unrecognizable.
“Come,” Raphael urged her and led her into the night.
The streets were teeming with revelers, many wearing masks, some elaborate, others as simple as her own. Everybody was the same. Class was forgotten. It was how it was meant to be. During carnival, a pauper could be a prince. A noble could be a pirate. A whore could be a lady.
Isabella looked with wonder at the different people and masks as Raphael led her through the busy alleys around Piazza San Marco. The further they walked, the quieter the streets became. She barely noticed how far they’d gone because she was so fascinated with the activities in the streets.
She was surprised when Raphael suddenly stopped under an arched walkway and pressed her back to a wall behind her, his body flush against hers. “And now, my sweet wife, it’s time to consummate our marriage. I think I’ve waited long enough.” The predatory glint in his eyes was unmistakable.
Isabella gasped in shock. “Here?”
His lips ghosted over her skin, his breath caressing her as he answered. “Yes, my beautiful angel, right here. That’s why we’re wearing masks. I’ll ravish you here, where any passerby might see us. Yet, they won’t know who we are. All they’ll think is that a man is fucking a whore, and they won’t care. Maybe they’ll simply watch.”
She tried to push him away, and with him her own scandalous desire to do just what he was suggesting. Her body already responded to his salacious words, her sex clenching in anticipation of his body claiming her. And the thought that somebody could see them sent a hot flame through her core. No, she couldn’t allow this to happen.
Raphael encircled her wrists and held them to the wall, then dipped his head to where her bosom heaved. He licked his tongue over her twin swells in a low and sensual stroke and inhaled. “I can smell your arousal, my love.”
Panic gripped her. If she allowed him to do this, he would realize that she was no lady, that she was no better than a whore, because only a whore would allow herself to be ravished in such a public place. And then? Would he toss her away when he saw what she really was? A deeply disturbed woman with lusty feelings, more debauched than any whore in the city?
“Please, Raphael, let us go home,” she pleaded, but knew her voice was hoarse with the lust she could barely contain. She didn’t understand why he conjured these feelings up in her. Her first husband never had. She’d been the dutiful wife, and while she had enjoyed when Giovanni had bedded her, she’d never lost control or felt the desire to do scandalous things like those Raphael proposed.
Isabella felt her bodice loosening and realized that Raphael was undoing some of the hooks that held her dress up. She tried to protest, but couldn’t because his lips on her skin made her brain unable to form any words. When his hands pulled down her bodice by only a few centimeters, it was sufficient for her breasts to pop out of their cage. Cold air blasted against them, tightening her nipples instantly.
Greedily, Raphael clamped his mouth over one nipple and sucked, while his hand cupped her other breast and kneaded it. Isabella couldn’t stop the moan from leaving her lips, just as she couldn’t stop the liquid that pooled between her legs. “Oh, God,” she whispered breathlessly.
Her nipple popped out of his mouth, and he used his fingers to pull on it. Then he looked at her, his eyes clouded with the same passion she’d seen in him the night before. “Open my breeches and take my cock out.”
Without thinking, she followed his order while he sank his lips onto her other nipple. With shaking fingers, she reached for his flap and started unbuttoning it. Her hand grazed his hard length. His moan was so deep and loud, she heard it echo in the archway. But by now she didn’t care who would see or hear them. She wanted him, wanted his hard shaft to drive into her and claim her.
When his trousers
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