Read Online The Virgin's Secret by Abby Green - Free Book Online Page A

beg him to stop, but the words wouldn’t come out.
    Leo wasn’t finished. ‘My father was so consumed it cost us our relationship. And it cost him his first wife. I grew up too fast and too young, aware of a terrible sense of injustice and a need to put things right. So while you were going to school, making friends, living your life here in your home, I was on the other side of the world, wondering how things might have been if my father and grandmother hadn’t been forced out of their own country. Wondering if I might then have had a father who was present, not absent. Wondering what we had done to deserve this awful slur on our name. Do you have any idea what it’s like to grow up being reminded that you don’t belong somewhere every single day by your own family? Like you’ve no right to put down roots?’
    Angel shook her head. She didn’t think he’d appreciate hearing about how lonely she’d felt when her father had sent her to a remote and ultra-conservative catholic boarding school in the wilds of the west of Ireland. Somehow she didn’t think that even the worst of her experiences there would come close to what Leo had described.
    She felt hollow inside. ‘Please, will you just tell me what it is you want or let me go?’
    Leo sat forward, elbows on his knees, glass held casually between long fingers. Supremely at ease, as if he hadn’t just related what he had.
    â€˜It’s quite simple, really. I wanted you the moment I saw you, and I want you now.’ His lip curled. ‘Despite knowing who you are.’
    Angel could feel her mouth opening and closing like an ineffectual fish. ‘You don’t. You can’t.’
    In a flooding of panic, Angel stood up. She carefully placed the glass down on a nearby table and hoped Leo wouldn’t notice how badly her hand was trembling.
    Leo stood too, and they faced each other across the expanse of a few feet.
    â€˜Sit down, Angel, we’re not finished yet.’
    Angel shook her head mutely, feeling the world start to constrict around her. Leo shrugged as if he didn’t care. She tried desperately to block out the way he looked so intimidatingly huge opposite her.
    â€˜You’re going to pay me back for everything you’ve done to me, and you will do it in my bed. As my mistress.’
    Angel nearly burst out laughing, the need to release some of her pent-up panic almost emerging as hysteria. It faded, though, when she saw the look on his face. Her belly quivered.
    â€˜You’re serious.’
    â€˜Of course I’m serious. I don’t joke about things like this.’
    A pulse beat in his jaw, making Angel’s belly clench.
    â€˜Do you think I’m so naive as to assume your father is just going to roll over and take what’s coming to him? I want you, and I want to keep you close, where I can see you— away from your father and his machinations. If that heat between us is anything to go by, I don’t imagine it’ll be unpleasant for either of us.’
    Angel’s belly quivered even more strongly and she felt slightly faint.
    â€˜You want to sleep with me?’
    His mouth quirked dangerously. ‘Among other things.’
    â€˜But…’
    â€˜But nothing. Everyone saw you and I at that party. I am not about to let you capitalise on that now that I’m back. Not to mention tonight’s fiasco. You’re a danger and a threat. You’ve had the audacity to come into my home twice, and now you’ll pay for it.’
    â€˜But my father—’ She stopped. He will kill me , Angel thought, with a mounting dread that had been born long, long ago.
    Leo waved a hand in an abrupt gesture of insult. ‘Your father I don’t much care about. I’m hoping it’ll cause him the maximum amount of humiliation when he sees his precious eldest daughter taken as mistress by his enemy. Everyone will know exactly why you are