For Angelo(42)

And then it was over.

Angelo had suddenly torn his mouth off her, and he was staring down at Lane, breathing hard, his eyes glittering with need.

Confused and left aching, Lane could only stare up at him, her heartbeat filling her eardrums.

“It’s too soon.” He rolled to his back and stared up at the ceiling. Because he had suddenly thought of Ray. And now he couldn’t get the faceless stranger’s name out of his mind.

Lane kept herself still, feeling like an unwanted corpse next to Angelo’s hot, masculine perfection. What had she done wrong?

“I’m sorry.” He forced the words out, unable to ignore the waves of misery coming off the girl beside him.

“Because you don’t want me?”

“Impossible.” Angelo’s lips twisted at the mere thought.

“Impossible,” she echoed numbly. He was lying to her. If it was impossible for him not to want her—

Lane jerked when Angelo suddenly grasped her hand.

The next thing she knew, he had it placed on…his…cock.

Her eyes flew open.

It was scorching hot, rigid and hard, and engorged to the point that her fingers couldn’t even completely encircle it. And she had tried, an unnamed, wanton instinct making her do so.

“Like I said.” Angelo’s tone was cool. “Impossible.”

Right.

She coughed. She swallowed. But she just couldn’t make herself speak, she was too busy feeling how, err, impossibly hard he was. Unable to help it, she felt her fingers tightening to squeeze his cock—

Angelo stiffened, and his hand was suddenly imprisoning hers. “What,” he grated out, “do you think you were doing?”

This time, his harsh tone didn’t scare her at all.

It only made Lane feel all sorts of wonderful things, too many things that she could no longer make any sense of it. She only knew she wanted to—

Angelo bit back a curse when he felt Lane trying to squeeze his cock again. He tightened his hold over her hand. “Stop it.” He lifted himself up to look down at her, expecting her to let go, but she didn’t.

What the hell?

Her caramel brown eyes were filled with a mixture of wonder and longing, and his cock twitched—

Her fingers squeezed, and he saw Lane wet her lips, looking like she couldn’t wait to have his cock in her mouth.

Fuck.

He tried getting rid of her hand, but her fingers actually tightened around him.

“Let go.”

“I can’t.”

And to his utter incredulity, she did look like she couldn’t.

“Just let go.”

She gave him a helpless look. “My hand doesn’t want to.”

He glared at her, muttering, “I can’t believe you’re making me play the shy maiden here.” He wanted to kill her for forcing a reversal of roles between them, but at the same time her sheer outrageous and unpredictability made him want to…fuck her. Hard. Harder than he had fucked any woman.

“If you want me—” She wetted her lips again, and Angelo vowed grimly to himself that if she did it again, he would not be accountable for his actions, and to hell with whoever Ray was.

“Then why don’t you—”

“I told you,” he cut her off impatiently. “It’s too soon—”

Her fingers squeezed his cock, like a petulant child throwing a tantrum, and Angelo stopped speaking, thinking that this might just be the first time he’d like to date a girl who constantly threw tantrums.

He said finally, “I simply think it’s better if you take more time to think about it.” Before he could stop himself, he added grimly, “Your decision could hurt other people—”

She thought about her parents and winced.

His mood worsened at the guilt that flashed in her eyes. So there was a Ray that would be hurt.

She said haltingly, “They don’t have to know—” The fury in Angelo’s gaze made her backtrack hastily, and she said lamely, “Or they could also know.” She was confused and surprised, never imagining Angelo was the old-fashioned type who’d want an introduction to a girl’s parents before dating her.

“Yes,” he said flatly. “They should know.” His lip curled. They? Who was she kidding? Both of them knew this was Ray he was talking about.

“I’ll tell them tomorrow, I promise.” She made a mental note to call Nellie first thing in the morning. No matter how embarrassing, she would tell Nellie the truth. She unconsciously squared her shoulders at the thought. She would tell Nellie that she had met the one for her, and she knew it was true even though they had only been speaking to each other for a few days.

Angelo’s gaze narrowed on her face, but he couldn’t detect any hint of deception. She really did mean it. The thought allowed him to gradually relax. “Good girl.”