had left him while she took a shower.
Especially when Beth considered she had spent those same minutes thinking of the night of lovemaking ahead!
She gave a low and disgruntled humphing sound as she turned back the bedclothes, turning off the light and plunging the room into darkness before dropping the towel and crawling in naked with her back turned towards Raphael. Her feelings of insult turned to ones of irritation as she realised that having Raphael on top of the bedcovers totally restricted her from pulling those bedclothes up over the bareness of her shoulders.
Beth tossed and turned for several minutes trying to get comfortable, and all the time she did Raphael remained totally unmoving beside her, his breathing still deep and steady. She finally sat up slightly to shoot a scowling glance in Raphael’s general direction as she punched her pillows into comfortable submission, a part of her secretly wishing it were him she was punching. How dared Raphael just fall asleep after all those things he had described wanting to do to her? It was beyond insulting, it was—
‘What did that poor pillow ever do to you?’
Beth froze at the husky sound of Raphael’s voice, realising her eyes must have adjusted to the gloom of the bedroom as she raised startled lids and easily saw the light glitter of his eyes reflected in the moonlight shining in through the windows.
She moistened her lips. ‘I thought you were asleep.’ Her voice sounded unnaturally loud in the stilled silence of the room.
‘I was,’ Raphael drawled as he turned on his side, bending his elbow and resting his cheek against the palm of his hand as he looked down at her. ‘You woke me up when you started attacking that defenceless pillow.’
‘I was imagining it was you!’ she came back tartly.
Having decided that it might be prudent on his part to pretend to be asleep when Beth returned from taking her shower, to give her the option of a woman’s prerogative to change her mind, Raphael now found himself giving a rueful shake of his head at Beth’s obvious disgruntlement that he hadn’t been waiting in impatient anticipation for her return. ‘Why?’ he prompted huskily.
Her eyes glittered at him in the semi-darkness. ‘Why do you think?’
Raphael reached out and gently touched the soft creaminess of her heated cheek with his fingertips, feeling rather than seeing the quiver that shook her body at just that light caress. ‘Would you believe me if I told you I was doing the gentlemanly thing and giving you the opportunity to change your mind?’
‘Why?’ she now returned softly.
He drew in a sharp breath. ‘Because, despite the outrageous things I may have said to you in the restaurant downstairs, I am a gentleman.’
‘Does that mean you weren’t serious about those outrageous things?’ There was a teasing lilt to her voice, her hair a silver-gold cascade over her bared shoulders in the moonlight.
‘I meant every single word I said to you earlier,’ Raphael assured her decisively. ‘It is because I meant them, because I want you in all the ways I described, but saw and recognised your uncertainty once we reached this bedroom, that I decided it might be better if I were to go to sleep.’
‘To give the appearance of being asleep?’
‘Yes.’
All of Beth’s earlier nervousness evaporated as she reached out to run her hands slowly up Raphael’s chest and over the warmth of his shoulders as she scooted across the bed, only to give a groan of frustration as she realised the bedclothes continued to act as a barrier between them. ‘Either you’re going to have to get beneath the bedcovers or I’m going to get out from beneath them!’ she muttered dryly.
‘I believe it best that I be the one to join you,’ he murmured ruefully as he drew her arms gently from about his neck before throwing back the bedclothes and standing up.
Beth’s breath hitched in her throat as she lay back against the pillows and watched Raphael shed his shirt completely, the moonlight turning his bared and muscled flesh a deep and burnished gold, his shoulders impossibly wide, and his tapered chest and abdomen perfectly toned.
She stopped breathing altogether as he unzipped his trousers before pushing them, and his boxers, down the long length of his legs, before straightening.
He stood proudly naked, his body bathed in moonlight, his erection jutting up so long it reached his navel, and so thick around Beth doubted her fingers would be able to encircle it, the bulbous