Mediterranean Mavericks

Well, she thought grimly as she viewed the thick licks of mascara that lengthened her eyelashes and made her eyes look bluer than they really were, everyone just loved to tell her that she had the potential to look almost as good as Elise if she’d only take time with her appearance. Now it seemed they’d achieved their dearest wish, only—

She was not and had never wanted to be Elise, had she? And that person she could see in the mirror was just someone pretending to be something she was not.

The fraud, in other words—the fake.

The pink lipstick had all gone by now, she saw, but her lips still looked fuller than she was used to seeing them. Fuller and sexier because of too many hot kisses shared with a complete stranger.

A stranger who was in for a big shock when he eventually got to meet the real Rachel Carmichael.

Releasing a sigh, she turned away from the mirror and went back into the bedroom to search for that other item that had gone missing—her bag with her cellphone inside it.

It wasn’t in the bedroom so she let herself into the hallway, then walked down it and into the living room. The dress did not feel so indecently short now that her ankles were no longer elevated by four-inch heels, she noticed as she walked.

She heard the bag before she found it because her phone was already ringing. It had to be Mark—who else? she mocked grimly as she followed the sound and found the bag lying on the floor by the sofa she’d last sat down upon.

Her half-finished glass of vodka stood alongside it. As she bent to get her bag there was a moment when she considered picking up the glass first and downing what was left in true Dutch courage style before she told Mark what had happened.

In the end she didn’t need to tell him. Pushing her hair behind her ear, she put the phone to it.

‘Rachel, what the hell are you doing in Raffaelle Villani’s apartment?’ Mark’s voice all but pounced.

‘How did you find out where I am—?’ she asked.

‘Because it’s all over the bloody Internet!’

A sound from behind her made her turn to find Raffaelle Villani propping up the living room doorway. His shirt sleeves were rolled up now, revealing tanned muscular forearms sprinkled with just enough dark hair to make her wonder where else on his body it might be.

Her stomach muscles quivered. Her mouth went dry. Fluttering down her eyelashes, ‘It’s nothing for you to panic about,’ she said huskily into the phone. ‘I—I’ve been explaining the—situation to R-Raffaelle.’ The name fell uneasily from her lips and she caught the way one of his eyebrows arched in mocking note of that. ‘He—he’s being very understanding about it as—as I told you and Elise he would be once he’d heard all the facts.’

There was a short silence. ‘I’m coming to get you.’

‘No—!’ Rachel pushed out. ‘It—it’s better that you stay away from here.’

‘Because I’m the press? Because between the two of you—you’ve come up with this crazy engagement announcement that is flying round Europe as we speak?’

That far, that quickly—? Rachel swallowed.

‘I’m your brother first, Rachel,’ Mark was saying angrily. ‘And if that bastard is—’

‘Well, it’s just a bit too late to remember that, Mark!’ she cut in. ‘After the way you left me standing tonight, I wish I didn’t have a brother!’

‘I thought you were right behind me until I reached my car.’ He had the grace to sound uncomfortable. ‘When I did think to look back, the rest of my cronies were piling out of the hotel and I couldn’t see you anywhere, so I assumed you’d disappeared in the other direction.’

‘And, happy with that very stupid idea, you just went home without me to post your scoop.’ Wasn’t that just typically Mark?

‘I had a deadline,’ he grunted.

I had a life, Rachel thought angrily. ‘Well, it’s too late to come at me with the brotherly concern now.’

‘Yeah, you’re right.’ He sighed. ‘Sorry, Rachel. So he’s okay with all of this, then?’

Straight from apology back to business, Rachel noticed. ‘Yes,’ she said.

He sucked in a breath. ‘So when are you coming back here?’

‘Coming back?’ She looked at Raffaelle Villani. He was standing there, waiting to hear her answer as much as Mark was.

And she knew suddenly that she was going nowhere. She owed it to this man to play the game the way he had decided it would be played.

‘I’m not coming back,’ she said to Mark, but it was this other man’s wry tilt of his dark head that held her attention. ‘We—we’re still talking through our options,’ she added. ‘So I’m staying here f-for now.’

‘Just talking?’ Mark asked silkily.

She couldn’t answer, not straight away anyway, because there was something about the way Raffaelle was looking at her now that—

‘Yes,’ she said.

But the gap had been too long for her streetwise, cynical half-brother. She heard him let out a long breath of air. ‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ he said grimly. ‘He isn’t the kind of man you want to become mixed up with.’

Great advice, she thought, after the event. ‘I’ll call you—tomorrow,’ was all she said.

‘I had better go and ring Elise to tell her she can stop worrying.’

And that was Mark, Rachel noted bleakly, back to prioritizing in his usual way—his twin always being a bigger priority for him than she ever could be.

‘Okay,’ she murmured. ‘Tell her I—’

‘Great,’ he cut in. ‘Got to go now, Rachel. I need to change my copy before it goes to print. Do you have any idea how much you’ve messed me about by making that announcement tonight?’

The phone went dead. Rachel stared at it. And, for the first time since this whole wretched evening began, she felt the thick push of weak tears hit her eyes and her throat.

Raffaelle watched as she continued to stand there with the cellphone in her hand. She’d gone pale again and if her body language was speaking to him then it was telling him that she had just been tossed aside like a used bloody pawn.

Anger pumped at his chest. He wanted to kick something—her twin siblings, for instance.

‘What did you expect?’ he demanded brusquely. ‘A full rescue, complete with armour and swords? You are not the main player on this chessboard, cara—Elise is.’

‘I know that,’ she whispered and sank down on to the sofa.

He breathed out a sigh. ‘At least her unborn child will get to know its rightful father.’

He’d meant that to sound comforting but it had come out sounding harsh. She winced, pressing her lips together and dipping her head. Her hair slid forward, revealing the vulnerable curve of her slender white nape.

Raffaelle brought his teeth together, his tongue sitting behind them and tingling with a mixed-up desire to taste what he could see and the knowledge that it was at real risk of being bitten off if he did not take more care about what he said.

With a reluctance to let his mood soften, he pushed himself away from the door and walked towards her. She heard him coming and stiffened her spine. When he leant down with the intention of picking up her glass to offer it to her, she actually shuddered.

‘Please don’t start dragging me around again,’ she choked out.

Was that what he had been doing—?

Yes, that was what he had been doing, Raffaelle realised, and straightened up with a jerk. ‘I’m—sorry,’ he said.

‘Everyone is sorry.’ She laughed tensely. ‘Doesn’t help much though, does it?’

He couldn’t argue with that so he threw himself down on the sofa beside her and released another sigh. ‘Beginning to feel more like the real victim now, cara?’ He could not seem to stop the taunts from coming. ‘It is a strange feeling, don’t you think—being kind of frustratingly helpless? If we then start to wonder how our present lovers are going to feel when the news hits the stands, the sense of frustration really begins to bite.’

‘You have a lover?’ Her chin shot up, her slender neck twisting to show him blue eyes stark with horror and the glittering evidence of held-in tears. His inner senses shifted, stirring awake from what had only been a very light slumber anyway.

‘Do you?’ he fed back.

‘Of course not!’ she snapped. ‘Do you really think I would have got involved in any of this if I had a lover who could be embarrassed by it?’

‘Whereas I was not allowed to make that choice,’ he pointed out. ‘So stop feeling sorry for yourself,’ he finished coolly. ‘You are still less the victim here than I am, so—’

‘And you are just so loving being able to keep saying that to me!’ Rachel got to her feet, restless, tense without knowing why.

Then she did know and she turned on him. ‘So who is she—?’ she speared at him as if she had the right to ask such a question.

Which she didn’t, as the mocking glint in his eyes told her.

But it did not stop her stupid brain from conjuring up some other leggy blonde creature with a very expensive pedigree draping herself over him while he lounged in much the same way he was now—all long limbs and tight muscles and rampant sex appeal waiting to be adored because it was his due.

She took in a short breath, despising the heat of jealousy she could feel burning in her chest, as if a few angry kisses and a sham announcement had given her exclusive rights of possession over him!

It did not, but nor did it stop her crazy imagination from imprinting her own image of him. Her heart began pounding out a suffocating rhythm. This time she couldn’t even look away! And to make it so much worse, having been crushed against him more times than was decent, she could even smell his sexy scent in her nostrils, feel the warmth of his mouth and the possessive touch of his hands on her—

‘There is no one—fortunately…’

His deep voice slunk into her brain but she had to blink to make herself hear the words he’d spoken—then blink again to make herself understand what they meant.

He meant that there was no other lover in his life right now. Her mouth fell dry and her legs went hollow.

‘I was just curious as to whether you had a man hanging about in the wings of this charade, ready to jump out and cause me more trouble.’

‘Well, there isn’t,’ she confirmed and spun away, hating to hear him make that sardonic denunciation of her character because she knew he had every right to suspect her of every underhand trick there was going.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘So I can sit here and enjoy looking at my newly betrothed’s fabulous legs without worrying if I am encroaching on someone else’s territory.’

The aforementioned legs tingled. She moved tensely. ‘We are not betrothed—’

‘And the way the neat shape of her derrière is teasing me as it moves inside that tight little dress…’

Rachel swung round. ‘Is this your idea of having fun, just to get your own back on me?’

‘With compliments?’ he quizzed innocently.

‘Those are not compliments!’

‘You don’t like me to tell you that I like what I see—?’

‘No—!’ she lashed out.

‘But it’s okay for you to look me over as if you cannot believe your good fortune, is it?’

Rachel froze as a guilty blush ran right up her body and into her face. ‘I w-was not—’

‘Are your breasts your own?’ he cut in on her insolently.

Her mouth dropped open in complete disbelief that he had actually voiced that question. ‘How dare you ask me that?’ she seethed.

‘Easily,’ he replied cynically. ‘They look real, but who can tell by just looking these days—’

‘They are real!’ she choked out. ‘And I’ve had enough of this—’

‘No, you haven’t.’

With only that small hint that something was coming, he sat forward and snaked an arm around her waist, then tumbled her down on to his lap.

Her cry of alarm doubled as a shimmering gasp when she found herself contained inside all of that long-limbed, hard-muscled strength.

‘W-what do you think you’re doing?’ Her clenched fists pushed at his shoulders.

The gleam in his eyes mocked her. ‘The way you keep looking at me, count yourself lucky that I lasted as long as I did.’

Oh, God, she’d been that obvious? ‘You said y-you wouldn’t do this—!’

‘You are no longer helpless.’

He caught hold of her chin and pushed it upwards, his eyes hiding beneath half-lowered eyelashes as he waited for her lips to part with her next cry of protest—then he pounced, dipping his dark head to match the full pink quivering shape of her mouth with his.

So they’d kissed in anger. They’d kissed in a terrifying state of untrammelled lust. They’d kissed to shock and to subdue. But this—this was different. This contained so much hungry, frustrated, heated desire that it stirred her up more turbulently than any kiss she’d experienced in her entire life.

He explored her mouth so deeply that the feeling of being taken over completely drained her of the will to fight. Her clenched fists stopped pushing and opened to begin stroking in tight, tense, restless movements that only stopped when she found the warmly scented skin at his nape.

One of his arms held her clamped against him, the other stroked the length of her silk-covered thigh. Her dress had rucked up and the higher his hand glided the more she had to brace her inner thighs to try to contain what was happening there. And her breasts were tight, the nipples two stinging pinpricks pressing against the solid wall of his chest through his shirt.

Her fingers became restless again, one set moving to his satin cheekbone, then down in a delicate tremor to the corners of their straining mouths. He muttered something as he caught hold of her fingers and fed them down between them, until she was covering the hard ridge of aroused flesh pushing at his trousers. Frenzy arrived, a hot feverish frenzy of mutual desire that had been bubbling beneath the surface ever since their first kiss. Now it quickly spiralled out of control.

He caught hold of her hair and pulled her head back, his mouth deserting hers to wreak a trail of hot kisses down the arching stretch of her throat.

She was writhing with excitement, her skin alive to every brush of his lips and flickering lick of his tongue. A simple tug and the strap holding up her dress slipped off her shoulder. As clear air hit the thrust of her breast his mouth was continuing its delicious torment across its swollen quivering slope until he claimed the nipple with a luxurious suck.

An explosion of pleasure swept down from her nipple to low in her body, making her shudder, making her scythe out hot breaths as she clung to him.

Then his mouth came back to hers again and his tongue stung deep. Her deserted nipple was pulsating in protest at the loss of his exquisite suckling. She groaned into his mouth. He responded by lifting her up and bringing her back down straddling him without breaking the deep hot-mouthed kiss. She felt the thickness of his erection and couldn’t stop herself from pressing into it. He encouraged her by clasping the tight mounds of her behind, now fully exposed because her dress was bunched to her waist. Flaming heat ignited between her thighs and she rocked her lower body, her fingers clutching at his silk-black hair.

When he stood up with her she didn’t bother to protest. She knew what he was doing and where he was taking her. How he made it there without staggering she didn’t know because his breathing was shot and his mouth had still not given up possession of hers.

The bed felt soft beneath her as he laid her down on it and she clung to his neck in case he decided to straighten and leave her, but he did no such thing.

Her dress was shimmied down her body. He stripped it from her legs with the deftness of a man who knew the easiest way to undress a woman without interrupting what was already happening with their mouths. There was no bra to remove—this dress was not the kind that permitted the wearing of one—and her stockings held themselves up, which left only her panties as a flimsy barrier to her complete nudity, but they stayed in place because he was now busy with his shirt.

She wanted to help; it was a feverish need that sent her fingers frantic as they tugged at shirt buttons, while his slipped lower to deal with his trouser-clasp and zip…

An impatient rustle of clothing, the fevered hiss of their breath, the heated scents from their bodies and the urgent touch of their fingers on newly exposed eager flesh…

And that deep drugging kiss just did not stop throughout all of it, not as she explored his muscle-packed contours or throughout each quivering gasp she made of pleasure when he explored her softer rounded flesh.

The impatient tug he gave at his shoes to remove them coincided with the reckless way that she dragged off his shirt.

Hot, taut satin skin adorned her hungry fingers once again, coated with a layer of male body hair. She scraped through it with her fingernails and felt him shudder with pleasure, her skin livening with excitement when she finally felt the full power of his naked length come to settle alongside her own. He was big and hot and amazingly, beautifully, magnificently built. Greedy for more, she rolled tight in against him and he accommodated her with a shift of his body that brought her into full contact with every part of his front.

The pouting buds of her breasts rubbed against the rough hair on his chest and she couldn’t breathe for the tingling, stinging pleasure of it, yet she was panting, could barely cope with the thrills of excitement that went racing through her as he ran his hands down her spine and over her bottom and thighs to locate her stocking tops. He sent them sliding away with no effort at all. Her toes curled as the silk finally left them and he closed his fingers over her foot and used it to bend her leg over his hips.

Shock stung her into a quivering mass of pleasure when he captured one of her hands and fed it down to the velvet-smooth thickness of his penis, then urged her to stroke it between her legs.

He was big, a beautiful long-limbed muscular male with proportional length to his sex. She still had on her panties but she did not want them on; she wanted to feel him stroking like this against her with no barrier to dull the sensual ache.

Maybe he read her mind because he rolled on to his back, taking her with him, so she lay over him. Then he lifted her up and pushed her thighs together and ran his fingers into the scrappy fabric of her panties to stroke it away from the firm shape of her behind.

‘Your skin is like silk,’ he breathed against her urgent mouth.

When she caught the words with the flickering tip of her tongue he ran a forefinger into the tightly clenched crevice he’d uncovered and followed it all the way to the hot welcoming wetness between her legs.

He knew exactly what he was doing. Rachel just went wild as the dizzying tumult of thick, warm stimulation coiled around her senses. She moved with him in natural enticement and on a lusty growl he toppled her on to her back, then came to lie across her, their kiss completely broken for the first time.

His eyes were two intense black diamond orbs that he took from the burning desire suffusing her face to look down where his fingers now moved on her, following the path of pale dusky curls into soft female folds between her pearly-white thighs. The damp tip of his tongue appeared between his teeth as his dark head followed. For the next few minutes Rachel existed purely in the drugging eddy of his touch.

She was exquisite. The most receptive woman he had ever experienced. There was a brief moment when he let himself wonder what man had taught her to respond like this. Then, as something too close to jealousy ripped at him, he thrust the question away. His fingers made a slow sensual journey to search out her pleasure spots, allowing his thumb to replace his tongue in rolling possession of her taut little nub. He looked back at her face and watched her sink deeper into helpless response, urged on by his burning need to drive her out of her mind.

Her pale hair lay spread out across his pillow, her parted mouth warm and full and softly gasping, her lips dewy-red against the whiteness of her wonderful skin. Her eyes were closed, her slender arms thrown above her head in complete abandon and the two peaks of her breasts swayed and quivered as she moved her body in a natural sensual rhythm with his caress.

And his heart was thundering against his ribcage, the ache of his own steadily growing need pulsing its demand along his fully aroused length. She wanted to come. He could feel the anxious ripple of her inner muscles bringing her swiftly towards her peak. But thinking about another man making her feel this good made him determined to heighten her pleasure some more.

So he ruthlessly withdrew and, as she whimpered out a protest, he stripped her panties fully away. Without pausing, he then began a long slow, tormenting assault with his hands and his lips and his tongue over every inch of her smooth pale flesh. Dipping his fingers yet again into her hot sweet centre, he closed his mouth round one of her breasts. They were so perfect, two plump pearly-white mounds of womanly softness, with pink super-sensitive tips protruding from their rose-circled peaks. His fingers toyed with one while his tongue toyed with the other. She groaned and arched and gasped and quivered and tried to pay him back with the hungry nip of her teeth. Her hands were everywhere on him now, exploring and stroking, sometimes sending him into paroxysms of shudders when she decided to score her nails into his flesh.

By the time he covered her, she was nothing more than a shimmer of sensation and he took her face between his fingers, then urged, ‘Look at me,’ in a dark husky voice that made her tremble as she lifted her heavy eyelids and showed him dark blue passion-drugged eyes.

He was so very beautiful, she thought hazily. A dark passionate lover with the face of a fallen angel. Rachel held his gaze as he eased himself between her slender thighs and made that first slow silken thrust inside, surprise widening her eyes as she felt his girth and length. She was no virgin, but he was big so maybe experience had taught him caution with a new lover because she could see his fight not to give her all of him gripping the perfect mould of his face.

‘Okay?’ he asked huskily.

She nodded, her tongue making a circle of her lips as she willed her inner muscles to relax. With an erotic slowness that fanned the flames flickering between them, he followed her circling tongue with his own. Her fingers were clutching at the bunched muscles in his shoulders, her breathing reduced to short gasps of air as he pushed deeper still. She could feel the roughness of his thighs pressing along the length of her silkier thighs and the way his lean buttocks clenched as the first sense-shattering ripple of her muscles played along his length.

It was a slow, slow merging like she’d never experienced—a careful all-consuming invasion that sent her mind spinning off somewhere and her senses taking on a singing bright will of their own. She moved restlessly beneath him, wanting all of him—needing all of him—but where her hands clutched his shoulders she could feel their bulging taut muscles were trembling with stress as he held himself back. Impatiently she lifted her hips, closed her eyes, then let her muscles draw him in deep.

Nothing had ever felt like this, Raffaelle thought on a lusty groan as the full pressure of his hips sent her thighs spreading wider apart and she took him into that hot tight tunnel with a gripping greed which sent shots of sensation rippling down his full length.

He claimed her mouth with a devouring kiss and she kissed him back so desperately that he flung caution aside and allowed the powerful flow to take him over. Half expecting protest, he received eager encouragement instead as the tactile muscle play of her pleasure surrounded him in moist muscle-livened heat.

She was amazing, a pearly-white sylph with the moves of a siren. Her arms were wrapped around his shoulders, her fingernails scoring deep into his flesh. He moved with increasingly harder strokes and she moved with him, taking each driving plunge from his flanks with an exquisite contraction which rewarded each exquisite thrust.