Page 109 of Price of Angels

“They just want to sleep with me,” she said in a small, miserable voice.

“Yeah. Not tie you up, not hurt you. Just be with you. Because they want you.”

“And that’s not supposed to scare me?”

“No.”

“Then why did you try to kill RJ just now?”

His frown was black with anger, harsh lines pressing between his brows, around his mouth. “Because he shouldn’t have touched you.”

Faintly amused by his flip-flop logic, she said, “Why not?”

“Because it frightened you,” he snapped, getting to his feet, pacing at the foot of the bed.

“But I thought I wasn’t supposed to be frightened.”

“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.

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