Venice Vampyr (Venice Vampyr #1)

nipples beaded, and she felt her skin turn into gooseflesh.
    When Raphael’s fingers suddenly grazed her nape, she flinched. He pulled away and met her with a surprised look in the mirror. Then he cleared his throat. “I was wondering if you could tell me more about him, about your late husband.”
    “Why?” Her spine tingled with the unpleasant feeling of being interrogated.
    He smiled at her now. “Because I don’t want to make the same mistakes in our marriage as he did.”
    Isabella turned her head to him. She hadn’t expected his answer. “Mistakes? What makes you think he made mistakes? We had a perfectly agreeable marriage.”
    “Agreeable,” he snorted. “I don’t want an agreeable marriage. I want a happy one.”
    “Isn’t that the same thing?”
    “No, my angel. Now tell me, what was he like?” He took the hairbrush out of her hand and started brushing her hair with it. She was startled by the intimate action.
    “Well, if you must.” Then she sighed. “He never brushed my hair.”
    Raphael’s smile was warm, and it extended to his eyes. The almost predatory, tense way with which he’d questioned her about Giovanni’s ring was gone. Maybe she had just imagined it.
    “He was a good man. He provided for me, taught me how to help him run the business. I learned much from him. He was kind.” She paused, not knowing what else to say about him.
    “Yet he never licked your pussy,” Raphael whispered close to her ear.
    She dropped her lids. “He wasn’t that type of man.”
    “What type, Isabella?” His breath ghosted over her shoulder.
    “That … that,” she stammered, unable to concentrate when he was deliberately trying to make her body react to him.
    “Passionate?” he helped.
    “He was a measured man. Everything had its time and place. That’s why it was so strange …” So strange when he changed.
    “What was strange?” Raphael continued brushing her hair with long and gentle strokes.
    “Before his death. He was not the same man anymore.”
    “In what way?”
    “I’m not sure, but he was different. He avoided being alone with me. He had terrible mood swings, outbursts of temper. And he would stay away all night, then shut himself away all day. It wasn’t normal. He even shunned Massimo, and they’d always been as close as brothers. One day he tossed the onyx ring in the corner as if it was worth nothing. It was his temper.”
    The smooth strokes with which Raphael brushed her hair soothed her memories. But something else still bothered her. “I think he took a mistress. He wouldn’t bed me anymore. Maybe that’s what happens to men when they are married for a few years. They lose interest in their wives.”
    Raphael set the brush on the table and turned her body to him. “Is that what you’re afraid of? That I’ll lose interest in you?”
    She didn’t want to answer him. What would it serve? Only to expose her heart. He would break it one day—one day soon when she discovered his true motives for marrying her. She didn’t want to meet his eye, but he shelved her chin on his hand and tilted her face up.
    “I’ll never lose interest in you. How could I? You’re the most engaging and passionate woman I’ve ever met.”
    His kiss was tender, but within seconds it turned heated and consuming. Despite her reservations about him, her uncertainty of what he wanted from her, and from this marriage, she melted into him.
    Raphael lifted her into his arms and carried her to their bed, where he covered her with his own body. “Now, my sweet wife, let me show you how much you interest me.”
     



Chapter Sixteen
     
    This was the third night that Isabella had awakened and found herself alone. Raphael was nowhere to be found. Just as the two nights before: he’d come to bed and made love to her, only to disappear sometime while she slept. At first she’d thought she would find him downstairs in the study or the parlor having a glass of grappa or reading a book, but the house was empty, save for the servants.
    Yet, every morning he was by her side again, sleeping, his body pressed closely to hers as if he’d never been away. Despite his assurances that he wouldn’t lose interest in her as Giovanni had, she couldn’t help but speculate where he went in the middle of the night.
    But she wouldn’t make the same mistake she’d made with Giovanni. She wouldn’t allow him to treat her like this. If he disappeared again, she would follow him and find out what he