One Night in... Milan: The Italian's Future Bride / The Italian's Chosen Wife / The Italian's Captive Virgin

He had taught her how to be that person—that other Italian lover had tutored her on how to give the best of pleasures to a man, had then dumped her as if that was all she had been good for—a student of his sexual expertise and a boost for his ego.

And then there was that thing with real teeth which was biting at him. He was used to being desired for himself. He was used to being the favoured one women revolved around, waiting with bated breath to find out which one of them he would choose.

Arrogant thinking? Conceited of him to know that he only had to crook a finger to have them crawling with gratitude around his shoes?

Yes. He freely admitted it. His clenched chin went up.

With Rachel Carmichael he was learning very quickly what it felt like to come in as second best in the heart and mind of a woman.

He did not like it. It gnawed at his pride and his sexual ego. And if he needed to find an excuse for why he was still standing here instead of driving away, then there it was.

There was no way that he was going to accept second best to any other man. By the time this thing between them was over, his Italian rival was destined to be nothing but a vague shadow in her distant memory.

She’d gone quiet.

Raffaelle looked up at the ceiling. What was she doing up there—lying on her bed pining for the heartbreaker?

Rachel was sitting on her bed with her cellphone lying in her palm displaying a text message from Elise.

Thank you for doing this for me. I will love you always. Leo is over the moon about the baby. He’s taking us to Florida on a long overdue holiday. I could not be happier. He sends you his congratulations! Tell R thanks for his understanding. Have a great time playing the rich man’s future bride!

What a wonderful game, Rachel thought bitterly. What a great way to waste several weeks of her life.

If she still had a rich future husband to play the game with, that was. He could have come to his senses and made his escape while she was up here moping—driven away in a cloud of dust and offended pride!

Getting up, she walked over to the window that overlooked the courtyard. The silver Ferrari still sat there glinting in the shallow sunlight. Relief was the first emotion she experienced—for Elise’s sake, not her own, she quickly told herself.

Then the bedroom door suddenly opened and she turned to see him standing there, filling the gap like he had filled the other door downstairs and her senses responded, reaching down like taunting fingers to touch all too excitable pleasure points and she knew she was relieved he was still here for no one else’s sake but her own.

‘Gao,’ he murmured huskily.

‘Gao,’ she responded warily, searching his face for a sign that another battle was about to begin and feeling the taunting brush of those fingers again when she saw that anger had been replaced by lazy sensual warmth.

‘Need any help?’ he asked lightly.

‘Doing what?’ Rachel frowned.

‘Packing.’ Walking forward, his gaze flicked curiously around a room made up of countrified furniture complete with chintzy soft furnishings. ‘I see no sign of it happening yet,’ he observed. ‘But then—’ his eyes came back to hers ‘—maybe you have other ideas for how we can spend the rest of the afternoon—?’

It was like being tossed back into the pit of writhing snakes again.

Switch off the anger and let desire rush back in, she reasoned. ‘I d-don’t think—’

‘Good idea—let’s both not think.’ He moved in closer. ‘That small flowery bed looks the perfect place to spend a few hours thinking of nothing at all but this … ‘

But this—but this … His arms came around her and his mouth took over hers. No one needed to think about doing this, although—

‘Why?’ she whispered. ‘Y-you should …’

‘Be turned off you because you keep showing me different faces?’

His fingertips combed through the curls on her head as if to remind her of one of those changes she had made once already today and—damn her, but Rachel felt herself almost purring into his touch like a cat stroked by its beloved master.

He saw it and, on a soft laugh, caught her full, softly rounded, inviting mouth. It was one of those bewitching, tasty, compulsive kisses that clung, tongue tip to tongue tip. She swayed closer and his hands caught her waist to feel the slender arching of her spine for a few seconds before he gently but firmly drew her back.

‘You get to me, Rachel, you really get to me. Though God knows why you do, because I certainly don’t.’

‘Not your usual type?’ She could not resist the dig because while he frowned at her she was tingling in places that should not do that—the nerve-endings along the length of her inner thighs and between her legs.

He shook his head. ‘Not my usual anything,’ he muttered. ‘You answer back, you disrespect, you lie and you cheat without batting an eye.’

‘I don’t cheat—!’ she protested.

‘Then what do you call the woman I first met last night with the long straight hair and the couture dress?’

A cheat. He was right.

‘Well, this is the real me,’ she said as she took a step back from him. ‘The one with curls and jeans and—if you give me the chance—the one constantly fighting with dirt beneath her chipped fingernails …’ She looked down at her nails, frowning now because they looked so different from what she was used to seeing: clean, well manicured and—pink. ‘I am not made to be a femme fatale, Raffaelle. I wasn’t even that good at it last night, only you didn’t notice it because you were seeing what you’d been conditioned to expect to see at a function like that.’

‘You were damn good at what came afterwards,’ he said brusquely. ‘I’ll take a rain-check on the femme fatale bit if I can have more of that.’

Her chin went up, blue eyes coolly challenging. ‘And the cheating face I’m supposed to show to the real world? Does it pop on and off according to what you require from me?’

To her surprise he let loose one of those lazy sexy smiles that melted the hardness out of his face. ‘I think I like the idea of that. I will keep the sensual curly-haired Circe all to myself while the rest of the world gets the femme fatale.’

‘Complete with fake ring to go with the fake relationship.’ Rachel heaved out a sigh. ‘We shouldn’t be doing this at all.’

‘Too late for regrets, cara. We have been over this already. We are both into this up to our necks.’

‘Not the sex part.’

‘Yes, the sex part!’ he contended. ‘It is here. We have it. And since it is the area where you really do get to me, we keep it.’

‘If I say no?’

His laugh was derisive. ‘You would have to want to say no and you don’t.’ He lowered his head to toy with her lips again. Electrifying, seducing. ‘Do you—?’ he challenged her for an honest answer.

Since her lips were clinging and her hands had already found their way beneath his T-shirt to the satin tight warmth of his skin she could not very well give any other answer than a weak shake of her head.

‘Then say it so I can hear it.’

‘I want you,’ she whispered, swaying closer to him again, wanting, needing, body contact.

His hands on her waist held her back. ‘Say my name,’ he insisted.

Say his name … Alonso was suddenly looming up between them again. She tugged in a tense breath.

‘I did not think of any other man but you last night, Raffaelle.’ She felt she owed it to him to tell him that.

His murmur of satisfaction brought his mouth back to hers again with a full-on hot, deep, sensual attack. At last he was letting her have what she craved the most—skin-to-skin contact with him. Her fingernails curled into satin-tight flesh, then followed the muscular line of his ribcage across his chest, then around to his back so she could punish him at the same time as she arched even closer.

He shuddered, deserting her mouth. ‘You ruthless witch,’ he muttered as he took a moment to grip the edge of his T-shirt and rake it right off. Hers followed suit before he would allow her any more of his mouth.

Like that they strained against each other, exploring with their hands, tongues and lips. He was perfect. No man should possess a body like his. Rachel tasted his skin, her hands moving possessively over his hair roughened contours while he stood there and let her enjoy him, encouraging her with kisses and slow strokes of his hands.

Neither of them noticed that they were still standing in front of the window. Rachel with her back to it, Raffaelle with the sheen of the sinking sun painting his skin rich gold with a hot coral glow. He buried his fingers in her hair and pulled her head back to receive the full onslaught of his kiss.

Lights flashed, explosions took place. In the dizzying urgency of two lovers who needed to move this thing on to its next passionate stage, they missed that those explosive flashes came from outside the window.

The camera-toting paparazzo, who’d picked up their trail where others hadn’t, slunk off down the driveway back to his car parked in the lane. He was smiling, pleased with himself, while the two captured lovers continued what they were doing, Rachel reaching up her arms to wind them round Raffaelle’s neck as he lifted her up so her legs could cling to his hips. The bed was two steps away and he toppled her on to it, then bent to rid of her tight-fitting jeans.

He stood back. ‘Tell me what you want,’ he demanded as he began to strip.

‘You,’ she whispered.

‘And who am I?’

‘Raffaelle,’ she sighed out—then sighed again as the full burgeoning thrust of him was arrogantly displayed.

He made her repeat his name throughout the long hours that followed. By the time they drove away from her home the intimacy between them had evolved into something beyond sex.

They arrived back at his apartment mid-evening. Raffaelle cooked them a meal while Rachel unpacked her clothes, grimacing at the array of sleek designer hand-me-downs Elise was forever giving to her, which most women would kill to own, but which she had rarely ever had an occasion to wear. Now they took up all of her hanging space in Raffaelle’s dressing room as if they reflected the person she was now.

But she wasn’t, was she?

They ate in the living room, lounging on a rug with their backs resting against one of the sofas and the television switched on. Rachel ate while she tried to concentrate on what was happening on the TV screen when really she was already hyped up about what was to follow.

Crazy, she told herself. You know none of this is real. You must be mad to let him get to you this badly.

Then he reached out to pick up her wineglass from the low table in front of them and handed it to her and their eyes clashed. What was good or bad for her became lost in what happened next. He moved in to kiss her; she fell into the kiss. The glass went back to the table and they made love on the rug between bowls of half-eaten pasta with the television talking away to a lost audience. Afterwards he carried her, satiated and too weak to argue, to bed.

‘The pots and things …’ she mumbled sleepily.

‘Shh,’ he said. ‘I will see to them,’ and he left her there.

By the time Raffaelle came back into the bedroom she was asleep. When he slipped beneath the duvet he did not disturb her—he did not think he had the energy to cope with what was bound to ensue if he did.

He closed his eyes, wanting sleep to shut out the next few hours before he had to make any decisions about how they were going to tackle the rest of this. The great sex was one thing, but the realities of life still waited out there for him to deal with.

Lies built on more lies. Smothering the urge to sigh, he shifted his shoulders against the pillows. She moved beside him, turning in her sleep to curl in close to him, her soft breath warm on his neck and a cool hand settling lightly on his chest.

He looked down at it resting there, with its pale slender fingers and pearly-pink varnished nails, and his skin burned in response to what he knew it could make him feel.

Lies or not, she was in his blood now. A fantasy siren most men would kill to possess. He closed his eyes again and tried to hunt down that illusive thing called sleep. His last conscious thought was the grimly satisfying knowledge that she was almost worth the temporary loss of his freedom and the trail of subterfuge he was about to embark upon.

Unless Mother Nature decided to get in on the act.

He fell asleep on that thought.

The next day brought fresh problems to deal with. He had been drinking coffee in the kitchen and trying to put his head in order while Rachel still lay lost in sleep in his bed, when his housekeeper arrived and laid a tabloid down in front of him.

‘I thought you might want to see this,’ she murmured embarrassedly.

But one glance at the photograph was enough to send him into the bedroom. ‘Rachel, wake up.’

He shook her gently, then watched as she did her trick of emerging from the duvet in that way which grabbed at his senses.

‘We need to talk,’ he said grimly, then dropped the paper on to her lap.

Silence hung for the next thirty seconds while he stood there waiting and she looked down at the newspaper. There was something disturbingly erotic about the way the photograph had caught them and he knew by the way she suddenly dropped her face into her hands that this was one intrusion too far.

A nerve at the corner of his hard mouth gave a twitch. ‘I suppose that being caught on camera like this will kill the suspicions of any mocking doubters and prove that we are indeed what we appear to be. But from now on both of us must be aware of what we do and what we say even when we believe we have complete privacy.’

‘Life in the fast lane,’ she named it bitterly.

‘Si,’ he agreed. ‘I am used to it—though not to the degree that I feel the need to hide behind closed curtains,’ he put in cynically. ‘I would have expected that, having a half-sister like Elise and an insight into your half-brother’s way of earning his living, you would know all the pitfalls of life in the fast lane.’

At last Rachel lifted her head to look at him. ‘Are you implying that I set this up too?’ she demanded.

‘No,’ he denied. ‘I am simply advising you to draw on your knowledge gained from both of your siblings and think carefully before you move or speak.’

‘It sounded more like a command to me.’

‘Call it what you want,’ he said. ‘But accept that you will not go out without someone with you,’ he instructed. ‘I will assign one of my own security people to escort you.’

It was only as he said it that Rachel realised she was stuck here in London, in his apartment with nothing to do. Elise was away. Even Mark was away. She didn’t know anyone else in the city! While it was very obvious by the way he was dressed that he was not going to hang around here if at all possible and keep her company.

‘So I’m to be a prisoner now as well as your …’ She severed the rest but they both knew what she had been about to say.

‘It cuts both ways, cara,’ Raffaelle said unsympathetically. ‘I had a life and relative freedom with which to live it until you threw yourself at me. Now I have you, a bed and no life to call my own.’

‘At least you get to go to work.’

‘It is what I do during the day.’

‘Well, lucky you.’ Rachel handed him back the newspaper, then she curled on her side and tugged the duvet up to her ears. ‘I might as well stay right here then, since it’s the only place I am useful.’

He laughed. ‘Hold that delightful thought until I return.’

Then he was gone. The door closed. He strode down the hallway and out of the apartment, then into the lift. It took him down to the basement where Dino and his limo awaited him. The moment he settled in the rear seat and opened his laptop his business cellphone began ringing and real life settled in. As he concluded his fourth complicated call of the journey, Dino was pulling the car to a stop outside the Villani building. He climbed out and strode in through the doors into familiar surroundings where that other excitement which came a very close second to sex waited to take him over.

Then it came.

‘Congratulations, Mr Villani!’

‘Congratulations, sir!’

Congratulations resounded from every corner. The curious smiles that accompanied them were due almost entirely to the photograph printed in this morning’s paper, he judged.

His smile was mocking but fixed. And even that was wearing thin by the time he hit the top floor of the building.

‘Congratulations, Raffaelle,’ his secretary greeted him and dumped a whole load of telephone message slips down on his desk.

‘What are those?’ he asked dubiously.

‘Congratulations and invitations, of course.’ She grinned. ‘I would hazard a guess that these are only the beginning. It looks as if you and Miss Carmichael will be dining out every night for months!’

He gave her them back. ‘You deal with them.’

‘Me?’

‘Filter out the rubbish and sort the rest into some kind of order,’ he instructed. ‘Then I will look at them.’

‘But wouldn’t it be more appropriate if Miss Carmichael did it?’

Recalling the woman he had just walked away from brought a gleam to his eyes. ‘No. She has better things to do,’ he murmured dryly.

Like playing his personal little sex nymph.

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE SEX NYMPH WAS UP, showered and dressed in jeans and a T-shirt by the time Raffaelle entered his office building to a barrage of congratulations.

The sex nymph could not be more prim and polite when his housekeeper introduced herself as Rosa, the chauffeur’s wife; apparently both of them travelled everywhere that Raffaelle went.

And the sex nymph had no intention of being anywhere near the bedroom by the time he got back home again.

She had come up with a much more practical way to spend her time.

Over a light breakfast prepared by Rosa, Rachel planned her day with the concentration of a tourist determined to miss nothing out. Only her tour would not consist of historical sites in the city; she was going to trawl the restaurants and food wholesalers specialising in organic produce.

Her nice new security guard arrived conveniently as she was about to leave. His name was Tony and he had the use of a car, which meant far less footwork.

Still, by the time she had been delivered safely back to the apartment long hours later, she was almost dead on her feet.

Raffaelle was crossing the hall towards his study from the living room as she stepped in through the door. Pinstriped jacket gone, shirt sleeves rolled up, tie knot hanging low at his throat and glass slotted between his fingers, he looked deliciously like the successful man just in from work and ready to wind down from his busy day.

Rachel paused, completely held by his sexual pull.

He paused too and looked at her, silky curls ruffled, face still chilled by the cold breeze blowing outside, woollen coat unbuttoned to reveal a white T-shirt with a neckline that scooped low at the front. He took his time taking in every detail with the slow—slow thoroughness of a seasoned connoisseur of beautiful women.

Knowing that she lacked the connoisseur’s high standards right now sent Rachel’s chin shooting up, blue eyes challenging him to say something derogatory.

‘Did you enjoy your day, mi amore?’ was the sarcastic comment that fell from his lips.

Defences heightened, she reluctantly supposed she should explain where she’d been. ‘I went … ‘

‘I know where you have been,’ he cut in. ‘Tony works for me, not for you.’

‘Then, yes—’ they could both play with polite sarcasm, she decided ‘—I had a very enjoyable day, thank you. And you?’

‘I had an …interesting day,’ he replied, watching her every step as she made herself walk forward. ‘I spent it giving polite replies to polite invitations for us to dine with polite people who cannot wait to get a better look at my future wife.’

Recalling the revealing photograph in this morning’s paper sent a rush of heat into her cool cheeks.

‘Of course you did the wise thing and politely declined those polite invitations?’

‘No, I accepted—most of them.’

Rachel pulled to a standstill. ‘I hope you’re just teasing.’

He took a sip of his drink, every inch of him vibrating with a kind of sardonic challenge that gave her his answer before he shook his dark head.

‘The show must go on.’

‘But I don’t want to meet your friends!’ she protested.

‘Scared they might see through us?’

‘Yes!’ she said. ‘Can’t we just want to—be alone together—as real engaged couples prefer to be?’

‘You’re mistaking a new betrothal with a new marriage,’ he countered. ‘Honeymooners want to—be alone together. Newly betrothed couples want to get out there and—show off.’

‘But I don’t want to show off!’

A satin black eyebrow arched in enquiry. ‘You don’t think I am good enough to show off?’

‘Don’t talk rubbish,’ she snapped. What woman in her right mind would say he wasn’t fit to show off? ‘I just don’t think we are fit to be seen as an intimate couple within a group of your friends!’ Stuffing her hands into her coat pockets and hunching her shoulders in self-defence, she went on, ‘I presumed we would do—safer things like go out to quiet restaurants or something.’

‘A restaurant it is.’ He smiled. ‘Eight o’clock. We will be meeting my stepsister and several other close friends of mine.’

Rachel’s stomach started rolling sickly. ‘Tonight?’ she squeezed out painfully.

‘Si,’ he confirmed.

‘W-why couldn’t you be friendless?’ she tossed out helplessly.

He just grinned. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, cara, but I am certainly not friendless.’

‘But your stepsister of all people. She knows we are fakes!’

His mood changed in a flicker. ‘Stop playing the scared innocent, Rachel, when we both know you are far from it,’ he clipped out. ‘This is what you signed up for to save your sister’s marriage. And lovers who fall on one other as often as we do are certainly not faking it!’

She pushed her hands through her hair. ‘You know what I meant.’

‘And you know what I mean when I say—get your act together,’ he instructed, ‘because we are going out in public tonight and I want the besotted lover by my side, not the farmer with a chip on her shoulder a mile wide!’

Rachel stared at him. ‘What’s that supposed to imply?’

He threw out an impatient hand. ‘You compare yourself badly to your more glamorous sister,’ he provided. ‘You compare me with your ex-lover and hate the fact that I am Italian like him.’

‘I do not!’ she denied.

‘Was he good-looking?’ he demanded.

‘What has that got to do with anything?’ Her eyes went wide in bewilderment.

‘Was he—?’ he persisted.

‘Yes!’

‘How old?’

‘My age—’

‘And what kind of car did he drive?’

She sucked in an angry breath. ‘A red Ferrari,’ she answered. ‘But that wasn’t—’

‘Great,’ he gritted. ‘Mine is silver. Is that a bad mark against me or one against him for being too flashy?’

‘You’re crazy,’ she breathed.

Maybe he was. At this precise moment Raffaelle did not know why he was so fired up about a man he probably would not give a second thought to in other circumstances.

‘Just go and get ready.’ He turned his back on her and strode into his study, wanting to toss his drink to the back of his angry throat but refusing to allow himself the gut soothing pleasure while she was standing there staring at him. ‘And I don’t like flashy, so don’t come out dressed in red!’ he could not stop himself from adding.

Then he shut the door—slammed the damn door!

Rachel shook all the way into the bedroom. She shook as she removed her coat and laid it aside. She had absolutely no idea what all of that had been about and she didn’t think that she wanted to know.