The Italian Duke's Virgin Mistress (13 page)

The end came quickly and almost violently, in a series of frantic mini-orgasms for Charley that built in intensity until Raphael tensed and made an agonised sound of release against her skin, his completion within her inciting a final orgasm that took her to new heights and held her there, whilst her body convulsed on wave after wave of pleasure.

Drained and trembling, Charley unwrapped her legs
from Raphael’s body, too weak to stand unsupported on her own, simply leaning into him as he held her, their hearts pounding together in the aftermath of what they had shared.

They had eaten, showered, made love again—this time with Raphael slowly building her desire with sensuality and an awareness of her needs that had brought tears of emotion to her eyes.

‘Stay with me,’ Charley whispered as Raphael held her protectively in the curve of his body, and they both knew that it wasn’t just for tonight that she wanted him to stay.

A
SHADOW
blotted out the morning sunlight warming her face, causing Charley to murmur a protest in her sleep. Just as she had done earlier, when he’d eased her out of his arms so that he could shower and dress, Raphael noted. The morning light fell harshly against the planes of his face, revealing a certain gauntness and weariness of spirit. He shouldn’t have come here last night—shouldn’t have left the safety of Rome even though it had become an imprisoning barren waste of aching. He had no right to take what he had given his vow to himself not to.

The temptation to simply walk away whilst Charlotte slept was almost overwhelming, but he made himself overcome it, leaning down to place his hand on her body—not on her bare rounded shoulder; he was far too raw to be able to trust himself to touch her skin to skin. Instead he placed his hand gently on the spot where her arm lay beneath the bedclothes.

Charley woke up immediately, her sleepy gaze
sharpening into focus, delight brimming in it as she sat up, exclaiming, ‘Raphael!’

Everything about her demeanour spoke openly and joyously of her feelings. Raphael could see her love for him in the way she smiled at him, hear it in the upward lilt of her voice, feel it in the softly sensuous yearning movement of her body towards him.

He drew in a sharp breath and stepped back from the bed, turning away from her to look towards the window as he told her, ‘I shall be returning to Rome in half an hour, but first I need to talk to you about last night.’

Charley felt the weight of his words as though they were the onset of an avalanche that was going to crush the life out of her. In the short space of time it took Raphael to say them, the happiness with which she had awoken had turned to fear.

‘Last night?’ she repeated.

Raphael nodded his head.

‘Last night should never have happened. The blame for the fact that it did lies entirely with me. I should have had more self-control; I should not have come here and given in to my…need. It mustn’t happen again. It will not happen again.’

Charley couldn’t hide her distressed anguish.

‘I don’t understand,’ she protested. ‘You want me, and I want you.’

‘Yes.’

Raphael’s voice was terse. He wasn’t looking at her, and Charley could see the way his jaw tensed.

‘Then why can’t we be together? I love you, Raphael.’

‘Yes, I know, and that is part of the reason why it
must end. I cannot give you…There is no future for us. It is better, kinder, fairer to you, that we end things now.’

No future for them? Pain and anger filled Charley.

‘Why is there no future for us? Because I’m not good enough for you, The Duke? Is that why you said what you did about me not conceiving your child? I’m not good enough to be the mother of a baby with your precious blue blood, is that it?’

She was working herself up into a fury because it was the only way she had of stopping herself from begging him to change his mind. She had to hold on to her anger because it was all she had to cling to.

‘No. Never that.’ Raphael swung round as he uttered the tormented denial, the sunlight revealing the new thinness of his face, his expression that of a man emotionally tortured beyond his own bearing.

‘Tell me what it is, then,’ Charley insisted.
‘Tell
me.’

She could see his chest expanding as he took a deep, ragged breath.

‘Very well, then. You saw for yourself how I reacted last night—how my anger overwhelmed me, how I took hold of you in anger and violence.’

‘Because you were afraid that the car would hit me.’

‘I wish I could believe it was only that that motivated me, but I cannot let myself accept that. Last night I broke every vow I have ever made to myself. It must never happen again. I am not saying that things must end between us because I do not want you to have my child, but because I will not put you in a position where I might hurt you. Just as I will not pass on to any child the poisoned inheritance that is in my own genes.’

Whilst Charley looked at him in shocked bewilderment, Raphael loosened the tension out of his shoulders with a tired movement.

‘You will want to know what I mean?’

‘Yes,’ Charley agreed.

‘It is a long story—as long as the history of my mother’s family. She was descended from the bloodline of one of the most bloodthirsty of all the Beccelli family. During the fifteenth century his cruelty and sadism was such that it was expunged from all family documents. His greed knew no bounds. In order to empower himself he waged war on his neighbours, amongst them my mother’s family, giving orders that the sons of the family should be killed along with their parents, whilst taking for himself their daughter to be married to one of his own sons—but not before he had raped her and impregnated her.’

Raphael heard Charley’s indrawn gasp.

‘His cruelty was unimaginable—the product of a twisted and sadistic mind. Finally he was brought to rough justice when he was murdered by his own sons, who then fell out amongst themselves, killing one another and leaving behind them the young raped bride who was carrying the child of her abuser. From that time down through my mother’s family there have been those who have manifested sadism—men and women who have carried out acts of unspeakable cruelty. My mother’s own great-grandfather was one of those people, as was a male cousin—who ended up being murdered in a brothel. There were other members of
her family—less openly affected but possessed of terrible tempers, given to uncontrollable rages. Because of her dread of passing on the curse of that inheritance my mother had sworn never to marry or have a child, so that no future generations would be contaminated by her inheritance. But then she met my father. They were passionately in love with one another, and he persuaded her to marry him. She told me over and over again during my childhood how she had promised herself that she would not burden future generations with the burden she herself had had to carry, how madness brought on by guilt as well as sadism destroyed the lives of so many who shared her blood.’

Charley had to swallow hard before she could speak. Raphael’s revelations had filled her with pity for him, and a fiercely protective love.

‘But you are neither of those things,’ was all she felt able to say. ‘You are no sadist, Raphael, and you are not mad.’

‘Not yet—although that is not to say that I will never be, nor that my child will not be.’

It took several seconds for the full horror of what he was saying to sink into Charley’s mind.

‘But you can’t know that it will happen,’ she managed.

‘No. But, far more importantly I cannot know that it will not—and because of that I cannot take the risk, not for you and not for a child. Even if it is free of the taint of our shared blood, he or she in turn will have to carry the burden that will be born with them, and they will have to make the decision that I was not strong enough to make for them. It is my belief that in
speaking to me as she did my mother was asking me to do what she had not been able to do.’

‘But you are a duke, and without an heir…’

‘I have an heir—the son of a cousin who is my closest male relative on my father’s side, and so untainted.’ Raphael dismissed Charley’s statement. ‘The reason I am telling you this is not because I want your pity but because I want you to understand why we cannot be together. Already you have witnessed my anger—how are we to know how that darkness within me might grow?’

‘That was a completely natural reaction, and my fault.’

‘No, last night is not the first time such a rage has possessed me. After my mother’s death I went into her sitting room—the room she always loved best. I could almost see her sitting there in her favourite chair, but she wasn’t there, and because of that I destroyed that chair by smashing it against the fireplace.’

‘You were just a boy,’ Charley protested. ‘A boy who had lost both his parents and who was alone and frightened.’

Raphael turned to her, giving her a tormented look of mingled desire and denial.

‘Do you not think I would like to tell myself that? That I would like to believe it? But I cannot. I must not. Because it may not be the truth, and because there is no way of knowing whether or not I possess my mother’s family’s curse.’

‘I love you, Raphael, and I am willing to take the risk.’

‘Maybe so, but I am not.’

‘Because you don’t love me?’ Charley challenged
him. Surely if she could get him to say that he loved her then she would be able to find a way to persuade him to let her share his life?

‘No, I don’t love you.’

The pain that seized her was crucifying, unbearable. Without knowing it she made a small sound, agonised and heartrending. Raphael closed his eyes. He must not weaken. It was for her sake that he was denying her—for her future.

‘Don’t you think if I
did
love you that I would still say there could be nothing between us? Don’t you think that if I loved you my concern would be for you, for your ultimate happiness, your right to love a man you will never need to fear—a man who can give you the child or children that you will also love.’ His voice became harsher as he told her, ‘I cannot and will not imprison you in a relationship which ultimately you will come to resent. I can’t. I have told you that, and if there were by some mischance to be a child…’ He paused and then told her heavily, ‘It is my belief that my mother took her own life after my father’s death, because she was afraid of being alone with the responsibility of what she might have passed on to me and through me to generations as yet unborn.’

Charley’s heart ached with compassion and love.

‘I refuse to believe that you are affected by your family’s affliction, Raphael, and as for children—for a woman who loves you, who truly loves you as I do, you yourself would be enough,’ she told him fiercely, unable to keep her emotions out of her voice.

Now, at last, he turned fully to look at her. The
morning sunlight was cruel, revealing the toll his openness with her had taken on his haunted features.

‘You cannot know that I will not be affected. Neither of us can. Do you think I want to see you recoil from me in horror and fear? To see the love shining in your eyes now turn to horror?’

Charley desperately wanted to go to him and hold him, almost as a mother might hold her child. He was the man she loved and he always would be. What he had revealed to her had only made her love him more, not less, just as it had made her want to share with him his exile from what other people took for granted.

‘Raphael, please let me share this with you,’ she begged him.

‘No,’ Raphael answered. ‘To love someone and not yearn to create with them the miracle of a new life from that love is an act of denial beyond the limits of my own control. I may not have known that before, but I know it now. I learned that when I held you in my arms. I will not allow what I feel for you to chain you to me. Love—true, real love—has to be stronger than that. It must put what is right for the person loved above its own needs and desires.’

Raphael was saying that he loved her?

Joy lifted her heart—only for it to crash down again as she took in the full meaning of what Raphael had said.

‘You cannot make that decision for me,’ she told him. ‘If you love me then—’

‘Then nothing.’ Raphael stopped her, his voice harsh. ‘I cannot offer you my love and still think of myself as a man of honour. You must see that?’

‘What I see,’ Charley told him spiritedly, ‘is that you are making us both suffer when we don’t have to over an issue that may not even exist. I love you, Raphael. Of course I would love to have your child—but I will gladly and willingly sacrifice doing so to be with you and share your life.’

‘I cannot allow you to do that.’ His mouth twisted—the mouth she had kissed so passionately last night—and the lips that had touched her body so intimately, bringing her such pleasure, now held a cynical twist, causing her intense pain.

‘Your own choice of words reveals the truth—you describe not having a child as a sacrifice,’ Raphael told her. ‘You cannot deny it. You used that description of your own volition.’

Charley could see that it was pointless for her to wish the word unsaid. She raged inwardly, blaming herself for her thoughtlessness, thinking how bitterly unfair it was that the whole of her future happiness should hang on one simple word.

‘You may love me now, Charlotte,’ Raphael told her, ‘but there will come a time when the ache inside you for a child will be stronger than the ache inside you for me. I cannot let that happen. Not for my sake, but for yours. I am already guilty of allowing my own selfish need to overcome my principles, and in doing so I am hurting you. I shall not do so any more. When I return to Rome I will speak to my lawyer and to your employer, to arrange for someone else to take your place here, working on the project.’

Raphael ignored Charlotte’s stifled protest.

‘I shall, of course, compensate you financially…’ he continued.

‘Pay me off, you mean? Like a discarded toy you don’t want any more? Is that how you always treat the women you sleep with, Raphael—by paying them off once you have had what you wanted from them?’

White-faced with grief, Charley flung the words at him, retreating to the top of the bed when he strode towards her, to grasp her shoulders and almost shake her.

‘You will not say that,’ he told her. ‘You will not demean what we shared together and yourself by speaking in such a way. The money has nothing to do with our personal relationship. It is to compensate you because you will be losing your job.’

It was because his emotions were so raw that he was angry with her, Charley knew. The thought crossed her mind that if she increased that anger, if she really, really pushed him, then that emotion might spill over into a passion that would result in them making love, giving her a chance to prove to him that what they felt for one another was too strong to be ignored. Shame flooded through her. She must not taint what they had shared last night by attempting to manipulate him. She did not want her memories soured by her own shame.