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‘I’m no saint...and Ididn’tadmire it when you were using that strength of will against me,’ Angel told her bluntly.
A helpless gurgle of laughter was wrenched from Gaby at that admission. Sometimes Angel was so honest that he made her toes curl. Embarrassed by an amusement that struck her as less than generous, she buried her hot face in his jacket. If she was as honest with herself, that strength of hers five years ago had only been staged for his benefit and her pride. Never had she wanted so badly to have an excuse to give in and settle for a casual fling with a man who only wanted her body and nothing else from her. But Angel hadn’t given her that excuse because he didn’t lie, and he didn’t pretend. He had been quite upfront about his desire only for sex. The recollection still pained her and in response she pushed her troubled face harder into his lean, muscular shoulder.
The warm, achingly familiar scent of him engulfed her in an intoxicating wave. He smelt good enough to eat. There was a hint of his usual cologne with an undertone of clean, spicy masculinity that made her nipples tighten and her thighs press together. That fast, that naturally, her body reacted to Angel with the off-the-charts sizzling chemistry that had almost destroyed her the last time they were together. That craving had almost torn her apart. Shaken by the surge of reaction gripping her, Gaby lifted her head and tried to will herself into backing away.
‘You’re a snuggler,’ Angel condemned, his extraordinary dark golden eyes locked to her flushed face.
‘Guilty as charged,’ Gaby conceded.
His dark head angled down, and she literally stopped breathing. He looked as though he were on the brink of kissing her and she wanted him to kiss her so badly but, if it hadn’t happened five years ago, what were the chances of it happening now? Back then Angel had thought far in advance of his every move, foreseeing every possible betrayal and complication in his relationships. He had wanted the reassurance of a signed non-disclosure agreement before he became intimate with a woman. And Gaby hadrefusedto sign and that had been that, the end of the road before she even got walking down it, because Angel would not take the risk of trusting her to that extent.
‘You smell of...roses, is it?’ Angel murmured, staring down at her, dark eyes glowing, gleaming gold, exotically fringed by a luxuriant ring of dense black curling lashes. His tawny eyes were so gorgeous it was hard to look away from him.
‘Yes...er...fancy skincare creams in my en suite,’ Gaby mumbled, and it was as if time was slowing down for her as the tension between them thrummed like a warning drumbeat. ‘We shouldn’t be this close.’
‘If you were a fire, no matter how many warnings I was given I would still get burned. It was always like that,’ Angel told her sibilantly, his breath ghosting across her cheek as he brought his lips down to the level of hers and kissed her.
His acknowledgement that he still wanted her as much as he had years earlier lifted Gaby’s self-esteem to giddy heights and made her feel more secure. What she was feeling wasnotone-sided; it was mutual. His mouth on hers wasn’t just a kiss, though, or indeed anything like any kiss she had had before. Her hands travelled up slowly over his broad chest to his strong shoulders and into his hair, because a kiss from Angel shot her onto another plane entirely.
Her fingertips toyed with the thick black silky hair at his nape, shaping the base of his skull. His tongue traced the seam of her lips and then delved between, ignited a lightning storm inside her that sent sensual sensation arrowing along every nerve ending she possessed. A violent shiver rattled through her, a piercing sweetness rising as his tongue duelled with her own. It was electrifying as her nipples swelled and pinched taut and she pressed instinctively closer to him, squirming as a pool of liquid heat gathered in her pelvis.
‘That was worth waiting for,’ she gasped inanely as he released her lips to drag in a shuddering breath.
Laughter rippled through Angel as he stared down into her flushed face, revelling in the blueness of her eyes. ‘I don’t want to stop...’ he confessed in a driven undertone.
‘I’m not signing anything!’ Gaby exclaimed as though he had flipped a switch on her, and as more colour flooded her anxious face at that embarrassing exclamation she reached up a hand and gently framed a high sculpted cheekbone. ‘Can’t you trust me that far?’
‘I don’t carry round non-disclosure agreements in my back pocket,’ Angel countered with sardonic bite. ‘And there’s no personal insult in the provisions I take to protect myself. I have never fully trusted any woman.’
‘I think that’s sad,’ Gaby told him truthfully while at the same time a tiny bit of panic was gripping her, because she had just given him the green light to go ahead without even properly thinking about what she was doing.
Yet choosing to be with Angel felt seductively like following a natural instinct and surrendering to the inevitable. Fighting the desire to be with him five years earlier had been a serious challenge. Back then she had still suffered from the illusion that Mr Perfect was probably waiting to meet her round the next corner in her life and she had been content to have faith and wait, had naively assumed that some day soon another man would make her feel exactly what Angel made her feel.
Only it hadn’t happened, and, goodness knew, she had tried hard to recapture that sizzling connection with someone else. In Angel’s wake, however, real life had proved a downer. She had met men who groped, men who demanded, even men who made passes at her friends. Indeed, she had met every combination of bad in the male sex and several men who were perfectly decent and acceptable but not one of whom had inspired the insane craving that Angel could incite with one wickedly sensual smile. It had taught her a lesson. It had taught her to look back with regret at the experience she had missed out on, although she had never regretted refusing to sign that non-disclosure agreement. That had been a line she refused to cross even for his benefit.
‘Maybe it is sad but that’s how it is for me,’ Angel parried without apology, swooping down to capture her mouth again. ‘Am I moving too fast for you? I plead guilty... I am insanely impatient, and the first time there’ll probably be more speed and passion than finesse, but I promise to make it up to you the next time...’
He was so outspoken that Gaby didn’t know where to look. She had never been open about sex. She had had to fake knowledge she didn’t have to fit in when she was younger but as she’d matured she had simply sought friends who slept around less and didn’t judge her for her more old-fashioned outlook.
Gaby trembled as his lips caressed hers, every sense on a high of exhilaration at the taste and the scent and the feel of him against her. The strap of her dress loosened and slid off her shoulder and she tensed, gasping into his mouth as he unbuttoned its twin.
‘Time we moved this to a more private place,’ Angel told her, springing upright and bending down to lift her clean off the sofa before she had even guessed what he was planning to do.
He carried her into the bedroom next door and settled her down on a huge ornately carved wooden bed in a far grander room than the one she had been allotted. It reminded her of the differences between them, the fact that she was staff and that he was usually the boss in every scenario. Only notherboss, she reminded herself as she lay back, striving to seem calm, only she wasn’t calm with her brain running riot. She didn’t want him to know that he would be her first lover. Angel would see significance in that and possibly even think she was a little bit weird for still being so inexperienced at her age. No way was she willing to give him that satisfaction!
Angel shed his jacket, his tie and kicked off his shoes with a haste that was unlike him. He stared at the woman on the bed, the embodiment and fulfilment of a dream and a long-held fantasy, he conceded abstractedly. Possibly there was some excuse for that uncool haste of his. She looked amazing, her hair tumbling across the pillow in a silken cloud of colourful waves, blue eyes with the depth of gemstones luminous against her porcelain skin.
He unbuttoned his shirt, unzipped his trousers, the eager throb at his groin growing in intensity as she watched him.
As his lean bronzed physique emerged from his discarded clothing, Gaby was mesmerised. He was all hard contours and strength, from the ripple of muscles across his abdomen as he moved to the breadth of his hair-roughened chest. A dark furrow of hair dissected his flat stomach and ran down out of sight into his boxers and there her gaze lingered, warmth blooming in her cheeks because the fine fabric accentuated his jutting arousal.
He dropped down on the bed beside her, lifting her up and reaching for her unstrapped dress to slide it up over her head. As her breasts were bared Angel expelled his breath in a rush. ‘Beautiful,’ he husked, his hands rising to cup the full swells, his thumbs grazing across the swollen nipples, making her shiver because she was incredibly sensitive there. He lowered her down to the pillows again and whisked off her last garment without her even properly being aware of it.
Shifting against her lazily, he angled back his hips to remove the boxers, and for several heart-stopping seconds as he came back to her she felt him rubbing against her lower stomach, and then he rose up on his elbows and crushed her parted lips hungrily beneath his again, rolling her over and stroking her breasts. He trailed his mouth down the slope of her shoulder and caught a straining nipple between his fingers, closing his lips round the swollen tip and tugging on it. A tiny moan escaped her, her hips rising at the ache forming between her legs.
Kneading the soft swells, he utilised the edge of his teeth and flicked his tongue across the rosy buds, creating a chain reaction to the heart of her that made her clench her inner muscles tight. When he directed his attention to her damp core and circled her clitoris, it was too much stimulation for her overexcited body and a climax engulfed her at shattering speed. Her body convulsing, she was insensible to everything for some moments and then she blinked up at him in surprise and faint mortification as though that lack of control had shamed her.
‘I like that you’re as ready for this as I am,’ Angel growled appreciatively, shifting down the bed, long fingers trailing down a still-trembling thigh.
