‘Fortunately, you no longer have to look after your own hair,’ Angel informed her lazily. ‘Add a stylist to your staff—’
Merry opened pale blue eyes very wide. ‘I’m to have my own staff?’ she gasped.
‘Of course. You’ll need a social secretary to take care of your calendar, someone to shop for you…unless you want to do it yourself,’ Angel volunteered doubtfully. ‘I’ve started you off with a new wardrobe—’
‘Have you indeed?’ Merry cut in jerkily.
‘It’s a wedding present. I wasn’t sure you’d want to be bothered,’ Angel volunteered, a fingertip tracing the quivering fullness of her lower lip, sending a shiver through her taut, slender body. ‘You’ve never struck me as being that interested in clothes or appearances.’
‘I’m not,’ she agreed almost guiltily. ‘Sybil was always trying to persuade me that shopping was enjoyable.’
‘I don’t want you having to do things you don’t want to do,’ Angel told her huskily. ‘I don’t want you to change who you are to fit into my world, so it’s easier to have someone else take care of the less welcome aspects for you.’
Her heartbeat was thumping hard and fast inside her tightening chest. ‘You like me the way I am?’
‘Very much,’ Angel asserted. ‘You’re unusual and I value that.’
A smile slowly tilted and softened the tense line of her mouth. ‘And you have a fetish for very long hair?’
A wolfish grin slashed his expressive mouth, cutting his dark male beauty into high-cheekboned perfection and interesting hollows while his intense gaze held hers fast. ‘Only from the first moment I saw you.’
Warmth flushed through Merry, leaving her breathless. ‘That must be the most romantic thing you’ve ever said to me.’
‘I don’t do romantic, koukla mou,’ Angel told her uneasily, a frown line building between his fine ebony brows as he stared down at her in frustration. ‘For me, it was a sexual charge and instantaneous…’
And if she was honest, Merry reflected ruefully, it had been the same for her that first day, a powerful instant physical reaction that had only deepened with repeated exposure.
Lean brown hands dropped to the sash at her waist and jerked it loose so that her breath hitched in her throat. She could feel her breasts swelling inside her bra, her nipples prickling into feverish prominence, the sense of melting at her feminine core. She was trembling, awake on every level even before he picked her up against him and crushed her ripe mouth hungrily under his.
‘Thee mou… I want you even more now than I wanted you then,’ Angel intoned rawly. ‘And that’s saying something. But then I’ve never had to be patient before.’
‘You don’t have any patience,’ she whispered through reddened lips. ‘You want everything yesterday.’
‘Once I got you back I didn’t want to be too demanding in case it made you change your mind. Before the wedding, I felt like I was in a straitjacket around you, forced to be on my best behaviour,’ he complained.
Merry laughed, riveted to appreciate that she had read his uncharacteristic restraint correctly. She knew him better than she had believed, she thought victoriously, and his admission thrilled her. He hadn’t wanted to risk driving her away and losing her. Losing them, she corrected with a sudden inner flinch of dismayed acceptance, the thrilled sensation swiftly dying again. He had practised patience with Elyssa’s mother for Elyssa’s benefit, fearful of losing access through their marriage to his daughter, which put a very different slant on his attitude.
‘Unhappily for me, I am a naturally demanding man,’ Angel admitted thickly, long, deft fingers twitching the buttons loose on her top, parting the edges, pushing them off her slim, taut shoulders until the garment dropped to the tiled floor. ‘No good at waiting, no fan of deferred gratification either…’
Her ribcage tensed as she snatched in a sustaining breath, ridiculously self-conscious standing there in her simple white lace bra. Although they had been intimate twice before, on the first occasion they had been in semi-darkness and on the second they had both been so frantic that she hadn’t had the time or space to feel remotely shy. But now, her face burned as Angel released the catch on her bra and her breasts tumbled free, plump and swollen and heavy.