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‘So, Aldo is bossy like you,’ Maya observed.
‘I’m not bossy.’
‘Yousoare,’ Maya told him, lifting a fine blonde brow in emphasis.
Raffaele could feel his patience sliding again. ‘Let’s leave how we arrived at this point behind us. They’re notyourdebts.’
‘But I’m the one paying for them,’ she pointed out helplessly.
‘This topic is closed,’ Raffaele dictated.
Silence fell. Maya dealt him an amused glance and concentrated on her food.
‘Possibly...’ Raffaele breathed tautly. ‘I can be a little too dominant.’
‘Or...’ Maya pondered. ‘You just want to leave the truth behind and make me behave like I’m one of your women.’
‘I do not have women in the plural,’ Raffaele informed her levelly. ‘Why are you so determined to argue with me?’
A faint pink lit Maya’s face and she jerked a slight shoulder and fell silent. She felt an intense need to keep him at a distance. Because she disliked him? Or because dredging her attention from that lean, beautiful face of his across the table was becomingly increasingly difficult? This close he had stunning eyes, dark pools laced with fascinating gold highlights, inky black lashes even better than eyeliner at framing that lustrous gaze. Her breath feathered in her throat, her chest tightening as she felt her nipples stiffen, and a hollow ache stirred between her thighs. She was not so dumb that she didn’t know what was happening to her even if it hadn’t happened to her in a man’s company before...
It struck her as cruelly ironic that that surge of physical attraction should strike with Raffaele Manzini. She had been waiting,wantingto feel that exciting hormonal buzz with a man and take advantage of it to gain some sexual experience. Her face bloomed with colour because that seemed such an obnoxious thought to have, but as it dawned on her that Raffaele Manzini would be her first lover she found herself wishing that she weren’t still a virgin. No man had ever drawn her enough to want to take that final step. Was that why she had been waiting like the Sleeping Beauty, or some such silly creature, for that first love to come along and give her that happy fairy-tale ending?
She almost laughed at how ridiculously naïve she had been for so many years, honestly believing that that one very special guy was going to just magically appear for her. That wasn’t how life worked. Life wasn’t that neat and tidy; it wasn’t like an exam to prepare for and pass. But Maya had never done anything she hadn’t pre-planned because she rarely took risks, had learned at far too early an age that she was the one who had to be mature, sensible and careful to look after her family. There had been no teenaged crushes, no infatuations, no first boyfriend who counted in any meaningful way. The whole sex and romance story had passed her by while she’d worked and studied and passed exam after exam because the academic world was stable and sensible and gave her no nasty surprises.
And it was a very nasty surprise to accept that she could feel her body burn as though someone had turned a blowtorch on her just because a man smiled. Raffaele Manzini, womaniser that he was, had dynamite sex appeal. It had nothing to do with her brain, it was all physical, meaningless, forgettable, she told herself urgently. He was making conversation, smoothly, entertainingly, sticking slickly to the impersonal because she knew that he had decided thatshewas prickly and difficult. But she wasn’t, shewasn’t. He...he just made her angry. And why was he surprised by that when he had virtually blackmailed her into agreeing to marry him and have a child for him? Was he so spoiled by her sex that, no matter what he did, he expected admiration and appreciation?
‘I was planning to take you to a clubbutI think you’d prefer to go home.’
‘I would but not dressed like this,’ Maya confessed. ‘I’ll tell my family lies tomorrow, not tonight. I’m too tired this evening to tell smiling, soothing lies.’
‘I’ll take you back to my apartment to change. Your clothes are there,’ Raffaele admitted.
‘Why are they at your apartment?’ Maya asked as she stood up, wincing as she forced her feet back into the new shoes again.
‘Obviously because I thought you’d spend the night with me,’ Raffaele confessed without hesitation. ‘Why would we wait for a ring to get this show on the road?’
Even in her heels she had to tilt her head to look up at him. He had to be six feet four or five. His confession had blown her resolve to be polite and pleasant right out of the water again because it told her so much that she didn’t want to see in him. ‘You are unbelievable,’ she snapped at him, bristling with distaste. ‘I only met you properly for the first time this morning!’
‘Believe me, it feels like I’ve known you a lot longer,’ Raffaele murmured, sincere for once because he couldn’t quite credit that it had only been a few hours since their first meeting. In the strangest way, in a way he couldn’t possibly explain, he felt ridiculously comfortable with Maya even though she had sat there damning him with her eyes and acting moody as hell.
But Maya was only winding up, her temper like petrol on a bonfire as she studied his ridiculously beautiful and insouciant face. ‘And you thought I would be willing to fall into bed with youimmediately?’ She gasped incredulously.
‘A guy can hope—that’s not a crime,’ Raffaele fielded, shifting to ease the pressure on his jeans because there it was again, that spear of unholy lust that she roused without eventrying, without even touching him. The sexual charge of her blew him away.
‘You don’t hope, youexpect!’ Maya corrected angrily, gathering her bag in a quick angry movement and clutching it to her chest. ‘Sex and baby-making is off the tableuntilwe’re married.’
‘That doesn’t surprise me.’
Maya stalked forward, green eyes bright as emeralds. ‘Why doesn’t it surprise you?’
‘Because you don’t trust me, you don’t trust anyone,’ Raffaele told her softly. ‘I’m like that too. And on top of not trusting, you’re...inhibited.’
‘I’m not inhibited!’ Maya snapped at him.
Raffaele took her hand and pressed her back against the wall. ‘If you’re not, kiss me.’
‘I’m not kissing you!’ Maya spat.
