She licked her palm, slowly and purposefully, meeting his gaze again as she did so, and then she closed her fingers around his erection and began to stroke him properly, her hand sliding slickly up the shaft and over the head.
Hal just watched her, in a daze, his blood speeding through his veins, feeling dizzy with lust. When she leaned over him and lowered her head, he thought he might come on the spot, but he managed to contain his desire, holding it in as she closed her mouth over him.
Holy fucking hell, that felt good. His eyelids fluttered shut and his lips parted in a silent groan as she slid her lips down the shaft and took him deeper into her mouth. He didn’t think about Rebecca or the phone call or the past or anything in fact—all thoughts left his brain, and he was just a collection of nerve endings and erogenous zones, his whole world centering on the amazing sensations Angel was creating in his groin.
Her hand continued to stroke him, and her tongue teased him, rasping over the sensitive skin, and he knew he wouldn’t last long. Only a few minutes later, he put a hand on her head and murmured, “I’m going to come,” wondering if she’d pull away, but she just groaned and stroked fast and took him deeper, sucking hard. He tipped his head on the back of the sofa, letting the pleasure build inside him like steam in a kettle until he came to the boil, and he erupted in her mouth, crying out with the beauty of it, feeling her swallow him down. He clutched his hand in her hair, overwhelmed with emotion at what she’d done for him, and they stayed like that for what seemed like an eternity, until his muscles had ceased to spasm, and his mind returned from the blissful place it had ascended to and drifted back to Earth.
Angel lifted up, tucked him away and zipped up his jeans, then curled up beside him on the sofa. He held her tightly, waiting for his heart to stop racing, and for his emotions to settle.
When he eventually turned his head to look at her, he found her watching him, her lips curved up at the corners, her dark eyes gentle.
“Better?” she said.
He nodded and kissed her forehead.
She leaned forward and picked up her glass from the coffee table, took a sip, then passed the glass to him.
“It’s not even midday yet,” he said.
“It’s Christmas Day, and I think you need it,” she said.
His lips twisting, he took a mouthful and let it warm him all the way down.
“I’m sorry the phone call upset you,” she said.
“I’m touched that you said to put my kids first.”
She scratched at a mark on his sweater. “I don’t want you to think it was easy. But your children are so lovely. I wouldn’t want to get in the way of their happiness.”
He cupped her face. “Sweetheart, whatever happens between us, never think that. You’ve brought me back to life. You’ve given me something to live for. Whatever has gone wrong in my marriage, it’s down to Rebecca and me, nobody else, not the kids, and certainly not you.”
“And Charles?”
“He was a vulture,” he said flatly. “Picking at the bones of something already dead. She had an affair, but the marriage was already over. No one in a happy marriage looks to cheat.”
He brushed his thumb over her lips. “We’ve been over for two years. You were right—she was just unhappy today, and being nostalgic. Tomorrow, she’ll regret what she said, and be thankful I didn’t take her up on it.”
Angel’s brow furrowed as if she wasn’t so sure, and Hal’s heart went out to her. It was Christmas Day, for God’s sake. She was gorgeous, and he’d asked her to stay with him. What the fuck was he doing, going on about his ex-wife?
He placed the glass back on the table. Holding her head, he kissed her, sliding his hand into her hair, slanting his mouth across hers, then held her around the waist and twisted so they were lying on the sofa, facing each other.
With the fire leaping in the background and the snow falling quietly outside, he kissed her and stroked her, sneaking his hands up her crushed-velvet sweater to her even softer breasts, and teased her nipples until she was sighing against his mouth. Then he unzipped her jeans and slipped a hand underneath the elastic of her panties and down into her wet and swollen folds.
Angel moaned and pushed up against his fingers, and he began to stroke her, his mouth on her breast, until she was breathing heavily, and he could feel her body taut as a bowstring, quivering, ready to let loose.
Circling a finger over her clit, he kissed her mouth again, then murmured, “Come for me,” and as he kissed her again, she shuddered and came, clenching around his fingers with short, sharp pulses, her body jerking, her hot sighs warming his lips.
When she’d done, he withdrew his fingers, then sucked them. Her dazed look turned to exasperation, and he smirked.
She lifted a hand and stroked his hair.
He kissed her. “I’m so glad you came back.”
“Me too.”
“You’re really going to stay tonight?”
“If that’s what you want.”
He nodded slowly, his emotions settling down for the first time that day. “That’s what I want.”
“Then it’s settled. Merry Christmas.” And she put her arms around him and kissed him.
Chapter Twenty-Five
It turned out to be the most wonderful day Angel had spent in... well, maybe ever. They went out for a walk, following a similar path to the one she’d taken the day before, and talked all the way, Hal telling her about the priory and the castle, and other snippets of the island’s history, and Angel starting to open up about the research she’d done for her MA now she realized he really was interested and she wasn’t going to bore him to death. Far from it—the two of them talked about Viking settlements all the way to the lime kilns, and then they had fun playing a game of twenty questions to guess the historical figure.
“Is it ridiculous that such a stupid game is making me insanely happy?” Angel asked him as they crossed the nature reserve, wading through the thick snow. It was freezing, but she knew when they got back home there would be the log fire, a bottle of brandy, and a hot Viking to warm her up, so she didn’t mind too much,
He chuckled. “No.”
“I like being with you, Hal Carlson.”
“Me too, Angel Matthews.” He caught her hand, pulled her into his arms, and kissed her.
She melted against him like the snowflakes on his jacket, opening her mouth to his warm tongue. “Mmm.” When he finally moved back, she pressed the fingers of her mitten to her mouth. “I want you again,” she whispered. “You’re turning me into a sex addict.”
“Oh, I think you were already there. I didn’t have anything to do with it.” Grinning, he slipped an arm around her shoulders and they started walking back to town.
“I can’t believe I’ve only known you a few days,” she said. “I feel as if I’ve known you forever.”
“Maybe we were together in a previous life. Viking Hal and his shield maiden.”
“Maybe.” The thought gave her a strange tingle inside.
“Did you feel this way about Eoin?” he asked. “You haven’t talked about him much yet.”
She glanced across the fields, looking for the curlews that were calling through the veil of snow, but unable to see them. “I haven’t talked about him to anyone except my therapist.”
“Not even Lesa?”
“No. It felt too... private to discuss with anyone else.”
“You don’t have to tell me,” he said. “We haven’t known each other very long.”
“No, I know. It’s odd, though, but I feel as if I could tell you anything,” she admitted. “Maybe it’s because we are almost strangers, or because it’s a finite thing and I’ll never...” She was going to say ‘see you again’, but the thought made her throat tighten, so she just trailed off.
“What was he like?” Hal asked.
She took a deep breath, the icy air sliding down inside her like cold water. She blew it out slowly. “Very different from you. Shorter. Slim and
wiry. Not Viking-like at all.”
He smiled. “He was a history student?”
“Yes, modern history, though. He became a teacher when he graduated. He was good at communication. He loved to take a subject and strip it apart the way mechanics would strip a car engine. He’d look at every angle and analyze every single part of it. That could be exhausting, when the subject was our relationship.” She gave a tired smile.
“Why did you never get married?”
She shrugged. “We talked about it a few times. Maybe if we had fallen pregnant we would have done.” She smiled at Hal’s silent disapproval. “You’re quite old-fashioned, aren’t you?”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“No. I like it.”
“I would never have left a woman because she couldn’t have children,” he said bluntly.
Angel pursed her lips. “It wasn’t as simple as that. Trying to get pregnant, and finding out you’ve failed every month... It puts huge pressure on a relationship. Sex became all about conceiving. I realize that now. I didn’t at the time. He was suffering too, and I was so caught up in myself that I didn’t think about his pain.”
“I don’t buy it,” Hal said. “It was his job to support you. That’s what we do. Turning the focus onto ourselves in this sort of thing is selfish. It makes me want to punch him.”
Angel giggled. “I’d like to have seen that.” Her smile faded, though, as she thought about how different things might have turned out if it had been Hal whom she’d been with and not Eoin. Not that she could blame Eoin for what had happened. “It’s not really fair,” she said softly. “He did try to make things work, but he couldn’t cope with the effect being infertile had on me. Living with someone with depression is hard.”
“Does he know how bad things got for you?”
She nodded. “Lesa rang him to tell him in February.”
“Did he come to see you?”
“No.”
Hal stopped and looked at her, then started walking again.
“I wasn’t his responsibility,” Angel said. “He didn’t want to get involved.”
“Fucking bastard.”
“Hal...”
He waved a hand. “Forget it. How do you feel about not having kids now?”
His gaze was direct. He didn’t tear apart every sentence to find out what each word meant, but equally he didn’t shy away from the difficult questions. She liked that about him.
Across the reserve, a flock of geese took to the skies, and then it fell quiet again, as if the snow was a huge blanket that muffled all sound. She had the feeling that the world was holding its breath, waiting for her answer.
“For the previous five or six years, I thought of little else,” she said. Her breath frosted before her face in little white puffs. “It was all-encompassing. We’re built to procreate, and the broody feeling women sometimes get is nature’s way of forcing us down that path. I felt like a failure because I couldn’t conceive. I felt that I’d let Eoin down, which I did, in the simplest way, and myself too. I wanted children, and I couldn’t believe it wasn’t going to happen. And then when he left, I felt my life was over.”
She lifted her face to the snow. “But I feel differently now. While I was in hospital, I realized that there’s more to life than having children. I mean, I wish I could have them, and I know it must be a wonderful experience. But that’s not all that life is about. There are lots of benefits when you don’t have kids. And I started thinking about those—the freedom of having no responsibility, no ties. I realized it didn’t matter if I gave up my job and lived on baked beans for a year—I could do whatever I wanted, and I was the only one who would be affected. That’s why I quit my job last week. I’ve started looking around for an archaeological job. Not much luck yet, but I will keep trying.” She spoke with quiet determination. “Sometimes I feel panicky that I won’t get there, but then I remind myself that I have all the time in the world.”
“And does love play a part in your plans?”
She looked up at him, surprised at the question. “Love? I don’t know. Am I likely to meet a guy who doesn’t want a family? I’m not sure.”
“Maybe he’ll already have one.”
She stopped walking. Hal stopped too and turned to face her. He shrugged. “I’m just saying.”
“You’re just saying,” she repeated softly.
“Yeah.” He moved closer to her and bent to nuzzle her ear.
“I live six hours away,” she whispered.
“Yeah, I know.” He touched his mouth to her ear, and she shivered as the cold wind brushed across the wet skin.
“I’m also mentally unhinged.”
That made him laugh. “No more than the rest of us.”
“Does it bother you?” She looked up at him, needing to know. “The fact that I... you know? Back in February.”
“It bothers me that you were so unhappy you felt there was no way out.”
“But it doesn’t make you wary of getting to know me? In case I try it again?”
He kissed her nose. “Are you planning to?”
“No. But my family is afraid I am.”
“I think you were in a very dark place,” he said. “You’d spiraled down, and you knew it was affecting your relationship, and that made you sad because you didn’t know how to mend it. But the thing is, I think some relationships have a use-by date. I do believe that you have to work at a marriage—at any relationship—and that you shouldn’t just bail at the first sign of trouble. But equally, sometimes it’s just not going to work, and staying around only makes everyone miserable. But that doesn’t mean it’s not horrible, and hard, when it ends.”
Her eyes teared up, and she blinked rapidly before icicles formed on her lashes. “It’s nice to know you understand.”
“Oh, I do. Very much. We’ve had a tough time. But I think there’s finally light at the end of the tunnel, don’t you?”
She looked into his bright blue eyes, her breath catching at the affection in there. It was crazy, and it was just a crush, and she knew she mustn’t take it seriously, but she was crazy about this guy, and she wasn’t going to pretend she wasn’t.
Lifting up onto her tiptoes, she kissed him, and they stood there for a long time, wrapped in each other’s arms while the snowflakes swirled around them.
When they finally parted, he grabbed her hand and gave a laugh that seemed so carefree it filled her heart with joy. “Come on,” he said. “It’s fucking freezing out here.”
Laughing, they picked up the pace and walked as quickly as they could back to the house.
Once they were home, they poured a stiff drink to warm themselves up, then had a look through his kitchen cupboards as they decided what to have for Christmas dinner.
“I don’t like turkey,” he said.
“Me neither.” She pointed to a packet of spaghetti. “How about I knock us up a tomato sauce with that bacon you’ve got in the fridge?”
“I’ve got some garlic bread in the freezer,” he said.
“Perfect.”
So they cooked themselves the spaghetti, tossed it in the tomato sauce, served it up, and took it into the warm living room to eat.
Afterward, they listened to the Queen’s Speech, then curled up on the sofa to watch Bridget Jones’s Diary. They’d seen it before, of course, but they laughed through the funny bits, repeating the lines they knew, then both dozed off, lulled to sleep by the food and the warmth.
Later, they ran a bath and got in together, which was a bit of a squeeze, but at least it was cozy. Then, after drying off, they found a spare thin mattress that Hal kept in case the kids had friends over, and took it and the duvet from the bed into the living room, and laid it out in front of the fire.
For a long time, they just kissed and stroked each other, talking about their childhoods and their families, about previous Christmases both good and bad. And then Hal lowered his mouth to her breast, and Angel knew the talk was over, and it was time to show h
im what a wonderful day she’d had.
They made love, Hal moving inside her slowly, taking time to kiss her all the while, and Angel felt contentment building with the pleasure, a feeling that she could do this all day every day until the end of time, just lying there with the man of her dreams, letting him love her until they couldn’t bear it anymore and they both came in a series of sweet and blissful clenches that left them gasping.
It wasn’t love, of course, it was lust—she wasn’t being stupid. But it was fun to pretend, all the same.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The rest of the week felt like heaven to Hal. Some mornings, Angel left him to spend time on her own. It gave him the opportunity to relax, to read, to watch TV, or go out for a walk, before she returned later in the afternoon to share the evening meal, and his bed at night.
Amazingly, Angel managed to get a guy from the insurance company to come out, and he announced that they would write off the car. In the meantime, they provided her with a replacement, which at least meant she would be able to get home.
Hal was rather disappointed about that. He’d had visions of her being stranded with him forever, spirited away with him on their Brigadoon-style island. Instead, he promised himself he would make the most of the time he had with her, while he planned in his head the conversation he was sure they both knew was looming.
On some days, they headed out in the car. The snow continued to fall, but the roads were salted, and the causeway remained open, so they set off to explore the area. He took her to Berwick-upon-Tweed, and they spent a good part of the day walking around the twelfth-century castle, discussing Scottish history. A few days later, they went south to Alnwick castle, and spent ages in the Postern Tower, which had an archaeological exhibition featuring exhibits from Pompeii and Ancient Egypt, as well as various time periods in England.
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