Page 110 of Price of Angels

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.

“Watch,” 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.

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