Chapter 17
We have gone way, way past inappropriate
Clara
At first, I couldn’t really process anything. My brain was scrambled from what had just happened. Rafe pulled me up to sitting on the desk and I blinked up at his face, but I couldn’t make out his expression. My glasses had fallen off at some point and now everything was blurry.
I felt a little arrow of panic spear through my post-amazing-sex-with-Rafe haze. Did he look disgusted with me now? With himself? I turned to search the desk behind me, looking around for my glasses, but I couldn’t find them. My chest tightened. I hated not being able to see.
My older brother Freddie and his friends thought it was funny when we were kids to hide my glasses so that I would have to stumble around the house to find them.
He called me Little Mole and would laugh at me and push me around as I tearfully pleaded to have my glasses returned.
My other older brother, Ruben, would usually end up putting a stop to it, which would kick off a fight between them.
I’d leave them to their violence and sneak away.
Panic rose in my chest the longer I couldn’t find my glasses, and the backs of my eyes started to sting. Then I realised that in my panic, I had forgotten that I was still completely exposed.
“Shit, shit,” I muttered as I abandoned my search to pull up the cups of my bra and try to get my shirt back on, but it was caught around my elbows.
“Clara?” Rafe’s soft voice was full of concern now. “Baby, calm down. You’re okay. Everything is okay.”
His large hand cupped my jaw on one side as his thumb swept away a tear that had fallen.
Then he lifted both sides of my shirt and buttoned it quickly.
I was staring down at my hands. Another tear made it down my cheek.
He put his knuckle underneath my chin to lift my face to his, but my vision was even more blurry now with tears and I still couldn’t make out his expression.
“Deep breaths, darling,” he said, his voice still gentle but now firm. Then he slid my glasses back onto my nose. He secured the arms behind my ears, gently pushing the hair that had fallen forwards into my face back over my shoulders, and stroked down my back.
“Sorry, sorry,” I whispered, and I heard him sigh. When I looked up at his face, I could see his features clearly now, and he was frowning.
“Clara, why are you apologising?” he asked in a low, gentle voice.
I shook my head and shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know,” I said, still whispering.
His frown cleared and he smiled before he gave me a light kiss and stepped back to help me off the desk.
Then he grabbed my knickers and my leggings off the floor and helped me back into them.
Heat hit my cheeks. I’d forgotten about the whole being naked from the waist down thing.
Once he had completed that task, he sat in the large armchair behind him and pulled me down to sit on his lap.
I stiffened. I was still mid-panic attack and not at all sure what was happening.
Little Mole Clara did not live out her wild fantasies with men like Lord Sterling.
“I should get up,” I whispered as his arms came around me.
But the smell of him, the feel of his large body and the need I felt to be close to him won out, and I melted into the warmth of his broad chest. “This isn’t appropriate,” I muttered half-heartedly.
I could feel his smile against me before he burst out laughing into my hair, pulling me even closer to him.
His large body shaking with laughter was one of the most wonderful feelings I had ever experienced in my life.
“Clara, we just fucked on my desk,” he told me through his amusement. “We have gone way, way past inappropriate.”
I swallowed. “Ah. Yes. You’re right. I’m just not sure what’s happening or why it’s happening.
I’m a bit worried about how I’ve behaved.
” I’d been so worried about apologising to Rafe tonight that I’d raided his drinks cabinet and downed a shot of brandy earlier.
Being a complete lightweight, it had been enough to decimate my inhibitions.
“How you’ve behaved?” Rafe asked. I looked up at his face; his eyebrows were both raised. He still had his arms around me, and his hands were stroking down my back in soothing movements.
“Well… I sort of cornered you in your office and propositioned you,” I said nervously. “I mean, what were you supposed to do when I started talking about all of my dirty fantasies? I basically preyed on your masculine urges.”
Rafe stared at me a moment before blinking and then leaning down to laugh into my neck, even harder than before.
“I don’t see what’s so funny,” I muttered indignantly. When he finally managed to stop laughing, he raised his head from my neck and looked at me with a smile.
“Baby, please never, ever say masculine urges again. I don’t think I can take it,” he said in an amused voice.
I shrugged helplessly. “What am I supposed to say?”
He rolled his eyes. “Clara, I’ve wanted you for weeks.
I think I’ve wanted you since the first moment you looked up at me with those big brown eyes in the classroom that day when I was being a dickhead, and you put me in my place.
Now, I just came harder than I have ever come in my entire life.
You haven’t tricked me into giving in to my masculine urges.
I’m a man who takes what he wants, and I want you more than I’ve wanted anything in a very, very long time. ”
“You want me?” I whispered, and his hand came up to my jaw to turn my head gently towards him so that he could look into my eyes.
“You’re funny. You’re kind. You’re intelligent. You’re beautiful.”
I snorted at the word “beautiful,” and his gaze sharpened.
“You don’t believe you’re beautiful?” he asked, and I broke eye contact to look down at my hands.
“You don’t have to say these things to me, you know?
” I said in a small voice. “If you want to carry on with…” I waved my hand vaguely in the air, trying to think of a word for it which wouldn’t make me blush.
I settled on, “…stuff, you don’t have to give me any flowery words or tell me what you think I want to hear.
” I swallowed nervously. “I really, really enjoyed the stuff, so you don’t have to lie to me. ”
“Oh, darling,” he muttered as he rested his forehead against mine, his hands coming up to cup both sides of my jaw tenderly. “What happened to you?”
“W-w-what do you mean?”
“What happened to make you believe I’m lying?”
I shrugged, and he wrapped his arms around me again to pull me back into his chest. Feeling overwhelmed and exposed, I decided to just give in at that point.
I relaxed against his warm, muscular chest and nuzzled into the base of his neck, loving the feel of his stubble against my cheek and breathing in his clean scent edged with expensive aftershave.
“It’s okay,” Rafe said softly. “You don’t have to tell me yet.”
I didn’t understand. Not really. But I also didn’t have the energy to argue.
“Just listen for a minute, okay?” he said, his voice a low rumble in his chest, pleasant and soothing.
I nodded. “So, the situation is a little more complicated than we would like. But let me be clear: if anyone has manipulated anyone here, it’s me manipulating you.
I am in a position of power. I’m older. I’m your employer.
If anyone’s in the wrong, it’s me. But I have to say, Clara, nothing feels wrong about this.
In fact, this feels more right than anything I’ve felt for a long while.
We don’t have to work out anything now. For now, I just want to hold you. ”
“But maybe we should talk about whether––?”
His groan as I attempted to sit up cut off what I was going to say.
“If you wriggle anymore, baby,” he told me in a hoarse voice, “I’ll give in to some more of those masculine urges you went on about. Just keep still, relax and trust me, okay?”
Trust was a difficult one for me. I trusted Lily and Mrs C. I trusted Zach. But that was about it.
I’d made the mistake once of trusting my university boyfriend, who I met whilst I was doing teacher training.
Nathan had been a mild-mannered, bespectacled, cardigan-wearing skinny guy.
He was gentle, and he was kind. I lost my virginity to him, and I was with him for about three months until he met my family, who apparently “scared the bollocks off” him.
I didn’t blame Nathan. My family scared the bollocks off most people. But I thought we’d meant something to each other, so the disappointment of being ghosted completely with no other explanation was crushing.
Worse even than Nathan was Daniel, who had used me as a stepladder into my father’s crime syndicate, not even realising what an ineffective stepladder I actually was, seeing as I didn’t command the respect of anyone, least of all my father.
When he did realise this, Daniel dumped me as quickly as possible.
He still worked for Dad, and I saw him occasionally when I had to be at the house.
But I never looked directly at him anymore.
I never looked directly at any of my father’s men anymore.
I was tired. Really, really tired and completely overwhelmed with the strength of my feelings for Rafe.
He was so warm and his arms were so strong around me.
So, I thought, why not? I would let myself have this moment.
I could pretend that he was mine, that he knew who I was, who I really was and who my family were, and that he didn’t care, that he just wanted me.
I could pretend I was safe.
For now.