Crazy Kisses

by Tara Janzen

  Travis was more of a chameleon, able to change as circumstances required, able to express a whole host of emotions, from the glory of victory to the utter exhaustion of battles lost, but hard fought.

  Definitely hard fought, Kid thought, looking at the triptych and for the first time wondering how much damage the broken angel had inflicted on the demon who had beaten him and banished him to hell.

  Curious, he looked around the gallery, picking out other “descending angel” paintings, and slowly coming to the realization that he’d had the paintings all wrong. Completely wrong. They weren’t of defeat. The doomed angel had given up nothing, conceded nothing. He’d fought to the death, claiming his victory in valor when triumph was beyond his reach.

  The truth struck Kid hard. He’d seen victory in death before, half a dozen times in half a dozen places around the world, in combat. He didn’t know where or how Travis had come to his understanding, but he had to give it to the guy for getting it right. There was more to Nikki’s angel than he’d thought, maybe a whole lot more.

  Then his gaze fell on the last painting hanging from the catwalk, the one most in the shadows, and he suddenly knew that in some unsuspecting way, he’d underestimated Nikki, too.

  Kid wasn’t the first savage she’d seen, and not the first she’d drawn. Before him, there’d been Creed.

  God. Even half clothed and in wings, the jungle boy was no less than what he always was—wild, fierce by nature, not by intellect, and deadly by design.

  And the demon who had vanquished Travis? It hadn’t gotten by Creed. The beast hung broken and lifeless from the jungle boy’s hand, his fist closed around the scruff of the monster’s thick neck, his fingers digging deep through the skin to clutch broken vertebrae and torn muscle.

  Shit. Creed made Kid look civilized. Whatever expression Nikki had caught on his face when he’d broken Sanchez’s neck, he at least had not been snarling, his teeth bared, and there had been no blood on his mouth.

  There was on Creed’s.

  Geezus. What the fuck kind of angels were these? Demon-eating angels?

  Nikki had never done work like this before, and he hated to be the one to tell her, but he didn’t think anyone was going to buy a painting of a bloody-mouthed angel who ate monsters.

  Then he saw the sold tag on the bottom of the frame.

  I’ll be damned. That was the last thing he’d expected.

  Okay, second to last, he quickly revised, catching sight of Nikki headed in his direction.

  He braced himself. His makeshift plan for the night had not included actual face time with her. His plan had been to watch her from afar and count on Skeeter to take care of any close work. He wasn’t up for close work with Nikki, but if she was coming over, and she definitely was, they were going to be pretty damn close, about two feet apart max, if that, in this crowd.

  So he braced himself, because he had too much pride to run. He just hoped to hell she wasn’t coming over because she wanted him to meet Rocky. She could have saved herself the trip. He wasn’t doing it. No way. No how. He did not want to talk to the man whose “no, not really” fiancé he’d been making love to less than twenty-four hours ago. He’d at least figured that out in the alley.

  Twenty feet and closing.

  Ridiculously, and despite his pride, he found himself backing up, until he was up against the wall, or rather, a door.

  No. Correction, he realized. It wasn’t a door. It was the door. The door to the oversize closet where she’d saved his life the last time he’d been in this freaking art gallery. The coincidence literally flabbergasted him. She could have cornered him anywhere, but no, the fates, which he didn’t even believe in, had decreed that he face this next little ordeal of emotional angst with his back up against the door of the room where she’d gone down on him for the first time.

  He hated to be such a guy about it, but the truth was, sex defined a lot of the more memorable moments of his life—especially sex like they’d had in the closet. Geezus, he’d lost it that night.

  Ten feet. She’d entered the red zone.

  And she looked good enough to eat, all curves and sparkle and flash. Her hair stuck out all over just so. Earrings shone in glittery arcs down both of her ears.

  And the dress. Her dress was what happened when “business formal” met Nicole Alana McKinney. It became “business sensual.” Black, with a thousand little buttons all the way down the front, the dress was cut like a suit jacket, but the material was light, kind of airy and shimmering. It moved with her, sliding across her hips when she walked, catching the light in a way that made it almost silver at times, and typical Nikki, it barely covered her butt. Add the black stiletto heels with straps that wrapped around and around her ankles, and suddenly not-very-tall Nikki looked like she had legs that went on forever.

  Where in the hell did she find clothes like that? Clothes that always looked like they’d be fun to take off—and her clothes were lots of fun to take off, sweet little nothing scraps of a guy’s fantasy. Even her “business” dress would ball up to fit in his hand. And last night, hell—pink satin panties, the soft cotton of a bikini top, and all the shush and sparkle of a sequined miniskirt. He’d loved taking those off her—which flat-out broke his heart. Her clothes weren’t his to take off, not anymore, all the little wild things she wore.

  Up until he’d met her, he hadn’t dated a woman who didn’t own a parka and wear it most of the time. Cargo pants, T-shirts, hiking boots, ski gear, bike shorts—when he thought back over his previous girlfriends, there was a lot of sports equipment in the memories.

  But he’d fallen for her, the girlie-girl time bomb with diamond studs and silver hoops in her ears, with eyeliner, and shadow, and sooty mascara, with artfully blushed cheekbones, and glossy lipstick on her mouth.

  Eight feet, and he knew he was doomed.

  Five feet, and she didn’t stop.

  Two feet, and he was pressed so solidly back against the door, he felt like the world’s biggest fool.

  Then she was standing next to him, so close he couldn’t tell if she was actually touching him or not, until someone jostled her from behind. Suddenly, she was smack up against him, all over, all at once, landing softly on his chest and grabbing on to him for balance.

  He caught her with both arms.

  Absofuckinglutely zero feet. Less than zero.

  Dammit.

  “I—are you okay?” He couldn’t believe this.

  “No,” she said, her hands pressed against the front of his shirt. Then she laughed, but it sounded nervous, and she shook her head. “No, I’m not okay.”

  He tightened his hold on her, something in her voice setting off his warning signals. “What happened?”

  A hundred things flashed through his mind, too many of them with Conseco’s face attached, which startled the hell out of him. Is that why he’d come back, instead of leaving from the alley? Deep down inside, did he really think Conseco could have seen a matched set of hot pink, mock-croc luggage in Panama City and figured out that out of all the millions and millions of people in the world, Nikki McKinney from Boulder, Colorado, was having an art show on Saturday night in Denver?

  It didn’t make sense.

  But the nagging sense of unease was still there. It hadn’t left him all day. He’d missed something. Something subtle. He knew it, but he couldn’t figure out what it was.

  That’s why he’d stayed.

  “Just that you . . . oh.” The sound came out of her suddenly, on a little breath of surprise when her hand accidentally brushed against his shoulder holster. “You’re armed.”

  She looked up, and his heart flipped over in his chest. She was so damn beautiful. He’d never seen a face like hers, so perfectly shaped, every feature delicate, balanced, divine. She’d explained it to him once, very matter-of-factly. It was the angles, she’d said, the golden triangles, pleasing proportions to the human eye. Her face was made up of them. She’d measured them out on a photograph once. Travis had
a lot of these golden triangles, too.

  But not him. Oh, no, she’d assured him. His face was far more interesting, far more beautiful. The exception that broke the rule.

  Well, it probably broke something. He’d give her that much.

  “Doubly armed,” she continued, peeking under his jacket. “At an art show.”

  He let out a short breath.

  Yes, he had two guns in a double shoulder holster. His .45 on the right, and his 9mm on the left. No special reason. He’d just felt like he needed plenty of firepower to face the night, whatever the hell that meant. Even he didn’t know. Like she said, he was at an art show, not in a combat zone.

  And the thirty-round magazine for the Glock 9mm he’d put in the trunk of his car? Hell, a banana clip on a semiautomatic pistol was so crazy, so much overkill, he thought he better keep that little fact to himself.

  Obviously, whatever edge he’d fallen off of in Colombia, he still hadn’t quite crawled back on top of it.

  “It’s okay,” he said. Okay for him. Some of the people in Toussi’s might have a problem with it, if they found out.

  Tough. He was licensed.

  “It’s always like this for you, isn’t it? The guns, I mean, your whole life.”

  “Yes.” What could he say? He was never unarmed, and he didn’t see that changing any time soon.

  A sigh escaped her. “Kid, those men, the ones last night, they were there because of you, weren’t they, not to rob the house, or, well, anything like that.” It wasn’t a question, and he wasn’t going to lie to her, not now that they were safely out of Panama.

  “Yes.”

  She withdrew her hands from the front of his shirt, her gaze falling to the floor. “Were they there to kill you? Like they did Martin?”

  Now here was where a lie would come in handy, he thought, but he couldn’t bring himself to use one.

  “You know the job, Nikki.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “No, I don’t. You told me you were a bodyguard, but that doesn’t quite cover it, does it? And as far as the rest of what you all do, nobody tells me anything, not even Regan, not even since Quinn started flying for SDF again.”

  Nikki’s sister, Regan, had married one of the original chop-shop boys, Quinn Younger. Quinn had taken some time off after the wedding, laid low, stayed out of the line of fire, but when Dylan needed him in Indonesia, Quinn came back on board. Kid hadn’t been surprised. Quinn had been living on the edge and running the streets since he’d been thirteen. A guy just didn’t up and walk away from that kind of adrenaline.

  “Everything SDF does is either classified or doesn’t officially exist,” he told her truthfully, knowing it wasn’t much, but not having anything else to give her. Those were just the facts. “There isn’t much I do that I can talk about.”

  “You killed those men last night. We could talk about that.”

  She hadn’t lifted her head, which worked for him. He didn’t want her to see the look she’d put on his face, but fuck, he wasn’t going there, not even for her.

  Angry, he turned to leave, but she held him with just the touch of her hand.

  “I’d never imagined anything like what you did.”

  No, he didn’t suppose she had, but he really didn’t want to hear it. He’d seen it on his coffee table, thank you very much.

  “Creed talked about how good you are, and then last night, when I saw for myself . . . well, I never saw anyone move so fast, think so fast. You were faster than them, Kid, stronger than the first guy.”

  “More savage.” It was a cheap shot, but he took it anyway.

  “Yes,” she said unequivocally, lifting her gaze and meeting his square on.

  Great. This was just what he wanted to hear.

  “Creed wouldn’t have talked about the mission.” No way in hell.

  “He didn’t,” she admitted. “But he did tell me how glad he was to have J.T.’s brother at his back when he returned to South America, and that you’d found the men you’d been looking for. I figured out on my own what you probably did to them.”

  He narrowed his gaze at her. No, he decided. Impossible. There was no way for her to have figured out what he and Creed had done to the NRF rebels they’d tracked down in Peru.

  “No, you didn’t.” He shook his head. No matter what she’d dreamed up, it wouldn’t have been the truth.

  “Look at the painting, Kid. The only thing I imagined was what the demon looked like. The rest of it is all Creed. It was in his eyes. I saw it in his body. Everything in him changed when I asked him to tell me about Colombia.”

  He hated to think it, that she’d known anything, but when he shifted his attention back to the demon-eating angel, he was forced to admit that she might have seen the truth. Nikki McKinney didn’t miss much when she had a guy under her lights, and the jungle boy did not have much subterfuge in him. For anyone who knew him, it was written all over his face, what a freaking savage he could be.

  “Kid,” she said softly, her hand coming back to rest on his chest. “You told me what the Colombians did to J.T. You told me Creed was there with him, and I cannot imagine that the man in my painting did not repay them in kind, the way you did last night. You need to talk to me, Kid.”

  No. Not about this, he didn’t. Not ever.

  “I want to understand.”

  “I get paid to do a job, Nikki, a job I’m trained to do, a job that I don’t think plays very well in this crowd.” He didn’t have to look around to know he didn’t fit in here tonight, not with her friends or her life. “I’m sorry about what happened in Panama, really sorry, and I should have told you that before I—” he stopped short, suddenly unsure of what he’d meant to say next.

  But she wasn’t unsure.

  Her hand went back to her side. “Before you dumped me on Skeeter and ran out on me again.”

  No. That wasn’t what he’d been about to say. Something along those lines, maybe. Or maybe he’d meant to say something more along the lines of—

  “You’re the one who got up in the middle of the night and packed your bags.”

  The minute the words were out, he knew he’d nailed them. Yes, sir, that’s exactly what he’d been meaning to say to her all day long. He just hadn’t meant to ever actually say it.

  Her gaze locked onto his. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

  “No, we’re not.” Not anywhere he was willing to go.

  Three women negotiated their way past them, chatting excitedly, holding their wineglasses high, and Nikki pressed herself closer to him.

  Perfect.

  “Damn,” she said under her breath. “Come on.”

  He felt her reach around him for the doorknob to the closet, and a little trickle of fear coursed down his spine. She couldn’t be serious. She couldn’t possibly be planning on dragging him into the closet. He didn’t want to be within a thousand feet of the damn closet, which was why, he was sure, it took her all of ten seconds to get him in there, instead of the reluctant, against-his-will thirty it should have.

  She closed the door behind them and threw the lock, which only upped his alarm.

  “I need to tell you about Rocky and me.”

  Then he really was changing his mind about being in the closet. He didn’t want to hear another damn thing about her freaking fiancé, and by God, he was going to tell her. All he needed to do was get the words out of his suddenly very dry throat.

  CHAPTER

  19

  YOU’VE GOT RATS all over your buffet,” Travis said, coming up behind Jane and whispering in her ear. It wasn’t the sort of thing anybody would want advertised, even these kinds of Rats. There had been three ravenous teenagers piling their plates high when he’d walked by, and he’d recognized two of them from last night. Plus, he’d just wanted to whisper in her ear.

  Jane started, whirling around and practically ending up in his arms. He was that close, but not close enough to suit him, not after having held her, even if it had been in a ventilat
ion shaft.

  God, the kiss they’d shared had been so hot. It was all he’d been able to think about all day.

  “So how did everything turn out last night?” he asked. “You got home okay, right? I came by about eight this morning, but you didn’t answer.”

  “I was still asleep at eight. It was . . . a long night.” Her gaze slid away, which he tried not to let bother him, but it did, just a little. The last thing he wanted, please, was to end up back at square one with her.

  Last night had been a turning point in their relationship, from not being anywhere near one, to a kiss. That wasn’t the sort of ground he was willing to give up.

  “Thanks for calling Skeeter. She’s the one who finally sprung me.”

  “I know. I called her today to make sure you were okay. I’m so sorry about what happened.”

  “Don’t be. It wasn’t your fault I followed you.”

  She shrugged, as if she wasn’t quite as sure as he was about what was whose fault. Then she went and proved it.

  “Trouble seems to be following me around a lot lately. If you want to stay out of it, you might want to stay away from me.”

  She was dead serious. He could tell by the tone of her voice and the nonchalant way she tried to downplay the warning. No unnecessary drama for the urban jungle queen. Just the facts. Ignore them at your peril.

  He did.

  “Actually, I was hoping we could spend some time together. Do stuff. Talk.” He ducked his head to get a better look at her. “Kiss.”

  To his relief, she blushed. She wasn’t completely immune to him, and she hadn’t forgotten their kiss.

  “Suzi was asking for you,” she said, changing the subject. “And Nikki is here, but I haven’t seen her since, well . . .” She looked around the gallery, her voice trailing off.

  “Since?” he prompted, curious now. The last time he’d seen Nikki, she’d been in Rocky’s lap.