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  Don’t Call Her Angel

  Cara McKenna

  Peering into Emily’s and Rasul’s lives from the outside paints an unlikely picture—the sweet, deferring Southern bride and her cold, self-possessed, ex-military husband. Peer into their bedroom and the scene grows starker still. Domineering man, submissive girl, a sex life not for the faint of heart. But peer inside their heads? That’s another matter entirely.

  Obsessive, traditional and controlling, Rasul never planned on marrying an American woman, let alone a kinky one. A dark past has left Emily with unusual appetites, ones Rasul has come to embrace—a small price to pay to indulge his sexual power trip, the thrill of being the one who makes her every desire real.

  But bringing another man into their bedroom? For most husbands, that’s a kink too far. For Rasul, it’s yet another sin he never dreamed he’d commit before he met his wife…and an invitation to spoil her rotten too good to pass up.

  Ellora’s Cave Publishing

  www.ellorascave.com

  Don’t Call Her Angel

  ISBN 9781419934476

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  Don’t Call Her Angel Copyright © 2011 Cara McKenna

  Edited by Kelli Collins & Kahli Reid

  Cover art by Syneca

  Electronic book publication June 2011

  The terms Romantica® and Quickies® are registered trademarks of Ellora’s Cave Publishing.

  With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.® 1056 Home Avenue, Akron OH 44310-3502.

  Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the publisher’s permission. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000. (http://www.fbi.gov/ipr/). Please purchase only authorized electronic or print editions and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted material. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  Don’t Call Her Angel

  Cara McKenna

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks as always to Amy, my trustiest reader of my rustiest manuscripts.

  Trademarks Acknowledgement

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

  C-SPAN: National Cable Satellite Corporation

  Guinness: Diageo, PLC

  I Love Lucy: CBS Broadcasting, Inc.

  Maker’s Mark: Maker’s Mark Distillery, Inc.

  Mini: Rover Group, Ltd.

  Peanuts: Peanuts Worldwide, LLC

  Stella Artois: Anheuser–Busch Inbev SA Corporation

  Target: Target Brands, Inc.

  Chapter One

  At six o’clock, Emily looked up as the rumble of the garage door announced her husband’s punctual return.

  She glanced around the kitchen as she passed through and deemed it tidy, a pleasant place for a man to come home to. Emily’s momma would have rolled her eyes at such a thought. Such a “wifey” thought—her never-married mother’s favorite derogatory adjective. Emily didn’t care. She loved that it still felt like the moments before a first date when her husband drove up, and that he still excited her as he had three years ago when they’d first laid eyes on each other.

  She smoothed her hair, freshly brushed, her makeup just retouched, though her husband likely wouldn’t notice either effort.

  Yet he couldn’t be faulted. More often than not, he came home with a head full of worries Emily couldn’t begin to imagine, plus it wasn’t as though he didn’t look at her, or indeed enjoy looking at her. Besides, Emily hadn’t married Rasul for his ability to spot whether or not she’d gotten highlights done or changed her perfume. She’d married him for how he made her feel, and the way he looked at her, a stare so intense it probably melted all her foundation off anyhow. She’d married him for his strong hands, rough voice, his kind heart and the way she felt around him, a wondrous mix of secure and electrified.

  The garage door rattled shut and Emily held her breath as boots mounted the steps, as the knob turned and the door swung in. Her blood pumped quicker and a grin overtook her face. Goddamn, how was this possibly her husband?

  He smiled as he stepped inside and Emily waited patiently. Certain things must be done before she could greet him properly. He toed his boots off on the mat and ditched his briefcase on the counter. He offered Emily a kiss—a quick kiss, firm and possessive, chased by another smile.

  “Hey, you.”

  “Hey yourself. You want a drink?” she asked.

  Rasul nodded. He walked back to close the door, lingering there, waiting for Emily to turn away.

  She grabbed him a beer from the fridge, listening as he went through his private ritual, turning the locks just so, jiggling the knob, tugging, starting it all over. He must have had a relatively calm Monday at work, as he only relocked the door four times before deciding it was sufficient. As he took a seat at the dining room table with a sigh, Emily poured herself a glass of white wine and cut it with orange juice.

  “My little lightweight,” he teased in his warm, dark accent, and they tapped their drinks together.

  She gave him a looking-over, curious as always about what went on inside that private head, though realizing she’d probably rather not know. “How was work?”

  Rasul shrugged, as much information as he ever offered about his job. He worked for the federal government just a few miles from their home in Virginia, as an interrogator. Born for it. Back in the Middle East, he’d served in his homeland’s army all through his twenties, and though he was five-eleven, something in his posture or expression made him look about seven-foot-three. Black eyes and brows and permanent five o’clock shadow, shaved head, a body that made a delicate Georgia flower such as Emily fan herself to fight off a swoon.

  She imagined he spent his days slamming his fists on desks under the glare of bright, hoodless bulbs, scaring pertinent intelligence out of bad men, yelling until spittle peppered their faces. His bosses treated Rasul like a Rottweiler, only really caring what he did once they gave the order to sic, and as such he refused to adhere to the agency’s dress code. Jeans and a black tee shirt were his uniform for every occasion save weddings and funerals. If his regular bonuses were any indication, he did his job damn well, and no one seemed to mind if he was occasionally mistaken for a security guard. In fact sometimes, here at home, he resembled that role a bit too closely for Emily’s taste.

  “How has everything been around here?” He often came home hoarse, but not tonight. Tonight his deep voice with that strangely elegant lilt sounded rich and mysterious. Commanding.

  She glanced around the kitchen. “Fine. Quiet.”

  The house was too big for them, too new to her still after only eight weeks. She missed their old apartment, but she’d grow to love this home. Add a dog and couple of kids someday and it’d be the perfect size.

  “You look nice,” he said.

  Emily smiled, glad of this hint that he was relaxed enough to have spotted her effort. “Thanks. Thought I’d grill steaks tonight, since it’s finally feelin’ like spring. Made a casserole for you for tomorrow. Chicken and spinach and some other things.”

  His gaz
e jumped instinctively to the stove. He didn’t rise to check the burner knobs though, another sign he was feeling calm today. “Sounds lovely. Though not as lovely as you being home.”

  She smiled tightly, annoyed he’d hit their one raw nerve. Rasul wished she’d stay home, as if her working were an insult to him and his earning potential, his manhood. Emily had tried playing housewife full-time for a month after they’d married, but it made her feel isolated and idle and paranoid. She was a fidgety person, and work kept her brain busy. “It’s only two shifts a week.”

  “Two night shifts.”

  She smiled and shook her head. “You met me at that bar. Plus nobody’s gonna jump out of the bushes and knife me in Reston.”

  His nostrils flared and he sipped his beer.

  Neanderthal, her mother’s voice said. Her momma had fashioned herself a breed of preachy feminism later in her life, and had never approved of Rasul. She’d sat through their small backyard ceremony looking as though she were smelling something foul. His race and lapsed religion had nothing to do with it—not directly, anyhow. She simply thought her son-in-law was pushy and cold, and didn’t care to listen to justifications about cultural rifts. Emily liked those things about him though. Plus he’d never outright forbid her to work if that’s what she wanted.

  “It’s only for a few more months,” Emily reminded him. When she’d moved here with her dusty GED she’d worked as a cashier at Target. She’d swapped it for a job tending bar, which she’d held on to for nearly four years, and now here she was, signed up to start a nursing course in the fall. That might as well be a fast-food gig in this affluent area, but for a girl who grew up in a single-wide, Emily felt poised for greatness.

  “When September rolls around I can finally start feeling like a grown-up,” she said.

  “I’m very proud.” Anyone aside from Emily might have been unconvinced by Rasul’s dry tone, but she knew him. She knew from the shape of his cheek when he smiled and the way his eyes softened that he was indeed proud. He spent his days screaming threats to get the truth out of people, but Emily could read his emotions like a polygraph, every tiny, silent hint he offered.

  He set his beer on the table and spread his legs, patting one. Emily relocated, straddling his thigh to rest her back against his arm and hard chest, relaxing instantly. An unlikely match, the ruthless former soldier and his small, blonde Southern bride.

  Emily had spent most of her life being called “slow” or “simple”, overhearing her aunts saying things like, “Thank goodness she’s pretty. If she don’t get herself in no trouble with the local boys she might just stand a chance at marrying well someday. God knows she ain’t the brightest penny in the fountain.” But Rasul never made her feel that way. He liked that she could sit in front of C-SPAN for three days straight with her eyes taped open and still not retain a single word of it. He liked that she knew the lyrics to every Patsy Cline song but stared blankly at people when they asked her opinion about this or that politician.

  “But you live right outside D.C.!” people would say. In those moments Emily just shrugged her apology. Politics, math, science, current events…it went over her head like Rasul’s phone calls home. Like the voice of the teacher in those old Peanuts cartoons. Yes ma’am.

  “You feel nice,” she murmured, taking in his warmth and the reassuring comfort of his size.

  “So do you.” A man of few words, but the ones murmured against her neck spoke volumes. “I’ll miss you tomorrow.”

  “You too,” she said.

  “Miss your body in our bed.”

  Emily shivered, already slipping into her role, the quiet, obedient one. Strong hands palmed her bare arms and goose bumps rose across her skin.

  When Emily had finally mustered the courage to tell her mother she planned to marry Rasul, they’d both been a little tipsy. Her momma had met Rasul twice and already deemed him an unfixable, backward-thinking chauvinist ogre.

  “I’m telling you, you’ll regret it. Welcome to the rest of your life, Em,” she’d said, waving her hands as though gesturing at a movie screen showcasing Emily’s bleak future. “Welcome to forty years of selfish, boring missionary monotony with that man. You’re just a blow-up doll to a patriarchal thug like him. A blow-up doll who can cook and nod and make babies and look pretty while she’s at it. If he’s doing anything to impress you in the bedroom now, honey, well…you can kiss that goodbye the second he closes the sale. That’s all you are to him, baby girl. Another piece of property. Mark my words, kiss your own pleasure sayonara.”

  Emily smiled at the thought.

  Momma, if you only knew.

  Chapter Two

  Rasul gave Emily’s thigh a light smack. “Up you get.”

  She stood. “You hungry now?” she asked, praying she could guess the answer.

  “Not for dinner.”

  She smiled and headed for the stairs, to the second floor and their bedroom. She did like this about their fancy new house—carpeted steps meant she couldn’t hear him on her heels, could only imagine his body behind hers.

  She walked into the bedroom and headed for the picture window. Like the rest of the house, this room was too large. She slid the blinds closed to make it feel less vast, and to keep her mind off how badly she needed to order more furniture. She turned to find Rasul in the threshold, his body silhouetted by the light from the hall. He changed at moments such as these, turning into a version of his brutal, professional self, she imagined. Tough guy or not, he’d never raised his voice to Emily or handled her roughly the entire time she’d known him. Not outside this room, at least. And inside…inside he could do whatever he pleased.

  “On your knees.”

  A shiver trickled through her, cooling her skin and heating her pussy. She took her place in the center of the bedroom’s carpeted floor. Rasul stepped to her, slowly. For a minute he merely stood above her, touching her hair, smoothing it back from her face and running his fingers through it. Thoughts were surely racing through his mind, items from a menu flashing past as he deliberated over his selection.

  “Strip,” he finally said.

  Emily tugged her shirt off and shimmied out of her shorts and underwear to kneel expectantly at his feet. He stripped away his own shirt, kicked his jeans and socks aside, standing before her in only his briefs.

  Fuck, this body. Rasul was OCD about certain things—his lock- and stove-checking rituals, demanding about how close or how far they were seated from windows in restaurants. But for all the ways it drove Emily up the wall, she had to forgive him, because the thing he was most obsessive about was his workout. Up at quarter to five every morning, jogging to the park to perform some sadistic training circuit from his military days. At thirty-four he was as cut and lean as he’d been in pictures snapped over a decade earlier, reflexes like something out of an action movie.

  My man. She cupped the bulge in his briefs and he was already stiff. Not a huge cock, but thick, as hard as his muscles and only getting harder as she rubbed the ridge of his erection. His hands held her head, gentle. Gentle for now.

  She fondled his balls through the cotton, as taunting for her as it must feel to him. She took his shrouded shaft in both hands and squeezed, loving his size and smell, loving that she could tease him for an hour and he’d still have the wherewithal to fuck her senseless to her heart’s content, no risk of him beating her to the punch. She slid one hand to his ass and objectified the dip of muscle at his hip…her favorite. When they used a mirror, this was the part of him she most loved to watch. Those hips pistoning as he gave her what she wanted.

  She raised her chin to meet his gaze, the protocol. He nodded, her permission to take the next step. As she eased his briefs down his thighs, his scent grew stronger.

  “Stroke it.”

  A taunting graze of her fingers to start. A light touch as she measured him from base to head, as their excitement and anticipation grew in tandem.

  “Stroke. It.”

  She swallowed
. Wrapping her fist firmly around his flesh, she obeyed. She felt him take hold of her hair, rough enough to intimidate but not to hurt. Rasul in sexual mode was a magical contradiction. Behind the orders and his seeming selfishness, this fantasy was purely Emily’s. His fantasy was all about controlling her pleasure, granting her wishes. He had the intuition to know what those wishes were and the physical gifts to realize them…and the stamina to keep it all up until she dropped. This powerful man was hers to command in their secret, silent language of glances and touches.

  “Talk to me,” he muttered.

  “You’re hard.” She stroked him with tight pulls, easing back the skin to expose his flushed head. “Hard and thick. Tell me what you want from me.”

  “Suck me.”

  She held back a smile, glancing up at his shadowed face, letting her expression turn hesitant.

  A yank at her hair. “Suck me.”

  Emily lowered her eyes, then her mouth. She traced her lower lip with the smooth, hot tip of his cock until a bossy push at the back of her head forced him inside. She slid her free palm to his hip to feel the muscle flex as he pushed deeper. Strong. The sensation made the blood course fast and hot in her veins.

  “Good. More.”

  As if she had a choice. She took what he gave her, steady, incremental thrusts until he filled her mouth, until his head touched the back of her throat. She moaned around him, a fearful noise.

  “Good.” His breathing came in sharp, nasal inhalations. She could picture the expression she couldn’t see, the glint in his narrowed eyes and the stern set of his jaw.

  For a minute she let him fuck her mouth, liking the degradation of it but craving a bit of control of her own. She pushed at his hip and he let her lean back to focus on his head. The way a man tasted had always been something she’d put up with before her husband, but with Rasul, she savored it. She teased his slit with the tip of her tongue, worshipping his spit-slick shaft with her hand.