The Secret Valtinos Baby. Lynne Graham

      ‘Is that a fetish of yours?’

      ‘Not that I’ve noticed, but that prissy little smile of yours turns me on no end,’ Angel confided, disconcerting her.

      ‘I do not have a prissy smile.’

      ‘Talking too much,’ Angel growled, crushing her ripe mouth beneath his again, running his hands down the sides of her narrow ribcage to dispose of her bra and let his hands rise to cup the small delicate mounds of her breasts.

      As his thumbs grazed her sensitive nipples a gasp parted Merry’s lips, and when his hungry mouth followed there she fell back against the pillows and dug her fingers into his thick tangle of curls. Heat arrowed in stormy flashes right to her core, leaving her insanely conscious of how excited she was becoming. Her thighs pressed together, her hips dug into the mattress as she struggled to get a grip on herself, but it was as if her body were streaking ahead of her and no matter how hard she tried to catch it, she couldn’t.

      He shifted position, ran his tongue down over her straining midriff to her navel, parted her from her knickers without her noticing, traced her inner thighs with a devil’s expertise until she was splayed out like a sacrifice. And then the flood of crazy pleasure came at her in breathless, jolting stabs that shocked and roused her to a level that was almost unbearable. She was shaken by what she was allowing him to do and how much her body craved it and how very little she could control her own reactions. She twisted and turned, hauled him back to her at one point and kissed him breathless, wanting, needing, trembling on the edge of something she didn’t understand.

      The tight bands in her pelvis strained to hold in the wild searing shots of pleasure gripping her and then her control broke and she writhed in a wild frenzy of release. The sound of her own gasping cry startled her, her eyes flying wide, and Angel grinned shamelessly down at her like a very sexy pirate, a dark shadow of stubble merely accentuating his fantastic bone structure.

      ‘You’re staying the whole night,’ he told her thickly.

      ‘No,’ Merry muttered, head rolling back on the pillows as he crawled up her body like the predator he truly was. ‘Once it’s done, it’s over.’

      ‘You are so stubborn,’ Angel groaned in frustration, nipping up her slender throat to find her swollen lips again, teasing and tasting and letting his tongue plunge and twin with hers until she was beyond thought and argument again. He donned protection.

      He eased into her slowly, very slowly, and impatience assailed her. She didn’t want or need to be treated like fine china that might shatter or like that rare unicorn he had mentioned. Her body was slick and eager again, the pulse at the heart of her racing with anticipation. She tilted under him, angling up her hips, and the invitation was too much for his control and he jerked over her and plunged deep. A brief burning sting of pain made her stiffen and gasp.

      ‘That’s your own fault,’ Angel growled in exasperation. ‘If you would just lie still.’

      ‘I’m not a blow-up doll.’

      ‘I was trying not to hurt you.’

      ‘I’m not breakable either,’ Merry argued, every skin cell on red alert as she felt her body slowly stretch to enclose his, tiny little shimmers of exquisite sensation flying through her as he began to move, hinting that the best was yet to come. ‘Don’t stop.’

      And he didn’t. He sank deep into her with a shuddering groan of pleasure and the pace picked up, jolting her with waves of glorious excitement. She arched her body up, suddenly needy again, hungry again, marvelling at the limitless capacity of her body to feel more and yet more. But this time the climb to pleasure was slower and she writhed, blue eyes lighting up with impatience and a need she had never expressed before. Her heart raced, her pulses pounded and that sweet, seductive throb of delight grew and grew inside her until she could contain it no longer. Every barrier dropped as her body exploded into an ecstatic climax that left her limp and stunned.

      Angel released her from his weight but made a move to pull her under his arm and retain a hold on her. Quick as a flash Merry evaded him, her whole being bent on immediate escape. They had had sex but she didn’t want to hang around for the aftermath. Dignity, she told herself staunchly, dictated an immediate departure. She slid out of the other side of the bed, bending down to scoop up her discarded clothes.

      ‘I asked you to stay,’ Angel reminded her.

      ‘I’m going home,’ she said as he vaulted out of bed and headed into what she presumed was a bathroom, his lean, powerful body emanating impatience and annoyance in perceptible waves.

      She would have liked a shower but she was determined not to linger. With a grimace, she pulled her clothes back on and was out in the hall cramming her feet back into her shoes and hurriedly calling a taxi when Angel reappeared, bronzed and still unashamedly naked in the bedroom doorway. ‘I don’t want you to leave.’

      ‘I’ve already ordered a taxi.’ Merry tilted her chin, her long hair streaming untidily round her flushed heart-shaped face. ‘We agreed and it’s better like this.’

      ‘I asked for one night—’

      ‘You can’t have everything your way,’ Merry declared flatly. ‘I enjoyed myself but all good things come to an end.’

      Angel swore in Greek. ‘You drive me insane.’

      ‘What’s your problem? According to your forecast, we’re done and dusted now,’ she pointed out helplessly.

      Yet for all her proud nonchalance in front of him, Merry travelled home in a daze of mounting panic. Back at her apartment she had to wait until the shower was free. She felt shell-shocked by what she had done. Her body ached but her brain ached almost as much, trying to rationalise the fleeting madness that had overtaken her. She tried to examine it from Angel’s unemotional point of view, but that didn’t work for her when her own emotions were throwing tantrums and storming about inside her as much as if she had killed someone. Done and dusted, forget about it now, she reminded herself doggedly. He had much more experience in such encounters than she had, had to know what he was talking about. The curiosity and that unnatural hunger had been satisfied and now it would all die a natural death and become an embarrassing memory that she’d never ever share with anyone, she told herself with determination.

      Only in the days that followed Merry slowly came to appreciate that, for all his evident experience, Angel Valtinos had got it badly wrong. Feed a cold, starve a fever was a saying she had grown up with, and before very long had passed she knew that it had been a serious mistake to feed the fever. She saw it in the way Angel’s stunning dark eyes locked on her like magnets, heard it in the terseness of his instructions to her and she felt the pull of him inside herself as if he had attached a secret chain to her. Excitement crashed over her when he was close by, her temperature climbing, her heart thumping. Slowly, painfully, she came to appreciate that she was infatuated with him and very nearly as giddy and mindless as a silly schoolgirl in his vicinity. The suspicion that she was more her mother’s daughter than she had ever dreamt she could be appalled her.

      Was that the real explanation of why she had slept with Angel Valtinos? She had asked herself again and again why she had done that, why she had made such an impulsive decision that went against everything she believed, and now she was being faced with an answer that she loathed. At some point in their relationship she had begun getting attached to him, possibly around the time she had started admiring his intellect and shrewd business instincts. That attachment was pitiful, she decided with angry self-loathing, and in haste she began to look for another job, desperate to leave Angel and Valtinos Enterprises behind her.

      Two weeks after their first encounter, Angel showed up at her apartment one evening without the smallest warning. The same angry frustration that powered him was running through her.

      ‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded, far from pleased to be surprised in her cotton pyjamas, fresh from the shower and bare of make-up.

      Angel grimaced, his lean, darkly handsome features taut and troubled as he leant back against her bedroom