Ally kept her gaze down, not wanting him to read her thoughts. Until she realised her attention had strayed to his groin. She swallowed. No wonder there’d been pain. Angelo wasn’t a little man in any respect.
‘Far more thanvery nice, Ally.’ His deep voice slid across her body’s pleasure points, making her skin tighten and her nipples peak.
Horrified, she looked up and met his dark stare. This couldn’t go on. She had to pull herself together.
She nodded, as if everything was clear and easy. ‘And now it’s finished. Time to move on.’
Ally watched his black eyebrows climb, as if in surprise. But there was no going back. She had to begin as she meant to go on. Not as a victim, or an object of sympathy.
‘So, Angelo, the million-dollar question is, if I’m not your ex-wife, Alexa Barrett, who am I?’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘IWISHIKNEW.’
Angelo hated seeing the pain and confusion in her beautiful shadowed eyes. Just as he hated that perfunctory tilt of her chin and her cool tone as she spoke dismissively about sex being over.
Of course it’s over. She’s out of bounds. She should have been out of bounds from the first.
Yet he felt dazed by the most memorable lovemaking of his life. He told himself that was an exaggeration but didn’t believe it.
Clearly it hadn’t been the same for Ally.
It had been no tender seduction. In the beginning it had been too hot and fast for an innocent. When he’d learned the truth, he’d belatedly done everything he could to make up for the initial pain. He’d thought he’d succeeded. But maybe, despite her orgasm, the whole event had been too traumatic.
If he’d known, he’d have taken more care.
If he’d known, he’d have found a way to resist her!
‘We’ll find out who you are.’ He leaned close, aiming to reassure. ‘Trust me. I have the resources to help. We’ll discover your identity, you’ll see.’
For the longest moment her lavender gaze locked on his and he’d have given half his fortune to know what she thought.
Was it possible that, despite the shock of what had just happened, she too felt the connection he did? Even now he felt it, more strongly than anything he’d experienced with Alexa.
Finally she nodded. ‘I hope so. It’s rather tough, not knowing who you are.’
Angelo’s heart went out to her. There she sat, clutching the bedclothes and, if he wasn’t mistaken, trying not to shiver, but downplaying her shock. She was so gallant. She gave him a lesson in true courage.
‘On the upside,’ he offered, trying to match her light tone, ‘at least you’re not my ex-wife.’
Was it selfish to be glad she wasn’t the woman he’d learned to despise?
Ally laughed aloud, the sound pulling his lips into an answering smile. ‘You’re right. Every time you spoke about her it was to reveal something awful. I was on tenterhooks all the time, wondering what dreadful thing you were going to tell me next.’ She snuggled lower into the bed. ‘It’s a relief to know that wasn’t my life.’
Again, Angelo admired her attitude. Ally was strong, forthright and refreshing.
She needed help and he needed to begin thinking with his mind not his libido. Even if some greedy part of him wanted her to reach out to him for reassurance now everything they thought they’d known about her was disproven.
Angelo stilled at the realisation of his selfishness. No, it was far better that she was confident, even though he sensed some of what she projected was a façade.
‘You said you felt suddenly woozy at the party.’ It wasn’t a word he was familiar with but from the context he guessed she meant unwell. ‘But you were okay by the time we got back here.’ He paused, thinking of how much more than simplyokayshe’d been. ‘Is there anything else I need to know? Should I call the doctor?’
She shook her head, her rumpled hair sliding around her bare skin like a curtain of dark honey.
‘No, it’s nothing like that. I think it was a memory, or part of one.’
Yet, instead of being excited, Ally’s expression grew tense. That wasn’t a good sign.