Her Exquisite Surrender: Surrendering All But Her Heart / Innocent in the Ivory Tower / Full Surrender. Lucy Ellis
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compartmentalise it as a simple battle of wills, not as a strategic war against her very soul.
His lips ground against hers as his hands gripped her upper arms, his fingers biting into her flesh. She relished the discomfort. She was in the mood for pain. She kissed him back, with her teeth and her tongue taking turns. She felt him flinch as her teeth drew blood, and he punished her by driving his tongue all the harder against hers until she finally submitted.
She let him have his way for a few breathless seconds before she tried a counter-attack. She took his lower lip between her teeth and held on.
He spun her around, so her back was facing the pool, and with no more warning than the sound of his feet moving against the flagstones he tangled his legs with hers so she lost her footing. She opened her mouth on a startled gasp, fell backwards and disappeared under the water, taking him with her.
She came up coughing and spluttering; panic was like a madman inside her chest, fighting its way out any way it could. She felt the sickening hammer blows of her heart. She felt the acrid sting of chlorine in her eyes. She was choking against the water she had swallowed. It burned the back of her throat like acid.
‘You … you bastard!’ she screamed at him like a virago.
He pushed the wet hair out of his eyes and laughed. ‘You asked for it.’
She came at him then. Hands in fists and teeth bared, she fell upon him, not caring if she drew blood or worse. She called him every foul name she could think of, the words pouring out of her like a vitriolic flood.
He simply held her aloft, and none of her blows and kicks came to anything but impotent splashes against and below the water.
Suddenly it was all too much.
The fight went out of her. She felt the dismantling of her spirit like starch being rinsed out of a piece of fabric. She went as limp as a rag doll.
‘Do you give up?’ he asked, with a victorious glint in his dark eyes.
‘I give up …’
His brows moved together and his smile faded. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.
‘Nothing,’ she said tonelessly. ‘Can I get out now? I—I’m getting cold.’
‘Sure,’ he said, releasing her, his gaze watchful.
Natalie waded to the edge of the pool. She didn’t bother searching for the steps. She gripped the side and hauled herself out in an ungainly fashion. She stood well back from the side and wrung her hair out like a rope, and pushed it back over her shoulder. It wasn’t cold, but she was shivering as if she had been immersed for hours in the Black Sea.
Angelo elevated himself out of the pool with a lot more athletic grace than she had. He came and stood in front of her, his hand capturing her juddering chin so he could hold her gaze. ‘You didn’t hurt yourself, did you?’ he asked.
She flashed him a resentful look. ‘It would be your fault if I had.’
‘I would never have pushed you in if I didn’t think it was safe,’ he said. ‘The water is deepest this end.’
She wrenched her chin out of his grasp and rubbed at it furiously. ‘What if it had been the other end?’ she asked. ‘I could’ve been knocked out or even killed.’
‘I would never deliberately hurt you, cara.’
‘Not physically, maybe,’ she said, throwing him a speaking glance.
A little smiled pulled up the corners of his mouth. ‘So you’re feeling a little threatened emotionally?’ he asked.
She glowered at him. ‘Not at all.’
His smile tilted further. ‘It’s the sex, cara,’ he said. ‘Did you know that the oxytocin released at orgasm is known as the bonding hormone? It makes people fall in love.’
She gave him a disparaging look. ‘If that’s true then why haven’t you been in love with anyone since we were together? It’s not as if you haven’t been having loads and loads of sex.’
His eyes held hers in a toe-curling lock. ‘Ah, but there is sex and there is sex.’ His gaze flicked to her mouth, pausing there for a heartbeat before coming back to make love with her eyes.
Natalie felt her hips and spine soften. She felt the stirring of her pulse, the tap-tap-tap of her blood as it coursed through her veins. It sent a primal message to the innermost heart of her femininity, making it contract tightly with need.
‘But you’re not in love with me,’ she said, testing him. ‘You just want revenge.’
He stroked a light, teasing fingertip down the length of her bare arm, right to the back of her hand, before he captured her fingers in his and brought her close to his body. She felt the shock of touching him thigh to thigh like a stun gun. It sent a wave of craving through her that almost knocked her off her feet.
‘I love what you do to me,’ he said. ‘I love how you make me feel.’
She could barely think with his erection pressing so enticingly against her. Her body seeped with need. She felt the humid dew of it between her thighs. She looked up in time to see his mouth come down. She closed her eyes and gave herself up to his devastatingly sensual kiss.
His lips moved with hot urgency against hers, drawing from her a response that was just as fiery. Her tongue met his and duelled with it, danced with it, mated with it. Shivers of reaction washed over her body. She pressed herself closer, wanting that thrill of the flesh to block out the pain of the past.
But suddenly he put her from him. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m not falling for that again.’
Natalie looked at him in confusion. ‘You don’t want to …?’
He gave her a wry look. ‘Of course I want to,’ he said. ‘But I’m not going to until you tell me why you were out here, wandering about like a sleepwalker.’
Her gaze slipped out of the range of his. ‘I wasn’t doing any such thing.’
He pushed her chin up with a finger and thumb. ‘Yes, you were,’ he said, his gaze determined as it pinned hers. ‘And I want to know why.’
Natalie felt her stomach churning and her shivering turned to shuddering. ‘I told you. I often have trouble sleeping,’ she said.
His eyes continued to delve into hers. ‘What plays on your mind so much that you can’t settle?’
She licked her dry lips. ‘Nothing.’
His brow lifted sceptically. ‘I want the truth, Natalie. You owe me that, don’t you think?’
‘I owe you nothing,’ she said, with a flash of her gaze.
His eyes tussled with hers. ‘If you won’t tell me then I’ll have to find someone who will,’ he said. ‘And I have a feeling it won’t take too much digging.’
Natalie swallowed in panic. If he went looking for answers it might stir up a press fest. She could just imagine the way the papers would run with it. She would have to relive every heartbreaking moment of that fateful trip. Her mother would be devastated to have her terrible loss splashed all over the headlines. Her father had managed to keep things quiet all those years ago, but it would be fair game now, in today’s tell-all climate.
And then there was Lachlan to consider.
How would he feel to have the world know he was nothing but a replacement child? That he had only been conceived to fill the shoes of the lost Armitage son and heir?
She ran her tongue over her lips, fighting for time, for strength, for courage. ‘I … I made a terrible mistake … a few years back …’ She bit down on her lip, not sure if she could go on.
‘Tell me about it, Natalie.’
Oh, dear God, could