The Italian's Future Bride(15)

       
           



       



This was payback-sexual payback. And he meant to make her keep on paying for as long as this thing took to pan out.



She was picked up and tumbled back on to the duvet. He came to lean over  her, blocking out the light like a domineering shadow, everything about  him so physically superior, strong, mesmerising-overwhelming yet so  potently exciting at the same time.



His eyes glinted down at her, his face a map of hard angles built on  arrogant sexual claim. She was about to be ravished a second time and  the horror of it was that she knew she was not going to say no.



A telephone started ringing with the shrillness of a klaxon. Staring up  into his face, tense and not breathing, Rachel thought for several  seconds that he was going to ignore the call and continue with what he  had started here.



Then his face altered, shutting down desire with the single blink of  those long eyelashes, and he took hold of his shirt and grimly closed it  across her breasts.



With that he levered himself off the bed, leaving Rachel to sit up and  huddle inside the shirt while he went to recover his trousers and this  time pulled them on.



He glanced back at her, nothing lover-like about him anywhere now. 'Get in the bed. Go to sleep,' he instructed.



Then he strode out of the bedroom, closing the door behind him, leaving  Rachel coldly aware that she had just been put in her place.



As thegift in his bed, to use if or when he so desired it.



The telephone went silent. Unable to stop herself, Rachel got up and  went to open the door as quietly as she could, meaning to creep down the  hall and listen in on the conversation-just in case it had something to  do with them.



She did not need to take another step from where she was. The door on  the opposite side of the hall was open. He was standing in front of a  desk with his back towards her and his trousers resting low on his hips.



'You think that ringing me at two in the morning will please me, Daniella-?' His tone did not sound pleased at all.



Rachel continued to hover, watching as his naked shoulders racked up tighter the more that his stepsister said.



'Daniella … 'he sighed out eventually. 'Will you give me the opportunity  to speak? I am sorry you have been hit by so many telephone calls,' he  said wearily. 'No, the lady in question is not Elise,' he denied. 'She  is who she has always been. It is everyone else who made the mistake. '



A lie. Another lie. Rachel felt the weight of every single one of them land upon her shoulders.



Raffaelle turned sharply, as if he could sense her standing here. She  watched his eyes move in a possessive flow from her face to his shirt,  then down her legs. The intimacy in the look conflicted with the  coldness now in charge of his features. And she knew that not only had  he brought himself under control, but she was now looking at the man  she'd first met, undeniably attractive but cynical and hard.



On a wavering grimace Rachel dropped her eyes from him and stepped back  into the bedroom. When Elise had picked him to have her rebellious  affair with, she had chosen the wrong man, she thought heavily as she  closed the door.



Pushing his free hand into his trouser pocket, Raffaelle suppressed the  desire to either curse or sigh as he leant his lean hips against the  edge of the desk while Daniella continued to yell in his ear.



He was angry with the interfering press, who were taking it in turns to  call up Daniella in their quest for more information. He was also fed up  because the whole thing was now driving itself like a train with no  damn brakes.



And he was achingly bloody aroused and despising himself for feeling  like that. Where did he get off, jumping all over a woman-astranger  -like some randy, feckless, uncontrolled youth-?



No wonder she'd looked at him just now as if he had crawled out from  beneath a stone. No wonder she had gone back in the bedroom and shut  herself away. She knew she was trapped;he knew he was trapped!



'No, Daniella,' he grimly cut in to her half-hysterical ranting. 'It  isyou who made the mistake two months ago. She wasnever Elise-have you  got that?'



His cold tone alone had the desired effect.



'You mean you want me tosay that I was mistaken?'



'No. I am telling you that youare mistaken.'



'So youhave just got engaged to marry this Rachel Carmichael-the same woman who threw herself at you tonight?'



'Si,' he confirmed.



'Just like that-?'She was almost choking on her disbelief.



'No, not just like that,' he sighed out. 'I have been-courting Rachel over the last few months.'                       
       
           



       



'Courtingher-?'



Bad choice of word. 'Seducingher, then.'



Her struck silence made him grimace and he couldn't make up his mind if  she was beginning to swallow the lies or simply being sensible for once  and taking on board the grim warning in his voice.



'Is she pregnant-?'



'No!' he bit out, jerking upright from the desk and swinging round as a sting of stark alarm shot down his back.



Dio,he'd used nothing to stop it from happening, and he had not thought to ask her if she was protected!



What kind of crass bloody oversexed fool did that make him? Or her for not thinking about it-?



'And, since my personal life is no one's business but my own,cara , can I  suggest a simpleno comment from you would make me happy? Or, better  still, Daniella-take the telephone off the hook!'



He cut the connection and tossed the handset back on its rest, then just stood there, not knowing what to do next.



Sex without protection with a woman he barely knew. Flexing muscles  rippled all over him as he took on board the consequences which could  result from such a stupidly irresponsible act.



With his luck tonight, she could already be in the process of conceiving  his baby. Add all the other risks which came along with unprotected sex  and he suddenly felt like a time bomb set to go off!



A growl left his throat as he turned back to the bedroom. Chin set like a  vice, he pushed open the door. The room was in darkness. He switched on  the overhead light and went to stand at the bottom of the bed.



She was nothing but a curled up mound beneath the duvet. 'I did not use protection,' he clipped out.



The mound jerked, then went still for a gut-clenching second. Then it  moved again and she emerged, sliding up against the pillows,  flush-cheeked-wary, defensive-sensationally delectable.



Dio, he thought.



'Say that again,' she shook out.



'I did not use protection,' he repeated tautly. 'I am not promiscuous  and I have never taken such risks before in my life,' he added stiffly.  'I like to think that I can respect my … partner's history in the same way  that she can respect mine.'



Rachel looked at the way he was standing there like some arrogant  autocrat caught with his pants down by his bitch of a wife. Only his  pants were up; it was his shirt that was missing and the bitch of a wife  in this case was thegift he'd been handed and enjoyed thoroughly-before  he'd thought to wonder where she had been before she'd landed in his  bed!



As if it wasn't bad enough that she was sitting in the bed belonging to a  man she had only met for the first time tonight, wearing his shirt and  his scents and his touch on her skin-she now had to endure the kind of  conversation that belonged in a brothel!



Next he would be asking how much he owed her for her services. Give him  half a chance and she knew he would love to denounce her out loud as a  whore.



Well, what did that make him? Rachel wanted to know.



'I am a clean-living, careful, healthy person,' she snapped out indignantly.



'I am relieved to hear it.'



He didn't look it. 'I don't sleep around! And if you hit me with one  more rotten insult, Mr Villani,' she warned furiously. 'I think I am  going to physically attack you!'



'My apologies if it sounded as if I was trying to insult you-'



'You did insult me.' She went to slide back down the bed.



'But we don't know each other.'



'You can say that again,' Rachel muttered.



'And it is an issue we need to address.'



'Well, you addressed it very eloquently,' she told him and tugged up the duvet with anow go away kind of shrug.



If he read it he ignored it. 'We have not finished with this.'



'Yes, we have.'



'No, Rachel, we have not … '



It was the alteration in his voice from stiff to weary that forced her  to take notice. 'We still have the issue of another kind of protection  to discuss.'



Another kind … Rachel froze for a second, then slid back up the pillows  again, only this time more slowly as she finally began to catch on.



He put it in simple words for her. 'I did not protect us against-conception. I need to know if you did.'



It was like being hit with one hard knock too many; she felt all the  colour drain from her face. 'I don't believe this is happening to me,'  she whispered.