Borrowed Angel

by Heather Graham

  He groaned, and his arms came around her fiercely, and his mouth, teeth and tongue raked her endlessly. Nothing had ever touched him as she did; nothing had ever made him forget the pain.

  In her arms, there was only the sheer fascination with every part of her—the satin feel of her flesh, the velvet texture of her hair sweeping over his shoulders and chest, teasing the length of him as she moved. She nuzzled his breast, nipped his flesh and moved down over him. There was the molten warmth of her mouth upon him, the stroke of her fingers. There was the feel of her knotting him into explosive ecstasy, making him soar over the world.

  He allowed her to lead until he could take no more. He shuddered and cried out at her caress, and then he seized her and swept into her fiercely, hungrily. He thought that he branded something of himself upon her, and still he realized that her arms took more. Her soft and tender touch and her whispers took something of him. In her arms he was healed.

  He was whole. His anger seeped from him just like his seed. She took from him gently, and when he lay back, soaked and shuddering and spent, he knew that his world had changed, and that she had changed it.

  He let the air cool his body and curled his fingers around hers. “I have a confession to make,” he told her.

  “Oh? What’s that?” she asked warily.

  He turned around, propping up on an elbow, looking down into the emerald sea of her eyes. He wished that the moment could go on forever. Her hair was a spill of fire all around her. She was damp and beautiful and so natural at his side. She was naked, except for the emerald ring and pendant. Her lips were curled into a rueful, curious smile.

  He touched her lower lip with his thumb. “She’s a pet,” he said.

  She frowned, and her gaze fell on him, narrowed with suspicion. “She…?”

  He laughed. “No, there’s no pleasure palace in the basement. I don’t even have a basement. She, the cat. Her name is Baby. Wendy picked her up as a kitten, her mother was dead. She spends her time prowling around between the two houses and the village for handouts. She wouldn’t have hurt you, not in a thousand years.”

  “She’s a…pet?” Ashley repeated.

  “Yes,” he said, then hesitated. “Are you angry?”

  “Hmm. I should be,” she muttered, her lashes falling low over her eyes. But she stared at him with the familiar fire in her gaze. “I should be furious. You kissed me, and all—” she paused, then indicated the bed with a sweep of her hand “—all this, under false pretenses!”

  “Well—”

  “I should—” she interrupted “—slug you. Right in the jaw.”

  “But you already did that,” he reminded her, and with a broad smile he crawled over her, straddling her hips and catching her wrists. He bent low over her. “You already did that.”

  “And I’m not sorry. You deserved it.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, I didn’t take kindly to it,” he warned her. He loved holding her and feeling the length of her. And he loved the way her chin tilted up in defiance. He knew that she wasn’t afraid of him in the least, and if she had been afraid, she’d still have fought. Their fingers were wound together and he felt the thrust of her breasts against him. His lips very nearly touched hers as he spoke. “I let you get away with that once, but not again.”

  “You let me get away with it because you knew you deserved it,” she said sweetly.

  “You’re impertinent, did you know that?”

  She shrugged. She seemed about to retort, but those words died. Instead she whispered, “You’re the most fascinating person I’ve ever met. And I’m sorry if that offends you, but it’s the truth.”

  He held still, then kissed the tip of her nose and her lips. He carefully rolled his weight away from her. He stood and looked toward the east, and a small part of him urged him toward the window. He found the switch for the shutters and pressed the button, and with no more sound than a slight jingle, the shutters began to roll into their casings. The day appeared before him, beautiful, with the sun bathing the landscape. It was a wilderness out there, complete, alien and harsh to those who did not know it.

  She was a borrowed angel, he thought. Brought by the storm. Borrowed angels sprouted big silver wings, and then they flew away. Maybe it had been all right to touch her, even to lose himself within her, and maybe she had done more for him than anyone else. But the storm was over. Their time was over.

  He turned around and came back beside her. He knew that she had been watching him and wondering at his thoughts, but she hadn’t spoken. He touched her hair and kissed her. “And you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. On screen, in a picture, in the flesh, ever.”

  He left her again, going to his dresser to dig out some clothing. He turned around to tell her that he was heading for the shower, but his words faded away.

  Her back was to him. She was propped up on an elbow. The sheet just fell over her hips, her hair cascaded from her shoulders to the bed, and the long line of her back was visible down to the rise of her buttocks. She was framed by the rays of the sun beating down upon the hummocks and trees and the river of grass. She looked so beautiful. He wished that he could hold that moment forever, too.

  Except, he reminded himself, that things were hidden from him. He couldn’t see her eyes. And he was certain that they stared out on the forbidding swampland with fear and loathing.

  “I’ll be in the shower,” he said softly. She didn’t acknowledge him; he wondered if she had even heard him. He walked into the bathroom and pushed the button for the shutters there, too. They rolled up, showing what lay behind the tub. There was a redwood privacy fence surrounding the windows, and within the fence grew philodendrons, vines, creepers and a few wild orchids. Soaking in the tub was almost like lying in a pool in the wilderness.

  He needed to go out and kick the generator, he told himself. He could use some hot water right now.

  He grabbed a towel and walked through the bedroom. Ashley seemed to be sleeping so he moved silently. Outside he unlocked the wooden shed and went in. He wished that the generator worked as easily as the shutters. He had to rev the engine again and again before he could get the generator to kick into action. Finally it began to hum. Eric looked around. The day was almost deathly still. It wasn’t hot, though. The storm seemed to have swept away a lot of the late summer heat.

  Where else could a man stand in nothing but a towel and fight with his generator? he asked himself. There was nothing around him. The road wasn’t really far at all, and the canal by his property led north to the Big Cypress, or south toward the Tamiami trail. There were other homes like his. Not many, but there were some. And there were still the small villages, like the one where his grandfather chose to live. Grandfather preferred the company of his old friends. Eric understood. If there was one thing he cherished most about his family it was that they all sought to understand one another and to give each other room.

  The generator was humming away. He looked at his airboat at the back of the shed and thought that it was time to take it out, too. If Baby had made it to his house, then there was surely a way to reach Wendy’s by now.

  A sharp pain suddenly ripped through his midsection and he almost bent over. He didn’t want to let Ashley go.

  All the more reason to get her away just as quickly as he could.

  He gazed out over the expanse of his property and a little trickle of unease touched his spine. Maybe it was more important than he was imagining it to be to get her to Wendy’s place right away.

  He had thought that she was hysterical when she had told him about the murder. And even when he had convinced himself that she wasn’t the hysterical type, he still thought that the storm had frightened her so badly that she had imagined things.

  But why should she have? The swamp had long been a place where grievous sins could be hidden. Men had been lured to murder here time and time again. What better place to hide a body than this endless river of gra
ss where little was seen by any eye?

  Maybe she had seen something. And if she had, Brad would be the best one to deal with it.

  Eric picked his way through the fallen shrubbery back toward the house. He should never have come out barefoot, he told himself. Storms threw up snakes. There had been a time when Indians very rarely died from snakebite, a time long before antisnakebite kits and antidotes. They lived with the snakes, they were bitten, and they gained immunity. From the rattlers, anyway. The coral snakes could be deadly, though, their venom was so powerful. To this day, any Indian child living in or near the Everglades knew a coral snake very well by sight and avoided it.

  And anyone with half a brain wouldn’t be walking over the fallen vegetation without shoes!

  Cursing to himself, he went inside the house, still haunted by a feeling of unease. He locked the front door carefully, then came into his study. He opened his closet, took down his shotgun and loaded both barrels. He set the gun back on the high shelf. Then he went to his desk and dug in the bottom drawer for the ammunition box, assuring himself that he had plenty of bullets. He set the box back in the drawer and headed for his bedroom.

  Ashley was still sleeping. He went into the bathroom and turned on the hot water. He had to let it run a while. When he noted the steam rising, he switched on the whirlpool jets and crawled in. It felt good. He’d taken so many cold showers lately that the hot bath was wonderful. He closed his eyes and leaned back.

  He jolted up almost immediately, aware that the door had opened. It was Ashley.

  “Hi there, fellow—” she started to tease, but then she saw the steam rising and the foliage outside the window. “Oh, how lovely! And hot water!”

  “Want to join me?” He raised his eyebrows devilishly. She laughed, wound up her hair, then sank into the tub. She closed her eyes, sinking lower. Her toes met with his calves, and she smiled, allowing her feet to be bold and brazen. He caught her toes. He kneaded her feet and drew her closer, stroking the length of her calves. She smiled, but then her eyes shot open and she gripped the side of the tub, stiffening.

  “Heat! Hot water! Then you’ve got electricity!”

  “Yes.”

  “Then the phone must work!”

  Something inside him seemed to die a little bit. He hadn’t expected her to be so desperately eager to leave. His jaw clenched tightly. He shook his head. “The phone lines are still down. I’ve got a generator.” He sat directly in front of one of the jets. The water shot against his lower back. It eased his tension, but he found new constrictions forming within him. He caught hold of her ankles and pulled her against him. She paid little heed.

  “Oh,” she said disappointedly. Her lashes fell, then they flew open again. “A generator! Then we could have had electricity this whole time!”

  “If I had wanted to go out in the midst of the storm,” he said dryly, “I suppose we could have.”

  “But yesterday—”

  “I can live without it for a day or two.”

  “But—”

  “Sorry. I didn’t realize that electricity meant so much to you.”

  She shook her head impatiently. “It isn’t that! It’s—”

  He didn’t let her finish. He found her mouth and kissed her almost savagely. Maybe she wouldn’t realize the awful tension inside him. Maybe she would think that the tempest was simply the swirling water, the steaming heat.

  It wasn’t. It lay within him. He just wanted to taste all of her one more time.

  She tried to pull away from him once, then no more words escaped her. He made love to her with a fierce and vehement passion that was all encompassing and completely overwhelming. When it was over, she was as exhilarated and exhausted as she had never been before. She lay against his wet chest in the water and Eric idly stroked her hair. “I’m taking you out of here this afternoon,” he told her.

  Ashley stiffened, wondering at the coldness in his words when there had been such incredible heat in his arms. She opened her mouth to speak, but Eric went ramrod tight against her, his fingers winding like wire around her arms. He pushed her forward slightly to stand and grab a towel.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Nothing. Nothing,” he told her. But there had been something. He wrapped the towel around his waist and pulled her out of the tub. He put a towel around her shoulders and took her into the bedroom. He pushed her down into a corner by the bed. “Stay there.”

  “But—”

  “Stay there!” he commanded in a sharp whisper.

  Not daring to take any more time, Eric hurried along the hallway to his office. When he was about to enter he ducked down low.

  Someone in black was passing by his window.

  Eric crawled to his desk and dug out the .38 Special. Then he stood, back against the wall, thinking. He’d heard someone come. There were a dozen good reasons why he shouldn’t have expected anything other than a friend.

  And yet he had known that this was no friend.

  The figure was gone.

  He hurried back into the hallway and looked down it. Walking silently, he came to the bedroom door and peered in. Ashley was there, in the corner, where he had left her.

  He smiled at her.

  Then suddenly, the day came alive. The window shattered into a thousand pieces, bursting in upon them like tiny diamonds. A bullet whizzed by and struck the wall.

  Ashley screamed, covering her head. Eric screamed to her, “Down! Stay down!” He turned toward the window in a split second, aiming his gun quickly. He fired, then ducked as he saw the nose of a gun come around the corner of the window. A bullet soared past him. He fired in the direction of the shot. He heard a thumping on the porch and then a thrashing in the grass. He leaped for the broken window and used the butt of his gun to clear away the shards of glass, so he could jump out. He landed on the porch and searched the area. There were drops of blood leading into the brush. He followed the trail, but even as he rushed along, he heard the sound of a motor. Out in the canal, a boat was leaving. He would never catch up on foot.

  Swearing, he turned back. He realized that he had cut his foot, and hobbled on through the grass. Then he sped up. He didn’t want Ashley alone, not for a minute.

  He leaped over the window ledge, intending to hurry to her where she sat in the corner. She pitched herself into his arms instead.

  “I told you to stay still!” he yelled at her, catching her arms and shaking her.

  “You shouldn’t have gone after him!” she countered, meeting his gaze boldly. But she was trembling. He relented slightly, pulling her against the thunder of his heart.

  “What in the hell is going on here?” he muttered.

  “I told you. I saw a murder,” she murmured softly, her voice quivering.

  He pushed her away from him, slamming the button to lower the shutters again. They crunched over the broken glass but closed with resolve.

  “Ashley, it’s all right. It’s over,” he said.

  “It isn’t over. It’s just beginning,” she said dully. She slammed her fists against him. “You shouldn’t have gone out there! You might have been killed!”

  “Stop it. I know how to take care of myself, especially out here.”

  She sank down on the bed, believing him. Still clad in the towel, he paced the room. She noticed that his foot was bleeding and she pointed to it. “Your—your foot.”

  “What?” He glanced down. “Oh, yeah.” He smiled. “Want to get me a Band-Aid?”

  She hurried into the bathroom and searched through the medicine chest until she found the Band-Aids. Then she paused, feeling as if the big picture window that had delighted her so was now a giant eye. She stared at it uneasily, then realized that Eric was behind her, holding her shoulders. “It’s all right, Ashley. He’s definitely gone—for now, anyway.” He released her and pushed the button to lower the shutters. “It’s safe, see?”

  She nodded. She did feel safe with him, but she began to tremble again. He might have go
tten himself killed out there, and if he had, it would have been all her fault.

  “I’m sorry that I involved you in this.”

  “You didn’t involve me in anything,” he told her harshly.

  “But I did.”

  “Listen, I still don’t know what I believe,” he said sharply. “You saw a murder. Maybe. But tell me, how did the murderer follow you here? How did he—or she—find you here?”

  “I—I don’t know.”

  “So maybe you’re not at fault at all. Maybe it’s someone after me.”

  Ashley didn’t believe it for a minute. But then again, how could the murderer have found Eric’s house? She started to shiver. “Maybe he followed us here when you picked me up.”

  “No. Unless he’s an incredible tracker. Unless he knows this area. Listen, I don’t know what’s going on.”

  “Who would be coming after you?”

  “Who knows?”

  Ashley turned away from him worriedly. She almost screamed when he touched her shoulders to turn her around.

  “Ashley—”

  “I’m still afraid that I’ve put you at terrible risk.”

  He hesitated a second. Then a smile curved his lips and he touched her chin and gave a wonderful Bogart imitation. “If you have, you’ve been worth the risks, kid. Here’s looking at you.”

  She smiled, but then her smile faded. “What are we going to do?”

  He shrugged. “We could stay here. With the shutters down, the house is like Fort Knox. I’d have the advantages…” His voice trailed away, and he shook his head. “No, because if I don’t show up at Wendy’s, she or Brad will come here, and they could be taken unaware. We should move. Get dressed,” he told Ashley. “Get something from the armoire. Jeans, socks, boots and a long-sleeved shirt. There might be a lot of mosquitoes out.”

  Her eyes held his and she nodded, as if in a daze. He gave her a little shove out to the bedroom and picked up the clothes he had already chosen for himself off the bathroom floor. When he came back into the bedroom, he paused.