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.
