Her Exquisite Surrender: Surrendering All But Her Heart / Innocent in the Ivory Tower / Full Surrender. Lucy Ellis
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She squirmed and writhed as he kissed every spot of flesh as he gradually exposed it. She tugged his shirt out of his trousers and with more haste than precision got him out of the rest of his clothes. She ran her hands over him reverentially. He was so strong and so lean, his muscles tightly corded, his skin satin smooth all but for the sprinkling of masculine hair that went from his chest in an arrow to his swollen groin. She stroked him with her hand, loving the feel of his reaction to her touch. She heard him snatch in a breath, his eyes glittering as she gave him a sultry look from beneath her lashes.
‘If you’re going to do what I think you’re about to do then this show is going to be over before it gets started,’ he warned.
She gave him a devil-may-care look and shimmied down in front of him. ‘Then I’ll just have to wait until the encore, won’t I?’
‘Dio mio,’ he groaned in ecstasy as she took him into her mouth.
She used her tongue and the moistness of her saliva to take him to the brink. She would have pushed him over, but he stopped her by placing his hands on either side of her head.
‘Enough,’ he growled, and hauled her to her feet.
He carried her to the bed, laying her down and covering her, with his weight supported by his arms to avoid crushing her. His mouth took hers in a searing kiss as his hand caressed her breasts and that aching secret dark place between her thighs.
It was her turn to suck in a breath when he moved down her body to stroke her with his lips and tongue. She felt the fizzing of her nerves as he brought her closer and closer. Her release started far away, and then gathered speed and stampeded through her flesh. She lost herself in a whirlpool of sensation that made her feel weightless and boneless.
She opened her eyes to find him looking at her as he stroked a lazy finger down between her breasts. ‘Do you want to finish me off with your hand?’ he asked.
She gave him a little frown. ‘Don’t you want to come inside me?’
‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ he said, gently circling one of her nipples. ‘You might still be sore.’
She stroked her hand down his lean stubbly jaw. ‘I want you inside me,’ she said. ‘I want you.’
His eyes held hers in a sensual lock that made her belly quiver. ‘I’ll take it easy,’ he said. ‘Tell me to stop if it hurts.’
‘It’s not as if I’m a virgin, Angelo,’ she said, with a brittle little laugh to cover her unexpected emotional response to his tenderness. ‘I can handle everything you dish out.’
His eyes smouldered as they held hers. ‘Don’t say you weren’t warned,’ he said, and covered her mouth with his.
Angelo lay on his side and watched Natalie sleep. From time to time he would pick up a silky strand of her hair and twirl it around one of his fingers.
She didn’t stir.
Her stubborn refusal to open her heart to him was like a thorn in his flesh. It was as if she would do anything to stop him thinking she cared about him. He thought back to their break-up, to how she had announced without warning that she was leaving. Her bags had been packed when he’d come home from a three-day workshop in Wales. She had told him she had slept with someone she had met at the local pub. He had stood there in dumbstruck silence, wondering if she was joking.
Their relationship had been volatile at times, but he hadn’t really thought she was serious about walking out on him. She had threatened to many times, but he had always thought it was just her letting off steam. He had planned to ask her to marry him that very night. He had wanted to wait until he got back from the workshop so she would have had time to think about how much she had missed him. But then she had shown him a photo on her phone, of her with a man, sitting at the bar, smiling over their drinks. The anger he had felt at seeing the evidence of her betrayal had been like a hot red dust storm in front of his eyes. She had stood there, looking at him with a what-are-you-going-to-do-about-it-look and he had snapped.
He wasn’t proud of the words he had flailed her with. He was even more ashamed that he’d pushed her up against the wall like a cheap hooker and given her a bruising parting kiss that had left both of them bleeding.
He shuffled through his thoughts as he looked at her lying next to him like a sleeping angel.
She had wanted him to believe she had betrayed him.
But why?
Hadn’t he shown her how much he had loved her? He had said it enough times and shown it in a thousand different ways. She had never taken him seriously. Funny that, since she took life so seriously herself. She rarely smiled unless it was a self-effacing one. He couldn’t remember ever hearing her laugh other than one of those totally fake cackles that grated on his nerves because he knew them for the tawdry imitation they were.
Why had she been so desperate to get him out of her life?
He was still frowning when she opened her eyes and stretched like a cat. ‘What time is it?’ she asked.
‘You didn’t do it, did you?’ he asked.
A puzzled flicker passed through her gaze. ‘Do what?’
‘You didn’t sleep with that guy from the bar.’
She made a business of sitting upright and covering herself with a portion of the sheet. ‘I went home with him,’ she said after a moment.
‘But you didn’t sleep with him,’ he said. ‘You wanted me to think you had. You wanted me to believe that because you knew me well enough to know I would never have let you go for anything less.’
A tiny muscle began tapping in her cheek and her eyes took on a defensive sheen. ‘I wasn’t ready for commitment. You were pressuring me to settle down. I didn’t want to lose my freedom. I didn’t want to lose my identity and become some nameless rich man’s husband just like my mother.’
‘You’re nothing like your mother, cara,’ he said. ‘You’re too strong and feisty for that.’
She got off the bed and wrapped herself in a silky wrap. ‘I don’t always feel strong,’ she said. ‘Sometimes I feel …’ Her teeth sank into her bottom lip.
‘What do you feel?’
She turned to the dressing table and picked up a brush, started pulling it through her hair. ‘I feel hungry,’ she said. She put the brush down and swung around to face him. ‘What does a girl have to do around here to get a meal?’
Angelo knew it wasn’t wise to push her. He had to be patient with her. She was feeling vulnerable and had retreated back to her default position. It was her way of protecting herself.
He only wished he had known that five years ago.
Natalie sat across from Angelo in a restaurant in Sorrento an hour later. He had given her the choice of eating in or out and she had chosen to go out. It wasn’t that she particularly wanted to mingle with other people; it was more that she wanted to keep her head when around him. She couldn’t do that so well when she was alone with him.
The passion they had shared had stirred up old longings that made her feel uneasy. She was fine with having sex with him—more than fine, truth be told. It was just she knew he would want more from her.
He had always wanted more than she was prepared to give.
How long before he would ask her to think about staying with him indefinitely? Then he would start talking about babies.
His mother had already dropped a few broad hints when she had helped her choose her wedding dress. Natalie’s stomach knotted at the thought of being responsible for a tiny infant. She could just imagine how her parents would react if she were to tell them she was having a baby. Her mother would reach for the nearest bottle and drain it dry. Her father wouldn’t say a word. He would simply raise his eyebrows and