‘So, explain to me how your grandfather is dead and yet not dead,’ Azrael demanded quite seriously and with his usual imperious edge.
‘It’s not happening. I’m out of here, bag and baggage,’ Molly told him roundly, grabbing up a suitcase and thinking better of it. ‘No, that doesn’t belong to me. None of it does. The clothes in these cases were bought with your money so they are not mine—’
‘Stop this...now!’ Azrael thundered at her. ‘You are not leaving me—’
Glittering green eyes struck his. ‘Watch me,’ she invited, sashaying out of the door again, carrying only her handbag.
‘You’re my wife—’
‘And you called me a lying gold-digger. I will not stay married to a man who thinks that of me!’ Molly spat back at him in rage.
‘If I have made a mistake I will make up for it,’ Azrael swore with touching faith in his own powers of persuasion. ‘But you are not leaving me—’
‘I am leaving you,’ Molly repeated with emphasis. ‘And you’re not allowed to make mistakes of that magnitude and be forgiven for them! There is no get-out-of-jail-free card here!’
‘I will not allow you to leave me,’ Azrael shot back at her with suppressed savagery, wondering why she was referring to a prison. ‘That option isn’t on the table. You are already my wife—’
‘Without my consent...remember?’ Molly reminded him doggedly.
Azrael voiced a very rude English word and snatched her off her feet. ‘I don’t care. You are not leaving me,’ he repeated stubbornly, ignoring her struggles as he carted her back into their bedroom and planted her down on the bed like a rock being settled firmly back into sand. ‘This is your home now.’
‘You can’t force me to stay here against my will and you know you can’t!’ Molly told him defiantly. ‘I’d scream the place down, I’d run away, I’d be a nightmare!’
‘Explain your “not dead” grandfather,’ Azrael persisted, lounging back against the door to prevent her from trying to leave again.
Molly dealt him a hostile appraisal. ‘Why should I?’
‘It would be the adult approach.’
‘You’re one to talk,’ Molly snapped. ‘You jumped straight to nasty conclusions.’
‘My past experiences with women have made me distrustful and cynical.’
Molly closed her eyes tight, furious at the idea of him ever having been with anyone else. It was a totally unreasonable reaction but that was how she felt: as if he was hers, body and soul. Such a possessive feeling was not something to celebrate just at that moment, she reflected with self-loathing.
‘Explain,’ Azrael demanded.
‘My grandmother, a widow, married Maurice Devlin when my mother was a baby. My mother’s birth father died before she was born, never mind my birth. Maurice has always been my grandfather and I rarely remember that we’re not related by blood,’ she confided truthfully. ‘He raised my mother as his daughter. When she died he continued to treat me as his grandchild and I’ve always thought of him as family...the only family I have.’
‘Thank you. That has clarified the situation,’ Azrael responded with dignity, torn between relief that his worst imaginings were groundless and anger that he, who prided himself on his cool head and judgement, could have put himself so much in the wrong.
Molly recognised the conflicting emotions chasing across his lean, darkly handsome face and noted the colour rising to accentuate his exotic cheekbones as he accepted the truth of her explanation. She wondered dimly what kind of behaviour his past experiences with women had entailed and crushed a curiosity that she knew would only upset her.
‘I am very sorry for my misapprehension,’ Azrael murmured gruffly. ‘I insulted you.’
He was defensive, wearing his Mr Grumpy expression again and, even aware that she was the injured party, Molly was impressed that he could rise above his pride to apologise. ‘I’m still annoyed with you,’ she admitted.
Azrael jerked his chin in acknowledgement and studied her with dark intense eyes. ‘I lost my temper—’
‘We all do from time to time,’ she parried, fighting an overpowering desire to wrap her arms round his lean, powerful figure and despising herself for it. ‘But I can’t overlook the speed with which you chose to believe the worst of me...that’s a dangerous level of distrust.’
A very faint spur of panic urged Azrael forward. There was so much he felt that he should be saying but he wasn’t used to saying such things and he didn’t have the words to explain that she brought something into his life he knew he could not bear to lose. He sank down on the side of the bed and used a long-fingered brown hand to cradle her cheekbone, his thumb tracing the edge of her full, sultry mouth.
‘I love the dress,’ he said so inanely that he winced for himself but the soft, warm touch of her skin made concentration impossible. ‘It looks amazing on you.’
Molly snatched in a startled breath, battling to retain her distance, but the glide of his thumb made her mouth tingle and the compliment could only please.
‘The next time you go to London I will accompany you and we will visit your grandfather together,’ Azrael declared.
Soothed by that statement of intent, Molly came up on her knees on the bed, drawn by his proximity, mesmerised by the black-lashed drama of his dark golden eyes. ‘I’m still furious with you—’ she warned him tartly even while her breath fractured in her throat as the familiar scent of him, husky male spiced with an extra degree of exotic, engulfed her.
‘Of course.’ Azrael bent his head and went for the soft pink lure of her ripe lips, the need to connect with her overwhelming every other rational response.
AZRAEL’S MOUTH ENGULFED Molly’s and all the reasons why she shouldn’t allow that, including the prepared speech about why intimacy was a very bad idea, simply melted out of her mind as though they had never existed.
He was incredibly good at kissing, she thought vaguely, or maybe it was because she was utterly desperate to be kissed. She didn’t know which and she didn’t know if it even mattered because Azrael’s mouth on hers was pure sensual intoxication. She trailed off his kaffiyah to get her hands into his luxuriant black hair and he was very much on board with that approach because he shed his cloak and began to unbutton his tunic while pressing her back against the pillows to savour her lips and let his tongue dance and curl with hers. Sensation awakened there first where with every moist sweep of his tongue her body ratcheted up in tension a little more. Her spine strained to ease the tingling of her nipples and the swelling of her breasts while heat gathered at her feminine core.
Azrael ran the zip down on the dress and then it got complicated because, when he tried to ease the sleeves down to free her arms, the fabric merely stretched and then sprang back into position. With a strangled laugh of amusement, Molly pushed him back and sat up to wrench the clinging dress down over her arms and let it drop to her waist.
‘That was a challenge,’ Azrael acknowledged, dark golden eyes alive with the same amusement. ‘I’m not making a very polished impression here, am I?’
Molly’s hands framed his lean dark face