A Touch of Notoriety(43)

Beth’s face was fiery hot as she found herself unable to look away from the fierceness of Raphael’s gaze, so aroused just listening to him describe making love to her she could barely breathe; her nipples felt full and aching, between her thighs moist as her channel became swollen in anticipation of that sweet penetration, that hard little nubbin already an aching throb.

‘And afterwards I want to taste you there,’ Raphael continued softly. ‘Take my time kissing slowly down your body, until I can place my lips and tongue on you—’

‘Perhaps we should go now?’ Beth had heard enough, was already so aroused by the things Raphael was saying to her that she was in danger of reaching that climax just sitting here listening to him describe all the wonderful things he was going to do to her.

‘And then I want to thrust my tongue inside you, again and again, squeezing your breasts and plucking your nipples as I make you come that way the second time—’

‘Raphael...!’ She was so wet and aching now she shifted uncomfortably on the seat as her trousers felt too tight and restrictive.

‘The third time I want to—’

‘The third time?’ She gasped weakly, her eyes wide, her cheeks flushed, and her skin feeling damp, just from listening to the sensuous and mesmerising rumble of Raphael’s voice as it moved over her like a caress.

He nodded. ‘A woman may have as many orgasms as the man is experienced enough to give her.’

‘And you’re very experienced?’

His mouth quirked self-derisively. ‘Oh, yes.’

‘And the man?’ she challenged.

‘Me?’ He shrugged those impossibly broad shoulders. ‘After the first two times—the first will be fast and hard, because I have wanted you for too long for it to be any other way, and the second slow and intense, because I want to explore every single part of your body before I allow myself the pleasure of plunging between your thighs a second time—it will be for you to decide how many more times, and in what ways, you will make me hard and hot for you.’

It was as if Beth had opened a door, pressed a switch somewhere deep inside Raphael, releasing a man who was dark and primal. A man who it seemed had held back in their lovemaking so far—out of a desire not to shock or alarm her?—but was making it clear he no longer intended doing so. His next comment confirmed that was his intention.

‘Think carefully, Beth,’ he warned gruffly. ‘Be absolutely sure, before we go up those stairs together, that you want all that I want, because I doubt, once we are alone and both naked, that I will be able to stop from indulging in every erotic fantasy I have ever had about you. And there have been many,’ he acknowledged wryly.

Beth wasn’t sure that she knew, let alone was familiar with, all of the things promised in the hard sensuality of Raphael’s glittering blue gaze. But she shivered with the anticipation of wanting to know. Oh, yes, here and now, with this man, she wanted that—wanted Raphael!—so very much...

She stroked her tongue across the dryness of her lips, drawing her breath in sharply as Raphael’s eyes took on an almost feral fierceness as his heated gaze followed that sweeping caress. ‘I told you, Raphael, I want you, all of you, in whatever way you want me.’ And if that included lovemaking as she had never imagined it, let alone come close to experiencing, in the one or two forays she had made into the physical side of a relationship during her years at university, then so be it.

‘And I need to know it is not something you will regret in the morning!’ he rasped harshly.

Beth winced. ‘Can’t we let the morning take care of itself?’

A nerve pulsed in his clenched jaw. ‘No.’

She frowned, not sure what Raphael wanted from her—and knowing that most men of her acquaintance would take what she was offering, and to hell with the why she was offering!

But not Raphael...

Was she in love with him? Was that the real reason she wanted to spend her last night as Beth Blake in Raphael’s arms?

She did know that Raphael affected her like no other man she had ever met, that he had done so since the moment she first looked at him, arousing her interest, her own sexual fantasies, at the same time as he annoyed her.

But Raphael was a physically experienced man in his thirties, not a boy as green as Beth was, and whatever he asked of her during the night ahead she knew she would gladly give. She didn’t want to give herself—or Raphael!—the time to work out why that was. ‘Could we not analyse the spontaneity out of this, Raphael?’ she answered him impatiently.