When Falcone's World Stops Turning

With a guttural curse, and his cheek flaring red where Sam had hit him, Rafaele hauled her into his arms and his mouth was on hers. He was kissing her angrily, roughly.

It took a second for Sam to get over the shock, but what happened next wasn’t the reaction she would have chosen if she’d had half a brain cell still working. Her reaction came from her treacherous body and overrode her brain completely.

She started kissing him back, matching his anger with her own. For exposing her. For saying those words out loud. For making her feel even more ashamed and confused. For being here. For making her want him. For making her remember. For kissing her just to dominate her and prove how much she still wanted him.

Her hands were clutching Rafaele’s jacket. She tasted blood and yet it wasn’t pain that registered. It was passion, and it sent her senses spiralling out of all control. Rafaele’s hands were bruisingly hard on her arms and tears pricked behind Sam’s eyelids at the tumult of desire mixed with frustration.

She opened her eyes to see swirling green oceans. Rafaele pulled away jerkily and Sam could hear nothing but the thunder of her own heartbeat and her ragged breathing. She was still clutching his jacket and she let go, her hands shaking.

‘You’re bleeding...’

The fact that Rafaele’s voice was rough was no comfort. He was just angry, not overcome with passion.

Sam reached up and touched her lip and winced when it stung slightly. Her mouth felt swollen. She knew she had to get out of there before he saw something. Before he saw that very close behind her anger in that exchange had been an awful yearning for something else.

‘I have to go. They’ll be wondering where we are.’ Her insides were heaving, roiling. She was terrified she might be sick again, and this time all over Rafaele’s immaculate shoes. She couldn’t look at him.

‘Sam—’

‘No.’ She cut him off and looked at him. ‘Not here.’

His jaw tightened. ‘Fine. I’ll send a car for you this evening. We’ll talk at my place.’

Sam was too much in shock to argue. Too much had happened—too much physicality. Too much of a reminder that he aroused more passion in her just by looking at him than she’d ever felt in her life with anyone else. She simply didn’t have it in her right then to say anything other than a very reluctant, ‘Fine.’ She needed to get away from this man before he exposed her completely.

* * *

That evening, Sam waited for Rafaele in an exclusive townhouse in the middle of Mayfair, demesne of the rich and famous. Anger and an awful sense of futility had simmered in her belly all day as she’d had to put up with her colleagues excitedly discussing the great opportunity Rafaele Falcone had presented them with while knowing that it was only to ensure he gained as much control of her life as he could.

She was afraid of the volatility of her emotions after what had happened in that bathroom earlier and, worse, at the thought of working for him again. She forced herself to take deep breaths and focused on her surroundings. Luxurious sofas and chairs, dressed in shades of grey and white and cream. Low coffee tables and sleek furnishings. Seriously intimidating.

She felt very scruffy as she was still in her work uniform of narrow black trousers, white shirt and black jacket. Flat shoes. Hair pulled back. No make-up. These surroundings were made for a much more sensual woman. A woman who would drape herself seductively on a couch in a beautiful silk dress and wait for her lover.

It reminded Sam painfully of Rafaele’s palazzo on the outskirts of Milan, where sometimes she had fooled herself into believing nothing existed beyond those four walls. And that she was one of those beautiful seductive women.

‘Sorry to keep you waiting.’

Sam whirled around so abruptly when she heard his voice that she felt dizzy. She realised she was clutching her leather bag to her chest like a shield and lowered it.

She really wasn’t prepared to see Rafaele again so soon, and that swirling cauldron of emotions within her was spiked with a mix of anger and ever-present shame. And the memory of that angry kiss. Her lips were still sensitive. He looked like the Devil himself, emerging from the shadows of the doorway. Tall, broad, hard, muscled. And mean. His face was harsh, his mouth unsmiling. Making a mockery of his apology for keeping her waiting.

Nothing had changed from earlier. But despite her anger Sam’s conscience stung. Tightly, she said, ‘I’m sorry...for hitting you earlier. I don’t know what came over me...but what you said...it was wrong.’

Liar. She burned inside. She might as well have held her tongue. She was lying to herself as much as to him.

Rafaele came further in. Grim. ‘I deserved it. I provoked you.’

Sam blanched and looked at him. She hadn’t expected that, and somewhere treacherous a part of her melted.

He walked past her and over to a drinks board, helping himself to something amber that swirled in the bottom of a bulbous glass. He looked at her over his shoulder, making heat flood her cheeks. She hadn’t even realised that she’d been making a thorough inspection of his broad back, tapering down to lean hips and firm buttocks.

‘Drink?’

She shook her head hurriedly and got out a choked, ‘No. Thank you.’

‘Suit yourself.’ He gestured to a nearby couch. ‘Sit down, Sam—and you can put down your bag. You look as if your fingers might break.’

She looked down stupidly to see white knuckles through the skin of her fingers where they gripped the leather. Forcing herself to take a breath, she moved jerkily over to the couch and perched on the edge, resisting the design of it, which wanted to seduce her into a more relaxed pose.

Rafaele came and sat down opposite her, clearly far more relaxed than her as he sank back into the couch, resting one arm across the top. Sam fought the desire to look and see how his shirt must be stretched across his chest.

‘What kind of a name is Milo anyway? Irish?’

Sam blinked. It took a minute for his words to sink in because they were so unexpected. ‘It’s...it was my grandfather’s name.’

Sam was vaguely surprised he remembered that detail of her heritage. She was one generation removed from Ireland, actually, having been born and brought up in England because her parents had moved there after her brilliant father had been offered a job at a London university.

Sam sensed his anger building again. ‘I did intend to tell you...some day. I would never have withheld that information from Milo for ever.’

Rafaele snorted a harsh laugh. ‘That’s big of you. You would have waited until he’d built up a childhood full of resentment about his absent father and I wouldn’t have even known.’

Rafaele sat forward and put down his glass with a clatter. He ran his hand impatiently through his hair, making it flop messily onto his forehead. Sam’s insides clenched when she remembered how she’d once felt comfortable running her hands through his hair, using it to hold him in place when he’d had his face buried between—