“You will stay,” he repeated, a curve of a smile appearing on his lips, but there was still a question in his deep voice.

“Yes, I will stay but I will not get married to you. At least, not yet,” she added, before he could celebrate his victory. Being here was one thing, becoming his wife was an entirely different manner. She would be far more than just the mother of his child. She would be his queen and the thought terrified her. “I need time to think about things.”

He blew out a breath, the disappointment evident on his face. “I’ll take my small wins then. Take all the time you need, Angel, but do not have me wait forever.”

“I won’t,” she vowed. That would be torture for both of them. Too much torture.

“At least you’ve agreed to stay. That relieves more stress than I can tell you.”

“Less stress will be better for both of us,” she said, then added with a hand on her belly, “for all us.”

Angus looked to her hand, and then to her eyes and smiled. “Now that we’ve reached a partial compromise, can we finally declare a truce and go back to how we were before?”

“What do you mean?”

“I want you,” he said curtly. “My libido isn’t fussy about labels. I want you, regardless of who you are.”

“Honestly, Your Royal Pain-in-the-Ass, your moods confuse me. I can hardly keep up with them. Maybe I’m overly sensitive, but your treatment of me is very erratic—”

He stared down at her with molten eyes that made her feel overheated and dizzy. “Did you not hear what I said Siobhan?”

Does he not hear what he, himself, is saying? Siobhan looked at him, wondering what part of his insufferable brain did not function correctly. One moment he was grunting at her and the next, well, he was looking at her like she was his last drink of water.

“I heard you,” she said slowly. “But I still don’t understand you.”

He rubbed an unsteady hand over his mouth, looking like a man in agony. His body seemed to thrum with tension. “At least we agree on something.”

What is happening here? For all the films she’d seen, for all she’d heard from her friends and learned in London, she’d never imagined a man behaving like this—as though he were about to die from desire. Even the erotic books she’d read never had accounts of men’s bodies shuddering with lust, pained with a need so great they could scarcely speak, and could barely stand to be touched.

She wasn’t sure whether she wanted to slap him or kiss him.

She couldn’t remember ever being so attracted to someone who made her so spitting mad. She couldn’t order her thoughts. Her mind kept bouncing back and forth, one second thinking about how unreliable he was, the next noticing he was as handsome as sin personified.

Frowning, she brought her palm up to cup his face, and he shuddered, even at that slight touch. She wondered why he reacted as he did. Was it just unspoken desire for her? How could he want her so badly, but be so unwilling to love her? Remembering her earlier resolve to use honey with him instead of vinegar, she gave him a soft, sensual kiss, then let go of his face.

He rasped under his breath, “Mercy.”

Siobhan couldn’t help but be infected by Angus’s good mood. She’d never seen him so happy and relaxed. She intended to enjoy today. She’d take it as a gift.

This could be her new life, her fresh start, and she wasn’t going to give up easily. Now that she knew why he resisted loving her, she felt her chances at breaking through his barrier were improved. She was no longer lost in a confusing mystery. Things might eventually work out, and one way to improve the odds was to indulge in the one area where they were immensely compatible. They would both benefit from this badly needed detente.

She moved closer to him in the dark and kissed him again, feeling him shudder when her lips made unexpected contact.

“Is that what you want?” she asked.

He laughed, his thumb rubbing over the back of her hand lazily. “A kiss, Angel. All I wish for is a kiss.”

She didn’t believe him. Besides, she would be willing to kiss him for free the way he made her feel.

“Do I get some answers?” she asked shrewdly. “For the kiss tonight? Toll troll paid in advance?”

Angus shrugged. “Tit for tat, Angel. It’s the way of the world. If a man has coffee and no milk, he finds someone with milk and no coffee. I’m merely offering you a mutually satisfying trade.” But if he had his way, he’d coax enough sweet kisses from her tonight he’d need only to roll over in the morning to kiss her again.

In his bed.

“Was that a yes, Angus?”

“Cease and desist, Angel!” he groaned. “Shoot me another one of those beguiling looks and I’ll be giving you my American Express Centurion Card with its secret perks…and perhaps toss in a few diamonds.”

“I have your word, then?”

“You have my word and my pledge.”

“Deal.” Siobhan sealed their bargain hastily. Answers and the excuse for a kiss. How can I ask for more?

Angus’s dark head fell forward, his mouth to her ear. Shivers slid up her back when his breath fanned her neck. “My kiss, Angel.”

“My answer first, Dragon,” she demanded.

He mumbled something indistinct against her collarbone.

“What? I can’t hear you,” she said

“It’s really too foolish to bear repeating…”

“A deal’s a deal, Angus!” she complained, shivering as his lips grazed her neck again and again.

Angus groaned. “Once, a…friend of mine wished for me the perfect wife. That my wife would be all that I ever dared dream of…all I ever hoped for. And then he wished that she would refuse to love me. Refuse to touch me. Refuse to share my bed.”

“Why would a friend wish such a thing?” she asked indignantly.

Because it was an ex-girlfriend, not a male friend. “Why would a wife do such a thing?” he countered smoothly against the tender lobe of her ear.

“I’m not your wife.” She felt the bite of his teeth against her earlobe and shuddered. Why would I say no to him? Why would a wife—a woman—say no to this impossibly beautiful, intriguing man?

Her pulse quickened; she turned her head and stared straight into burnished golden eyes of unfathomable depths.

Bewildered by the flush and quiver of emotion, she touched a finger to his perfectly sculpted lips. Her mind cried out to identify this new feeling, to control it, but her body demanded she know him in a way that had nothing to do with reason or logic.

“Now, my kiss,” he demanded.

His eyes lingered on her face, a seductive visual caress that heated her blood, as he pulled her head closer and brushed his lips against hers. His tongue circled her mouth, tasting every corner, every fullness, teased her senseless; until it was too much for her, and her lips relaxed above his, molded to his, opened for him as her whole body seemed to be opening and crying out for him.

His tongue was making her forget why she ever resisted him. She was in a heaven of sensation. Add to that, his masculine scent and barely harnessed lust. She felt like a rosebud, unfurling to the heat of the sun, to his lips, tongue, and hands.

When she wrapped her arms around his neck, the satisfaction made him quake.

Hot and hard, ruthlessly, he moved his mouth over hers. He slanted across her lips with a relentless hunger that caused stars to shimmer behind her closed eyes.

“Let me love you,” he said against her lips.

Sex offered a physical release and nothing more. There was no risk to one’s heart. There was no shattered pride. There was simply mindless bliss, and nothing.

Angus craved that nothing. He hungered for it. He’d built himself into someone who was stronger because of it. Now, this woman, pregnant with his heir no less, challenged the order he’d established for himself. “I won’t take anything you don’t wish to give.”

She wondered what it would have been like if he was a normal guy; if she wasn’t pregnant. If.

But she would never know it. The only thing she did know was he listened to her like a man had never listened before; he worried about her, took care of her, and stood up for her, even when he knew it was going to bring him grief later for doing so.

With a decisiveness that caught him off guard, Siobhan reached for his belt, unbuckled it and unbuttoned his pants, and when he rose his hips, she pulled them and his underwear down, revealing his arousal.

He didn’t waste any time and pulled off his turtlenecked sweater, baring himself for her.

Her eyes lovingly took in the muscles tapering from his broad chest down to the rigid hollows of his rock-hard abdomen…to his narrow hips…and his erection jutting proudly.

And then her cool fingers settled on him.

His mouth went dry and he throbbed as she explored the shape and texture of his aroused flesh. He stayed there half-sitting, half-lying in the sofa, in the middle of his family room, with his hands suspended in midair for a moment.

What to do? Snare his thick cock and work it inside me? Or tongue his throbbing length? “Magnificent,” she whispered, unaware that she’d spoken aloud.

But Angus wasn’t unaware—he heard her one word and desire slammed through him so savagely he shuddered, and shuddered anew when she knelt between his legs and took him in her mouth.

He entwined his fingers in her raven hair. “Angel, you are heaven.”

Siobhan’s eyes flew open for the sheer indulgence of looking at him and she saw he was looking directly into her eyes with such a smoldering promise of passion she moaned against his cock.

“The pleasure…” he bit out in a tone of wonder as he rocked into her mouth. “It’s almost agony.”

He was losing control, as he hadn’t in memory. God help me. He had never wanted to be inside another human being the way he did her. He took several breaths, nostrils flaring, as if he were preventing himself from coming. “I need to be inside you!”

“Hmm-mm.” And she sucked him, worked her hand over his length. Faster. Harder. Deeper.

Massive body quaking, he threw his head back, tendons taut as bowstrings. Then, losing control, he roared—as he had never done before, as he wasn’t supposed to do. How badly he needed that.

She felt the reverberations. She was about to go over the edge with him, just by witnessing his release.

Warmth slipped down her throat as he yelled his approval, “Yes, yes, Angel!”

She felt every shudder rippling through his powerful body, felt his shaft pumping between her lips as he bellowed to the ceiling.

On and on it continued, while his hips jerked helplessly to her mouth. His whole body shuddered in waves of pleasure. For a moment, it felt as if those waves were traveling through him, too.

When he gave a final groan, tugging her off him, she could hardly think. She sat back on his legs, catching her breath, unable to mask her surprise.

How exciting. How primal. She stretched her arms over her head and smiled.

“You liked that, huh?” he sneered.

He looked angry—why, she didn’t know. Yet when he moved his knee against her sex and she shuddered in pleasure, those qualms faded into the ether.

When she undulated against his leg to grind her clitoris, he growled, “Tantalizing minx.”

He’d just spilled his seed in her. He shouldn’t have been capable of an erection for a good long while. But blood was still flowing to his cock.

She gave a low cry as his rough palm covered her breast, kneaded it.

Holding one breast poised he dipped his head, and growled, “Need to suck you.”

“By all means,” she whispered. She watched him lash a wet lick over one of her swollen nipples. “Yes, Angus!”

Groaning, he wrapped his lips around her nipple, sucking it with greedy pulls.

Tunneling her fingers through his hair, she held him close and panted, “You’re making me feel so good.”

This is real. You are with her. This is happening. Giving the peak a loud suck, he moved to her other nipple, and rasped, “Your nipples are so sweet. As sweet as your lips. How I’ve hungered for this; hungered for you.”

The disbelief and awe in his voice made her melt for him.

When he took his mouth away, she gave a frustrated cry.

“Have to get inside you.”

Pressing open-mouthed kisses to her neck, he pumped his hips up, faster, rutting against her body. Her nipples raked his chest with each of his jostling movements.

She moaned in reply. The pressure kept mounting, until she was on the verge of coming. “Don’t stop, Angus!”

Her head shot forward, her mouth on his neck. Tongue flicking, she sucked on his skin as wanton urges suffused her.

She bent her arms over her head, crossing her wrists as she snapped her hips. The way she writhed atop him robbed him of breath.

Her hands glided down, one to cup a breast, one to masturbate her sex.

In the future, he would watch her self-pleasure; for now, he brushed that hand away. When he stroked the swollen bud with his forefinger, she threw back her head. The ends of her hair tickled his chest; added sensation for a male awash in it.

She grew even slicker, her tempo increasing. In an urgent whisper, she told him, “I’m so close.”

One of his arms coiled around her waist. As he continued to thrust, he wrapped her tighter against him, tighter still—until their slippery bodies were mashed together.

It was just the two of them, cocooned against the world, bodies lit by the fire.

Her nipples raked up and down his chest. “So when I scream—soon—do you think anyone can hear me?”

Pinned in her, he buckled his hips. “Who cares?”

She leaned in to suck on his neck in that maddening way, bearing down on him at the same time. She rode him faster, sending him into a frenzy. “I’m coming! You make me feel so—”

He was once more nearing the point of desperation—cock aching, balls burning—when she finally broke, tensing against him, her thighs trembling around his sides. Her head fell back, her climax wrenching a scream from her.

He eased his thrusts just to feel her spasms rippling up and down his length, her pleasure wringing his.

In the throes of his own climax, he’d wanted to consume Siobhan, so frenzied he was. He rose his hips in a frenzy, shoving himself inside her harder, deeper, growling and snarling like a wild creature flown with lust. And then his groans devolved to fierce grunts, his plunges became shorter, harder, faster. His grip on her hip, feral.

She sensed the coming storm, the tightness, the desperation, the hum in the air. Knowing he was coming close, she squeezed.

And her pleasure blossomed again.

“Yes,” he snarled, tightening his grip.

And then it arrived, that tempest. It rose from some secret place inside him, some unfathomable well, and washed over him like a river of pleasure.

His pleasure tautened, peaked, as did hers.

And it took them together.

He experienced something like euphoria when her channel demanded its due once more. His roar reverberated in the room as he bucked furiously against her, grinding back.

When their orgasms subsided, he continued to quake—as if his release had generated aftershocks.

With each of his ragged breaths, his chest heaved against her breasts, against her achy nipples. She could feel his heart thundering.

After drawing her into his arms, he buried his face in her hair and squeezed her.

“You are such a surprise…everything about you…” he groaned his lingering disbelief. “And if I never let you go?”

She shrugged and patted his heaving chest too tired to say anything. Their bodies were so close, she couldn’t tell where he ended and she began. And at that moment, she didn’t want to be anywhere else in any world.

Satisfied with her answer—absence of a denial was enough for now—he rose with her in his arms and walked to the bedroom. Putting her in bed, he pulled the cover over them and snuggled against her.

The heat from his body was so palpable, it seemed to stroke her in the dark.

Siobhan welcomed the sleep but Angus stayed awake.

How was it that he could hold her so close and still want more of her?

He’d gone from having no one to having a fantasy here in his arms.

Siobhan was not a placid sleeper. At times her lashes trembled and her lips parted with an anxious breath, and her fingers and toes twitched involuntarily. Whenever she became restless, he caressed and cradled her more closely.

Without even trying, she pulled something from him, a tenderness he’d never shown to anyone. He had pleasured women, taken them in every conceivable way. But he’d never made love to anyone the way he just had, as if his fingers were drinking pleasure from her skin. Beneath the covers, her slender thigh hitched higher on his leg as she turned more fully on her side. His cock answered vigorously. He wanted her again.

He had to steel himself from rolling over her and thrusting into her defenseless body. Instead he savored the feel of her tucked against him.

A log snapped in the hearth, the implosion of flame sending ruddy light through the room. He relished the way it gilded Siobhan’s skin, a sheen of gold over ivory.

Very softly he touched the perfect curve of her shoulder.

How strange it was to lie here so utterly contented, when he usually couldn’t abide inactivity. He could lie here for hours, with her head tucked against his shoulder, her breath on his neck, just holding her.

Take your time, Siobhan. And in the end, take me.