Page 68 of Kiss an Angel

“I didn’t mean to hurt her, but what was I supposed to do? She’s not an adult; she’s a kid.”

“She gave you her heart, Alex, and you told her it didn’t mean anything.”

“It wasn’t only her heart she was offering. Just before you came in, she let me know that her body was part of the package.”

“She’s feeling desperate. If you’d taken her up on it, she’d have been scared to death.”

He shuddered. “Sixteen-year-olds aren’t on my list of favorite perversions.”

“What is?” She immediately bit her lip. When was she going to start thinking before she spoke?

He gave her a maddening smile that made goose bumps break out on her skin. “It’ll be more fun for you to find that out for yourself.”

“Why don’t you just tell me?”

“Why don’t you just wait and see.”

She studied him. “Does it have anything to do with—no, of course not.”

“Are you worrying about those whips again?”

“Not really,” she lied.

“Good. Because you don’t have anything to be concerned about.” He paused. “If I do it exactly right, it hardly hurts at all.”

Her eyes widened. “Will you stop it!”

“What?”

His innocent expression didn’t fool her one bit “Stop planting all these seeds of suspicion in my mind.”

“I haven’t done a thing. You’ve put the suspicions there all by yourself.”

“Only because you keep playing games with me. You’ve baited me about this from the beginning, and I don’t like it. Just answer one simple question. Yes or no? Have you ever whipped a woman?”

“Yes or no?”

“That’s what I’m asking.”

“No qualifiers?”

“None.”

“All right, then. Yes, I have definitely whipped a woman.”

She swallowed and said weakly, “I take that back about the qualifiers.”

“Sorry, sweetheart, but you lost your chance.” With a grin, he sat down behind his desk. “I have work to do, so maybe you’d better tell me what you wanted to see me about.”

Several seconds passed before she could gather her wits enough to remember what had brought her here in the first place. “It’s Glenna.”

“What about her?”

“She’s a large animal and that cage is too small for her. We need a new one.”

“Just like that? You want us to buy a new gorilla cage?”

“It’s inhumane keeping her so closely confined. She’s really sad, Alex. She has these wonderful soft fingers and she pushes them out through the bars as if she’s starved for contact with another living being. And that’s not the only problem. All the cages are so old that I’m not even sure they’re safe. The lock on the leopard cage is being held together with wire.”

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