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  ‘Your childhood. Schooling. That kind of thing. A whole life to get through.’ Shrugging his broad shoulders, he wandered over to one of the cushioned divans which overlooked the central courtyard and slid down on it, black eyes like chips of jet. ‘Why, if you manage to keep it brief, we might even be able to cover your likes and dislikes before we get called for dinner!’

  Natasha glared at him. Had the put-down been deliberate? Did he just want to get it over with as quickly as possible because she was boring? Well, damn him!

  ‘I was brought up by a maiden aunt—’

  ‘Your parents?’ he intercepted swiftly.

  For a moment, she was tempted to tell him that if he kept interrupting they would never be able to ‘keep it brief,’ but some instinct of self-preservation told her not to bring discord into the bedroom.

  ‘My parents both died within a couple of years of one another. My aunt was older.’

  ‘And strict?’

  She sighed. ‘Raffaele, is all this necessary? I thought we had a whole life to get through.’

  Something in her gentle admonishment made him wince, and yet something else disturbed him far more. The fact that he wanted to know! And why was that? Because for the first time in his life he had met a woman who wasn’t gushing to tell him everything bar her inside leg measurement?

  ‘I want to know,’ he said stubbornly.

  And, of course, what Raffaele wanted he always got—didn’t he? ‘Yes, she was strict,’ said Natasha, and then to stop him from reaching the obvious conclusion for himself, and thinking that he was some kind of psychological genius, she elaborated. ‘In fact, she was so strict that I’d barely been allowed any kind of social life before I went to university.’ She met the look in his eyes and nodded. ‘That was where it all went wrong. Freedom came as a bit of a double-edged sword, really—I wanted it, but I was scared of it, too. And, of course. I didn’t have any real experiences of going out, drinking, dancing. The sort of things that most people my age had grown up with.’

  He suddenly caught a glimpse of the girl she must have been then—with the unworldly air which had remained pretty much intact until her recent makeover. ‘And what about Sam ’s father?’

  Well, she might be able to see the purpose of allowing him a recap of her past life, but he certainly didn’t need to know the fine details of that. Sam ’s father had just been looking for thrills—not a lifelong commitment. And in a way Natasha hadn’t been able to blame him—

  because she hadn’t been looking to have a baby, either. But accidents happened—and just because Sam hadn’t been planned it didn’t mean that he didn’t have every right to be loved and nurtured and cherished.

  ‘ Sam ’s father has many attributes,’ she said carefully.

  ‘Why doesn’t he see his boy?’

  Natasha frowned. ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘I want to know.’ He met the challenge in her eyes. ‘For research purposes, you understand,’

  he elaborated coolly.

  ‘He wanted nothing to do with the pregnancy,’ she said flatly. ‘He has never even seen his child, and nor has he wanted to.’

  He saw the fierce expression of pride masking the hurt on her face and something turned over inside him. ‘ Natasha —’

  She shook her head, shaking away his meaningless expression of sympathy. She didn’t need that. ‘But I wanted the baby—no matter how he was created. And, in many ways, it’s easier this way. At least I’ve been spared the emotional warfare which comes when two parents are separated. Sam has never known anything but love and I’ve never regretted my decision—not for a single second!’

  In a way he applauded her fiery spirit, yet also he cursed her—because nothing drew a man to a woman more than a flame. Didn’t she realise that he wanted her in his arms, that he desired her intensely and that something seemed to be blocking his desire every step of the way?

  First, he had hesitated because of the inequality of their social standing. Yet now her feisty defiance in the face of what must have been a difficult time seemed to be blocking him, yet again. So what was stopping him?

  Was it his conscience?

  Raffaele frowned. He must stop being sentimental—because nobody could accuse her of that.

  She had coolly stated that it suited her for Sam ’s father not to be around, just as she had coolly agreed to masquerade as his fiancé. She was a pragmatic woman who had demonstrated that she had a woman’s needs—needs which she’d admirably suppressed during Sam ’s early years.

  But Sam wasn’t around now. For once, she was free of responsibility. They were both adults who wanted one another—didn’t they deserve a little light relief in the form of a mutually explosive passion?

  He studied her. Her hair was a silken tumble around her shoulders and the long gauzy dress she had sensibly worn in such a strict country hinted distractingly at the lush firm body which lay beneath. Her painted toenails peeped out from the front of woven leather sandals, quietly informing him that her long legs were bare, and suddenly he ached to have them wrapped around his naked back. But she was surveying him as warily as a cornered animal, and Raffaele—who was a master of timing—recognised that the time was not right.

  He rose from the divan with all the languid grace of some jungle cat and picked up an air-light linen jacket.

  ‘I’m going to have my meeting with Zahid before dinner—you might wish to freshen up,’ he drawled, and his eyes met hers as he wished that he could stay and watch her.

  Natasha found her cheeks colouring as she watched him go, wondering if there was some kind of acceptable behaviour for sharing a suite with a man. Rules which most normal people were aware of but which had passed her by. Was there some kind of code you used when you needed to go to the bathroom?

  She waited until she was sure he had gone, and then gathered together all her fresh clothes and lingerie—terrified of having to emerge from her shower looking in any way vulnerable in case Raffaele should suddenly appear. Because, in a way, all this watchful waiting was playing havoc with her senses.

  She knew he wanted her—despite her laughable lack of experience with the opposite sex.

  Even if it wasn’t for the telltale glint she sometimes saw in the depths of those ebony eyes, a man like Raffaele could not disguise the sexuality which seemed to exude from every pore of his remarkable body.

  The trouble was that she wanted him, too.

  So where did that leave her? Wondering and worrying about whether to go through with her heart’s greatest wish—or protecting that self-same heart by denying it?

  The bathroom increased her trepidation even while it appealed to her senses—it was all marble and mosaic and mirrors. Costly essences lined a spa bath so wide and deep that you could almost imagine floating in it, and someone had placed bowls of fresh crimson rose petals on the pristine white surfaces.

  But Natasha had spent too much of her adult life catering to other people’s needs not to allow herself to enjoy this. Freedom and luxury—what a pleasure. Closing her eyes, she slicked on the creamy soap, creating layers of foamy suds over her breasts…breasts which were growing unusually heavy…

  The minutes melted by as the memory of Raffaele’s kiss swam into her head with erotic clarity. Her body stirred restlessly beneath the scented water, and in the end Natasha got out.

  Heading for the shower, she turned the temperature right down until she was so cold that she was shivering as she wrapped herself in an oversized white towelling robe to dry.

  She slithered into the brand-new lingerie and a long, silky robe, and when she’d dried her hair and put on a little make-up she stepped back to inspect herself in the full- length mirror.

  The woman who stared back at her might have blended in perfectly with the luxurious surroundings, but it certainly didn’t look like the Natasha she knew. It didn’t feel like Natasha , either. The new bra and panties fitted as comfortably as a second skin, but they were making her uncomfortably aware of her bod
y. Of the strange new dull ache which seemed to tingle at her skin just lately. But she would be a hypocrite if she pretended to try and pinpoint when that longing had begun, because it was engraved on her memory as well as her heart.

  Ever since the afternoon when Raffaele had kissed her! Drawing a deep breath for courage, and telling herself that to embroil herself any deeper than she already was would be sheer madness, Natasha pushed the door open and walked into the suite.

  He was waiting for her. Reclining on a heap of lavish velvet and brocade cushions, looking such a mass of contradictions. Sexy and passionate—yet cool and calculating. His olive skin glowed softly, like deep golden silk. And those legs. Natasha swallowed. So impossibly long.

  His whole pose was both languid and watchful, and she found herself wondering how he managed to be all those things at once.

  ‘I note that you have learnt to make a man wait, mia cara ,’ he murmured approvingly.

  She swallowed, wishing that the huge room didn’t suddenly feel as though it had telescoped into matchbox proportions. ‘I’m not playing games with you, Raffaele.’

  ‘Well, you should,’ he reprimanded softly. ‘Games are good, because men like to believe they are being played with.’

  ‘D-did you have your meeting with the Sheikh?’

  ‘I did.’

  Edgily, her fingers pleated at the soft silk which covered her thigh. ‘What was it about?’

  ‘You want to hear the details about the new conference centre which is being built in Zahid’s country?’

  ‘No. Not really.’ Natasha turned away from the mocking distraction of his ebony eyes. ‘What time’s dinner?’ she asked, a note of slight desperation in her voice.

  ‘Not until seven.’

  ‘Oh!’ Another hour to kill. Sixty long minutes in such gloriously tempting confinement with him. How the hell was she going to get through it?

  ‘ Natasha ?’

  His deep voice broke into her thoughts.

  ‘ Natasha , look at me.’

  Reluctantly, she turned back and did as he asked, afraid of what she would read in his face—

  what kind of new temptation she would find there. ‘What?’ she whispered.

  ‘You look very beautiful tonight, in your robe of silk and with your hair like coils of satin. Do you know that?’

  She wanted to tell him not to play games. Not to seduce her with his honeyed words and that look of approbation which seemed to wash sweetly over her skin. Not to tell her she was beautiful when she knew deep down that she was plain and ordinary Natasha Phillips , who just happened to have had a lot of money and care thrown her way.

  But the oddest thing of all was that he made her feel beautiful. As if it wasn’t a game at all.

  As if the words he spoke were true. As if he were saying them to someone for the very first time.

  And how crazy was that?

  With his long list of lovers, Raffaele must have told a woman she was beautiful almost as often as he’d made yet another major takeover!

  Snapping herself out of the spell he seemed to have woven around her, Natasha forced a smile. ‘Do you happen to know your way around this vast place?’ she asked.

  ‘No.’ A spark of interest flared from the black eyes. ‘But I have a pretty good sense of direction.’

  ‘Shall we have a guided tour of the riad before dinner, then?’ she questioned guilelessly.

  Reluctantly, he applauded her manipulation, acknowledging that the air had been becoming fraught with tension and knowing that it might have built up to such an extent that there would have been no alternative but to kiss her.

  But you are planning to kiss her, anyway. ‘What a wonderful idea,’ he said softly, his eyes a dark gleam. ‘Let’s go.’

  She followed him downstairs to the cool, central courtyard she’d seen briefly when they’d arrived and which dominated the ground floor. It was almost as if they were walking on a cool carpet of different kinds of marble—in colours ranging from palest cream to a rich sand and every shade in between.

  Tall candles were being blown gently by the lightest of breezes, and by now a soft dusk had begun to fall. The warm air was scented with some heady fragrance which Natasha didn’t recognise, and her senses felt as if they were slowly coming to life.

  The courtyard led onto a large swimming pool, its turquoise waters illuminated from within, and Natasha gasped.

  ‘Oh, but that’s beautiful!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘You can swim?’ Raffaele asked.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘We could steal down here later, when the house is asleep,’ he suggested, and saw the way she bit her lip. ‘You could show me what a nymph you are in the water.’

  Abruptly, Natasha turned and began walking away, her heart thundering, wanting to tell him not to make suggestions like that, but afraid that he would hear the longing in her voice if she attempted to carry through such a blatant lie.

  His footfall was soft, but he was following her, and she barely knew where she was going other than around a maze of corridors—some light, some dark—as if she was taking part in some bizarre game of hide and seek. Or as if he was the hunter and she the quarry. A quarry that had no desire to escape.

  Raffaele knew what she was doing. The language of her body was calling out to him like a siren, but he recognised that she did not want to be seen to be complicit in her own desires.

  She wanted him to take her, as women had longed to be taken since the beginning of time.

  He felt his mouth dry as he quickened his pace and watched hers slow. So easy to reach her.

  So ridiculously easy. He reached for her, capturing her waist with his hands, and turned her around, seeing the way her eyes darkened and her lips parted as she gazed up at him.

  ‘ Natasha ,’ he ground out, in a voice which was harsh with desire.

  Thoughts flew into her mind. That she could stop him. That she should stop him. That this was leading absolutely nowhere other than to certain heartbreak. But wasn’t this a dream which Natasha had cherished and nurtured, despite trying not to? Like a tiny seed which someone had planted in a dark cupboard she hadn’t been able to help herself from feeding it, occasionally allowing light in on it, so that it had just grown and grown.

  ‘Raffaele,’ she said unsteadily, and just the saying of his name was like granting herself a forbidden luxury. Like the turning of a key in a door which had always been locked.

  And suddenly his lips were on hers, and Natasha was letting him kiss her, not fighting him—

  not in any way. She had wanted this for much too long to deny it any longer. Moaning at the first sweet taste of his mouth, she felt the hot chase of her breathing and the eager surrender of her body as he pulled her into a darkened alcove.

  Chapter 10

  His lips were hot and hungry, his body hard.

  ‘Raffaele!’ Natasha moaned against his mouth, gripping at his broad shoulders for fear that she should sway and fall.

  ‘You want this,’ he said unsteadily, not asking but stating.

  Some last vestige of sanity swam into her mind. ‘The servants—’

  ‘There are no servants, cara ,’ he ground out. ‘In a place like this they are taught to look the other way.’

  Natasha stiffened. Was that how he saw her, back in London ? Cooking breakfast for the women who had shared his bed and then slipping into the shadows when her presence was no longer required?

  The sentiment unsettled her—but not enough to stop her. Not enough to make her hold back from reaching up to grip those muscular broad shoulders, or from sighing out her pleasure as he pulled her closer.

  It was as if she had been made to be held by him. To be wrapped in his arms with his heart beating against her breast. She closed her eyes as he slid his palms proprietorially over each of her silk-covered buttocks, letting her feel the hard cradle of his desire.

  ‘Raffaele,’ she breathed shakily.

  ‘Our bodies match, si?’ he murmured. �
�They fit together perfectly.’

  ‘Like a jigsaw,’ she whispered, barely realising that she had said it aloud until she heard his low laugh of pleasure.

  ‘But a jigsaw with one vital piece missing, I think.’

  His voice sounded suddenly different. Deepened with desire and a sense of purpose. But Natasha had no time to be nervous, because now one hard, muscular thigh was parting hers—

  though it only seemed to increase the terrible growing ache within her rather than relieving it.

  ‘You like that?’ he questioned, as his mouth whispered over the base of her throat.

  She swallowed. ‘Yes!’

  Raffaele reached round to take one soft breast in his hand, his thumb beginning to tease the hard thrust of her nipple as it peaked through the light material of the dress, and he felt the shudder of pleasure which rippled through her body. ‘This, too?’

  She closed her eyes. ‘Yes!’ She knew where this was heading, where she wanted it to go.

  Something in Raffaele’s touch incited her as well as excited her—and she was suddenly filled with the urgent desire to touch him back. To dare to feel him as he was feeling her. She drifted her hands down, over his chest, over the taut board of his torso. He groaned his approval.

  ‘Ancora di piu. More!’ he translated huskily, and then groaned again as he felt her fingers tiptoe farther down, seeming to hesitate before cupping him, as if testing the weight there, as if she were intimately assessing his body. And it was a situation so bizarre that Natasha should be doing this—should be touching him in such a way which was making him harder than he could ever remember being before—that he very nearly exploded there and then, in that dark and scented alcove.

  He bent his mouth to her ear, to the perfumed bright hair. Where had his little mouse gone now? ‘Take off your panties,’ he murmured.

  Distractedly, she shook her head.

  ‘No?’

  ‘It’s…’

  ‘It’s, what?’ he prompted on a throaty murmur.

  ‘It’s wrong…We…we…shouldn’t.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we?’

  ‘N-no!’