Not for love nor money.
How could she be intimate with a man with those scars all over her arms and thighs? She could just imagine the look of horror, disgust and revulsion once her scarred flesh was uncovered.
The sad irony was that before her twenty-first birthday party she had been confident in her body, but that night had totally destroyed her self-esteem and taken away every scrap of her self-respect.
The cutting had been a way to release the emotional torment. It had been her way of controlling the shame that resided inside her body at having been taken advantage of by a man she had thought she could trust. Even though the rational part of her acknowledged she hadn’t deserved to be treated like that, and the man in question had been very drunk, the emotional part flayed her with recrimination. She should have been more careful. She should have stayed with her friends. She shouldn’t have drunk that fourth drink.
She should have told someone.
That was the one thing Lily had never been able to bring herself to do. How did you tell one of your closest friends that her older brother had lured you into another room and forced himself on you while everyone else had been partying next door?
So she had kept silent, and the pain and shame had burrowed deep inside her.
Which made what Raoul Caffarelli thought of her so totally laughable. Even in her partying days she had never been the type to sleep around. She’d only had two relationships—one when she’d been nineteen, which had lasted four months, and another when she’d been twenty that had lasted six. She hadn’t felt emotionally ready for a full-on physical relationship.
Throughout her childhood she had watched her mother go from one ill-advised relationship to another, which had made Lily careful in her choice of partner. She often wondered if she had been a bit more streetwise if she might have been able to prevent what happened to her. Her judgement had been skewed by youthful complacency and familiarity.
But she was older and far wiser now.
And angry.
It was good to be angry because it stopped her thinking about that kiss.
How had it happened? One minute she’d been holding a tissue to Raoul’s cut forehead, the next she’d been clutching at him as if his mouth was a lifeline. His lips had been like velvet on hers, warm and teasing, commanding and yet controlled. The seductive activity of his tongue had sent shivers rolling down her spine like runaway firecrackers.
You enjoyed it.
Yes, but that’s beside the point. Kissing a client—especially one as dangerously, deliciously, lethally attractive as Raoul Caffarelli—was totally out of the question.
N.O.
No.
No!
Lily walked out into the gardens rather than hide away in her room. She needed fresh air and exercise to clear her head and to stop her body from its traitorous impulses. It had been years since she had thought about sex. She had become accustomed to pushing it from her mind because of the shame she always associated with it. But for some reason Raoul’s kiss had not made her feel shame, but an intense desire to feel more of his touch.
He had been so gentle.
That had been so utterly disarming. If he had crushed her mouth to his and groped her with his hands she would have shoved back from him and given him a piece of her mind, if not a stinging slap across the face.
But she had been completely ambushed by his mesmerising lip play, the slow but sure stroke of his tongue, his measured pace, as if he’d known she would not like to be rushed or pressured.
It had made the hard, tight, locked away part of her soften and loosen. She had melted under the slow but sure seduction of his very experienced mouth.
She didn’t like to think of how experienced he was. She knew enough about him to know he was a playboy, who before his engagement had moved from partner to partner with astonishing haste.
The sun was hot on Lily’s head and shoulders as she traversed the expansive lawn that fringed the field where some magnificent-looking thoroughbreds were grazing. Their coats were like high-gloss satin, their powerful hindquarters shivering and their tails flicking every now and again as they shook off a fly.
&n
bsp; It was a beautiful property with its rolling fields and lush pastures. But she wondered how Raoul was going to manage his arm of the family business while he was confined to a wheelchair. Breeding horses was a very hands-on affair. Attending sales and trials and track meetings would be next to impossible, or at least very difficult—maybe even dangerous. Horses were flighty creatures and thoroughbreds particularly so. It would be difficult for Raoul to have any sort of control over them when he was unable to stand.
One of the horses lifted its head from the grass and looked at Lily with big, soft, intelligent eyes. It blew some air out of its velvety nostrils and came over to the fence, idly swishing its tail as it went.
Lily held out a flat hand and the horse wobbled its soft mouth against her palm in search of a treat. ‘I haven’t got anything for you. I’ll have to ask Dominique for an apple.’ She stroked the mare’s diamond shaped white blaze and then up behind her pointed ears. ‘You’re a beauty, aren’t you? I wonder how many races you’ve won.’
‘That’s Monsieur Caffarelli’s favourite brood mare,’ a young boy of about fifteen or sixteen said as he came over from the nearby stables. ‘Her stable name is Mardi.’ He stroked the mare’s gleaming shoulder. ‘In her day she won all but two of her starts, didn’t you, old girl?’