Читать книгу Exotic Nights: The Virgin's Secret / The Devil's Heart / Pleasured in the Playboy's Penthouse - Эбби Грин, Natalie Anderson - Страница 11

HIS stark words rendered Angel mute. She felt she had no choice as Leo led her into his bedroom. She chastised herself; there was always a choice. But her choice to retain her dignity and walk away would have an effect on the person closest to her.

And she found as Leo kicked the door shut with one foot and led Angel further in, close to his massive bed, that the desire to walk away was disturbingly elusive. She hated to admit it to herself, but was she using Delphi in some way to justify this?

Disgusted with herself, because that was a very real possibility, Angel wrenched her hand free from Leo’s. The very pertinent fact of her virginity had also been easy to push down to somewhere she didn’t want to explore. But now it was rising again. How could it not, when it was about to become an issue?

Angel backed a few feet away from Leo and stood tall. ‘I’m not going to just fall into your bed like some concubine.’

His mouth tightened. ‘No, there’s a more modern word: mistress. You’ll fall into my bed like the mistress you are. I’m sure you’ve done it for countless others, Angel, no need to be shy.’ He smiled, and it was cruelly mocking. ‘It’s lucky I caught you between lovers.’

‘How …?’ Angel asked shakily, the wind taken out of her sails. ‘How do you know I don’t have a lover?’

Leo walked over to where she stood. ‘Because I’ve had you followed since I left Athens and your every move reported back to me. So you see, Angel—’ here Leo reached out and tucked some wayward hair behind her ear ‘—I know that you must be dying to get a taste of the life you’ve undoubtedly been missing, thanks to your father’s excessive greed.’

He lifted up her hands, which were dry and a little rough from all the cleaning she’d been doing. Each time she’d had to scrub a toilet she’d imagined the day when she’d be polishing the white gold of one of her jewellery designs.

With no clue as to what was in her head, Leo brought her hands up to his mouth and kissed them one by one, making Angel’s heart speed up even as delayed shock made her useless. He’d had her followed?

‘You can’t deny that you aren’t craving the easy life again, Angel, and I can provide that for you.’

Bitterness that he had so little idea of who she really was made Angel say, ‘Just temporarily, though.’ She knew saying that would most likely give him the impression that she was greedy, and she hated that she cared.

He quirked a brow and dropped her hands, but kept hold of them. ‘It’s up to you, Angel. It depends on how much you please me in bed …’

Bed. Panic exploded in her gut. He thought she was experienced, really experienced. And, to give him his due, most of the girls in her peer group were. She and Delphi, they were a breed apart—always had been, thanks to Tito’s excessively controlling nature, and the fact that he’d had Angel all but locked away in a remote school for most of her teenage years. It was why their sister Damia had rebelled and come to such a tragic end.

‘Leo, I don’t think you understand—’

He came even closer and snaked a hand around her neck, drawing her mouth up to meet his. ‘There’s nothing to understand, Angel except this.’

Leo tipped her chin up, and before she could react his mouth was on hers for the second time in just twenty-four hours. So much had happened in so little time that Angel’s head reeled, but it was all being washed away as Leo’s mouth moved seductively against hers, eliciting a response that she couldn’t deny.

With a muted groan of despair at her own helpless reaction, Angel let her hands find their way to Leo’s chest, where they clung to his shirt. She had to hang on or she’d fall down in a heap. She could not understand how this man had such an instantaneous effect on her, but he did.

His tongue sought hers and made her insides melt into a pool of lust, just by stroking it. Their mouths clung. Angel remembered the study and her awfully wanton response, how he’d left her so unsatisfied. But she didn’t have time now to feel humiliated; all she could feel was that new-found ache, growing again.

Leo’s hands were on the back of her dress; the zip was being drawn down. Angel pulled away and looked up. Her chest rose and fell rapidly, and her heart was thumping so hard she felt faint. Her mouth felt bruised and swollen. She could only stand there as she felt a cool breeze whistle over her skin as the zip descended. All the while Leo was holding her gaze and not letting her look away.

When the zip was all the way down, to just above her buttocks, Leo pulled Angel in close again and smoothed his hands up and down her naked back. Electric shocks of sensation made her shudder; the tips of her breasts tingled. She felt him undo the clasp of her bra. Things were moving quickly … too quickly.

Jerkily Angel pulled away from Leo’s caressing, distracting hands. The dress gaped forward slightly, and she put up her hands to stop it falling. She knew now that she’d blocked out the reality of what it would mean to do this.

But just when she went to open her mouth to say something Leo started pulling off his own clothes. Her eyes grew huge, and between her legs she throbbed when he stood before her naked, like a proud warrior. His broad, superbly muscled chest and shoulders had been awe-inspiring when she’d seen them, but when her gaze dropped Angel’s breath stopped altogether.

A taut, flat belly led down to a thatch of dark hair from which sprang a truly intimidating erection. Angel had only ever seen one man in this state, and that would never have prepared her for this. Leo stood proud, legs apart, thighs heavily muscled, cradling his impressive masculinity.

There was a blur of movement and Angel felt her dress being pulled away and down her arms. Suddenly it lay in a pool of black at her feet. She gave a squeal of protest but Leo was remorseless, and somehow, with an economy and efficiency of movement that took her breath away, she stood before him in just her panties. Her hair fell about her shoulders. She put an arm across her breasts and a hand down to cover between her legs.

Leo chuckled darkly, ‘There’s really no need to act the innocent …’

‘But I’m not—’

‘Enough talking,’ he growled, and stopped her words with his mouth again, his naked body coming into hot and immediate contact with hers. Angel’s brain went into meltdown. He took her arm away from her breasts, and Angel’s brain nearly short-circuited when she came into contact with that turgid erection.

Despite the wild excitement that flared through her body she wasn’t ready for this. She’d never be ready for this. She’d had some dim and distant hope that perhaps she could pretend, that her virginity might not be glaringly obvious, but that hope laughed in her face now.

Leo was backing her towards the bed, pushing her down. Things were moving too fast. She had to stop him, even though knowing that he was naked and feeling his smooth olive skin next to hers was turning her thoughts to mush.

Angel couldn’t bear for them to get to the point she’d reached before with Achilles and have Leo look at her with the same awful dawning horror on his face when he found out she was a virgin. Angel could remember the excruciating pain, the awful humiliation when Achilles hadn’t been able to penetrate her. He’d shouted at her, told her she was frigid, that no one would want to sleep with her because she was a virgin.

And even though Angel felt in her body instinctively that this was different, that the same outcome wasn’t assured, her brain was warning her of the pain and humiliation to come. And she knew that, however bad it had been with Achilles, to face the same from Leo would wound her so much more deeply, and that knowledge alone was enough for her to call a halt.

With a mammoth move, Angel pushed at Leo’s chest. One of his hands was travelling up her leg, and already she could feel herself weakening, moistening. Her body wasn’t hers any more.

She shoved again, and knocked his hand away with enough violence to make it sound like a slap, ‘No!’ The sound echoed in the room.

Leo’s movements stilled over her.

She looked up at him and bit her lip. All she could see were the strong planes of his face. He too was breathing harshly.

‘I … I have to tell you something.’

After a long moment Leo pulled back and reached over to put on a lamp beside the bed; it cast out a warm pool of low light. Abruptly he plucked his jeans off the floor and pulled them on roughly, standing up.

Angel felt very exposed and sat up, grabbing the sheet and pulling it around her.

Leo stood with hands on his hips, jeans undone. She could see the bulge of his arousal. He oozed such potent virility in that moment that Angel knew she was right to stop this now; she was no match for him. He needed a woman with experience, a woman to equal him, a woman like the women she’d seen on the internet. She felt sick.

‘Well, Angel? This had better be good.’

Angel would have stood, but the sheet was tucked into the bed so she sat awkwardly, holding it against her. She looked down for a moment, gathering her courage, and felt the 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 he have stopped? For a man as virile as him to stop making love just because she was a virgin had to be because he had no interest in being her first lover … Angel couldn’t contemplate for a second that it might have been because she’d genuinely caught him off guard. That there might have been an honourable intention behind it. To indulge in that line of thinking made all sorts of feelings emerge in Angel’s belly; much easier to think of Leo being cruel, single-minded.

She had no idea how things would work now. Perhaps Leo would take lovers on the side while he paraded her in public as his mistress? Angel’s heart constricted. No doubt that might be a further humiliation he’d appreciate when he came to consider it.

But the stark evidence that no man wanted to sleep with her … that Leo didn’t want to sleep with her … sapped her confidence totally—no matter how much she might try and pretend otherwise. Somehow the reason why she was here, the fact that this all stemmed from Leo’s desire for revenge, seemed of little consequence right now.

She stepped out of her bathroom, turning the light off as she did so. For a moment she didn’t notice anyone else in the dimly lit bedroom. Then she heard a muted sound and looked up, suddenly tense.

Leo stood there, just a few feet away, still in his jeans, the top button open, giving a tantalising glimpse of the dark hair which led—Angel gulped. Was she dreaming? Was she so pathetic?

Leo put out a hand. ‘Come here, Angel.’

It was him. On numb legs, trying to ignore the renewed zinging of energy through her veins, Angel walked forward. She stopped a couple of feet away, still needing to protect herself. Just because he was here, it didn’t mean anything.

But in that moment Leo closed the distance, stepped right up to Angel, took her face in his hands and kissed her. Her mouth opened on a shocked gasp and Leo took devastating advantage, tongue stabbing deep, stroking along hers, until Angel’s legs felt weak and her hands went to Leo’s waist to hold on. It was a sensual onslaught that impacted every cell in her body.

The feel of his hot satiny skin under her hands made them stretch out, trying to feel as much as she could. She couldn’t begin to explain what had just happened; she was only capable of feeling. And, like a coward, she shut out the cacophony of voices in her head.

Eventually Leo pulled back, but not much. With a gesture that was almost tender he stroked Angel’s damp hair behind one ear. And then, his eyes on hers, glittering darkly, he said, ‘You’re mine now, Angel, no one else’s.’

Angel looked up and couldn’t speak. The moment was too huge. Leo’s hands came to the belt of her robe and pulled it open. She kept looking at him, drawing confidence from the way his eyes fell and flared when he took in her naked body. He pushed the robe off her shoulders and it fell at her feet with a quiet thump. Moisture pooled between her legs and she fought not to squirm.

And then Angel watched with a palpitating heart as Leo removed his jeans, again. He was as magnificent as she remembered. She suddenly wanted to reach out and touch him. As if reading her mind, Leo said throatily, ‘Go on. Touch me, Angel.’

Hesitantly she put out her hand and, with her heart in her mouth, encircled it around his erection. She heard his swift intake of breath. It felt amazing to her, hot and silky, but with a steel core. Experimentally she moved her hand up and down, shocked when she felt him harden and swell even more in her hand. Leo expelled a long hiss of breath and Angel looked up. His face was tight, eyes black, cheekbones slashed with dark colour. The thought of him embedding himself in her was nearly too much to imagine.

He put his hand on hers and gently removed it. For a second Angel felt bewildered. She was doing it wrong. And then he said, ‘If you keep touching me like that this will be over very quickly for both of us.’

Angel blushed and felt an absurd burst of relief. Leo took her by the hand and led her to the bed, gently pushed her down. She watched as he came over her, huge and dark and powerful. When he’d done this just a short while before she’d felt out of her depth and overwhelmed, but now … something had shifted. There was a gentleness about Leo that was desperately seductive.

As he took her mouth with his Angel arched herself into him, arms and hands searching to touch him, hold him. Their tongues collided feverishly, teeth nipping and biting. Angel could feel herself writhing underneath him, as if to try and feel every part of him.

Leo took his mouth away, and Angel gave a mewl of distress which quickly turned into a groan when she felt him cup one breast and bring the aching, tingling tip into the hot cavern of his mouth. Angel’s back arched. Her hand stabbed into his hair.

His other hand was travelling up her leg, caressing, smoothing, feeling, until he spanned one thigh. Angel’s legs fell open. He traced a path from her inner thigh to the juncture of her legs and she squirmed with intense pleasure.

His mouth moved to her other breast as his hand and fingers found that secret sweet spot between her legs, and she had to bite back a groan when she felt him stroke along plump and moistened folds. She was so wet.

Leo started to press hot kisses down her belly. Angel lifted her head, dizzy with desire and lust and an achy need for fulfilment. ‘Leo … please …’ She was not even sure what she was asking for.

‘What, Angel?’ He looked up, his voice sounding unbelievably husky, rough. ‘What do you want?’

His fingers continued to tease, stroking her, making her hips twitch. And then, with a determined look in his eyes, he inserted two fingers inside her, going deeper, harder, and Angel gasped out loud. The feeling was so … intimate. Leo kept his hand where it was and moved up, his mouth hovering for a long moment just inches away from Angel’s breast, where a nipple pouted wantonly towards him.

Feeling emboldened, Angel arched her back, offering herself up, and with a feral smile Leo bent his head and flicked out his tongue, teasing that hard tip until it stood tight and erect. Angel’s head fell back. His hand was between her legs, his tongue on her breast … The tightening, building deliciousness she’d felt before was happening again and she couldn’t stop it, didn’t want to.

Just when she hovered on the edge, about to tumble down, Leo took his hand from between her legs and moved away slightly. Angel let out a faint moan of despair. She heard the rustle of a package. A condom.

Then Leo was back and hovering over her. Broad and powerful. She could feel his body move between her legs.

‘Open up more for me, Angel …’

Angel parted her legs, allowing Leo into the cradle of her hips. Holding himself in one hand, he allowed the tip of his sex to move along the wet heat of her arousal to see how ready she was. She felt a pulse throb down there and groaned. Her head went back. She could feel that smooth head, teasing along her slick folds, being moistened with her juices.

Her hips started to buck towards Leo; she wanted him to impale her, but he drew back for a moment. His voice sounded rough. ‘Patience, Angel …’

He bent down and covered her body with his, his chest crushing her breasts. Her nipples were like knife-points against him. Angel felt like sobbing out her frustration, but just then she felt Leo slide into her, his mouth coming over hers in as if to swallow her pain.

She gasped open-mouthed against him. The sting of pain was there, but not as she’d felt it before. He pulled back and looked down at her. ‘Okay?’

Angel nodded.

She felt him push in a little further and winced. She could feel that she was so tight around him, but the awful dreaded pain wasn’t lingering. It was slightly uncomfortable, yes, but very quickly that was being overtaken with something that felt amazing.

Angel’s heart sang, and she said breathily, ‘It’s fine, Leo … it feels fine.’

In that moment Angel got a sense of how much Leo was holding back. She could see his shoulders shake slightly and his brow was beaded with sweat. With a deep groan Leo thrust all the way into her, and Angel gasped, her back arching on an instinct.

She couldn’t speak. She felt so full, so right. So she spoke with her eyes and her hands, urging him to go on, to take up the rhythm, without even really knowing what she was doing or asking.

Leo pulled back and then thrust again, taking it slow and easy for the first few times, allowing Angel to get used to him. But then she felt an urgency build up within her. She wanted him to go harder, faster. She craved it. She was answering some deeply ancient call of the most feminine part of her. ‘Please, Leo …’

‘Yes, Angel, yes … stay with me.’

Leo answered her incoherent plea. With their bodies slick with sweat, he started to thrust into her, exactly as she craved with every atom of her being. Her hips jerked to meet his, to try and wring every drop out of him with each cataclysmic penetration of her body.

Then the pinnacle of every sensation she’d ever known was reached and transcended. She stopped breathing, her eyes on Leo’s—did he know what was happening to her? He smiled as if he knew exactly what was happening, and with one powerful surge of his body into hers Angel was flung into another universe. A universe filled with exploding stars and a sweet, sweet oblivion.

Leo lay on his back, Angel tucked into his side, his arm around her. One long, smooth leg was thrown over his. He could feel her breasts pressing into him, those sweet, soft mounds tipped with those small, hard nipples. Even now he could still taste them on his tongue, their sweet muskiness.

Even though he’d taken her just a short time ago his body was ready for more. In fact he’d never been kept in such a state of arousal after making love. He could feel the unsteady beat of Angel’s heart, slowly coming back to normal, and her breath was a little uneven. He knew that she’d fallen into a sleep of sorts.

Leo reeled. He’d had sex. Lots of sex. But nothing had come close to what he’d just experienced. He tried desperately to rationalise it: It had to be because she’d been a virgin. It had to be. Because if it wasn’t—Angel moved. Leo’s heart stopped; anticipation coiled deep inside him.

Angel was aware of consciousness returning slowly, trickling back. She was tucked into Leo’s body, his arm tight around her, and everything rushed back in glorious Technicolor. She was a woman now. Leo hadn’t rejected her. Immediately she could feel moist heat between her legs, readying her for him again.

Angel’s hand moved down over Leo’s chest, exploring the play of his powerful muscles underneath that exquisitely golden olive skin, the brush of hair that made her tingle all over. She could feel tension come into the muscles under her hand and smiled against his skin. She didn’t want words, she couldn’t speak; she just wanted him.

When her seeking hand found what she was looking for a fiercely feminine exultation ran through her at finding him so hard and ready. She lifted her head and Leo turned to face her. He looked serious, and a little shiver of something snaked down Angel’s spine, but she quashed it. He put his hand over hers, stopping her movements.

‘Angel … you’re bound to be sore.’

She came up and shook her head, putting her finger to his lips. She did ache, but it was an ache that cried out for fulfilment, not an ache of pain. She took her other hand from him and guided his hand to the juncture between her legs where he could feel for himself how ready she was.

Leo said something that sounded guttural and then moved fast, so that Angel was on her back and he was looming over her, already moving between her legs. The ache was building at her core, and if Angel could have stopped and slowed time in that moment, she would have.

‘Yes, Leo … this is what I want … please.’

He bent his head said close to her mouth, ‘Well, since you ask so nicely …’

When Angel woke again, the curtains were open and sunlight flooded her room. For a second everything was a blank. And then she became aware of certain aches and sensations in her body that weren’t usual. As her consciousness returned fully everything came back in glorious Technicolor, and her heart tripped before starting up again at double speed. She knew that Leo wasn’t in the bed; she’d somehow known that immediately.

It stunned her slightly to know how quickly her life had changed one hundred and eighty degrees. This time yesterday she’d still been a virgin.

Last night Leo had made her a woman. He’d taken her to a paradise she’d never dreamed existed. Heat suffused Angel from head to toe. And yet she couldn’t stop a smile from breaking across her face. It was impossible to ignore the fact that her body felt as if it had been awoken from a deep, cold sleep …

But just as quickly her smile faded again, when the enormity of it all sank in. How could she be feeling like this for someone who had so coldly set out to take her because he wanted her and wanted to punish her? She frowned minutely, staring at the ceiling. She felt confused; Leo had taken her innocence with such devastating generosity that she reeled. Several times she’d seen the strain of his efforts to hold back, as if he was afraid he’d hurt her.

Angel lifted the sheet and looked into the bed, ignoring the signs of having been seriously seduced on her body, the faint bruises and reddish marks. There was no blood. Angel let the sheet drop; she knew rationally that there wasn’t always necessarily blood, but there was a stinging between her legs that spoke of the potential of it if Leo hadn’t been so gentle. And yet she could remember the desperation with which she’d urged him on, even when he’d tried to hold back for her sake.

With a burgeoning feeling of something huge in her chest Angel got out of bed and pulled on the robe which still lay on the floor. To think of how Leo had pushed it off her shoulders with such singular intent made Angel blush all over again.

Without really thinking of what she was doing, Angel went to the door that connected their rooms. After hesitating for the merest moment, she turned the handle and went in.

She stumbled to a halt when she saw Leo standing at the mirror of his wardrobe, knotting a tie. His eyes merely flicked to her through the mirror and then back to his task, with no change in expression. She hadn’t been sure what to expect, but it hadn’t been that. Angel was immediately tongue-tied. Leo looked so distant and intimidating in a dark suit, white shirt and tie. He looked like the phenomenally successful businessman he was. And nothing like the tender lover of last night. She suddenly knew she’d been an abject fool.

His eyes flicked to Angel again, and she felt heat rise in her face when she registered how cool they were. One dark brow rose quizzically. ‘Was there something you wanted, Angel?’

Was there something you wanted, Angel? Angel balked and died a tiny death in that moment. Was this the same man? Acting as if the most cataclysmic thing on the earth hadn’t just happened? But then, she realised in sick horror, it hadn’t—not for him. If anything, last night for him must have been excruciatingly banal. How could it not have been, with a complete innocent?

She shook her head vaguely. ‘I just …’ I just what? she mocked herself bitterly, cursing her impulse to come in here. How could she have disregarded everything that lay between them, forgotten why she was there?

A lot of things were impacting upon Angel, all at the same time. Leo turned from the mirror, his tie perfectly knotted, his shoulders broad and awesome in the jacket, hair smoothed back, jaw clean shaven. Aloof.

Very quickly Angel assessed the situation, her brain working overtime. She brought her hands to her robe and tightened it, barely registering the way Leo’s eyes dropped there for a split second. She tipped up her chin, forcing her voice to be cool. ‘I was just wondering what time the stylist will be here? You did say that you’d have someone come today?’

Leo’s jaw clenched and he strolled nonchalantly towards Angel, barely leashed power in every step. A flash of memory—those muscular thighs between hers last night—made a light sweat break out over Angel’s top lip. She fought not to retreat, not to show that she was barely holding it together in the face of his obvious distance. He stopped a few feet away, his gaze sweeping up and down in a blistering moment that nearly scuppered Angel’s precious composure.

‘You were an eager student last night, Angel. I can see our time together being most … enjoyable.’

Angel burned inside. With humiliation and, more treacherously, with hurt, in response to his whole demeanour and his calling her eager. She had been desperately, awfully eager. She had fallen into his bed more easily than a ripe apple falling from a tree. She wanted to lash back, and hitched her chin a mite higher.

‘I wouldn’t know, as I have so little experience to compare it to. But for what it’s worth last night was … pleasant enough.’

Leo laughed out loud, a big burst of sound that made Angel flinch. When he looked at her his eyes flashed a warning, and a mocking smile played around his sensual mouth. Angel had to fight against the pull in her belly, the desire to just stop and look at it. She dragged her gaze back up to his.

He stepped even closer and put out a hand, touching her jaw. Angel clenched it.

‘Sweetheart, I know exactly how it was for you. I felt every ripple of every one of your orgasms, so don’t pretend that it was anything less than pleasant.’

Angel knocked his hand away, dying somewhere inside. ‘Like I said, you’d know so much more than me. I’m sure the novelty won’t last long.’

Leo calmly replaced his hand, taking a firmer grip on Angel’s jaw. ‘On the contrary,’ he drawled, ‘I don’t see this novelty fading for some time. You’re all fire underneath that angelic exterior, and I’m looking forward to seeing a lot more of it. This is only the beginning.’

With that, he dropped his hand and stepped back. Angel thought for a split second that she saw some chink in his composure, and it had her heart beat hard in response. But then he looked at his watch and said crisply, ‘The stylist will be here at noon, followed by someone to give you some beauty treatments. We’ve got our first public outing tonight, Angel—a ball to celebrate my taking over Parnassus Shipping as CEO. It should be fun for you. It’s at the Grand Bretagne, where you’re more intimately acquainted with the dirty sheets. I’ll be back later. Wear something appropriate for your first viewing as my mistress.’

He ran a finger down her hot cheek. ‘I’m looking forward to stirring things up with you by my side.’