After Their Vows by Michelle Reid

and her limbs were melting. The thickness of his arousal was a blatant pleasure force he used to encourage her thighs even wider apart.
    When he raised his head she found she was panting like a sprinter. His ridiculously dark eyes leapt with burning flames, his deep chest heaving, his teeth gleaming white in the darkness between his hot pulsing lips.
    ‘Were there any other lovers?’ he repeated the question.
    Wanting that mouth back on her mouth—needing it there— ‘No,’ she squeezed out.
    He threw himself away from her, rolling back across to the other side of the bed. Angie just lay there in a state of shocked numbness, stunned that he could just stoplike that, but more appalled at how easily he had turned her into this shivering, quivering sensual wreck.
    Then he really deepened her humiliation by picking up the pillow she’d shoved between them and repositioning her pathetic barrier as if it was himself he was trying protect now.
    ‘Go to sleep,’ he rasped, before he slid onto his side with his back towards her.
    Angie rolled onto her side too, opening a gap between the two of them that made the silly barrier superfluous in a bed as big as this. Her eyes were burning with unshed tears, and she wondered if this was the point where she finally let them escape. She knew deep inside she had asked for everything Roque had just dealt out to her. She’d challenged his ego, poured scorn on his masculinity, and derided his prowess as a lover. Having satisfactorily reclaimed all three of those things, he was now content to fall asleep.
    Taut as coiled wire, curled up in a ball, she pushed a hand up against her quivering lips and closed her eyes tightly, working very hard to make sure he did not feel the tremors shaking the bed. She would get up in a minute, she told herself. She would wait until the rotten, faithless, cruel brute had fallen asleep, then she would go back to the other bedroom and this time lock the door so he couldn’t get in …
    She dreamed of locked doors and the helpless constraints of imprisonment as if someone had locked her in. Anxious, restless, she had no idea that she was whispering little pleas into the darkness, begging to be set free. When she uttered a small sob, Roque gave up on lying there watching her, removed the pillow from between them, and gently drew her into the middle ofthe bed. She curled into him as if she was hunting for safety, and whispered his name against his throat.
    Angie slept straight through until morning, when she came awake with a jittery start as if something or someone had woken her up. Remembering exactly where she was arrived half a second later, launching her into a sitting position as full recall of the night’s events flooded into her head.
    Pushing her hair back from her face, she swivelled a wary glance at the other side of the bed. It was empty. Relief quivered through her—followed by a burst of fury aimed entirely at herself, for falling asleep here when she’d meant to hot-foot it out of this bedroom and lock herself into the other one.
    What time was it?
    A glance at her watch sent her diving out of bed. She should have been walking into work as of now! Rushing out of the room and down the mezzanine landing to the other bedroom, she headed directly for the bathroom, and only thought about Roque’s meeting with her brother when she was standing beneath the shower.
    Had he already left?
    Quickly drying herself, she grabbed the bathrobe hanging up behind the door and dragged it on as her bare feet took her back out onto the landing and down the stairs. Last night’s dinner things had been cleared away, she saw as she crossed to the kitchen—then came to a thoroughly disconcerted halt.
    A complete stranger stood elbow-deep in washing up suds—a long, tall, curvy-shaped stranger, with short floppy blonde hair, wearing jeans and bright pink sneakers to match her bright pink tight, stretchy top. Whenshe turned around Angie saw she had big baby blue