The Italian's Future Bride(29)

Everywhere they went he took her out into public places-more  restaurants, more theatres, nightclubs and private parties-all very  select venues where they could be displayed as a couple.



It was almost all glitz and glamour. There were those in his close  circle of friends who were the kind of people she could relate to mainly  because they were easy to like. Then there were the other kind who  hovered on the fringes of it all who would have sold their grandmothers  to be included as a member of his inner set.



Then there was the seemingly endless stream of his ex-lovers from all  over the world who had no problem with telling her what they used to be  to him and thought it fine to discuss the ins and outs of having a lover  like him.



'Have they never heard of the word discretion?' she tossed at him after  one particularly vocal beauty had seen nothing wrong in singing his  sexual praises to Rachel-in front of Raffaelle. 'Or does it stroke your  ego to hear someone talk about you as if you were a stallion put out to  stud and therefore free to be debated for your sexual prowess?'



'I don't like it,' he denied.



'Then don't smile that smug smile while they list your assets.'



'It is not a smug smile, it is a forbearing one. And you sound like a jealously disapproving wife.'



'No, just a lover who does not think you are so great in bed that you deserve so much attention,' she denounced.



'No-?'



She should have read the intimation in thatno but she missed it.



'No,' she repeated.



'Maybe you found the Italian heartbreaker and sex tutor of innocents a better lover?'



She turned icy eyes on him. 'If you're fishing for information, then  forget it. Unlike your ex-lovers, this one does not kiss and tell.'



He had been fishing for information, Raffaelle acknowledged. She might  be the best lover he'd ever enjoyed but he had no clue as to where she  placed him on her admittedly short list.



And he'd accused her of being jealous when he knew that was his issue.  Jealous, curious, wary of the way she sometimes looked at him as if he  was a being from outer space. Their age difference bothered him. Her  youth and her beauty and that softer side she had to her that made some  of his previous women appear sex-hardened and clinical. Did she see him  like that: sex-hardened and clinical?



His male friends were drawn to her. He did not like to see it because he  knew exactly what it was about her that drew them. They wanted to  experience what he was experiencing. They wanted to know what it felt  like to simply touch a woman like Rachel and have her melt softly for  them.



And she did melt. It was his only source of male satisfaction. In  company, out of company, he touched her and she melted. Helooked at her  and she melted.                       
       
           



       



'Well, remember that I am the lover who takes you to heaven each night,' he said.



And, like Alonso, Rachel knew that he would break her heart one day.



He obsessed her mind and her body. She hated him sometimes, but her  desire for him was stronger than hate. He knew it too and the inner  battles she fought with herself turned him on. She watched it happen,  watched right up until the moment they reached the lift which would take  them into privacy and saw the social face he wore fall away to reveal  the hard, dark, sexually intense man.



The lift became her torture chamber. The stinging strikes of his sexual  promise flayed her skin. By the time they stepped through his front door  she was a minefield of electric impulses, hardly breathing, hyped up  and charged beyond anything sane.



Sometimes he would crash into that minefield right there in the hallway.  Sometimes he would draw out the agony by making her wait before he  unleashed the sensual storm. She learned to live on a high wire of  expectation that allowed no respite and little sleep, with him even  invading her dreams.



He knew every single sensitive inch of her. Sometimes he would coax her  to stretch out on the bed with her arms raised above her and her legs  pressed together, then he'd begin a long slow torture that she loved yet  hated with equal passion because he would make her come-eventually-with  only the lightest stroke of a finger or the gentlest flicker of his  tongue. It was an unashamed act of male domination which left her aching  because he never gave in to his own need on these occasions or finished  such torments off with an intimate, deep physical joining.



Why did he do that? Even after four weeks with him she still did not have an answer to that question.



And then there were those other times. The times when he allowed her to  perform the same slow torment on him. He would lie there with his eyes  closed and his long body taut with sexual tension while she indulged her  every whim.



Being equals, he called it. She called it dangerous, because it had  reached a stage where she could not look at him without seeing him lost  in the throes of what he was feeling on those occasions. A big golden  man, trembling and vulnerable, a slave to what she could make him feel.



The elixir which kept her rooted in their relationship, wanting-needing more.



And other things began to torment her which were far more disturbing  than the constant overwhelming heat of desire. She knew she had fallen  in love with him. She could feel it tugging constantly at the vulnerable  muscles around her heart. If he touched her those muscles squeezed and  quivered. If she let her eyes rest on him, those same muscles dipped  into a sinking tingling dive.



But Raffaelle was not in this for love. He wanted her, yes. He still  desired her so fiercely that she would have to be a complete idiot not  to know that he was content to keep things the way they were right now.



If she had any sense she would be walking away from it. Elise and Leo  were back in Chicago. Elise was happy, Leo was happy and keeping his  pregnant wife and his son close to him; the crisis in their marriage was  over.



All of this should be over now. And, if it wasn't for the worrying  prospect that her period was overdue, she would have no excuse left to  call upon which could allow her to stay.



Then it all went so spectacularly pear-shaped that it threw everything they had together into a reeling spin.



They were in Milan when it happened. Raffaelle was tense, distant,  preoccupied-busy with an important deal, he said. But Rachel wondered if  the stress of waiting to discover if she was pregnant was getting to  him too.



He didn't say so-never mentioned it at all and neither did she.



She knew that she needed to buy a pregnancy test. Putting it off any  longer was silly when she was almost a whole week late. She was supposed  to be going shopping with one of Raffaelle's many cousins but Carlotta  had rung up to say she couldn't make it.



On impulse she snatched up her purse and headed out of the apartment.  She should have called Tony to get him to drive her, but she didn't want  anyone with her to witness what she was going to do.



She caught a cab into the city, then headed for a row of shops that  included a pharmacy. Anxiety kept her locked inside her own thoughts as  she walked, but the last thing she expected to happen was to be woken  from them by a loud screech of brakes as a glossy red open top Ferrari  swished to a sudden stop at her side.



The man driving that car did not bother to open the door to climb out  but leapt with lithe limbed grace over the door. 'Rachel-amore!' he  called out.



Shock held her completely frozen, her blue gaze fixed on his familiar handsome face.                       
       
           



       



'Alonso-?' she gasped in surprise.



'Si-!' He laughed, all flashing white teeth, black silk hair and  honey-gold beauty. 'Is this not the greatest surprise of your life?'



CHAPTER TEN



HE BEGANclosing the gap between them, a lean muscled six-foot-two-inch  Italian encased in the finest silver-grey suit. A man with so much  natural charisma and self-belief that it just would not occur to him  that he was anything but a welcome sight to her.



So Rachel found herself engulfed by the pair of arms he folded around  her, then found herself being kissed on her cheeks and the tip of her  nose, then her surprised, still parted mouth.



She tried to pull back but he was not letting her. 'I saw you get out of  a cab and I could not believe my eyes!' he exclaimed. 'And look at  you,' he murmured, running a teasing set of fingers through the bouncy  curls on her head. 'Still my beautiful Rachel.' He kissed her mouth  again. 'This has to be the best moment of my day!'



Well, not mine, thought Rachel, still rolling on the shock of seeing him. 'What are you doing here in Milan?'



'I could ask the same thing of you.' He grinned down at her. 'Though I  would have to be blind not to know by now that you have captured the  heart of Raffaelle Villani, eh? May good fortune always smile upon the  bewitching,' he proposed expansively. 'He is totally besotted with you,  as I was, of course … '