A Touch of Notoriety - By Carole Mortimer Page 0,21

settling between them as he kissed her into pleasurable submission. Logic and good sense told him that would not only be an incredibly stupid move on his part, but also a dangerous one.

As he had feared, his instinct won...

‘What—?’ Beth barely had time to voice a protest as she felt steel bands move about her waist—Raphael’s arms?—as he rolled to the side and then above her, pinning her hands with his either side of her head, before his lips—those sculptured and incredibly sensual lips!—came down and claimed hers in a kiss that sent any thought of further protest completely out of her head. A kiss that owed nothing to gentle exploration and everything to fierce, possessive need as Raphael’s lips devoured and claimed.

Beth returned that hunger, her lips parting as Raphael’s tongue moved across them in a rasping caress before plunging deeply, hotly, into the heat of her mouth. She arched beneath him as he moved his thighs against and into her in a slow and seductive rhythm, freeing her hands to move them caressingly over the muscled contours of his chest to the warmth of his naked shoulders and then down over the flexing muscles of his back to the firmness of his bottom.

Steel encased in velvet. Every hard, delicious inch of Raphael was solid muscle encased in velvet-soft flesh. His chest. Shoulders. Back. Bottom. The hard and throbbing length of his aroused shaft as it moved so enticingly between her thighs...!

This man, a man Beth had once accused of possessing the emotions of a robot, was as physically aroused as she was!

She groaned low in her throat as she felt one of Raphael’s hands now cupping her breast, the thin material of her T-shirt no barrier to the pleasure of the sweeping caress of his thumb across the achingly aroused nipple, and sending shards of that pleasure coursing through her body even as it increased the throbbing, damp heat between her swollen and moist thighs.

Beth gazed up at Raphael in mute appeal as he wrenched his mouth from hers to move his weight off her as he looked down at her searchingly with eyes that were as dark as midnight, a flush to the hardness of his cheeks.

‘Your breasts fit perfectly into the palm of my hand,’ he murmured gruffly.

‘Do they?’ The sexual tension between them was so heavy and thick with expectation that Beth could barely breathe.

‘I wonder if...’ Those sculptured lips slightly parted as he continued to hold her gaze as he slowly lowered his head and placed his mouth on her breasts through her T-shirt before he gently drew the tight bud of her nipple into the heat of his mouth and suckled deeply.

Beth’s lids fluttered closed, her breath now coming in ragged gasps as she instinctively arched her back, pushing her nipple deeper into the burning heat of Raphael’s mouth, wanting more, wanting— Oh, God, wanting—

She gasped, her fingers digging painfully into Raphael’s shoulders, as she felt the heat of his hand cup between her parted thighs before pressing against the swollen nub nestled there in the same rhythm as he suckled deeply on her aching nipple, Beth immediately becoming lost to this duel assault on her senses, the pleasure rising, and then rising higher still, until she felt on the point of—

A deep gurgling sound preceded a low rumble, breaking through that haze of pleasure as Raphael stilled above her before releasing her nipple and raising his head to look down at her enquiringly, his eyes glittering a dark and amused blue.

Beth licked her lips. ‘Was that my stomach rumbling or yours?’

His mouth quirked into a mocking smile. ‘I believe it was yours...’

How embarrassing was that? She was alone with, and being kissed by, the most gorgeously handsome man she had ever met in her life, the two of them were making love together—to the degree she was poised on the edge of climax!—and her uncooperative stomach chose that moment to let her know it was time she put some food inside it!

Something that Raphael, at least, found amusing, if the laughter gleaming in those dark blue eyes as he looked down at her was any indication.

‘It is past time you were fed, it would seem,’ he bit out harshly. He rose agilely to his feet before holding out his hand to help Beth stand up beside him, the expression in his eyes hidden by hooded lids.

A Beth who was totally aware of the dampness of her T-shirt against her bared breast, as