain hanging heavily in the air.
Her gift would be arriving soon, and Raul badly needed some time alone to think.
Restare.
Stay.
He had almost said it out loud last night but had held back, worried that he might regret it in the light of day. Yet the light was here and the word was still there, on the tip of his tongue and at the front of his thoughts.
Usually he would take breakfast at his favourite café and sit watching the world go by, or on occasion chat with a local such as Silvio.
Not this morning.
He wanted to be home.
On a personal level Raul had never really understood the pleasure of breakfast in bed. He always rose early and, whether home or away, was dressed for the first coffee of the day and checking emails before it had even been poured.
On a business level Raul had both examined and profited from it. There was a lovers’ breakfast served at his hotel here in Venice, and a favourite on the menu was the baci in gondola—sweet white pastry melded with dark chocolate.
Raul was at his favourite café and ordering them now—only this time he was asking them to be placed in one of their trademark boxes and tied with a red velvet ribbon.
It was to be a true lovers’ breakfast, because he did not want maids intruding, and he wanted his coffee stronger and sweeter than usual today.
Raul wore the barista’s eye-roll when he also asked for English Breakfast Tea.
‘Cinque minute, Raul,’ the waitress told him.
Five minutes turned into seven, and he was grateful for the extra two, but even when they had passed still the thought remained.
Restare.
He wanted a chance for them.
* * *
Lydia lay, half listening to the sounds of Venice on a Sunday morning, and thought of their lovemaking.
It was still too close to be called a memory.
Yet it would be soon.
Unless she changed her flight times.
What if she told him she couldn’t get a flight out of Venice until tomorrow?
Lydia got out of bed and pulled on a robe and found her phone. Even as she plugged it in to charge it Lydia knew she was breaking the deal they had made—simply to walk away.
Only it wasn’t that simple.
This felt like love.
It was infatuation, Lydia scolded herself.
He was the first person who had shown an interest...
Only that wasn’t so.
There had been others, but she had chosen to let no one in.
‘Signorina...’
There was a knock at the door and Lydia opened it and smiled at the friendly face of a maid, who said her name was Loretta.
‘You have a delivery.’
‘Me?’ Lydia checked. ‘But no one knows that...’ And then her voice trailed off, because the name on the box was indeed hers, and as she took it Lydia felt its weight.