She had to help him by lifting her hips. She had a rear bumper on her. Getting in and out of pants took some effort and a bit of wiggling. He seemed to have no trouble, however, because two seconds later he dragged her slacks off her legs and dropped them on the corner of the mat.
Sweet heavens! Why hadn’t she thought to put on sexier underwear this morning?
Oh, yeah. Because when she’d boarded the plane to Moldova, the last thing she thought she’d be doing come evening was getting naked in front of the freaking Prince of Shadows!
Judging by his clenched jaw and flaring nostrils, Angel didn’t seem to mind her simple cotton thong. Passion burned like black flames in his eyes as he slowly lifted his gaze to her face.
“You are so beautiful.”
She blushed. She wasn’t beautiful. Passably pretty, at best. But the way he looked at her…
Mark had looked at her that way. Had made her feel like the most gorgeous creature on earth.
Grabbing his wrist, she pulled him down beside her. His weight depressed the mat and had her rolling toward him until they were both on their sides, face to face.
“You’re not so bad yourself.” She tentatively ran a hand over his bare shoulder. His skin was so hot it almost hurt to touch, so firm she was tempted to dig in her fingernails to test its limits.
He shuddered as she feathered her hand through his chest hair, so crinkly and rough her nipples ached because they knew how delicious it would feel to have that hair rubbing against them. When she lightly brushed a fingertip over his left nipple, she watched in fascination as it furled tight, the areola wrinkling delightfully.
Mark had been the one to teach her that a man’s nipples could be as sensitive as a woman’s. And Angel proved him right when he sucked in a ragged breath and shuddered again.
She knew her power in that moment. She was Wonder Woman. She was She-Ra. She was Sonya Butler, Goddess of Sex because she could make a big, dangerous man, an otherwise unshakable man, like Angel Agassi tremble.
“Angel…” She whispered his name into the space between them, listening as it wafted up into the dry air and echoed around the circus ring. His name was a prayer, an appeal, an invocation all rolled into one.
He would have taken her mouth then, leaned in and closed the small distance that separated them, but she wasn’t ready for that. The moment felt intensely emotional, profound. She wanted it to go on forever. She wanted to learn every part of him, imprint him in her mind so that if they did end up going their separate ways when this was all said and done, at least she’d have a detailed memory of him to take out and savor.
She lifted her hand and traced the outer edges of his face, staring at his forehead. Then the corner of his eye. Over the sharp curve of his right cheekbone. Finally landing at the soft crook on the side of his mouth.
He was stunning. Not that he’d been hard to look at before. The picture of him when he’d been Majid Abass, when he’d reminded her of Mark, was still clear in her mind’s eye. No red-blooded woman on the planet would claim he hadn’t been a handsome man.
But now? Oh, now he was more than handsome. Beyond handsome. So dazzling he took her breath away. And that would never do. She needed her breath, or she’d pass out and miss all the good stuff that came next.
As he’d done to her earlier, she pressed her finger against the plump pad of his bottom lip and watched his mouth open. He shocked her when he ducked his chin and sucked her finger between his lips. She couldn’t help the hungry gasp that escaped her. “Angel…” There it was again. That prayer. That appeal. That invocation.
Her finger slid from his lips with a soft pop. “Come here.” He pulled her flush against him.
It was odd. With her bottom half bare and his top half bare, they weren’t skin to skin. And yet her naked legs brushing against the rough denim of his jeans, and his chest hair rasping over the silk of her shirt, felt ridiculously intimate.
Then he kissed her, sucking and nibbling and licking and loving. He kissed her like Mark had kissed her. Like kissing was the be-all and end-all. As though it was the journey that was important, not the destination, and she marveled at his patience, at his ability to suck the marrow from the moment, revel in it, and not press for more.
In her experience, most men treated kissing as a means to an end, barreling through the process until they could get to something more pleasurable. But not Mark back then. Not Angel now.
After a long, gloriously torturous interlude, he snaked a hand between them and slowly unbuttoned her blouse. She might have protested. Now she would be bare on bottom and top, but the truth was she wanted to be naked with him. Wanted to feel his hot skin against her. Wanted to know what it was to have nothing separating them but their breaths and moans and heartbeats.
Her shirt joined her slacks in a pile on the corner of the mat and then, with a snap of his fingers, the front clasp of her bra released. Both sides fell open as if the garment said, “Help yourself, sir.”
And he did. Not asking permission before cupping her.
She hissed at the heat of his palm, moaned when the calluses on his hand rasped against her tender nipple. He dark eyes homed in on her exposed breasts. “Beautiful,” he whispered reverently. “You are so achingly beautiful.”
But she wasn’t. He was the one who was achingly beautiful, and yet…when she saw herself through his eyes, a woman given up to passion, pink and flushed and ready and willing, she thought maybe she understood what he meant. Perhaps to a man, there was nothing more glorious than a woman in need. Nothing more sublime that a woman who’d surrendered.
Closing her eyes, she collapsed limply against the mat, her arms flung out to her sides, her breasts pointing toward the ceiling like an offering she hoped he wouldn’t refuse.
He didn’t. He leaned forward and sucked one tender peak into the hot haven of his mouth.
Sensation exploded. Waves of pleasure centered under his talented lips and undulated through her again and again, keeping time with each suck, each flick of his expert tongue. He palmed her other breast, rasping his scarred, fingerprintless thumb over the tip before catching her nipple and pinching it lightly.
