Modern Romance - The Best of the Year. Miranda Lee

was mimicking another part of his anatomy now, and his hips were moving against her, making her squirm and whimper softly as the fever of desire rose within her.

      Suddenly Rafaele pulled away and Sam looked up through a heat haze, aware of her heart pounding and her ragged breath. Rafaele’s shirt hung half open.

      ‘I need to see you,’ he said thickly, and began to undo the buttons on her shirt.

      As the backs of his hands brushed against her breasts she shivered minutely at the exquisite sensation, already imagining him touching them with his hands...his mouth and tongue.

      Her shirt was drawn off and her bra dispensed with in an economy of movement, and then he just looked at her for a long moment, with an enigmatic expression that made butterflies erupt in Sam’s belly. About to scream with the mounting tension, she felt Rafaele’s hand finally cup her breast and shards of sensation rushed through her body. She tensed and arched her back, subconsciously begging him...and he needed no encouragement.

      Cupping the full mound of firm flesh, Rafaele bent his head and surrounded that tight peak in moist heat. The feel of his intense hot sucking made Sam cry out.

      Blindly, while Rafaele’s mouth was on her breast, Sam reached for his belt and undid it, her hands and fingers clumsy. She pulled it free of his trousers and it dropped to the floor, but before she could put her hands to his fly he was standing up again and helping her, pushing his trousers down, leaving him bared to her hungry gaze. Dear Lord. He was as magnificent as she remembered. Thick and long and hard. For her.

      Sam felt hot, as if she was on fire. She moved her numb fingers to Rafaele’s shirt buttons, wanting to finish undressing him. Her breath was loud in the quiet of the office. All that mattered to Sam was getting Rafaele bared to her, and when she finally pushed his shirt open and off his shoulders she breathed in deeply, her hands smoothing over hard musculature roughened with dark hair, nipples erect and hard.

      Unable to resist the lure, Sam explored with her tongue around those hard pieces of puckered flesh, aware of Rafaele’s hand on her head. He sucked in a breath, making his broad chest swell. He was so sensitive there. Sam moved her mouth up now, stretching her whole body, trailing kisses and tasting with her tongue along his throat, discovering the hard resoluteness of his stubbled jaw grazing her delicate skin.

      Her hands on his head drew him down. She was searching for his mouth again, like a blind person looking for water in a desert. Sucking him deep into her own mouth, Sam could feel his erection strain against her, and she dropped one hand to put it around him, feeling him jerk with tension.

      ‘Sam...’

      She almost didn’t recognise his voice. It sounded so tortured. Sam tore her mouth away from his to look up and she was dizzy with need and lust. It was just them and this insane desire. He was so firm in her hand, so strong, and her mouth watered when she remembered how she’d tasted him before, how she’d sucked that head into her mouth, her tongue swirling and exploring around the tip, her hand pumping him the way he’d shown her...

      She didn’t even realise her hand was moving rythmically until he tipped up her chin with his fingers and said, ‘I need to be inside you.’

      Sam’s sex throbbed. ‘Yes,’ she breathed, lifting her hips to help Rafaele when he went to pull her trousers and panties off. She was vaguely surprised she still had them on, that they hadn’t melted off her before now.

      Rafaele took himself in his hand—an unashamed and utterly masculine gesture. Sam was sitting on the desk naked, legs spread like a wanton, but she couldn’t drum up any concern. She wanted him inside her so badly. Rafaele ran his hand down over her quivering body, teasing her until she bit her lip. He pushed her legs apart further and looked at her.

      He stroked one hand up her inner thigh and let it rest for a moment at the tantalising juncture before his long fingers explored the wetness at her core—and then in one move he thrust them inside her.

      Sam gasped and grabbed onto Rafaele’s shoulders, unable to look away from that glittering, possessive green gaze. His fingers moved in and out, and her body started to clench around them, the anticipation building to fever-pitch.

      On some level Sam rejected this. She didn’t want to splinter apart while Rafaele looked on. She took his hand away from her and said roughly, ‘No—not like this. I’ll come when you come.’

      Rafaele smiled and it was fierce. The smile of a warrior. He took her mouth in another devastating kiss and her wetness was on the fingers that he wrapped tight around her hips. Rafaele thrust deep inside her in one cataclysmic move and swallowed her scream of pleasure, his hand holding her steady when she went so taut with excitement that she thought she’d splinter apart there and then, despite her brave words.

      But slowly, inexorably, expertly, Rafaele drew her back from that brink and then, with slow, measured, devastating thrusts of his body into hers he rewound that tension inside her until it built up higher and higher all over again.

      Sam wrapped her legs around Rafaele’s waist, her ankles crossed, her feet digging into his hard backside, urging him on, begging without words for him to go deeper, harder. Pushing her away from him slightly, but supporting her with an arm around her, he thrust harder and deeper.

      Sam’s head went back. Her eyes closed. She couldn’t take it—couldn’t articulate what she needed. She needed to come so badly, but Rafaele was relentless. She knew she was only seconds from begging. Overwhelmed, she felt tears prick her eyes—and then Rafaele thrust so deep it felt as if he touched her heart.

      Eyes flying open, tendons going taut all over her body, Sam came in a dizzying, blinding crescendo of pleasure so intense she couldn’t breathe. She gasped and felt Rafaele thrust deep again, sending her spiralling into an even higher dimension of pleasure. His body jerked between her legs and she felt her endless pulsating orgasm milking him of his essence, which was a warm flood inside her.

      In the aftermath of that shattering crescendo Sam barely knew which way was up. Her legs were still locked around his slim hips. Rafaele’s head was buried in her neck and she had the strongest urge to reach out and touch his hair, but when she lifted a hand it was trembling too much.

      His chest was heaving and damp against hers. Her breasts were tender. Rafaele was still hard inside her, his strength ebbing slowly. And then suddenly he reared back, eyes wild, making Sam wince as he broke the connection between their bodies.

      ‘Protection. We didn’t use protection.’

      Sam looked at him and went icy, before reason and sanity broke through. Relief was tinged with something bittersweet. ‘No,’ she breathed, ‘It’s okay, I’m...safe.’

      She bit her lip, suddenly acutely aware of how she was balancing precariously on the desk with Rafaele’s eyes on her. She felt raw, as if a layer of skin had been stripped off her body. She clenched her hands.

      ‘Are you sure?’ he demanded.

      Sam forced herself to look at Rafaele. Her mouth twisted. ‘Yes. I’m sure. My period just finished.’

      He sighed deeply. ‘Okay.’

      Sam couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her voice. ‘You believe me, then?’

      He paused in reaching down to grab some clothes and looked at her. ‘I believe you. I don’t think you’d want to repeat history any more than I would.’

      The words shouldn’t have hurt her. Much as his earlier words shouldn’t have hurt her. But they did. Sam didn’t want to question why.

      Grimacing slightly when her muscles protested, she stood shakily from the desk and took her shirt and bra from Rafaele’s outstretched hand.

      She couldn’t look at him. Face burning, she turned away to put on her clothes and castigated herself. She was repeating history right here, right now. Making love with him in his office exactly like she used to. She could remember what it had been like to go back onto the factory floor, feeling exhilarated and shamed all at once, as if a brand on her forehead marked her as