ANGEL GRASPED HER HAND and eased her up out of her seat. ‘I have a special request,’ he admitted almost harshly.
Enthralled by the golden glimmer of his intense appraisal, Merry moistened her dry lips with the tip of her tongue. ‘And what would that be?’
Long fingers flicked the silken bell of hair that fell to just below her shoulders. ‘You cut your hair. I loved it the way it was. Will you grow it again for me?’ he asked levelly.
Surprise darted through Merry, who had wondered if he had even noticed that she had shortened her hair. ‘I suppose that could be arranged,’ she breathed shakily.
‘Why did you cut it?’ he demanded. ‘It was really beautiful.’
Even more taken aback by that blunt question and the compliment, Merry coloured. She couldn’t tell him the truth, couldn’t afford to dwell on unfortunate memories at this stage of their marriage or mention truths that he might think were aimed at reproaching him. But when she had been pregnant and struggling against an unending tide of exhaustion and sickness to get through every day, the amount of care demanded by very long hair had simply felt like an unnecessary burden.
‘It was too much work to look after when I was pregnant,’ she muttered awkwardly.
‘Fortunately, you no longer have to look after your own hair,’ Angel informed her lazily. ‘Add a stylist to your staff—’
Merry opened pale blue eyes very wide. ‘I’m to have my own staff?’ she gasped.
‘Of course. You’ll need a social secretary to take care of your calendar, someone to shop for you...unless you want to do it yourself,’ Angel volunteered doubtfully. ‘I’ve started you off with a new wardrobe—’
‘Have you indeed?’ Merry cut in jerkily.
‘It’s a wedding present. I wasn’t sure you’d want to be bothered,’ Angel volunteered, a fingertip tracing the quivering fullness of her lower lip, sending a shiver through her taut, slender body. ‘You’ve never struck me as being that interested in clothes or appearances.’
‘I’m not,’ she agreed almost guiltily. ‘Sybil was always trying to persuade me that shopping was enjoyable.’
‘I don’t want you having to do things you don’t want to do,’ Angel told her huskily. ‘I don’t want you to change who you are to fit into my world, so it’s easier to have someone else take care of the less welcome aspects for you.’
Her heartbeat was thumping hard and fast inside her tightening chest. ‘You like me the way I am?’
‘Very much,’ Angel asserted. ‘You’re unusual and I value that.’
A smile slowly tilted and softened the tense line of her mouth. ‘And you have a fetish for very long hair?’
A wolfish grin slashed his expressive mouth, cutting his dark male beauty into high-cheekboned perfection and interesting hollows while his intense gaze held hers fast. ‘Only from the first moment I saw you.’
Warmth flushed through Merry, leaving her breathless. ‘That must be the most romantic thing you’ve ever said to me.’
‘I don’t do romantic, koukla mou,’ Angel told her uneasily, a frown line building between his fine ebony brows as he stared down at her in frustration. ‘For me, it was a sexual charge and instantaneous...’
And if she was honest, Merry reflected ruefully, it had been the same for her that first day, a powerful instant physical reaction that had only deepened with repeated exposure.
Lean brown hands dropped to the sash at her waist and jerked it loose so that her breath hitched in her throat. She could feel her breasts swelling inside her bra, her nipples prickling into feverish prominence, the sense of melting at her feminine core. She was trembling, awake on every level even before he picked her up against him and crushed her ripe mouth hungrily under his.
‘Thee mou... I want you even more now than I wanted you then,’ Angel intoned rawly. ‘And that’s saying something. But then I’ve never had to be patient before.’
‘You don’t have any patience,’ she whispered through reddened lips. ‘You want everything yesterday.’
‘Once I got you back I didn’t want to be too demanding in case it made you change your mind. Before the wedding, I felt like I was in a straitjacket around you, forced to be on my best behaviour,’ he complained.
Merry laughed, riveted to appreciate that she had read his uncharacteristic restraint correctly. She knew him better than she had believed, she thought victoriously, and his admission thrilled her. He hadn’t wanted to risk driving her away and losing her. Losing them, she corrected with a sudden inner flinch of dismayed acceptance, the thrilled sensation swiftly dying again. He had practised patience with Elyssa’s mother for Elyssa’s benefit, fearful of losing access through their marriage to his daughter, which put a very different slant on his attitude.
‘Unhappily for me, I am a naturally demanding man,’ Angel admitted thickly, long, deft fingers twitching the buttons loose on her top, parting the edges, pushing them off her slim, taut shoulders until the garment dropped to the tiled floor. ‘No good at waiting, no fan of deferred gratification either...’
Her ribcage tensed as she snatched in a sustaining breath, ridiculously self-conscious standing there in her simple white lace bra. Although they had been intimate twice before, on the first occasion they had been in semi-darkness and on the second they had both been so frantic that she hadn’t had the time or space to feel remotely shy. But now, her face burned as Angel released the catch on her bra and her breasts tumbled free, plump and swollen and heavy.
‘I have died and gone to heaven,’ Angel intoned, scooping her up and carrying her across to the bed. ‘I love your curves.’
‘I’m pretty much stuck with them,’ Merry pointed out, resisting a very strong urge to cup her hands over the swells that pregnancy had increased in size.
Angel cupped the burgeoning creamy swells, gently moulded and stroked them before leaning back to peel his shirt off over his head. Tangled black curls, glossy below the discreet lights, tumbled over his brow, his lean, strong face taut with hunger, dark golden eyes glittering like polished ingots. A thumb teased a quivering pink nipple until it hardened into a tight bud and throbbed, her breath escaping from her parted lips in an audible hiss of quaking response.
‘You should tremble... I want to eat you alive,’ Angel warned her, settling his hands to her waist to extract her from her linen trousers, yanking them off with scant ceremony and trailing off her last garment with brazen satisfaction. ‘But we’ve never taken the time to do this properly. We were always in a ridiculous hurry to reach the finishing line. It won’t be like that tonight.’
Merry felt the dampness between her thighs and reddened fiercely, wildly aware that her body was even now ready for him, surging impatiently ahead without shame to that finishing line he had mentioned. He made her single-minded and greedy and shameless, she thought helplessly. He turned everything she thought she knew about herself on its head and he had done that from the outset.
Watching her, Angel sprang upright again to strip off what remained of his clothes. He was, oh, so beautiful that she stared, taking in the long, bronzed flexing torso lightly sprinkled with black curling hair, the superb muscle definition, the long, powerful, hair-roughened thighs and the bold, eager thrust of his erection. Her belly fluttered, her mouth ran dry, her body flexed with sinful eagerness.
He returned to her again, all smouldering sexual assurance and with eyes that ravished her as she lay there. His hands found her curvy hips, his mouth locked to a rosy crest, and she simply gasped while he played with the puckered buds until they throbbed almost unbearably. A finger trailed through her slick folds and her spine arched, another sound, a plea for more that she couldn’t help, dragged from her. He spread her thighs to invade her body with skilful fingers and slid down her pale body to explore her most tender flesh.
Merry was already so aroused that she could barely contain herself. He toyed with her, brought his mouth to her and licked and teased until she writhed helplessly beneath his ministrations, her body alight like a forest fire, hot and twitchy and excited beyond bearing. It was as though every nerve ending had reached saturation point, thrusting her higher and higher with every passing second until her body shattered in an ecstatic climax without her volition. A high keening cry fell from her, her body jerking and gasping with the intensity of her relief as the long, convulsive waves of pleasure rippled through her again.
‘You really needed that,’ Angel husked knowingly, his brilliant gaze locked to her hectically flushed and softened face. ‘So did I. I needed to see you come for me again. I need to know I’m the only man to see you like this.’
‘Why?’ she asked baldly, taken aback by that admission.
Angel shrugged a broad shoulder. ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted, quite unconcerned by his own ignorance of what motivated him. ‘But when I saw you kissing that vet guy I wanted to wipe him off the face of the earth.’
Merry sat up with a start and hugged her knees in consternation. ‘How did you see that?’
‘You and Elyssa have had a security detail discreetly watching over you for months. It’s standard in this family and not negotiable,’ Angel told her without apology. ‘I needed to know you were both safe. I was sent a photo of you kissing him. I didn’t need to see that. I didn’t ask for it. I hated it.’
Merry sat there frozen, shock and resentment momentarily holding her fast. ‘Standard?’ she queried.
‘It’s my job to keep you both safe,’ he delivered flatly. ‘But sometimes you don’t want the details. Did you have sex with him?’
‘None of your business!’ Merry framed jaggedly, swinging her legs off the bed and standing up. ‘How many women have you been with since the night Elyssa was conceived?’
The silence simmered like a kettle suddenly pushed close to noisy boiling point.
Merry swung back to him, too angry to even care that she was naked. ‘I thought that would shut you up!’
‘After our little contraceptive mishap it was months before I was with anyone again. I couldn’t get you or that accident out of my head. I still wanted you but I had to stay away from you,’ Angel ground out with suppressed savagery, his lean, dark features rigid with remembered frustration and resentment. ‘Every other woman turned me off. You destroyed my sex drive until I got very, very drunk one night and finally broke the dry spell.’
Well, that was blunt and very Angel brutal, Merry acknowledged, stalking into the bathroom with hot stinging tears brimming in her eyes. And she still wanted to kill him, rake jealous fingernails down over his beautiful face and draw blood in punishment. Jealousy and hatred ate her alive, threatening to rip her asunder because she had no defence against such honesty. Of course, she had guessed there would be other women, other flings and sexual dalliances while they were apart, but guessing and knowing were two very different things.
Inside the bathroom, Angel closed two strong arms round her to hold her fast. ‘It was the worst sex I’ve ever had.’
‘Good!’ she bit out with raw sincerity.
‘It wasn’t like you and me. It wasn’t what I really wanted but I couldn’t have what I wanted and celibacy made me feel like a weakling,’ he groaned against the damp nape of her neck. ‘The sexual hold you had over me unnerved me right from the beginning. It felt toxic, dangerous...’
‘Thanks... I think,’ Merry framed weakly as he wrapped his strong arms even more tightly round her, imprisoning her in the hard, damp heat of his lean, powerful body.
‘It was the same for you. You fought it as well,’ he reminded her.
And that was true, she conceded grudgingly. That overpowering hunger had scared her, overwhelmed her, made her all too aware of her vulnerability. Could it really have been the same for him?
‘Even if the condom hadn’t broken that night, I’d have run like a hare,’ Angel admitted in a driven undertone. ‘I felt out of control. I couldn’t live like that.’
‘Neither could I,’ she confessed unevenly.
‘But now that I’ve got that ring on your finger, everything feels different,’ Angel stated, his breath fanning her shoulder, his hands smoothing up her body in innate celebration of the possessiveness roaring through him. ‘You’re mine now, all mine.’
‘Am I?’ she dared.
An appreciative laugh vibrated through him and his hands swept up over her breasts, moulding the ripe swells, tugging at the still-distended peaks, sending a piercing arrow of sweet shuddering sensation right down to the moist heart of her. ‘If you don’t know that yet, I’m doing something very wrong,’ he growled, lifting her off her feet to carry her back into the bedroom.
‘You have a one-track mind, Mr Valtinos,’ Merry condemned helplessly as he spread her on the bed and hovered over her body, brazenly eager for more action.
‘No, I have a wife to claim,’ Angel declared urgently, sliding between her slender thighs, gathering them up and plunging into her with ravenous sexual dominance. ‘And tonight nothing will keep me from you. Not my mistakes, not my clumsy efforts to make amends, not your disappointment in me, not my inability to live up to your impossibly high ideals. We are married and we will do the best we can with that challenge.’
His sudden intrusion into her honeyed depths stretched her tight and then sent a current of melting excitement surging through Merry. She closed her eyes as he moved, her head falling back, her body an erotic instrument in his charge, glorious sensation spilling through her, washing away the hurt and the disillusionment. Oh, later she would take out the hurt again and brood on it and hate herself, but just then she couldn’t hold onto that pain, not when a delicious flood of exquisite feeling clenched her core with his every sensual movement. He felt like hers for the first time, and as an explosive orgasm lit her up from inside out and he groaned with passionate pleasure into her hair she was soothed, quieted and gratified to be the source of that uninhibited satisfaction.