Page 86 of Price of Angels

He hadn’t really been paying attention to much of anything except her hand were it rested on his knee and the way the firelight played over her face. “Hmm?” He sipped his whiskey, and it added another shot of heat to this foreign veil of warmth wrapped round him so tight.

“John McClane,” Holly said. “His shirt’s just going to disintegrate, isn’t it?”

He snorted. “Is that what you want to happen?”

She shrugged and her shoulder pushed at his hip. She shifted somehow, no longer on his thigh, but fully in his lap. If she rolled her head around a little he’d have enough friction to get somewhere.

“I don’t really care,” she said. “A chest is a chest. I don’t care that much about looks.”

“So you were just playing to my ego when you said I was beautiful.”

She rolled onto her back, so she was looking up at him, her hair a dark curtain falling down his knees. Her eyes were wide, her expression soft and contemplative. “No,” she said in a quiet voice. “I meant it.”

Michael didn’t understand the sudden constriction at the base of his throat. The movie faded into the background; it could have been the most shocking porn playing on the screen, and he wouldn’t have been tempted to look at it. All he could see was Holly lying before him, like a sacrificial lamb in her trusting calmness.

“I do think you’re beautiful,” she said, without prompting.

“Just what every man wants to hear.” His voice was rough, but that tightness in his throat was getting worse.

She saw through the front, and smiled. “ ‘Beautiful’ isn’t a feminine word. I don’t even think it’s a human word. It isn’t what something looks like; it’s what somethingis.”

“Honey, you don’t know me very well.”

Her smile widened; there was a look in her eyes like she had a secret, and wasn’t ready to share it. “You aren’t so hard to know.”

The words ignited a clenching, wicked excitement in his gut. He wanted to punish her for that statement – no, punish wasn’t right. He wanted to show her how naïve she was…and that want was laced with sentiment and sugared with affection and he had no idea what sort of feeling it was at all. He grinned; he couldn’t have prevented his mouth from curving if he’d wanted to. He wanted to smile, and to touch her, and kiss her, and make her regret her ideals of beautiful…and prove them to her too.

There was a low dim screaming in the back of his head, as his conscience sought to categorize it all. But he shoved it down, and he moved his fingers up under her sweatshirt so he could touch the warm smooth skin of her belly and tease her navel with his fingertips.

A ripple of shock across her face. A tension in her stomach that he could feel in his fingers. She wanted to protest. She was still so new to this kind of sexual closeness.

Hell, so was he.

He moved his hand in a slow, aimless pattern, tracing the little tremors that moved through her skin, and held her eyes with his own.

“Undo your jeans.”

Her “no” was silent, and weak. She was caught between mounting anticipation and the old fear that he wasn’t sure would ever completely leave her bloodstream.

He said, quietly, “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“I know.” Her hands went to the front of her jeans.

He didn’t watch the movement of her fingers; it was sweetly excruciating to deny himself that and just listen to the zipper. Then she was done and he let his hand go there, replacing hers, sliding under the vee of the undone zipper to find the soft cotton of her panties, and the little mound of her sex.

Her eyes widened in reaction. He felt the subtle shifting of her hips, as she tightened her legs and lifted just the slightest toward his touch.

She liked it; she wanted it.

He petted her, lazy strokes of his fingers against the cotton. And he watched every tiny twitch of her face, the way her lips pressed together and then opened. She wanted to move, but she was unsure of herself, and she didn’t like feeling exposed like this; it was harder for her to relax with him so detached, sitting above her and watching.

“Does it make you nervous?” he asked, surprised by the timbre of his voice; it wasn’t normally that deep.

She nodded, and then wet her lips. “Not you, no. But…”

He pressed at her clit with his thumb, gentle pressure, through her panties.

“…this does,” she finished, breathless. “I like–” Her hips lifted again and a wordless sound left her before she got control again. “I like it when you’re with me.”

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