“I lied. You should be. The world’s full of bastards.”
“Michael.”
He halted, his hands on his hips, aggression shimmering off him in invisible heat currents. “What?”
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
She swallowed against the rising lump in her throat. “Well, if we’re talking just in general, that would be a long list. But right now – thank you for coming to my rescue. I thought the best way to get past some of the old fears would be to face them…” She bowed her head again, blinking. “But I was wrong.”
It was silent a beat, and then he came to her again, kneeling once more on the carpet, his arms folded over her legs this time, so even with her head down, she could see his face. She loved his face, every unforgiving angle of it.
“Mirrors, right?” he asked, and his voice was the low, velvet sound of midnight under the covers.
She was startled. “What?”
“Sometimes…it was in front of a mirror, wasn’t it? So you had to watch.” The gentlest, gentlest voice, his breath warm and smelling of whiskey where it stirred against her face.
Mirrors, yes, she’d told him about the mirrors. About her father, and the cruel bite of his fingers against her cheeks as he turned her head and forced her to watch. She shuddered hard at the memory, and nodded.
His arms shifted, so his hands were on her hips, thumbs pressing at the points of bone. “Stand up,” he said, softly. “Come face one of those fears.”
Her throat tightened at the prospect. She lived now in a constant state of wanting him, a low-level energy that cycled through her. But here, now, as rattled as she was…she could muster no heat or desire. All she wanted was to fold herself against his chest and sleep.
“Here?”
He stood, pulling her up to her feet with him. “Here.”
“Michael…” She pushed lightly at his chest as he walked them to the dressing table, resisting, but still compliant. Caught between abject terror and the familiar warm strength of his arms. “Michael, please, I don’t think I can…”
There they were, in the mirror, and as always, she was surprised by how small she looked. He seemed tall and stern by contrast, even if his face was at its gentlest and sweetest – somewhere in the neighborhood of terrifying for a regular man who made regular faces. She’d seen the lines, the weathering of his face so many times, but never alongside her own smooth complexion like this. Suddenly, she realized that she’d never asked his age, but that he must be ten, fifteen years older than her.
One of his arms was around her middle in front, the other across her shoulders. He raked his hand through her hair; it rippled and shimmered in the lamplight.
“It’s just us, see?” His eyes touched hers through the mirror. The lamp turned the colors to vivid jewel tones – hers bright emerald, his tiger’s-eye amber. “Just you and me.”
She watched their reflections as he brushed her hair back, exposing the pale line of her throat, and kissed her there, his mouth opening against her skipping pulse. It transfixed her: to feel the warmth of his lips, the hot wet stroke of his tongue, and see it too. They were separate things: the sight and the feel.
His lips skimmed up her jaw and then his hand cupped the back of her head and he turned her, so he could kiss her mouth. Then she could see nothing, and closed her eyes, sighing through her nose and opening to him, letting the warm stroke of his lips and tongue begin to thaw the cold tremors running beneath her skin.
He kissed her with languid thoroughness, until she felt the warming in the pit of her stomach, and everything had faded save the continuous, slick mating of their mouths.
When his hands eased her jacket off her shoulders, she helped him. She lifted her sweater off, let it fall, and then stepped into his arms, sliding her own around his neck, pressing herself to him. She liked the smooth leather against her skin, but she liked his skin better.
She ran down the zipper, and he shrugged out of jacket and cut, let them hit the floor. His shirt was black, with little white buttons, and she broke the kiss so she could see to slip all of them free.
She slid her hands between the parted halves, over the smooth stretch of his chest, fingertips sliding through the crinkly dusting of hair. His muscles tensed beneath her touch, excited and stimulated. Much like the man himself, who ditched the shirt with an impatient move and gathered her against him again.
He kissed her…and then he turned her, and there was the dreaded mirror again.
She’d worn the red bra, because it was the only one she owned that wasn’t threadbare and plain. It shaped her breasts so they were high and round. Above the waistband of her jeans, she could just see the red ribbon at the waist of the matching panties.
Michael stood behind her, the lamplight gilding his skin, highlighting a faint silver scar at the top of his shoulder, carving hollows in the grooves between muscles.
The skin of his hands was dull with accumulated roughness – calluses, old scars, the split knuckles of a mechanic and a biker. The contrast between them and the smooth flat of her stomach was stark, as he touched her.
“Watch,” he urged, against her ear.
Then his hands were at her back, at her bra clasp, and then the band was slackening, the cups falling away.
She saw herself every day in the shower, in her own mirror, in her bathroom, and never had she looked like this. The girl in the mirror seemed a different creature entirely as Michael’s hands covered her naked breasts, thumbs finding the straining rosy nipples.
She inhaled, lifting her chest on instinct into the subtle rasping of his calluses against her soft pale skin. And in the mirror she watched him cup her, weigh her, pet her in an artful, deliberate flexing of his strong fingers that reminded her nothing of all those other times in front of a mirror. He traced her budded nipples, pinched them lightly.
One of his hands slid down her belly, fingertips sliding just inside the waistband of her jeans. Her spine flexed in helpless reaction, her hips thrusting forward, searching for greater contact with his hand.
“Are you afraid?” he asked. His hand shoved down, diving inside her jeans, cupping her through the warm satin of her panties.
“No.” Her neck was weakening, and she let her head fall back against his shoulder as his fingers worked against her, and with his other hand he molded her breasts, one and then the other.
“Look at you,” he said. “No wonder they want you.”
It was shocking to her, to see the low-lidded, arching creature in his arms, shamelessly moving her hips as he stroked her, lifting into the hand at her breasts. The sight of his arm lying against her belly, his hand disappearing down into her jeans, was doing relentless things to her pulse. She was gasping. Her skin was superheated, feverish, hyper sensitive to every brush of his body against it.
“Are you afraid?” he asked her again.
“No,” she said, stronger this time. Sure. No, she wasn’t at all afraid.
Her eyes stayed glued to the mirror as Michael unbuttoned her jeans and shoved them down her hips, taking the panties with them. She lifted her feet, one at a time, pliant and entranced, as he tugged off one boot and then the other, rolled her socks down. And then she was stark naked: tiny feet and tiny hands, the hourglass curves of hips and waist and shoulders, the heaviness of her breasts, and the glazed green of her drugged eyes.
Michael stripped off his own jeans in one economic movement, and he stepped up behind her again.
He had never looked more perfect to her, and she felt his rigid cock at her back; felt the liquid heat between her legs and was ready for him.
There was a pull-out bench seat beneath the dresser, and he urged her up onto it, on her knees. He stroked her sides, her waist, her belly, and then his fingers found her sex, and he was spreading her. The head of his cock at her entrance. The slow entry. The rasp of her breath striking the mirror in front of her, and she couldn’t have looked away if she’d wanted to.
“Wa
tch,” he told her again, and sank the last inch, fully seated inside her, his hips held tight at her ass.
“God,” she whispered.
His hands found her hips, flexing until her skin dimpled beneath the fingertips. And he started to move, drawing back and thrusting forward again.
For one hideous flash of memory, she was back at the kitchen sink in the farmhouse, her Uncle Jacob behind her. The rending pain. The dim reflection in the window, as she rocked in time to his rhythm.
But Michael said, “It’s me, honey,” in a strained voice. His hands slid forward, smoothed across her belly, held her back against him as he stilled for a moment. Almost choking on the words, fighting his own restraint: “It’s me.”
Holly saw the stricken look that had overtaken her face as the past closed over her. She saw too the brilliant contrasts in his face: the harsh need, and the liquid softness in his eyes as he waited for her, pleading silently for her to shake off the memories and be with him in this moment.
Tears filled her eyes, as she looked at him. Tears of the most emotional thanks, that he could be so careful with her, tears of joy because he cared this much.
Her hands braced on the dresser, she leaned back against him, her inner muscles tightening around his cock.
“I’m okay,” she said. “Come on, let’s–”
He groaned as his face dropped into the crook of her neck, complete relief. His hips surged and his hands locked onto her tight, and it was the most violent thrusting as he drove inside her again and again, building a rhythm that coursed through her, made it difficult to keep her balance.
In the mirror, she watched the powerful movement of him behind her. She watched her cheeks flush deep pink. Watched her breasts swing as he pounded into her.
Her orgasm was shattering. It went on and on, and beneath its crush, she was aware of Michael taking hold of her, lifting her up into his arms, and stretching out on the bed with her. He laid her on her side, so she faced him. In her delirium of burning skin and rippling pulses, she clutched at his biceps and pressed her face to his hot chest.
She loved him. Loved him in a way that was both a white hot burn and a balm to soothe it.
He loved her.
From the moment of his birth to the moment of her death, he’d loved his mother. Camilla had been the sort of mother who loved without reservation; lullabies and stories and warm lipstick kisses. And after Mama was gone, he’d loved Uncle Wynn. He still did; the only father he’d ever known.
And now he loved Holly and he hadn’t the faintest idea how to go about keeping her.
She lay damp and flushed against him, her breath like the sound of wings beating as she sought to regain it.
He wanted to ease her onto her back, and have her again. He wanted to sleep, the soft shape of her fitted against him. He wanted to stop time, and keep things this simple. All women were complicated in his experience – but not Holly. She was bright, and sharp, and sweet, and he could feel the emotion pouring out of her, emotion she held for him. The irony – that she would ever be self-conscious, when she was incalculably smarter and kinder than the women he’d known. Her acceptance had been immediate and total.
And two murders lay ahead of him, and any number of awful things could happen to her before he’d finished them.
The idea terrified him.
For the first time, since the night his father bludgeoned his mother to death with a table lamp, he felt terror.
He felt her lips against his chest, a soft kiss she pressed over his heart.
He stroked her hair back off her face, feeling the fragile round shape of her skull, crushable and delicate. Yes, terrifying. “You wanna go home?”
His place, her place – it didn’t matter. Whichever one would be “home.”
“Yes.”
“He’s coming around.”
Ava peeked over Nell’s shoulder and saw RJ’s eyes flutter. He groaned, and if nothing else, he was conscious. His face looked like it’d taken on the business end of a baseball bat.
Nell dipped a cloth napkin in a cup of water and blotted his face with it again, eliciting a wince. His left eye was already swollen shut, the flesh around the socket puffed-up and rapidly discoloring. The orbital bones had to be broken.
“Man, what the hell did you do?” Aidan demanded of the half-comatose Dog laid out on the picnic table. “I think he was trying to kill you.”
“He was messing with Holly,” Ava said, and felt a dozen pairs of eyes swing toward her. She shrugged. “Well he was.”
“Did you see it?” Mercy asked.
“By the time I got out here, RJ was already on the ground, but Michael, plus Holly, plus RJ, plus TKO equals RJ got too friendly, in my estimation.”
Tango frowned. “RJ’s been sweet on her since she started working at Bell Bar.”
“Who the hell is Holly?” Ghost asked.
“Michael’s girlfriend,” Ava said. “He brought her with him tonight.”
“He has a girlfriend?”
She nodded.
“Jesus, what kinda chick willingly spends time with him?” Candy asked with a chuckle.
“She’s hot, man,” Aidan said. “But insane, obviously.”
“She’s not,” Ava said, frowning, earning censorious glances from all males present save her husband and Tango, who didn’t do censorious on any occasion. “She’s sweet,” she said. “And he’s really serious about her.”
“How would you know?” Ghost asked.
“I had lunch with her.”
Mercy frowned but said nothing, still concerned about the situation.
Maggie said, “Whatever she is, I take it Michael doesn’t want anyone laying hands on her. Did you figure that out tonight, RJ? Don’t touch other people’s dates.”
He mumbled a response.
Movement behind the crowd, at the front door, drew Ava’s attention. Michael and Holly leaving.
Ava said nothing. Let them escape, she thought. She would have wanted someone to do the same for her, years ago, when she was wildly in love with a dangerous man she couldn’t have.
“I want to ask you something, and I don’t want you to feel like you have to answer.”
Michael considered the cards laid out before him on the carpet. They were at his house, and they’d both showered, and were in sweats, and were exhausted and enjoying the warm crackle of the fire. Tomorrow, he’d have an angry president to answer to, but right now, he didn’t care about much of anything besides their game of solitaire and the way the fire danced across her fresh-scrubbed face.
“Shoot,” he said, laying the five of spades up on the appropriate stack they’d built between them.
She nibbled at her lip a moment, studying her cards, then lifted her eyes to his. “I’ve been wondering how you came to be a part of the Lean Dogs, when you…well, you don’t seem to like the rest of them that much.”
A simple question. Not a simple answer. And unfortunately for him, he didn’t speak in subtleties.
“I didn’t set out to join,” he said. “It ended up happening, ‘cause I was well-suited for it. It’s a long story.”
She smiled at him. “I’ve got nowhere to be.”
He gave her a discouraging look, but of course she wasn’t deterred.
“It can’t be any more embarrassing than my story,” she said in a light voice that belied the tiny tremor in her hands.
And it wasn’t, was it? No part of his history was as repulsive as the tale she’d told him.
So he took a deep breath and said, “My uncle raises hunting dogs. Blueticks and Great Danes.”
Her brows went up. “Great Danes are hunting dogs?”
He nodded. “Uncle Wynn uses them for boar hunting. They’re the kill dogs. The hounds do the tracking, and then you pull them back. And the Dane goes in with Kevlar” – he gestured to his own chest – “and holds down the hog while the hunter goes in with the knife.”
She watched him curiously, no trace of revulsion on her delica
te features. She looked fascinated.
“It’s a real old fashioned way to hunt. Most people use rifles, or bows. They get in blinds and wait for the pig to show. Wynn’s always done it the mountain man way, like they did it a hundred years ago. Lots of people use pitbulls, but I’ve never liked them. The Dane’s got the size and the smarts, and the trainability.”
Holly nodded.
“Uncle Wynn used to sell to people all over the southeast. He was real picky about who he sold his dogs to. And we never used a shipper; I always did the delivery.
“This guy in Arkansas wanted to buy an adult dog, one we’d already trained. So I took the dog, met the guy, and he asked if I’d stay on a few days and show him how to work with the dog. We did that a lot, with the adults we sold, so I said I would.”
He still remembered the moment he’d found the mailbox with the number he was looking for and turned up the driveway. The house had been a rambling brick number with Spanish arches leading into front courtyards, and shiny black double front doors. Between two windows, a massive circle of laser-cut metal adorned a section of front wall. Lean Dogs, Arkansas, on top and bottom, and the silhouette of a running dog in the center. The design was repeated on a snapping white flag that flew just beneath the Stars and Stripes on a tall pole out front. The yard was large, well-landscaped, brick-lined beds bursting with flowers. And everywhere there were bikes. Heavy, black, sinister Harleys, and a few old Indians.
Michael had stopped the truck in front of the garage doors, between a double column of parked motorcycles, and whistled softly to himself. The black and white Dane he’d brought, Ramses, had licked his face and whined from his spot in the passenger seat.
“Yeah,” Michael said. “I hear ya.”
The man who’d come out of the house to shake his hand had been slender and small-boned, with a hawkish face by contrast and small dark eyes that missed nothing. He’d introduced himself as Curtis, and while he spoke, Michael was taking note of all the tattoos going up his arms. Again, he saw the running dog silhouette, this time in solid black ink. And above the breast pocket of Curtis’s black leather vest was a narrow patch that declared him “President.”
Price of Angels (Dartmoor Book 2) Page 30
