It made her feel weak. Wild. Capable of anything and everything to get even closer to him. She tried to turn, but he did not allow it, and she found her nails digging into the doorjamb again as his hands moved lower, pulling up the heavy skirt she wore and investigating beneath.
"Rafe … " she managed to say when he pulled his mouth from hers, only to lick a path of wildfire down the length of her neck. "Rafe, I … "
She didn't know what she meant to say.
"Hold on," he said, his voice a dark and heavy magic behind her, as one hand smoothed its way along her leg, then onto her thigh, making her breath come too fast, her knees turn to water.
"Hold on?" she echoed, not comprehending him, not capable of thought when he was touching her like this, his palm so hot against her skin, his hard fingers faintly rough, as if calloused-and then his clever fingers found the tiny thong she wore, in a matching, wicked red.
Her fingers clutched at the door.
"Hold on … " she breathed.
She thought he laughed, which should have been impossible, and then he was moving beneath the tiny scrap of fabric and holding the heat of her in his hard palm. He traced a lazy pattern there, and Angel moaned, moving with him, her head falling back against him, her eyes drifting closed. Her hips moved of their own accord, chasing those teasing, tormenting fingers, until he shifted slightly and thrust into her slick heat.
One long finger, then another, and Angel forgot how to breathe.
He set the pace, and she met it. She rode his hand, chasing that wildfire, more and more desperate with each rolling thrust of his fingers. She was aware of the other arm that wrapped around her waist and held her tight against his body, and that hard, serious mouth that continued to taste her, drinking in the sounds she made, encouraging every sigh and whimper and moan. Sensation built on sensation until she was nothing at all but lost in the feel of him, the wild perfection of it, the agony and glory of this man and the way he played her body like an instrument made only for him, only for this-
And then she shattered in his hands like glass.
When she came back to herself he had let her skirt drop back down to the floor, though he continued to stand there, so still and strong behind her. Her legs were so shaky beneath her that she was not at all certain they would hold her. She shifted, dropping her hands and turning, sinking against the door as she finally faced him.
It was like a punch in the gut, hard and sharp. He was too fierce, too focused. He could see far too much. Once again, she was aware of his scars only after she'd absorbed the impact of his cold gaze, his dangerous expression, and even then, they only seemed to underscore what she knew about him. What she'd just experienced. That he was entirely too powerful here. That he could make her do anything, and she would enjoy it.
More than enjoy it.
His dark eyes glittered in the shadows of the room, and she was sure she could hear the echoes of her cries rebounding from the high walls. She felt some emotion she couldn't name move through her then, shaking her. She was afraid to name it-afraid to face it.
He reached up a hand to touch her cheek, his face so very fierce, his gaze so hard, so relentless, and she could not handle the intensity. She could not allow herself to feel this way. She could not allow herself to feel. But the emotion seemed to swell in her, tightening and sharpening, and she balked at the feel of his hard palm against her skin, balked at the sheer possessiveness in even so small a gesture.
It was slight-she hardly moved a muscle-but he froze.
"Ah, yes," he said, his voice harsh in the quiet of the room. Bitter condemnation and severe judgment warred on his grim face, while that flash of near silver in his dark eyes that looked too much like pain nearly made her weep. "It is so much less exciting when you must look the monster in the eye, isn't it? Impossible to pretend it is someone else touching you-someone less hideous to look upon, for a start. My apologies. I lost my head."
She thought she said his name, but he didn't look at her again.
He moved past her in the doorway, and then disappeared into the darkness of the manor house, leaving Angel to cling to the door as if it might keep her from falling while her heart pounded out a sickening beat in her chest and she wondered what, exactly, she'd just lost.
* * *
Angel could not sleep.
She'd tried everything to get herself to drift off into slumber, and had failed. She'd counted sodding sheep, but that had only made her more agitated. She'd attempted to quiet her mind-with precious little success. She'd even started to write a long, detailed e-mail to Allegra, her princess bride of a stepsister, but she'd given up several long and twisted paragraphs into all the tortured back story that had led her to this night and everything that had happened.
Sensible, play-it-safe Allegra was not likely to understand the things that had compelled Angel to marry Rafe, much less the things that Angel could hardly bear to express about what had passed between them without any words at all. So how could Angel possibly explain to her the potent mix of despair and deep, encompassing delight that coursed through her even hours later, marking her like some kind of internal tattoo, making her think she would die if Rafe put his hands on her again?
Or worse, she thought in some moments, if he did not?
That, Angel had decided, was far too much to dump in an email to her stepsister, who was probably carried aloft by doves and rainbows nightly with the force of her royal love, or something equally unimaginable and over-the-top, as suited the soon-to-be Princess of Santina. If she'd wanted Allegra's counsel and input, she should have included her in this madness from the start, before things grew so wholly out of control. But she had not. She had-as ever-completely failed to imagine any circumstance in which she might need someone else, even as a friend to reach out to on a dark night when she suspected she'd acted terribly and foolishly, and so she was now forced to rely on only herself.
As usual.
Have found myself stranded in the middle of Scottish countryside, of all places, with only an earl (quite attractively wealthy) and a rambling old house (crumbling all around us as I type, sadly) for entertainment, she'd written, knowing it would make Allegra smile to imagine Angel in such circumstances, so far from her usual London stomping grounds, much less any hope of a quick Tube ride to somewhere more exciting. Would give you the address, but am slightly afraid I've been transported to medieval times and will at any moment be expected to don a corset or some other form of fancy dress. (A wimple? The mind boggles!) The good news is that I have yet to see a kilt, hear a bagpipe or taste anything too horrible like haggis, but suspect all of the above lurk in my near future. Kilts and bagpipes I might manage to survive but haggis? A fate worse than death! Hope all is well with Prince Charming. Xx
It might not have been what Angel had really wanted to write, but it helped for a while after she hit Send and closed her laptop back up. It was the reaching out, perhaps, that made her feel less alone, no matter the form it took. But it didn't last.
The dawn was little more than a pale blue yearning outside her windows when Angel gave up, and swung her feet to the cold floor. There was a scooped-out, empty feeling inside of her, and it had only grown worse as the hours passed. She'd tortured herself with images of Rafe. His clever hands, his wicked fingers. His cruel, delicious mouth, so demanding against hers, so patient and knowing.
And that frozen look in his eyes when he'd thought she'd rejected him. Did he think it was his scars? She wished, with a part of herself she was not at all proud of, that it was that simple. That she was that shallow. She imagined that would be easier, somehow.
The truth was, Angel admitted to herself with a surge of that same old panic, she wasn't cut out for this. Not any of it. She'd had no idea how difficult it would be to actually marry for money-to attempt to forge a relationship out of nothing but mercenary urges and a stack of signed contracts. She might be forced to consider Chantelle in a whole new light, as whatever her mother's sins, she had somehow managed to maintain a marriage based on nothing more than a shared lust for Bobby's fame and fortune for all these years. But Angel wasn't her mother, no matter the surface similarities. She couldn't be, because she knew all too well that Chantelle had never had a moment's bit of trouble with her choices in life, and this was killing Angel a scant two weeks into it.