PIA DIDN’T SEE Raphael for another two weeks.
He wanted her. But whether he’d have acted on it if he hadn’t been shaken by Gio’s sudden heart attack, if he hadn’t been vulnerable, was a doubt that gnawed at her constantly.
She was more aware of her body now than she had ever been before—aware that anytime she thought of them in that huge bed, her sex became damp and her breasts tingled; aware that anytime she caught even a hint of that aqua-based cologne her skin prickled; aware that when she touched herself when she was showering or when she was finding sleep hard to come by, her body ached for a more purposeful, knowing touch. Ached for him.
He hadn’t forgotten her, that was for sure.
Because for every day she hadn’t seen him, he had sent her flowers, a diamond bracelet by an up-and-coming designer whose pieces had year-long waiting lists, so Gio had informed her. She was determined to return it, but then came a brand-new coffeemaker with endless capsule refills because she’d been complaining that Italian coffee was too strong for her. And then one day, the present that had her heart thumping against her rib cage arrived: a high-end set of carving tools and a particular type of wood that she’d told him she couldn’t source anywhere in the world.
Her heart warmed at the thoughtfulness of his gifts, highlighting the contrast from when it had only been a pretense.
She didn’t want things with Raphael to be over. She wanted more of his kisses and his hot caresses, his warm smile that only she brought out, and just more time with him.
She wanted a relationship with him.
But after the second week of still no Raphael, mild resentment and a gnawing anxiety settled on her. Especially when his mother took it upon herself to visit Pia and slyly let it drop that Raphael was dealing with matters relating to Allegra, who had briefly visited Alyssa two days ago.
More than once, Pia caught a hint of suggestion from Portia as to how hard Raphael had worked to build Vito Automobiles to what it was today. And how much Gio himself owed Raphael.
All she cared about was that he’d been so close and hadn’t dropped by to even say hello.
At least her application to a prestigious online university to get her master’s degree in education had been accepted—a dream of hers for so long. No sooner had she received the email than he had sent her a brand-new laptop, a box of chocolates, a pair of her prescription glasses because she’d told him she kept losing her first pair and misplacing the spare.
When Pia had laughed for two minutes straight, Gio had been utterly puzzled.
So most afternoons, Pia settled down in the veranda with her laptop and lesson plans while her grandfather napped. Afraid of creating even the smallest ripple through Gio’s precarious health, she had abandoned her plans for leaving Italy for now.
So it was fifteen days later that she found Raphael standing in the courtyard with a glass of white wine in his hand.
He cast a tall shadow in the afternoon sun, his broad shoulders tapering into a lean waist and muscular thighs, the very ones that had cradled her. There had been such power, such strength in him and yet he had been so gentle with her. That she knew his body with such intimate knowledge sent a strange thrum of power flowing through her veins.
Not that she had any illusion that he belonged to her.
She doubted Raphael would ever truly belong to any woman. And yet, seeing him stand there, Pia could only feel tenderness for him. As if somehow she could bring a new facet out of this hard man. As if she could give him something he didn’t have or hadn’t known before.
She sighed and trudged up the steep path. His hair, grown overlong, curled over the collar of his shirt. A pang beat through her chest as she noticed the dark shadows he sported under his eyes.
Wineglass raised to his mouth, he froze when he spotted her. That intense stare of his made her pulse flutter, that familiar feeling of excitement and anticipation singing through her veins.
His dark eyes swept over her with such lingering hunger that Pia instantly knew that he felt this thing between them just as strongly as she did.
Sweat had gathered over her forehead and her neck for she’d been walking for almost an hour. Her hair was a nest around her face. She wished she’d worn anything but another pair of old jeans and a collared T-shirt.
Then hated herself for thinking that.
“Hello, Pia.”
Pia walked around him, the clamor of her heart far too much to stand being near him right then, and poured herself a glass of ice-cold water. Only after she took a fortifying sip did she lift her gaze and meet his.
“Hello, Raphael.”
The table stood between them, yet nothing could dilute the awareness singing in the air between them, or his displeasure. His fingers gripped the wine flute so tightly that she was afraid he would break it and hurt himself.
“You didn’t come to the phone when I asked for you.”
She shrugged while her grandfather watched them as if he were at a tennis match. “I just...it wasn’t a good time to talk on the phone,” she said.
“All five times that I asked for you?” His tone rang with disbelief. His gaze lingered on her lips, searching, seeking.
There were a thousand questions in that simple sentence and Pia couldn’t answer all of them in front of Gio, even if she had the answers.
“I’ve been busy. Studying. I enrolled in a wood carving class in the village. Also thank you so much for the new tools and the wood. And the laptop. And my new glasses. I appreciate all the gifts,” she said lamely.
He carefully put his wineglass down and folded his hands behind him. “Do you?”
She hesitated at his combative expression. “Yes.”
“Tell him about the man you met when you went out to the trattoria the other night,” Gio urged. “You’re seeing him again, aren’t you?”
Like a hound scenting prey, Raphael walked past the table toward her. “Who is this man?”
Pia glared at Gio. Really, she didn’t understand Gio sometimes. Of all the hundred things he could’ve mentioned to Raphael her non-date was what he told him? “Just a guy I met at the café.”
“Is he a local? Does everyone at the café know you’re Giovanni’s granddaughter? Why didn’t Emilio tell me?”
“So Emilio is spying for you?”
“Emilio keeps an eye on Gio and now on you too.”
“I’m not answerable to you. You’re going to let him question me like that?” She appealed to Gio when he finally put the phone down.
“Raphael,” her grandfather said in a mock warning.
While she had been taking her stand, he had moved closer. The familiar scent of him—musk and heat—had her knees trembling beneath her. Pia clutched the table when he reached out a hand and brushed her cheek.
His hand pushed at a lock of hair behind her ear, while with the other he cupped her hip and pulled her forward. Her pulse racing, her body turned traitor, dipping toward him as if he were her true north.
“Are you trying to make me jealous, tesoro?”
Staring into his eyes, Pia forgot the entire world. “You’re the one who jumped to conclusions. And I would never do anything so low.”
“You wouldn’t?” He looked at her as if she were the answer to a lot of questions. A thumb traced her jawline, resting at the corner of her mouth. “You still haven’t told me anything about him.”
“Christ, Raphael. He’s a waiter at the café in the village. He saw me with some tools, we started chatting and it turns out carpentry is his hobby. We started talking, found we had a lot in common and when he told me about the class, I enrolled in it. That’s it. I made a friend. Sometimes, we hang out at the café. I didn’t know I was supposed to send you a day-to-day summary of my movements. I didn’t know I wasn’t allowed to make friends. Am I so untrustworthy? Am I answerable to you?”
“No, cara mia. Not answerable, and not untrustworthy, but you’re...”
“Naive and foolish?”
“Innocent.” How she was beginning to hate that word! “I do not care who you make friends with as long as the only man you let hold you like this is me.”
“Raphael, please, can we—”
She never finished the sentence because he pressed his mouth to hers in a soft buss and she was instantly lost. Every slumberous nerve ending leaped to life.
Oh, how could she want him so madly and be so mad at him at the same time?
His lips were so soft and yet hard, so familiar and yet there was something new in his every kiss. She could spend a lifetime in Raphael’s arms just savoring the taste of him, learning what he liked, discovering what she needed. Twining her tongue with his, Pia poured her heart and soul into his kiss.
When he held her like that, when he looked at her with such tender desire in his eyes, desire and love didn’t feel so different. What resonated in her body seemed to calm the clamoring in her soul. When Raphael was near, everything in her lined up.
“Maledizione, but I have missed kissing these soft lips,” he whispered into her mouth, sending arrows of pleasure to scandalous places. “Tell me you missed me, cara mia. Tell me you lie awake like me in the middle of the night wishing for my body, like I did for yours.”
Vining her hands around his neck, she sank into his hard body. Soft groans rumbled from their mouths as, thigh to thigh, their bodies fit perfectly against each other.
Pia had no idea how far she would have gone, if he hadn’t pulled back. It took her a few minutes to realize through the sensual haze that Gio had spoken.
She burned with embarrassment. Yet her grandfather ignored her completely, as if the responsibility of it solely lay at Raphael’s feet. “Gio, it’s only—”
Engaged in some macho one-on-one with Raphael, her grandfather wouldn’t even look at her. “Pia, I would like to speak to Raphael alone.”
She’d never been dismissed like that ever in her life before. “Not if you’re going to discuss me,” she said, frustration bleeding through her words. “Nonno, I know you worry for me and I didn’t make it easy by trusting Frank but I can take care of myself and this is really not anyone’s business but—”
“That cheating man is not my concern, Pia. Knowing what is at stake, knowing my worries and my plans for you, what my godson does with you is. Raphael, this has gone on long enough. Will you do the right thing or shall I—”
“Calm down, Giovanni,” Raphael said softly, a hint of steel in his tone. “The status of our relationship was hardly crucial when you were lying in the hospital bed.”
“And now?” Gio taunted.
Raphael replied in that same cutting voice that sent chills up Pia’s spine. “Leave it to me.”
Pia stared from one man to the other, feeling as if she were standing on ground filled with land mines. A sudden grin transformed Gio again to that loving, but cantankerous old man. Dread pooled in Pia’s belly. “So, you two will be married soon?”
Words came to her lips but Raphael’s grip around her waist tightened.
“As soon as I can manage it, si,” Raphael replied, and Pia went utterly still.
It was as if someone had pulled the rug from under her. As if someone had punched her in the stomach in the dark.
Contrary to what would be expected of an eighty-four-year-old man who had just had two heart attacks in one year, Gio laughed heartily. “This year, Raphael.” His bushy eyebrows scanned Pia’s face. “You’ll be happy with him, piccola.”
Whatever protest Pia was about to make died at the transformation in his face. How could she do anything to ruin the happiness in his face? “Nonno, I’d like to wait until you’re better before we even talk about the plans.”
Gio nodded magnanimously. “I remember how glorious it feels to be young and in love, but remember what happened with Lucia and me.” He pulled Pia into his arms, gave her a kiss on her cheek, his eyes glimmering with tears. “Lucia would approve of who I found to look after you.
“Too much excitemente for an old man, si? I will go rest now.”
* * *
Who I found to look after you...
The words left a chill on Pia’s skin. There was something so very wrong with it but she couldn’t put her finger on it.
The moment Giovanni’s silver head disappeared behind the doors of the house, she jerked away from Raphael.
Just when she was beginning to accept that she wanted a relationship with Raphael, the idea of marrying him, the idea of being his equal, his lover, his wife sent her into a swirl of panic.
“Pia, wait.”
“No, Raphael. I need to—”
She tried to slip away, but he captured her wrist and tugged her closer. Her legs tangled with his, her chest rasping against his. The man had the most beautiful black eyes. And when they focused on her like that, she was afraid she would melt from within. That she wouldn’t be able to refuse whatever he commanded of her in that arrogant tone.
“Let me explain, cara mia. You will—”
Chest rising and falling, Pia faced him. “Don’t call me that.”
His fingers crawled to her bare arm, the length of them wrapping around it. “I will call you whatever the hell I please.”
There was a possessive intensity to his words that shivered over her skin. He wasn’t mocking her now and something clearly had upset him too. Not that he would ever admit to it. “But I’m not yours to call whatever the hell you please,” she countered softly, staring into his eyes.
They flared infinitesimally, and Pia felt a surge of satisfaction amidst the panic. Did he really think she had no spine? “I didn’t protest in front of Gio because I didn’t want to upset him. Because I tried to understand that he called your honor into question. Clearly there’s something going on between you two.”
Inscrutability again. What were Gio and Raphael planning that she wasn’t supposed to know? She hoped it wasn’t another protective measure. “I’ve never seen you so upset before.”
She fisted and unfisted her hands. “I hate lies. I hate deception of any kind and it is my grandfather we’re deceiving.”
“It’s only deception if it’s not true.”
She flinched and stopped her frantic pacing. But he wasn’t joking. Dear God, he looked absolutely serious! “I’ve not agreed to marry you. And I don’t remember you asking me. So of course it isn’t true, and ergo it is deception.”
“If the lack of a proper proposal upsets you...?”
A hysterical laugh fell from her mouth while he stared at her with an inscrutable expression. “Stop saying I’m upset. I’m not upset. I’m just stating for the record that we don’t even have a relationship.”
“No?” His fingers clasped her bare arm and her breath fell out of rhythm instantly. “So you go around sleeping with men for the fun of it?”
“There’s nothing wrong with sleeping with a man for the fun of it. Sex should be fun and positive and tender and breath-stealing, shouldn’t it?”
A wicked gleam danced in his eyes. “I am pleased to have left you with such good impressions, bella. I agree that sex should be fun and positive and should be had whenever one wants to.” Heat arced between them, his fingers crawling into her nape. A sultry invitation glimmered in his eyes.
On a soft whimper, Pia closed her eyes. Images of their long, sweaty limbs tangled in gray sheets, the sinuous whispers of their skin sliding over each other, Raphael moving inside her like music—the sensations inundated her.
“But we’re not discussing the sexual mores of twenty-first-century women, are we? We’re discussing you, Pia. I know that what happened the other night is not a small thing for you.”
“No. But one night’s incredible sex is not the basis for marriage either. You could have told Nonno that we’re just...we’re just...”
“Whether now or in a few months’ time, we have to face this question, Pia.”
“Maybe so. But you said you didn’t want a relationship with a woman, much less to marry one.”
“You think I took you to bed, took your virginity, without being prepared for the consequences? Do you honestly think we could have a red-hot affair under Gio’s nose, and then go our separate ways? Turn the clock back to become polite acquaintances who have already shared lovers’ intimacies? Will you be perfectly all right when you see me with a new woman?”
“Yes.” She called his bluff while her heart thudded. “I’ll be fine. We should stop now. Before all those scenarios could become true. Before one of us gets hurt.”
Jaw clenched tight, he stood in front of her. “Is that right, bella mia? You have zero interest if I take another woman to my bed? If I push inside of her wet heat like I did with you, if I send her into ecstasy with my body and my fingers like I did you? If I—”
Pia cupped her hand over his mouth, unable to hear anymore. “I don’t know how one night of sex has transformed into this. We don’t suit each other. I’m not beautiful or sophisticated or any of the things that your other...your usual women are.
“And you...”
“And I what, Pia? Tell me how I do not suit you.”
“You don’t believe in love.”
“You thought you were in love with Frank.”
“You’ll never let me forget that mistake, will you? You think I’m a foolish idiot. Why would you even want me as a wife?”
“I do think you’re naive. But it is what attracts me to you. You’re unlike any woman I’ve ever known. You’re honest and open. You don’t care about external trappings. Just as you know you can trust me, I know I can trust you with myself and even with Alyssa. We burn when we come together and if you put love aside, you and I want the same things out of marriage.”
“Like what?”
“Fidelity, respect and lots of babies.”
“You truly want more children?”
“Yes. Especially if they’ll be nearsighted and smart and beautiful like you are.”
“I have to think about it. I need more time. I need...”
“Si?”
“I want to spend time with you.”
“I’m more than happy to do that.”
She blinked. “You are?”
“Si, Pia. Usually when a man is attracted to a woman, and he wants to do all sorts of deliciously wicked things to her, and is determined to persuade her to walk down the aisle to him, he wants to spend time with her. He wants to be the one who brings her favorite things, he wants to be the one who makes her cry out with pleasure, he wants to be the one who gives her babies...”
Pia threw herself at Raphael, glad that they were finally on the same page. “Although I don’t think we should sleep with each other again too soon.”
He looked thunderous. “What kind of a condition is that?”
“I go into this dreamy state where I can’t think logically when we make love. I...what I’m saying is...you have too much power in this relationship if we have sex.”
A hard, harsh laugh fell from his mouth. “You think you don’t have any?”
A vein pounded in his temple as she pulled him toward her. Joy blooming in her chest, she wrapped her arms around his waist, ran her hands over his muscled back and down. How she loved the way he felt in her hands. When she slipped her hands lower to his buttocks and tugged, his arousal grazed her belly. “Do you think I do?”
Jaw tight, heat scouring those sharp cheekbones, he raised a brow.
“See, I didn’t even know I had it.” When he’d have slammed her body into his to cradle his arousal, Pia pushed back at his shoulders. “No, let me touch you as I please.”
“You’re playing a dangerous game, cara mia. It’s been two weeks and I know if I touch you, you’ll be wet for me.”
Pia blushed, the dampness between her thighs confirming his arrogant confidence. “Yes, well, we already agreed that you can melt me like an ice cream on a summer day with one look, si?” She ran her hands up his back and sank them under his collar.
She petted him as if he were her very own wild animal. He growled when she rubbed herself against him. On purpose. Heat blazed in his eyes.
She was playing a dangerous game, and yet she’d never felt more alive. “Stay still for me, won’t you, Raphael?”
His explicit Italian—about what he’d like to do to her instead—sent heat pooling in her lower belly.
Sinking her fingers into his hair, Pia kissed the corner of his mouth. The scratch of his stubble against her lips was heavenly as she peppered that arrogant jaw with soft kisses. “I don’t even know what I like and don’t like yet.”
“Let me participate and I’ll give you the different options, bella. You love experiments, don’t you?”
Laughter bubbled up her throat even as she nibbled on his lips as if he were her favorite treat. He tasted of wine and masculinity and seduction and it went straight to her head. And her buckling knees.
When she traced that lower lip of his that drove her wild, he sucked the tip into his mouth and released it with a pop. A whimper escaped her mouth, her nipples suddenly sensitive against her bra. On the next breath, his fingers crawled into her hair, held her tight, and he took over the kiss. Hard and demanding, he plunged his tongue into her mouth. Rising to her toes, angling her mouth, Pia gave back as good as she got.
Their teeth banged. Their lips nipped and bit.
His thigh lodged between hers, hard muscle rubbing against the apex of her sex. Just where she desperately needed it. “Dannazione, Pia.” His forehead leaned against hers, his warm breath feathering over her face. “Come to bed, cara mia. I will happily show you how much power you have over me. We could spend all day in bed and by nighttime, you would know whether you like me above you, or under you or behind you.
I will show you how to use that sweet, deceiving mouth to drive me to the edge. I will show you what I can do to you here—” he emphasized by rubbing at the spot that ached for his attention “—that will...”
A rush of wetness filling her sex, Pia drew a sharp breath. And stumbled away from Raphael. The man could seduce her just with words.
And like her, he was breathing hard. His pupils dilated, his nostrils flaring, as if he had just engaged in a physical fight. The front of his trousers was tented and when her gaze lingered there, his growl was feral.
Raphael undone—or at least close to—was the most glorious sight she’d ever seen.
Swallowing away the longing burning through every inch of her, she slowly wiped the moisture from her lips with the back of her hand. “I know you want to spend the day with Alyssa and I have to study. But I’ve been dying to see one of the cars you’ve restored,” she added. Proving to herself that she could affect him just as much as he did her was a small victory. But having won the battle, she wasn’t really interested in the war.
A vein pulsing in his jaw, he stared at her for so long that Pia wondered if she had pushed him too far. “Friday evening.”
When he passed by her without touching her again, her heart sank.
“And Pia?”
“Si, Raphael?”
“You will be my wife, and I know how to exact retribution.”