Page 37 of Kiss an Angel

“See that you do.”

Sheba was the toughest woman he knew, and now he looked her straight in the eye. “Daisy doesn’t have anything to do with what happened between the two of us. I don’t want you trying to get to me through her.”

He saw a flash of the vulnerability she so rarely displayed, but it was gone as quickly as it had appeared. “I hate to deflate that ego of yours, but you seem to have an exaggerated idea of your importance to me.”

She walked away, and as he watched her go, he knew she was lying.

The two of them shared a long, complicated history that went back to the summer he had just turned sixteen, when he was spending his school vacation traveling with Quest Brothers and listening to Owen’s views on manhood. The Flying Cardozas had also been with the show that summer, and Alex was immediately besotted with the twenty-one-year-old queen of the center ring.

At night he fell asleep dreaming of her beauty, her grace, and her breasts. The girls he’d known until then seemed like children in comparison to the luscious and unattainable Sheba Cardoza. In addition to lusting after her, he felt a kinship with her in her drive for perfection and relentless push to be the best. In Sheba, he saw a will that matched his own.

She also had an egotistical streak, nurtured by her father, that Alex had never possessed. Sam Cardoza had raised Sheba to believe she was better than everyone else. But she also had a softer, maternal side, and although she was young, she served as a mother hen to the other members of the troupe, clucking over them when they misbehaved, filling their stomachs with her home-cooked spaghetti dinners, and counseling them on their love lives.

Even at the age of twenty-one, she liked playing the grand matriarch, and it wasn’t long before she brought Alex into the clan, taking pity on the parentless sixteen-year-old who watched her with young, hot eyes. She made certain Alex ate well and badgered Owen to keep him away from the rowdier workmen, ignoring the fact that Alex had spent too many years with circuses to be sheltered now.

Alex wanted more than maternal fussing from her, but a handsome Mexican flyer named Carlos Méndez stood in his way. Like Sheba, Carlos was the last of an old circus family, and he’d been hired by Sheba’s father as the new catcher. But Sam Cardoza had more than the good of the act in mind. While Carlos Mendez’s circus ancestry wasn’t as impressive as the Cardozas’, in Sam’s eyes it was acceptable enough to make him a fitting sire for the next generation of Cardoza flyers, and Sheba pleased her father by falling in love with Carlos.

Jealousy ate at Alex. His own circus lineage was far more impressive than Méndez’s, but Sheba saw him only as a scrawny teenager who had a way with horses and a talent for the bullwhip. She chattered about her plans to marry the dashing Mexican and confided that Sam had already made Carlos agree to give their children the Cardoza name.

As summer came to an end and Alex prepared to return to school, the Cardozas received word that they had been chosen to fly with Ringling the next season. Carlos strutted the lot like a cocky rooster, but he had more arrogance than brains, and on the day Alex was to leave, Sheba arrived at Carlos’s trailer unexpectedly and caught him undressing one of the showgirls.

Alex would never forget that night. He came out of the top and found Sheba waiting for him. She was dry-eyed and eerily calm.

“Come.”

He didn’t think about disobeying her. She drew him away from the others and led him to the edge of the lot where they slipped into a small, unlit space between two of the concession wagons. His heart began to pound at her clandestine manner and the dark sense of purpose that was as forbidden as the musky smell of her perfume.

She looked deeply into his eyes. Without a word spoken between them, she opened her blouse and let it fall low on her arms. Her full breasts with their large, dark tips gleamed in a stray patch of moonlight that slivered between the wagons. She lifted his hands and put them to her.

A hundred times he had imagined something like this, but his fantasies didn’t prepare him for the reality of holding her breasts and feeling those large nipples beneath his fingers.

“Kiss them,” she said.

He groaned and dropped his head, overwhelmed that this magnificent woman would give him such an offering. Although he wasn’t a virgin, his sexual experience was limited, and he’d never known such fierce excitement. His erection pulsated against his tight pants. At the same time, he was filled with awe and a wrenching gratitude for the gift she was giving him.

Her fingers worked his zipper. He breathed hard against her moist flesh. She reached inside his pants. He felt her touch him and lost control. With a low groan, he exploded.

He shuddered with passion and humiliation. She pressed her lips to his mouth and offered him a long, deep kiss. Then she lifted her head and, with her bare breasts still moist from his mouth, turned toward the opening at the end of the concession wagons.

That was when Alex saw Carlos standing there watching them.

The hard, triumphant glint in Sheba’s eyes told Alex she’d known he was there all

along, and he was gripped by a sense of betrayal so devastating he couldn’t breathe. She didn’t care for him at all. She’d merely used him to exact her revenge.

As she gazed at her former lover, she seemed to have forgotten Alex existed. “I’m hiring a new catcher,” she said coldly. “You’re fired.”

“You can’t fire me,” the catcher sputtered. “I’m a Méndez.”

“You’re nothing. Even this boy is more of a man than you.”

She turned away and once again sealed her lips over Alex’s young mouth. Through his lust, through the haze of betrayal, he felt a chilling spark of admiration that frightened him more than his uncle’s whip ever had. He understood her ruthless exhibition of pride. Like himself, Sheba would never let anyone or anything threaten who she was, no matter how dear the cost. Even as he hated her for using him as her pawn, he respected her.

Sheba spent the next sixteen years as a featured performer for the world’s great circuses, and she didn’t travel with Quest Brothers again until her career had begun to fade. By that time, her father had died, and Sheba, still unmarried and childless, had become the last Cardoza.

Owen welcomed her back to Quest Brothers and built his show around her. In his infrequent telephone conversations with Alex, he revealed just enough for Alex to realize the old man had become obsessed with her.

Alex and Sheba met again two summers ago, and it was immediately apparent that the balance of power between them had shifted. At thirty-two, he had entered the prime of his manhood and had nothing left to prove, while her best years as a performer were behind her. He knew his worth and had long ago put the self-doubt of adolescence behind him. She was beautiful, restless, and for reasons he did not immediately understand, still unmarried and childless.

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