My heartbeat is already racing, my skin sensitised, and I can feel the pressure build between my thighs. I don’t protest as he pulls my dress up, raising my arms so he can pull it off and over my head.
I should stop him, stand my ground and demand what I want, but I’m tired of demanding that too. I’m tired of fighting, of not being listened to. Maybe he’s right. Maybe we don’t need love. Maybe the way he makes me feel physically is all that I need.
‘I won’t trap you,’ Rafael murmurs in my ear as he reaches around to unsnap the clasp of my bra. ‘I won’t be like him.’ He pulls the straps down my arms and off, then he pushes down my knickers. ‘I’ll set you free.’
His hands slide over my bare skin, taking away all the constricting fabric binding my body, and as it slides away, I realise he’s right. Hedoesset me free. Because that’s how I feel now, naked but for my wedding ring. So, do I really need more than this?
He sweeps me up in his arms, carries me over to the sofa and puts me down on it, then, with calm and methodical movements, he strips off his own clothes until he’s finally as naked as I am. Then he stretches himself over me and I’m spreading my legs, welcoming him as he settles between them. I slide my hands up his muscular arms, caressing his smooth, velvety olive skin, moving up to his wide, strong shoulders and stroking them too. He looks into my eyes, easing one hand between my thighs, touching me, stroking me, testing me. There are black flames in his gaze and they’re all-consuming, and a small part of me, the one that still doubts, feels a spark of fear. Wondering if it’s too late for me. Too late not to want more. Too late for my heart to remain mine.
I’m afraid for the heart that beats so hard every time he looks at me. For the way I feel when he touches me, free and powerful and strong.
His intensity and his passion are a magnet I can’t escape, a light I’m irresistibly drawn to like a moth to a flame, and I don’t have the strength to fight it, not any more.
His dark gaze searches my face as if he’s imprinting it on his memory, noting every change of expression as his fingers stroke me, exploring the wet folds of my sex, making me shiver and gasp. ‘You chose me,’ Rafael murmurs. ‘Didn’t you, dragonfly? You chose me.’
‘Yes,’ I gasp as he slides a finger inside me. ‘Oh…yes…’
‘And you’ll never leave me, will you?’ He adds another finger, stretching me, driving me insane. ‘Not ever.’
‘No…’ I lift my hips, my thinking beginning to unravel. Everything beginning to unravel. Why would I leave him when he can make me feel this good?
‘You don’t need anything more than this,’ he whispers, his hand moving slowly, in and out, making me writhe. ‘Only me, touching you.’
I shudder, the smoky, musky scent of him filling my head, his touch everything, and I know he’s right. All I need is this, his hands on me, his body close to mine, and pleasure… Pleasure everywhere.
He takes his hand from between my thighs and raises it, easing his fingers into my mouth. ‘This is how you taste when I touch you,’ he says, his voice rough velvet. ‘No one else can give you this. Only me, your husband.’ He removes his fingers and licks them, his gaze a hot knife right through me. ‘You’re part of me now, dragonfly.’ The words are a soft growl. ‘You’re inside me and you can’t ever escape.’
But I don’t want to escape. I don’t ever want to. I want to stay right here with him.
He shifts, pushing inside me, going slowly, methodical and careful now. He slides deep, making me gasp, then he pauses, looking down into my eyes.
He’s deep inside me, surrounding me, his shadowed gaze the whole world, then he slides his hands behind my knees, lifting them over his hips. I wrap them around his waist, holding him even as he holds me, allowing him to slide even deeper.
‘I will give you everything,’ he murmurs, and I can hear the vow in his voice, see it in the glittering of his onyx eyes. ‘I will never hurt you, I promise. You’ll always be safe with me.’
He means it, I can hear his fierce will burning in every word, yet that voice in the back of my head is whispering again. Whispering that I’m not safe, that he will hurt me at some point, because it’s too late. It’s too late to walk away from him, too late to escape him.
He was right when he said he wouldn’t trap me, that he’d set me free. He did, only I didn’t leave when I should have. I stayed and now it’s too late, because I have a horrible feeling that I’ve trapped myself.
Because I’m falling in love with him.
But I can’t think about that now, not now he’s moving inside me and making me gasp. Making me clutch him, dig my fingers into his strong shoulders. Making me scream his name as we go down together in flames.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Rafael
The handpicked teamof builders I got in to help me with Olympia’s studio have left for the day, and now I’m standing in front of the structure, going over it with an expert eye. It’s been years since I’ve taken an active part in building anything—I leave that to my construction teams usually—but Olympia’s studio is different.
This is a special place for her and her alone, and so I wanted to help build it myself. I would have done the whole thing myself—it’s not as if I’ve forgotten how to construct a building—but I wanted to finish it fast so she can use it before the baby arrives, which meant getting in a team to help.
They’ve just put the roof on and we celebrated with beers all round, then I sent them home. My hands are dirty and rough from fitting wooden beams and nailing struts, but there’s a deep satisfaction inside me, the kind that comes from creating something, from building something concrete.
Something for her.
Months have passed since she chose me over her brother and I don’t recall ever being happier. I don’t think about Ulysses Zakynthos. I don’t think about my revenge or my lost family, or my father’s blood on the floor of his study, not when she is all I think about. And certainly not when the arrival of our child is imminent.
Yet no matter how happy I am, I can’t escape the feeling that all of this is somehow…fragile. There are times when I catch Olympia’s gaze on me, something in it I can’t name, a kind of despair that makes my breath catch. It’s fleeting though, there one minute, gone so fast the next that I can almost tell myself I didn’t see it. I certainly don’t want to ask her about it. I don’t want anything to burst this little soap bubble we’re living in.
