Kiss an Angel(108)

“Not so fast.” He captured her earlobe in his teeth and gave it a gentle nip. “First I need to punish you.”

“Punish me?” She stiffened, thinking of the whips stored under the bed, just beneath their hips.

“You excited me but you didn’t finish what you started.”

“That’s because you—”

“Enough.” Once again, he reared back and regarded her with all the lofty arrogance of his Romanov heritage.

She felt herself relax. He would never hurt her.

“When I want your opinion, woman, I’ll ask for it. Until then, you’d be wise to hold your tongue. My Cossacks have been a long time without a woman.”

She gave him a squinty-eyed look that told him he was pushing it.

One corner of his mouth quivered, but he didn’t smile. Instead, he dipped his head and brushed his lips across the inside of her thigh. “There’s only one fit punishment for a slave who can’t stay silent. A vicious tongue-lashing.”

The ceiling spun as he delivered on his threat and transported her into a realm of hot delight and ancient ecstasy. His body grew slick with perspiration and the muscles of his shoulders bunched beneath her hands, but still he wouldn’t stop. Only when she begged him did he finally force the sweet entry she needed so desperately.

He drove deep and true, and all the mischief faded from his eyes. “I want to love you now,” he whispered.

Her eyes stung with tears as he spoke the words she’d been longing to hear. She clung to his body, and they fell into a rhythm as timeless as the beat of their hearts. They moved as one, and she felt his love filling her, suffusing her, spilling into her very soul.

They swirled together, man and woman, earth and sky, all the elements of creation converging in a perfect melding.

When it was over, she felt a joy she’d never before experienced and a certainty that everything was going to be all right between them. I want to love you, he’d said. Not, I want to make love to you, but I want to love you. And he had. He couldn’t have loved her more completely if he’d spoken the words a hundred times.

She gazed across the pillow at him. He lay facing her, his eyes half-lidded, slumberous. Reaching over, she caressed his cheekbone, and he turned his head to press his lips against her palm.

She rubbed her thumb along his jawbone, enjoying the slight abrasion against her skin. “Thank you.”

“I’m the one who should thank you.”

“I hope that means you’re not going to give me to your Cossacks?”

“I wouldn’t share you with anybody.”

The erotic game they’d been playing had made her forget the promise she’d made to tell him about the baby. Now.

“You haven’t said anything about the divorce for a while.”

He immediately grew wary and rolled to his back. “It hasn’t been on my mind.”

She was disheartened by his withdrawal, but she’d known this would be difficult, and she continued to press him as gently as she could. “I’m glad. It’s not a good thing to think about.”

He gazed over at her, his eyes deeply troubled. “I know what you want me to say, but I can’t do it yet. Just give me a little more time, will you?”

With her heart in her throat, she nodded.

He looked as skittish as a wild animal brought too close to civilization. “Let’s just take it day by day for now.”

She understood that the worst thing she could do was make him feel trapped, and the fact that he wasn’t still insisting their marriage would be over in two more months gave her the confidence to wait just a little longer. “Of course we can.”

He drew himself up and leaned into the pillows propped against the headboard. “You know you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, don’t you?”

“I certainly do.”

He chuckled, and the tension seemed to leave him. She rolled onto her stomach, propped herself on her elbows, and stirred his chest hair with her fingertips. “Wasn’t Catherine the Great a Romanov?”

“Yes.”

“I read that she had a lusty nature.”

“She had a long string of lovers.”

“And a lot of power.” She leaned forward and nipped his pectoral muscle with her teeth. He jumped, so she nipped him again.

“Ouch!” He caught her chin and tilted it. “Exactly what’s going on in that devious little brain of yours?”

“I was just imagining all those strong men forced to bow down to Catherine the Great.”

“Uh huh.”

“Forced to serve her. To submit to her.”

“Uh-oh.”

She brushed her lips across his. “It’s your turn to be the slave, big guy.”

For a moment he looked startled, and then he gave a sigh that came all the way from his toes. “I think I just died and went to heaven.”





21




Alex had been impossible all week. Ever since they’d gone out to dinner and then returned to play their erotic games, he’d been looking for excuses to pick an argument with her, and now he scowled at her as he wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his arm.

“Couldn’t you have put some gas in the truck when you when into town for groceries?”