welcome curtain of her hair around her face.
She looked up finally, and spoke at the same time as Leo.
‘Angel—’
‘I’m a virgin.’
They both stopped. Leo looked at her. A strange stillness seemed to come into his body, and the air grew thick with atmosphere around them.
‘What did you say?’
Angel gulped. ‘I said that I’m a virgin.’
Leo shook his head. ‘No, it’s impossible.’
Angel felt the cold trickle of humiliation come into her body. This was going to be so much worse than she’d envisaged. On an impulse to cover up properly she scooted quickly from the bed and plucked her dress off the floor, stepping into it and pulling it up over her chest, clutching it there with her hands.
She looked at Leo and fought to stay standing in the face of his obvious disbelief. ‘I’m afraid it is possible. I’m not what you …’ She bit her lip. ‘I’ve never been anyone’s mistress.’
Leo’s hand came out in a slashing movement; anger throbbed in his voice. ‘You’re lying. This is some game you’re playing. I’ve told you, Angel, I don’t play games.’
‘Neither do I,’ she said miserably. ‘And believe what you want, Leo, but I don’t think it would take long to prove you wrong.’
Leo just stared at her, his hands bunched into fists on his hips. It was as if he was trying to see inside her very soul.
Angel couldn’t take the intensity of his regard. She looked down and stupidly felt she had to apologise. She quashed the impulse. ‘We didn’t … there hasn’t exactly been the opportunity to discuss …’ She stopped. Mortified.
Leo’s tone had gone from angry to icy. ‘You could have informed me when I told you I was going to take you as my mistress.’
Angel looked up, stung, anger rising. To think that she was going through this humiliation again. ‘How? Was I supposed to just come out with it?’
Leo just glared at her, a muscle popping in his jaw. Angel felt deflated all of a sudden. She backed away. Leo didn’t let her escape his blistering gaze. ‘Dammit, Angel you should have told me.’
He stilled then, and instinctively Angel grew wary. He asked silkily, ‘Did you come back here to sleep with me after discussing your options with your father? Like some kind of sacrificial virgin?’
Horror rose from Angel’s gut. She shook her head. ‘No. No. How could you think such a thing? My father isn’t even here, he’s gone to London.’
Leo raked a hand through his hair, making it flop with unruly sexiness onto his forehead. Angel’s belly clenched even now. She was aware of a pervading sense of hollow disappointment. Evidently he wasn’t willing to sleep with her, to take her innocence. Suddenly she couldn’t bear to be so vulnerable in front of him for a moment longer.
‘I’m going to go back to my room.’
After a long moment Leo just nodded, and said darkly, ‘I think that’s a good idea.’
Leo watched Angel walk out of the room, the gaping dress showing the slender length of her smooth back in a curiously vulnerable way. He felt pole-axed. Winded. She was a virgin. Or was she? He cursed himself. As she’d said herself, it wouldn’t take much to find out, and if he took her now, as he was aching to do, and she was telling the truth … he’d hurt her.
So if she was telling the truth she hadn’t had countless lovers, hadn’t been mistress to other men. It meant that his belief in one aspect of her behaviour had to be amended. For a second he again had the sickening suspicion that this was all part of some plan concocted with her father. Lead him on and drop the bombshell. But then he remembered the look of abject horror mixed with disgust on her face when he’d suggested that. It had been too real to ignore. She’d said her father hadn’t even been there, and that would be easy enough to prove. Something uncomfortable lodged in Leo’s chest.
He sat down on the edge of his bed and dropped his head for a moment. How the hell did someone like her remain a virgin till the age of twenty-four? For some reason he wasn’t prepared to look too closely at why that might be.
He suddenly remembered when they’d been in the study the previous evening. He’d brought her to certain orgasm, or very close. He’d been disgusted to find himself so out of control in that moment. Bringing a fully-clothed woman to orgasm—a woman who had just been caught stealing from his family! At the time he’d dismissed her reaction, not believing it, thinking she was acting. But if her reaction had been genuine it would explain the shocked look on her face, her embarrassment.
Hadn’t he felt compelled to pour her that drink? And then her agitation had led her to knock the glass out of his hand … Leo looked up again at the door she’d just walked through. The certainty hit him that she was telling the truth. You couldn’t fake that kind of innocence.
He was angry—angry with himself for not noticing the signs. He was a connoisseur of women, and yet he’d kissed and held an innocent in his arms and hadn’t even noticed. Because he’d been too inflamed. That was the truth. The minute he came within a foot of Angel his brain started to melt and hormones took over. Out of control. He grimaced. As evidenced by everything leading up to this moment.
When she’d stopped him it had taken more strength than he’d known he possessed to pull back from her lithe, firm body. He’d nearly exploded just seeing her breasts revealed, two beautifully shaped firm mounds, tipped with those small, hard nipples, enticing him to lick and explore.
Already the fire was building in his body again. And something else. The realisation that no other man had discovered the intimate secrets of Angel’s body. A curious bubbling feeling made Leo’s chest expand.
Leo realised that every other man they encountered in Athens might want Angel, but he would know that they hadn’t been her lover … She was a virgin, and she was his. He had the power in his hands to make her uniquely his. Something deeply primitive within him thrilled at the sound of those words, at their implication …
To Angel’s horror, as soon as she stepped under the spray of her shower, weak hot tears started falling down her cheeks, followed by gut-wrenching sobs. She pressed her hands to her face. She couldn’t believe she was feeling this way. She couldn’t believe that Leo, a man she barely knew, was so far under her skin that he had the power to hurt her like this, when she had every reason to hate him. How could she want someone like him to want her? Why wasn’t she happy she’d scored a point? Even she had seen that she’d dented his insufferable confidence for one moment. Stopped him in his tracks …
Angel eventually turned off the shower and stepped out, shivering slightly despite the heat. She roughly towel-dried her hair and pulled on a voluminous robe that was hanging on the back of the door, not even drying herself properly.
She felt flat and empty. Achilles had turned away from her in disgust when he’d discovered her virginity, when he’d known that she couldn’t please him. But Achilles had been a boy. Leo Parnassus was a man. She’d been right to worry; it was so obvious now that he would want nothing to do with a novice.
Angel felt nauseous. Had he been so repulsed? But why else would
