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Slowly he turned to her.
“They never found him at all. My mother is the one who finally told me. After twenty years of silence, she overnighted a letter to Paris that I received this morning. After he was dead.”
The hurt in his voice, the pain like a boy’s, caught at her throat. And Louisa could hold herself back no longer. Reaching out, she placed her hand on his back, rubbing his tight muscles and his strong, powerful, hunched shoulders. “Why did she wait so long to tell you?”
He gave a harsh laugh. “To hurt me, I suppose,” he said. “She doesn’t know that it’s impossible. I’ll never be hurt again—not by her or anyone.”
The bleakness of his tone belied his words.
“But surely,” Louisa persisted, “your mother loves you—”
His lip curled. “She sent me a letter and a package that arrived in Paris today.” He held up a gold signet ring. “She’d saved it for thirty-seven years, since before I was born. Now she sends it to me. Now, when it’s too late.”
Louisa’s heart turned over in her chest at the pain in his handsome face. She knew what finding his real father had meant to Rafael.
“I barely made it to the funeral. There were only five mourners, and they seemed to have shown up with the thought of asking surviving family members for money. Debts are all my father left behind. No wife. No other children. No friends. Just debts.”
“I’m so sorry,” Louisa whispered, desperate to take the pain out of his eyes, feeling helpless. “I’ll contact your guests and tell them the birthday dinner is canceled.”
His gaze became hard. “Why?”
“Because, because,” she stammered, “you’re in mourning.”
He shook his head. “The dinner party will go on as planned.”
“Are you sure? You don’t have to do this.”
He didn’t answer. Instead he looked around the beautiful room. He gave a low laugh. “I bought this palace for my father, for when I found him. Now all I have left—” his hand tightened into a fist around the gold ring hanging on a chain “—is this.”
She pressed her hand against his rough cheek, looking up into his face. “If only there was something I could do, if only—”
“There is.”
And he kissed her.
His lips were fierce, demanding. She could not stop him or pull away; all she could do was surrender to his strength, and the force of her own desire.
His hands moved over her clothes in the soft circle of pale golden light amid the shadows. He stroked her arms, her belly. Pulling off her woolen blazer and dropping it gently to the floor, he cupped her breasts through her thin cotton shirt. She gasped. Then, with a soft moan, she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him closer.
He pushed her back against the bed, still kissing her. He moved with increasing urgency, pulling up her blouse, reaching beneath her silk bra to caress her breasts. Her nipples hardened to small pebbles beneath his muscular fingers as she held him close, aching for his touch. But it wasn’t enough…wasn’t nearly enough!
With sudden impatience, he pulled open the blouse in a single swift movement, popping the buttons. He ripped her flimsy silk bra in half easily, pushing the cups apart and lowering his head to suckle her.
She gasped, arching beneath his mouth. As he licked and bit one nipple, his powerful hand squeezed the other breast, sending sparks of longing down her body, between her legs.
Lifting his head, cupping both her breasts in his large hands, he gave her a hard, possessive kiss that bruised her lips. But amid the pain was an intensity of pleasure, the need of her own longing that drove her almost insane.
She had to stop this.
She would die if she stopped this.
As he kissed her, she felt the weight of his body, fully clothed and so much larger than her own, pressing her heavily into the firm mattress. His mouth plundered hers, his tongue tantalizing and mastering her. She felt his powerful hands move down her body. Grabbing her skirt’s hemline at the knee, he pulled it up until her legs were bare all the way to her hips.
He continued to kiss her fiercely, holding her body to the bed with his weight. One hand moved between her legs, caressing between her naked thighs. She sucked in her breath. She tried to move, to push him away from her, but she could not. Her mind was no longer in control of her body. Her body wanted what it wanted—and it wanted him.
His hand cupped between her legs, and she gasped. He cut off her gasp with a hard kiss, stealing her protest away, leaving her beyond the ability to fight what they both wanted. He moved his hand beneath her white cotton panties, caressing her slick folds like molten heat with a thick finger, caressing her sensitive core with his thumb.
She gasped, arching off the bed.
