Nina gave a guttural scream, her head thrashing from side to side on the pillow as she felt another release tearing through her, more intense, more overwhelming even than the last two. She heard Rafe’s harsh groan as her muscles tightened about him, clenching, squeezing the long length of his shaft as she convulsed in climax. His back arching, head thrown back, dark hair wild about his shoulders as the intensity of that golden gaze captured and held hers as his own release exploded into her in hot, thick jets, intensifying and prolonging Nina’s own release as that heat hit the opening to her womb, filling her, completing her.
* * *
Rafe woke the following morning with the feel of the warmth of sun shining on his closed lids, and a smile on his lips. Nina was the reason for that smile as he remembered the night of passion they had just spent together. Hours and hours of making love, their hunger for each other seemingly insatiable.
He had gathered Nina’s boneless body up in his arms after the first time, before drawing back the bedclothes and cuddling her beneath them as they fell asleep in each other’s arms. But they had woken and made love twice more during the night, slowly, deliciously, wildly, each time becoming more attuned to each other’s needs and desires, murmuring encouragements and gasps as they shared their pleasure in each other.
An intensity of pleasure Rafe knew he had never experienced before, with any woman.
A remembered intensity of pleasure that now made Rafe’s smile widen as he thought of spending the morning in bed with Nina, or maybe the whole day. He was nowhere near to satisfying the intensity of the desire he felt for her.
Breakfast first, though. He needed to ensure Nina was fed if they were going to make love all day. Besides, Nina would look sexy as hell walking about the apartment wearing one of his white silk shirts.
As it was, the lack of movement on her side of the king-sized bed told him that she was still sleeping deeply. No doubt she was exhausted after all that nocturnal activity!
Rafe’s smile deepened at the thought of waking her, of slowly kissing those luscious lips while caressing that long, lithe body before thrusting deeply, languidly, into the welcoming heat of her sensitive and caressing body until they both gasped out their release.
He rolled over in the bed. ‘Nina, I— What the...?’
The other side of the bed was empty, only the indentation in the pillow and the slight warmth of the sheets to show that Nina had been lying there beside him a short time ago.
‘Nina?’ Rafe called softly as he threw back the bedclothes and got out of bed, padding barefoot and naked out into the hallway as he received no answer from the adjoining bedroom. ‘I’m supposed to be the one to make you breakfast,’ he teased as he entered the kitchen.
The empty kitchen.
And the rest of the apartment proved to be just as empty as Rafe moved from room to room in search of her.
‘Damn it!’ he finally muttered angrily as he re-entered the bedroom and realised that Nina’s clothes and shoes were no longer on the floor where they had been discarded last night, that there wasn’t a single item of her clothing in the bedroom to show that she had ever been there at all.
Because she’d left the bed, the apartment, and Rafe, before he had even woken up.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘WHAT THE HELL did you think you were doing?’
Nina’s fingers stilled in arranging her father’s jewellery collection in one of the open cabinets as she heard the sound of Rafe’s rasping and angry voice behind her. She stood up slowly, her gaze wary as she turned to see that Rafe was indeed angry, if the furious glitter in his eyes and the nerve pulsing in his tensely clenched jaw were any indication.
There wasn’t so much as a hint of the passionate and indulgent lover she had spent the night with.
A night of such an intensity of mind-blowing pleasure that it had been an absolute revelation to Nina. It made a complete nonsense of her two previous experiences; she definitely knew what all the fuss was about now!
Rafe had been a tender, fierce and erotic lover, bringing her to climax after climax as he explored and claimed every inch of her body, in the same way that he had allowed, encouraged her, to explore and pleasure every inch of his.
Nina blushed now just remembering the intimacies the two of them had shared during the night. No part of her, not a single inch, left untouched, unsatisfied, by Rafe’s caressing hands and mouth, and she was sure she now knew his body more intimately than she knew her own.
‘It’s okay,’ she huskily assured Rich and Andy as she saw they had stepped forward protectively, heads turned towards Rafe as he stood in the doorway of the gallery looking every inch the wealthy and sophisticated Rafe D’Angelo. He was dressed in his custom tailored charcoal suit and pale grey shirt and tie, the darkness of his hair curling silkily onto his shoulders. Much as he had looked the first morning they met. Just three days ago in actual time, but a lifetime away in the changes those same days had made within Nina.