‘That’s why we don’t get on,’ Merry pointed out.
‘We don’t get on because you have a very annoying sort of pious vibe going,’ Angel contradicted. ‘You’re smug.’
‘No, I’m not,’ she argued instantly as they crossed the half-empty car park.
‘You think you’re superior to me because you’re not at the mercy of your hormones…but you were when I touched you,’ Angel breathed, caging her in against the passenger door of his car, the heat of his lean, powerful body perceptible even through the inches separating them and the rich, evocative scent of husky male and exotic cologne filling her nostrils. His hands braced either side of her, not actually touching her quivering length, and her knees turned weak at the thought that he might touch her. ‘You can hardly breathe when I’m this close to you. I see that, I know that…every time I try to step back, it sucks me back in.’
He was like an impenetrable force field surrounding her. She knew she could push him away, she knew he wouldn’t fight, she knew he wouldn’t do anything she didn’t want him to do and a weird sense of unexpected power engulfed her. He was still coming back at her because he couldn’t resist the pull between them and she couldn’t resist it either. It was a weakness deep down inside her that she couldn’t suppress. Nobody had ever made her feel the way he was making her feel and that was a thrill on its own, a shot of adrenalin in her veins to match the feverish pound of her heartbeat. She wanted him. The knowledge ploughed through her like a battering ram, casting everything she had thought she knew about herself into a broken jumble of messy pieces.
‘You’re not my type,’ she whispered in dry-mouthed protest.
‘You’re not my type either,’ Angel admitted thickly. ‘But I’d still have sex in a car park with you any time you cared to ask.’
‘Not about to ask,’ Merry confided shakily. ‘Take me home…back off.’
‘You’re making a major production of this again,’ Angel accused, flashing his key fob to open the car. ‘Stop doing that. It’s…it’s bizarrely unnerving.’
She climbed into his car in a daze, the throb between her legs angry and unsettling, the sensual smoulder in the air almost unbearable, every nerve ending painfully aware of it. She didn’t know how he did that using only words and looks. It was terrifying. He had wiped her mind clean, made her feel stuff she didn’t want to feel, rocked the foundations of her security.
‘I don’t like you,’ she admitted.
‘Thee mou…you don’t have to like me, you only have to want me…and you do.’
And it was agonisingly true, she registered in dismay. Her brain didn’t seem to have anything to do with the equation. She thoroughly disapproved of everything he was and yet the chemistry between them was wild and dominant.
‘We have one night together and sate the craving. Then we put it away and bury it,’ Angel intoned in a driven undertone.
‘I thought you didn’t do virgins.’
‘Evidently you were born to be my single exception.’
‘Is this an actual negotiation?’ Merry enquired incredulously.
‘We have to sort this out. You’re taking my mind off work,’ Angel complained. ‘I can’t handle watching you all day and fantasising about you all night. It’s bad for business.’
‘What’s in it for me?’ Merry whispered unevenly.
‘I’m superlative at sex.’
‘Oh…’ Her lashes fluttered, her tummy somersaulting again as she wondered if she really was about to do what he wanted her to do, what she herself wanted to do. And that was the answer there and then when she was least expecting to see or understand it.
He would make a great introduction to sex for her, she thought dizzily. It would end the insane craving he had awakened inside her and maybe then she could return to her normal tranquil self. That prospect had huge appeal for her. The need would be satisfied, the intolerable longing ended. All right, it wasn’t the big romance with hearts and flowers that she had dimly envisioned, but then possibly that had never been a very practical aspiration. What he was offering was basic and honest even if it was casual and uncommitted and everything she had once sworn she would never participate in. It was not as though she had been saving herself for a wedding ring. She had been saving herself for love, but love hadn’t happened.