‘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.