Angel of Darkness

‘You don’t like seeing me with another woman. That hurt,’ Angelo savoured with primitive relish. ‘You couldn’t hide that from me. Like a knife twisting inside you. It made you sick. It terrified you—’

Perspiration beaded her brow. ‘Don’t...I hate you!’

Angelo hauled her even closer, wound a lean hand possessively into the tangled fall of her hair to hold her prisoner. ‘A couple of centuries ago you’d have been burnt at the stake for witchcraft, but you can burn in my bed instead—’

‘Let g-go of me!’ In disbelief, she could feel her breasts lifting and swelling in hard collision with his muscular chest. He brought his other hand down to her hips and crushed her suggestively into the hard cradle of his thighs. The thrust of his erection sent excitement spiralling through her in waves and she squeezed her eyes tightly shut in wild rejection. ‘No...no!’

She would not surrender to that excitement, she told herself furiously but he lowered his dark head and, instead of the aggressive assault she had expected, he let his mouth nip teasingly along the fullness of her lower lip, locking the oxygen in her throat.

‘Angelo, please...’ Her own voice sounded miles away, oddly strangled.

‘Please what?’ He let his tongue delve inch by inch between her parted lips and the world stood still and her knees turned to sawdust. Her entire body was pitched to that single caress.

‘Stop,’ she moaned.

‘But you want this as much as I do.’ His tongue flicked into the sensitive interior of her mouth and she clutched at him, every muscle jerking tight. He was pushing her backwards, lifting her off the carpet and then pressing her back against the wall.

He buried his lips hotly in a hollow of her collarbone and she trembled violently, her nipples peaking into painful sensitivity. His hands skimmed down the taut length of her thighs and she felt him shudder against her, his heart thundering against her spread fingers, as madly accelerated as her own.

He cupped the ripe curve of her bottom in his hands and she bit at his shoulder in frustration, what remained of her control evaporating fast.

‘Tell me that you’re lying,’ he urged unsteadily.

‘What?’ she mumbled, slurring the word, lost in a world of intense sensation that utterly seduced.

‘Tell me that you’re not pregnant,’ Angelo demanded in a roughened, almost pleading undertone.

‘But...I am,’ she responded on the peak of a sob of unbearable excitement.

‘Bitch,’ he groaned savagely, and suddenly tore himself back from her.

Kelda opened glazed eyes. Angelo was several feet away, his breathing pattern ruptured and audible. He made no attempt to conceal his blatant physical excitement. He looked back at her while she braced herself with shaking hands against the wall to stay upright. Luminescent gold engulfed her in the implacable force of his will.

‘And the baby is not mine...it’s definitely not mine?’ Angelo persisted roughly, rawly launching the demand at her in raking challenge. ‘How can you be so sure it’s not?’

In her mind’s eye, she saw him with Fiona and the pain and bitterness hit her afresh. To admit the truth would be the ultimate humiliation. ‘Definitely not yours,’ she spelt out.

He raked something at her in his own language and then spread his hands in a soundless arc of violent anger. ‘I am not prepared to live with the reminder that you went to bed with another man after me! If you choose to behave like a whore, you take the responsibility for the consequences...I will not! I don’t want you with another man’s bastard!’

In increasing distress, Kelda put her hands over her ears, lowering her head as a wave of dizziness folded in on her.

Spots swam in front of her eyes. Angelo blurred out of view. She thought she was going to suffocate in the darkness before she passed out and slid down the wall in a faint.

She felt so sick coming to that she was afraid to move a muscle.

‘She’s coming round,’ an unfamiliar voice said witheringly. ‘As I said she would. Perhaps if you fed your wife a little more and let her go to bed at a more reasonable hour, she would be somewhat healthier. Pregnant women need extra rest and a sensible diet—’

‘Pregnant,’ Angelo echoed, not quite steadily, with the same revulsion that might have distinguished a reference to an unmentionable disease.

‘If that is your attitude, I can quite see why she’s starving herself into a skeleton...what has she had to eat today?’

‘The icing off a slice of wedding cake. Nothing else.’

Kelda’s eyes opened wide at this instantaneous and correct response. How had Angelo known that? He must have been watching her.

Angelo had called out a doctor. The gentleman in question was balding, beetle-browed and near retirement. He was also treating Angelo to a look of scathing contempt. ‘And that didn’t bother you?’ he demanded.

‘I’m fine...sorry you had to be bothered,’ Kelda broke in hurriedly and tried to sit up.