by Abby Green
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.’
