Kiss an Angel (25 page)

"Not exactly. I just think it might be better if I drive you."

"Are you afraid I'll run off with your truck?"

"No. I just—it's not really my truck. It belongs to the circus, and you're probably not used to driving anything like it."

"I'm an excellent driver. I'm not going to wreck it."

"You don't know that for a fact."

She held out her hand, determined to have her way in this. "Please give me the keys."

"I wouldn't mind a trip to the library myself."

She gave him her steeliest gaze. "The keys, please."

He rubbed his chin with his knuckle as if he were thinking it over. "I'll tell you what. Unbutton your shirt and I'll give you the keys."

"What?"

"It's my best offer. Take it or leave it."

As she saw what passed for mischief glinting in his eyes, she wondered how someone so serious could have such a playful nature when it came to sex. "You actually expect me to..."

"Uh-huh." He leaned back against the sink and crossed his arms over his chest waiting for her.

A flare of heat bolted through her as she saw the desire in his eyes. She was by no means certain she was ready for another sexual encounter with him, but on the other hand, what would be the harm in a little naughty foreplay? The dampness of her blouse reminded her she'd been working all morning and wasn't any too clean. On the other hand, neither was he, and after all, they were just playing around, so what

did it matter?

She looked down her nose at him in her best imitation of royalty. "I'm certainly not going to use my

body as barter. That's offensive."

"I'm sorry you feel that way." He withdrew the keys from his pocket and, with exaggerated innocence, tossed them up and down in his palm.

The soft skin of her breasts prickled beneath her damp shirt, and the nipples pebbled. "How would you like it if I did something like this to you?"

"Sweetheart, I'd love it."

Suppressing a smile, she slowly opened the top button. "Maybe just a peek."

An inner voice told her she was playing with fire, but she ignored it.

"A peek might get you the key to the tailgate, but not the ignition."

She opened another button. ' What do I have to do to get the ignition key?"

"Have you got a bra on?"

"Yes."

"You'll have to take it off."

She should call a halt to this game right now, but instead she opened another button. "You are responsible for the truck, so I suppose it's only fair that you dictate the terms."

He looked amused.

She took her time with the last buttons. When they were open, she lightly clasped the front edges of the blouse in her palms and toyed with them, deliberately teasing him even as she recognized that this was a dangerous sort of mischief. "Maybe I should think about this some more."

"Don't make me get rough." His smoky whisper didn't bear the slightest trace of menace, but it still made her shiver.

"Since you put it that way ..." She parted the blouse, revealing the floral print bra that stuck to her skin.

"Open that clasp."

She toyed with it but didn't unfasten it.

"Do as I say and nobody'll get hurt."

She couldn't hold back a smile as she opened the clasp. Slowly, she peeled the moist lacy cups away

from her breasts and stood before him like a wanton, fully dressed, but with her blouse open and her breasts exposed.

"Beautiful." His whispered compliment made her feel like the most treasured woman on earth.

"Good enough for an ignition key?"

"Good enough for the whole damn truck."

In two long strides, he had her in his arms. His mouth swooped down to cover hers, and the world spun like a crazy carousel. He shoved her blouse down over her shoulders, then clasped her hips and lifted her just enough so he could grind against her. She felt him hard and demanding and knew the time for teasing had come to an end.

Blood rushed hot and needy through her veins. She opened her mouth to his tongue as he swept her from her feet and carried her toward the bed where he dropped her none too gently on the mattress.

"I'm dirty and sweaty."

"I am, too, so we don't have a problem." With one powerful motion he stripped his grimy T-shirt over

his head. "You're also overdressed."

She kicked off her grubby shoes and tugged at her jeans, but she wasn't working fast enough to please him.

"You're taking too long." Within moments, he'd stripped her so that she was as naked as he.

Her eyes took in his nude body with its whipcord strength and workingman's tan. Strands of hair on his chest feathered around the icon he wore. She needed to ask him about that She needed to ask him about so many things.

As he lay down beside her, she smelled the earthy scent of sweat and hard work on both their bodies and wondered why she wasn't repulsed. There was something primitive about coming together like this that aroused her in a way she would never have been able to imagine. Her abandon embarrassed her.

"I'm—I need to shower."

"Not till we're done." He pulled a condom from a small drawer in the chest beside the bed, tore it open, and put it on.

"But I'm so dirty."

He wedged her knees apart. "I want you like this, Daisy."

She moaned and sank her teeth into his shoulder as he thrust into her. She tasted salt and sweat and

knew he was tasting the same on her breasts. Her voice caught in her throat. "I really need to wash."

"Later."

"Oh, God, what are you doing?"

"What does it feel like?"

"It feels like you're—"

"I am. Do you want more?"

"Yes. Oh, yes..."

The smells and tastes. The touches. The sweat and grit beneath her palms. The thrust and parry.

Her hair stuck to her cheeks, and a piece of straw poked her neck. He pushed his fingers into the cleft

of her bottom and turned her on top of him, smearing grease from his arm down her side. He squeezed the backs of her thighs hard in his hands.

"Ride me."

She did as he said. She arched and plunged, moving instinctively, and then wincing as she hurt herself

on him.

"Slow down, sweetheart. I'm not going anywhere."

"I can't." She gazed at him through the haze of her pain and passion and saw his sweat-slicked face, lips drawn thin and pale. Flecks of dirt stuck to those harsh Russian cheekbones and a bit of straw clung to

his dark crisp hair. Sweat trickled over her breasts. She plunged again and gasped with pain.

"Don't, sweet. Shh . . . take your time."

He slipped his hands up along her back and pulled her down to stretch out over him, breasts to chest where he helped her find a new rhythm.

The insides of her thighs clasped the outsides of his, the icon abraded her skin, and she moved on his body, slowly at first, then writhing, loving the sensation of being in control, of dictating the rhythm and thrust. There was no pain, only sensation.

He gripped her bottom and let her have her way. She knew by the coiled tension she felt in those hard muscles beneath her what it cost him to relinquish control. He sank his teeth into the flesh over her collarbone, not hurting her, merely using another part of her body to fill another part of his.

She gave herself up to skin and sweat and musk. He made incoherent sounds and she answered in the same language. Both were lost to all that was civilized, thrown back to the jungle, the cave, the place of wildness until, for one suspended moment, they gripped creation's source.

* * *

She left him as soon as she could and sealed herself in the bathroom. As the shower water rushed over her, she was shaken by this new barbaric part of herself. Was it sacred or profane? How could she have abandoned herself like that with a man she didn't love? The question tormented her.

When she came out, wrapped in a towel with her skin scrubbed cleaner than her troubled soul, he was standing at the sink. Wearing only his dirty jeans, he held a beer bottle in his hand.

When he saw the expression on her face, he scowled. "You're going to make this complicated, aren't you?"

She pulled her clean clothes from the drawer and turned her back on him to dress. "I'm not sure exactly what you mean."

"I can see it in your face. You're having all kinds of second thoughts about what just happened."

"Aren't you?"

"Why would I be? Sex is simple, Daisy. It's fun and it feels good. It doesn't have to be complicated."

She nodded toward the bed. "Did that seem simple to you?"

"It was good. That's all that matters."

She zipped up her shorts and pushed her feet into her sandals. "You've had sex with a lot of women, haven't you?"

"I haven't been indiscriminate, if that's what you mean."

"Is it always like that?"

He hesitated. "No."

For a moment, some of her tension eased. "I'm glad. I want it to mean something."

"All it means is that, while our minds may have trouble communicating, our bodies don't have any problem at all."

"I don't think it's that simple."

"Sure it is."

"The earth moved," she said softly. "That has to be more than bodies communicating."

"Sometimes it works between two people, sometimes it doesn't. It works between us, and that's all there is to it."

"Do you really believe that?"

"Daisy, listen to me. You'll only get hurt if you start imagining things that aren't going to happen."

"I don't know what you mean."

He stared straight into her eyes, and she felt as if he were gazing into her soul.

"I'm not going to fall in love with you, sweetheart. It's just not going to happen.

I care about you, but I don't love you."

How his words hurt. Was love what she wanted from him? She lusted after him. She respected him. But how could she fall in love with someone who had so little regard for her? She knew to the very depth of her being that she wasn't tough enough to love a man like Alex Markov. He needed someone as stubborn and arrogant as himself, someone just as hardheaded and impossible to intimidate, a woman who could hold her own beneath the force of those dark scowls and give as good as she got. A woman who felt at home in the circus, who wasn't afraid of animals or backbreaking work. He needed—

Sheba Quest.

Jealousy snapped at her. While her mind recognized the logic of Alex and Sheba together, her heart rejected the idea.

Living with him had taught her something about pride, and she lifted her head.

"Believe it or not, I haven't been spending all my time worrying about how I'm going to make you fall in love with me." She picked up the brimming laundry basket. "As a matter of fact, I don't want your love. What I do want are the keys to your darned truck."

She snatched them off the counter and stomped toward the door. He moved swiftly to block her way. Taking the laundry basket from her, he said, "I'm not trying to hurt you, Daisy. I care about you. I

didn't want to, but I can't seem to help it. You're sweet and funny, and I like looking at you."

"You do?"

"Uh-huh."

She reached up to rub a speck of dirt from his cheekbone with her thumb.

"Well, you're bad-tempered and humorless, but I like looking at you, too."

"I'm glad."

She smiled and began to take the laundry basket back, only to have him hold on to it. "Before you go ... Sheba and I have been talking, and you're getting a new assignment."

She regarded him warily. "I'm already helping with the elephants and working with the menagerie. I don't think there's time for anything more."

"As of now, you're off elephant duty, and Trey can take over the menagerie."

"The menagerie's my responsibility."

"Fine. You can supervise him. The fact is, Daisy, the crowd likes you and Sheba wants to take advantage of that. I'm putting you in my act."

She stared at him.

"I'll start rehearsing you tomorrow morning."

She realized he wasn't quite meeting her eyes. "Rehearse me doing what?"

"Mainly, you'll just stand around and look pretty."

"What else?"

"You'll need to do some holding for me. No big deal."

"Holding? What does that mean—holding?"

"Just what I said. We'll talk about it tomorrow."

"Tell me now."

"You hold some things, that's all."

"I hold them?" She gulped. "And you whip them out of my hand, don't you?"

"Out of your hand." He paused. "Your mouth." She felt the blood drain from her head. "My mouth?"

"It's a standard trick. I've done it hundreds of times, and there's absolutely nothing to worry about." He opened the door for her and set the laundry basket in her arms. "Now if you're going to stop at the library, you'd better get to it. I'll see you later."

With a light push, he propelled her outside. She turned around to tell him there was no way she'd ever go into the ring, but the door shut before she could say a word.

13

"This time could you maybe try it with your eyes open?"

Daisy could tell that Alex was losing patience with her. The two of them stood behind the trailers in a Maryland baseball field, a field very much like the one they'd stood in the day before and the day before that for almost two weeks.

Her nerves were strung so tight she felt as if they would snap.

Tater stood off to the side where he alternated between sighing over his lady love and grubbing in the dirt. After her confrontation with the baby elephant a few weeks ago, Tater had started breaking away from the others to try to find her, and eventually Digger had punished him with the bull hook. Daisy hadn't been able to tolerate that, so she'd taken over responsibility for the small elephant during the daytime when he was most likely to roam. Everyone in the circus except Daisy seemed to have grown

accustomed to the sight of her walking around with Tater trotting behind like an overgrown lap dog.

"If I open my eyes, I'll flinch," Daisy pointed out to her whip-wielding husband, "and you told me the only way I can get hurt is if I flinch."