Exotic Nights

The next morning when Angel woke she was on her front, with one leg lifted up and her arms sprawled out wide. She felt utterly replete at a very deep level, and heavy—as if she could sink all the way to Middle Earth.

She heard a muted sound, and opened one eye to see Leo standing at the mirror of his wardrobe, knotting his tie. It was the same image as that first morning, and she was awake instantly, pulling a sheet over her nakedness, coming up on one arm, wary. She hadn’t woken in his bed before.

Leo looked at her, and Angel steeled herself. ‘You’re still here. And I’m in your bed.’

Leo’s mouth quirked and his attention went back to his tie. ‘You’re very good at stating the obvious.’

Angel bit her lip when she remembered last night. The conflagration that had blown up around them. What had led up to it.

‘Do you ever wake up with a woman you’ve slept with?’ she heard herself asking, as if someone had taken control of her mouth.

Leo’s hands stilled. Angel could see that the glimmer of warmth in his eyes was rapidly cooling.

Leo tried not to look at Angel, but he didn’t have to. Her image was burned onto his retina. She lay there, just feet away, in such tousled and innocently sexy splendour that she hit him right between the eyes. But her question … The very impertinence of it went through him like a gunshot. His immediate reaction had been a vociferous no! Because waking up with a woman in his arms was anathema to him on so many levels.

It implied a level of trust he just did not have. For him, trust meant emotion, and emotion meant instability, fear, and, quite literally, death. His primary female role model, his mother, had been dangerously unstable. He’d only told Angel the half of it last night—and why the hell had he said anything?

Irritation snaked through him now. He’d come dangerously close to waking up wrapped around Angel like a vine as it was. With her body curled trustingly into his. And that was bad enough.

Angel knew Leo wouldn’t answer her. She couldn’t believe she’d asked the question. She sat up and wrapped the sheet around her as she got up to look for her discarded clothes, blushing when she bent down to pick up her knickers from where Leo had flung them in his haste last night.

She was almost at her own door when she heard his cool, ‘We’re going out tonight. I’ll be home by eight.’

Angel stopped and just nodded her head, keeping her back to him. She couldn’t bear to see that same image again, those cool eyes in the mirror. She slipped into her room and shut the door behind her.

Back to square one. Back in her place. Delphi’s wedding was only a week away now. Perhaps Leo saw that as the end of Angel’s penance and he’d turn around the morning after and let her go. He’d replace all the beautiful clothes in the walk-in wardrobe with a different size for a new and improved mistress. One who didn’t come with messy ties and revenge.

Angel resolutely went straight into her shower and stood under steaming hot jets of water. At least she had something to look forward to apart from Delphi’s wedding: her jewellery commission for Ari and Lucy Levakis. Just thinking of that and anticipating what she’d start with that day helped to clear her mind of far too disturbing thoughts, like how disarming it had been to see a totally different side to Leo last night.

The day of Delphi’s wedding dawned, and Angel was getting ready at the villa. She’d agreed with Delphi that it would be best to avoid her father at all costs. At least they were fairly certain he’d not make a scene at the church, would be too conscious of his peers watching his every move. Leo had gone to the office and was going to go to the church separately, as Angel would be preoccupied with Delphi.

Butterflies erupted in Angel’s chest. This was it. The culmination of what she’d agreed with Leo that night just over a month ago. To become his mistress in exchange for arranging Delphi’s wedding. Why was she feeling butterflies of trepidation? Because this could be it? Here alone in her room she had to admit that she wasn’t prepared for this to be it, no matter how masochistic she knew that made her. It would be Leo’s ultimate revenge. Reel Angel in, show her a taste of paradise and then discard her like trash.

And Angel knew well that the paradise she spoke of had nothing to do with the ‘luxuries’ Leo no doubt expected she enjoyed. It was a paradise of another kind: the paradise of becoming a woman, of discovering her sensuality. The paradise of such exquisite lovemaking that Angel knew no other man would ever have the same effect on her.

She looked at herself in the mirror. Big blue eyes stared back at her, shining, glittering. Her cheeks were flushed.

Since that night in the kitchen nearly a week ago Angel had been battling her feelings. Trying to tell herself that what she felt was only akin to a victim falling for their kidnapper. She frowned. There was a name for that condition … yes, love, crowed a little mocking voice.

Angel paled visibly in the mirror. How could she possibly have fallen in love with Leo Parnassus, when he’d shown her nothing but cold calculation? Because, she reasoned, he’d been perfectly justified in believing that she’d come to steal from him. She wouldn’t have believed her either. Not with all the history that lay between their families. It was perfectly conceivable that Angel had been out to try and save her family by any means possible. And yet Leo had kept so admirably to his side of the equation that any minute now a car was coming to pick her up to bring her to the church where her pregnant sister would get married to her childhood sweetheart and all would be well for them.

And that was all that mattered, right? Even without all the obstacles between Angel and Leo, there could be no future. The man wasn’t even used to sharing a whole night with a woman in his bed, never mind his life …

A sound came from Angel’s bedroom door and she turned, expecting to see Calista to tell her the car had arrived. But it was Leo, stunning in a steel-grey suit, white shirt and tie.

Angel’s heart tripped; her hands went clammy. ‘What are you doing here?’

Leo mocked, ‘So pleased to see me? I must surprise you more often.’

Angel blushed fiercely. She knew what had just been going through her mind, and here he was, unsettling her, or … Her heart stopped. Perhaps he was here to tell her—

‘I thought I’d come for you myself, that’s all. You’d better get a move on.’

Angel broke out of the stasis she was in and quickly checked her reflection again, seriously flustered now. Her bridesmaid’s dress was a dark dusky pink, strapless and to the knee. Her hair was up in a chignon and she wore a flower in her hair the same colour as the dress.

Grabbing her wrap, she tottered out unsteadily in high heels, hoping that Leo hadn’t seen anything of the naked emotions on her face before she’d hidden them.

Angel thankfully managed to have as little to do with her father as possible during the wedding, but she felt his malevolent stare on her periodically. When she watched Stavros and Delphi walk around the altar three times, with the stefana crowns on their heads, she had to fight back tears, feeling inordinately weepy. She studiously avoided Leo’s eye throughout the ceremony, terrified again that he’d see her emotions bubbling so close to the surface. For she who had a somewhat jaded view