Page 68 of Price of Angels

He looked at Holly’s complete delicacy of form, the way she was as beautiful as she was, in ways he couldn’t quantify, despite the awful things done to her. Camilla was twenty-seven years in the ground, but he could do something for Holly. He could settle the cosmic score just a little.

And he needed so much more of what they’d had last night.

“You can come here,” he told her. “We can have Christmas.”

It was wondrous, to watch her absorb his words, and hold them in close behind her eyes to stop the tears, the breath lodging in her throat. “I can cook,” she said, in a quiet, straining voice. “I can make all the things you’re supposed to make.”

Michael nodded. “I got plenty of whiskey and firewood.”

She smiled, and it cracked, and her lips trembled.

Michael wanted to go to her, but it felt too soon and dangerous to do that, so he stared down into his coffee instead.

It was too cold to even think about putting her shorts back on, and besides that, Michael wouldn’t hear of it. “You’re gonna catch pneumonia and die,” he said, and insisted she keep the clothes he’d given her to wear. That was fine with her; they smelled like him, and the cedar drawer of the dresser he’d pulled them from.

In the bathroom, she scrubbed her face, combed her hair and tied it back with an elastic from her purse, and then it really was time for her to go, and she didn’t want to.

She faced him in the foyer, the house looking even more dated, but charming around them in the daylight. She twisted her hands together as the nerves stole over her, and as she stared up into his unforgiving face. It was a different breed of nerves from last night, though. Now, she was nervous about leaving him, breaking the spell of last night. She didn’t want to lose this, whatever it was. It was the most wonderful, precious thing, and she wanted to hold it close, to preserve it in her cupped hands and keep it burning.

Michael, again with the power to read her thoughts, said, “The other two will be cautious now, but I’ll get to them. They won’t be able to hide for long.”

She smiled, marveling at this new soft underbelly in his voice, and at the way such harsh words were like the sweetest love poetry to her ears. She nodded. “I know you will. You’re…you’re wonderful…”

“Ah, Holly, don’t…”

“But I mean it!” She stepped in close to him, her heart pounding. She couldn’t hold her hands back, clutching at the hard knots of his biceps. “I know it doesn’t mean much, coming from me, but you’re wonderful for what you did.” She felt the pressure of tears at the backs of her eyes and blinked against them. “What you did for me…” She bit down hard on her lip, on the verge of losing her composure completely. How could she make him understand what this meant to her? All of it.

He swallowed, his throat rippling in a way that looked like it hurt. His eyes were trained on her face, a striking depth to the hazel centers she hadn’t seen before. He wasn’t going to speak, she realized, only stare at her. But she felt his hands at the backs of her arms, clutching her as she clutched him.

“Oh, Michael.” She flung her arms around his neck, pressed herself against him and strained on her tiptoes, so she could tuck her face into the crook of his neck. The disbelief and the joy and the rapture crashed over her again, too consuming to be real. “You killed him. You really did, you killed him.”

His voice was thick. His hands were against her back, smoothing up and down the length of her spine. “I really did.”

“Tell me how to thank you,” she said against this throat, kissing the skin there. “I’ll do anything.”

He put his hands on her shoulders and eased her back, so she could see his face again, the pain pressed into the sinister lines of it. “Don’t thank me.”

She started to protest, and he shook his head. He wasn’t going to talk about this, acknowledge what it meant to her.

“When’s dinner tonight?” he asked, changing the subject without grace, his gaze almost desperate.

Holly reeled in her composure, lowering down onto her heels, nodding. “I get off at ten. So, eleven? It’ll take the lasagna a while to bake.”

“I’ll come by the bar.”

The tears rallied again, in her eyes, putting pressure on her sinuses. He had to know how excruciatingly magical it felt to think that a man who had killed for her, who had given her the first physically pleasurable moment of her life, would then come wait for her after work. Was this what normal girls felt? Was this the wondrous comfort Ava Lécuyer had in her husband?

“Okay,” she whispered.

But as she was turning for the door, his hands captured her, curled lightly around her throat. And he kissed her with the sudden, assured fervor of a drowning man.

Holly opened her mouth against his, melted into his chest, as his arms stole around her. She let him in and in, his tongue and his lips, and his hands going under her shirt in the back, finding her warm naked skin, overcome by the thought that in this small way, giving herself over to him, she was easing a deep ache he carried inside himself.

His breathing was ragged as he pulled back, his eyes liquid and sparkling, the way they’d been last night.

“Go,” he urged.

And she laid her hands against his face, and whispered, “I can’t wait to see you again,” before she left.