Modern Romance November 2015 Books 5-8. Кейт Хьюит

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СКАЧАТЬ STEPPED AWAY from him, and Rafael found he hardly breathed as she stood there for a moment, as if she hadn’t quite made up her mind. Not quite yet. She shifted her weight again and he heard the faint rustle of her skirt like a shout before she twisted around to look over her shoulder at him.

      Her eyes were so blue. Like that fathomless California sky. He’d thought he’d never see them again, that marvelous color. He’d had to content himself with memory. He’d had to settle for lesser blues, minor marvels.

      He wasn’t going to settle again.

      Rafael had a thousand things he wanted to say to her, but none of that mattered when what they boiled down to was the same thing: she was his. No matter the distance, the years. The hurts lodged and the lies told. What she thought of him, them, the past, the future they’d have to work out now that there was Arlo to consider. That was all noise.

      Lily was the sweet, deep quiet at the center of all of that.

       She was his.

      He saw her breathe in, then let it out. He saw her decision flash in her gorgeous eyes, a resolve that lifted her chin again and made every part of him clench tight in anticipation and a spark of something much too close to fear—

      She turned away from him again and took another step, then bent herself forward, gripping the back of the settee the way he’d told her to do.

      Lust and need and a deep kick of pure triumph punched into him then. So hard it hollowed him out. He wanted her so badly in that moment that if he touched her, he imagined he’d simply implode. And that wouldn’t do at all.

      So instead, he made her wait.

      He went back over to the bar and poured himself another drink. He took his time with it, watching her intently.

      “Do not move,” he ordered her, more silk than reprimand, when he saw her shift as if she meant to straighten. “It is your turn to wait, Lily. I waited for five years with no hope that you would ever return. You’ve waited five seconds so far and you know exactly where I am. You can suffer the unknown a little while longer, don’t you think?”

      “I didn’t know you were into torture,” she retorted, and he could see her defiance in the way she braced herself against the ornate little settee, too fussy to be a couch. The way she tilted her head to one side, sending all that heavy, slippery strawberry blond hair of hers cascading over one shoulder. “Is that a new hobby?”

      “You have no idea,” he murmured.

      “You could simply kiss me like a normal person,” she pointed out, almost chattily, as if she wasn’t standing there in a remarkably provocative position, awaiting his pleasure. “Or is that too pedestrian for a Castelli heir in a Venetian palazzo?”

      “Ogni volta che ti bacio dimentico dove sono.” Every time I kiss you I forget where I am. He hadn’t meant to say that.

      But the truth was, he didn’t simply want this woman. He admired her. He craved her sharp tongue as much as he wanted to feel the wet heat of it against his skin. He had never managed to reconcile himself to the loss of her. He had been made a different man entirely by her loss—and he didn’t know, now, how to pull those different pieces of himself together into one again. If that was even possible.

      He set his drink back down untouched and roamed back toward her, eyeing the picture she made as she waited there with the dress the color of the sea all around her and her exquisite form within it like some kind of mythical creature, too perfect to be believed. Yet this was Venice, after all. It was easier to believe all things were possible in a city that should not exist, propped up like so many dreams nailed fast to alder trees and left in the sea for centuries.

      But Lily was here again, wasn’t she? She lived, as his brother had pointed out to him. She had not died in that car accident. This was not a dream, despite the many, many times he’d had dreams just like it. Rafael could call this—her—a miracle if he chose, and he told himself he would worry later over the vicious little details that had made it all possible.

      Much later.

      He leaned over her, into her, caging her where she stood with his hands on either side of hers. She shuddered in that deep, luxuriant way that seemed to roll all the way through her and then into him, and when he bent to press his mouth to the nape of her neck, they both sighed.

      She was so warm, so delicately fragrant. He could smell that particular scent that was only hers, a sultry blend of her skin and her sex, and layered over that the hints of bathing products and stylist’s tools, cosmetics and the faint touch of something not quite slate that made him think of the snow outside.

      And the skin beneath his lips was so soft. So very soft. She shivered, and he wanted to inhale her. All of her.

      “La tua pelle e’ come seta,” Rafael murmured, right there against that sensitive spot at her nape, knowing full well she couldn’t understand him. Enjoying that fact, if he was honest. Your skin is like silk.

      “Why can’t I turn around?” Her voice was little more than a breath.

      He smiled against her skin. “Because this way, there can only be honesty between us. No harsh words to confuse the issue. No lies or make-believe memories. You will either respond to me or you won’t.”

      “You don’t seem worried that I won’t,” she said, almost ruefully.

      He grazed her lightly with his teeth and heard the sharp little noise she made in response, music to him the way it always had been, and he leaned in closer and indulged himself.

      “No,” he said against her soft, warm skin, “I’m not.”

      Rafael laid a trail of fire down the length of her neck, then across the delicate ridges of her finely wrought shoulder blades. He explored one with his mouth, his hands, then the other. He kept her caged there by his much larger body, drinking in every little sweet and helpless sound she made—far more intoxicating than any whiskey.

      And only when he’d relearned every sweet inch of her upper back did he pull back. She was shuddering again, her head low between her shoulders, breathing as hard as if she’d been running.

      “You might want to brace yourself, cara,” he told her, making no attempt to hide the sheer male satisfaction in his voice. “I’m only getting started.”

      He heard a hitch in her breath and it took him a moment to realize it was a laugh. Low, husky. Infinitely sensual. It wrapped around him and pierced his bones, shaking through him like a quiet little tsunami.

      “Promises, promises,” she taunted him softly.

      She was lethal. Rafael would do well to remember that.

      He reached out then and found the hidden zipper closure of her dress, unhooking it and then beginning to pull it down, exposing the long line of her spine and the acres of her soft skin. His mouth watered, but still he unzipped her, letting the dress fall from her mouthwatering curves to foam around her feet, effectively caging her there in yards and yards of fabric so soft to the touch that the only thing that could possibly be softer was her.

      She was like a feast spread before him, and he let himself breathe her in, exposed at last to his view. His own personal miracle. СКАЧАТЬ