Price of Angels (26 page)

              That set him back. “No kidding.”

              “No. I love scary movies. Monster movies. They make…” The words died in her throat. Without intending to, she’d circled back around to the past. It would never, it seemed, relinquish its hold on her. Probably because it was galloping toward her all the time.

              Michael’s expression was the most unique blending of sudden softness and intense anger. The dichotomy of the man; he couldn’t seem to feel for her without hating the men she’d fled. It was all a tangle, behind his eyes. “They make you feel better,” he finished for her.

              She nodded and pushed the lasagna noodles around on her plate with the tip of the fork. “Yeah. It’s nice to pretend that monsters all have fangs and teeth and claws…”

              Instead of ropes and beds and bibles.

              Michael’s fork stabbed at the plate with a loud metallic strike as he speared up pasta. But his voice was modulated, a clear attempt at redirecting the conversation. “Have you seen
Die Hard
?”

              Holly gave herself a little shake. “It’s on my list.”

              He nodded as he chewed and swallowed. “That needs to be remedied ASAP. You have to watch
Die Hard
at Christmas.”

              She chuckled. “Because it’s so festive?”

              “It is,” he said, and she couldn’t tell if he was real- or mock-serious. “We’ll watch it tomorrow.”

              Her face warmed. “We will?”

              “Yeah.”

Holly hadn’t expected the simple pleasure of watching him eat food she’d prepared. Of seeing him casual in his socked feet in her home like this. By the time she stood to clear the dishes, she was glowing, and didn’t care if it showed. This was world’s better than all of her imaginings.

              After she’d put the leftovers in the fridge, and returned to the table to refill Michael’s drink, he caught her gently by one forearm, hand going to the cuff at her wrist. His energy had tightened and intensified; his eyes were bright when they lifted to her face.

              “You cover the scars with these.” Not a question.

              She swallowed. “Yeah.”

              He passed his thumb over the brass snaps of the closure. “Will you take them off?”

              Holly took a deep breath, and sank slowly down to her knees, so her arms rested across his lap, fingers clasped against his denim-covered thighs. “I will,” she said as she looked up at him, “if you’ll do something for me.”

              She felt needlessly brave and stupid, too bold asking for anything from anyone. Who was she to deserve the consideration of a man who’d already given her so much?

              But he said, “Okay.”

              “Will you…” She had to dampen her lips. His eyes were so focused, full of an ungodly intensity. “Will you take your clothes off? I want to feel you this time,” she whispered.

              He nodded.

              Then he eased her hands away, so he could stand.

              “I didn’t mean you had to…” Holly started, and then trailed off, as he reached for the hem of his shirt. God, he was going to strip down right here, and all she could do was watch, mouth going dry as she knelt on the floor in front of him.

              His torso stretched and flexed as he lifted the shirt clear of his head, abs and pecs and biceps leaping and then settling. The tendons in his vein-laced forearms flickered under the skin as his hands went to his belt. Buckle, button, zipper, and he pushed down his boxer-briefs at the same time, shucked his socks as he pulled the jeans off his feet. And then he was naked and beautiful before her.

              He was hardening for her already.

              Holly wasn’t sure it would ever not frighten her, just a little: that male organ in its nest of dark hair. But she liked the little trail of hair that tracked up to his navel. And she liked the firm lengths of his thighs, the crisp shape of his calves and ankles and his long, narrow-toed feet.

              She unfastened the cuffs on her wrists and set them on the table.

              His hand came down for her and she took it, let him lift her to her feet.

              The blood was pounding in her ears, her breasts, between her legs as he pulled her into the bare hard length of him and kissed her. He was in complete control of himself this time, the hot stroke of his mouth deliberate, consuming, slow. He opened up her lips and feasted from her with florid, luscious movements of his tongue.

              As the fire kindled in her chest, Holly melted. She curled her hands around his biceps, leaning into him, his hard cock trapped against her belly. “I can’t,” she whispered between kisses, incoherent and desperate. “I can’t…”

              He knew. His arms were tight around her, holding her on her feet, his hand cupping the back of her head.

              “I’ll carry you,” he said, and he did, lifting her up into his arms without effort and taking her to the bed, laying her down on top of the covers and settling over her, hot, and graceful, and heavy.

              He nudged her legs apart and settled between them, grinding against her, so she could feel every inch of him through the screen of her pants. Her hips lifted automatically, seeking more explicit contact, craving the friction.

              “What did you like best?” he asked against her mouth, voice a low, dark, breathy sound. “What was your favorite part?”

              Last night tumbled through her mind in a blur of sensation: his hands, his mouth, his cock.

              She arched breathlessly against him, clutching at his shoulders. “I like when you’re inside me. I like when we’re together.”

              He gave a growling, groaning sigh and kissed her again, his hands going after her clothes. He swept her pants down, tugged them off her feet. She wasn’t wearing a bra, and he pushed her shirt up, hands closing on her breasts and kneading for long, tortuous moments.

              Then he joined them, sinking slowly down, cock pressing, pressing, pressing in until he filled her.

              Yes, this was her favorite part, when they were a part of one another. She loved his hot skin against her breasts and belly, the coarse hair of his legs and chest abrading her as he shifted languidly on top of her. A slow rhythm, hard flexing of his spine in patient, deep thrusts. Grinding against her. Crushing her down into the mattress.

              She dug her nails into his back out of helpless reaction.

              In a strained, tight voice, he said, “Just enjoy it, sweetheart. Let me make it good for you.” He breathed a laugh. “This is my favorite part too.”

              And then she was gone, lost to the coiled power of his body as he worked against her. She closed her eyes and softened her mouth for his kiss, and she gave herself over to this wonderful invasion, the way he reached and reached inside her.

              There was the most perfect moment, when she hovered, just before the peak. And then the orgasm shot through her veins like a narcotic. A wordless sound left her lips.

              The heat spilling through her as he came too.

              Michael heavy above her.

              Exhaustion closing over her in the best way.

              And then Michael was lifting her again, and then they were beneath her heaps of quilts, and she was lying against his chest, his heart thundering beneath her cheek.

              Sleep was coming, but she struggled against it, trying to press this moment into her memory, leave a plaster cast for her permanent keeping. She would need to return to this night, in her mind, long after the job was done and she’d lost him, because she was fast realizing that ghosts or no ghosts, there was no bright future waiting for her if she didn’t have Michael.

Thirteen

“No, baby, you don’t understand.”

              “No, baby,
you
don’t understand,” Mercy countered. He stood in the threshold of the kitchen, arms folded, smiling like a goofus as he watched her, clearly not understanding the severity of the situation.

              “You know I think you’re adorable,” Ava said, sighing, as she turned to him.

              He shrugged. “Naturally.”

              “But you are so not right now.”

              He feigned affronted.

              “These cookies,” she continued, “are a reflection of me as a human being. If they’re all misshapen, it means I’m a sloppy mess of a person.”

              “That’s stupid.”

              “That’s my grandmother for you.”

              “Tell her to go to hell,” he suggested.

              “I can’t do that; it’s Christmas.”

              “Okay, so let me do it.”

              “Mercy!” She regretting snapping immediately, closing her eyes and swallowing down her useless, hormonal aggression. “I’m sorry,” she said, glancing at him again. “It’s just that...I haven’t visited with her since I got back home.”

              He leaned back against the doorframe. “Since August? You moved back home and haven’t seen her at all?”

              “No, and I should have, and she won’t let me forget that. Add to that all that’s changed…” She gestured between them.

              “Please tell me she at least knows we got married.”

              She winced. “I didn’t exactly tell her…”

              “Ah, shit, Ava.”

              “But I’m sure Mom told her.”

              “How sure?”

              “Pretty sure.”

              “This isn’t going to go well for me, is it?” he asked with a wry, sideways smile.

              “I’m afraid not.”

              He shrugged again, as if to say
oh well
. “It won’t be the best thing that ever happened, but it won’t be the worst either. Is there something in particular you want me to wear?”

              Ava felt the faint pressure of a smile at her lips, and was glad for the brief humor. “Don’t take this the wrong way….but you don’t exactly have a diverse wardrobe.”

              He gave her a mock-offended face. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

              “I can’t ask you to put on your nice sweater, because you don’t have any nice sweaters. You don’t have
any
sweaters, actually.”

              “Is this gonna turn into a whole thing where you try to get me to dress different?”

              “No, baby. Just wear what you want to. She’s going to yell at you either way.”

              “Right.” He turned for the door. “You know, really, I think you’re being over-dramatic.”

              “Hmm,” she murmured, “that would be nice.” But she knew what to expect. It wouldn’t be pretty.

              Just like the cookies in front of her. She’d tried a new recipe, wanting to impress, pushing her meager cooking skills. Chocolate cookies, seasoned with a dash of ancho chili powder, with dark and white chocolate chips. They were too dark on bottom and the edges were crumbly.

              She finished stacking them on the plate she’d take to her parents’ and turned away from them, smoothing a hand over the leaping pulse in her throat as she walked to the kitchen window to peer down at the street.

             
You’ve killed men before
, she reminded herself.
How could you be afraid of something as simple as dinner?

              Because the world was scary, but family should have meant love and acceptance.

              “It doesn’t always work that way,” Maggie had told her several Christmases before, on a night when Denise had had one too many glasses of Chardonnay and lit into Ghost. “But you know what? Mom wouldn’t have been happy even if I’d done exactly what she wanted. She’s not a happy person. So I stopped trying to please her, and I met your dad” – her arm had squeezed around Ava’s shoulders – “and I had you, and I love you, and your brother more than anything in the world. We’re our own family.”

              Ava took a deep breath, and it fogged the window. On the other side of the glass, the first downy white flakes were begin to drift down from the triple-stacked gray clouds.

              “It’s snowing,” she murmured.

Michael woke before her. It was the faint gray light of a cloudy dawn that roused him, and his consciousness filled with the soft smells of clean sheets and warm skin. He opened his eyes and there was Holly, lying on her side and facing him, one hand upturned on the mattress between them, fingers lightly curled. Her face was smooth with sleep, a delicate porcelain in the pale light, her hair in dark loose waves across her shoulders.

              The scar on her wrist looked faint and silver in this morning glow, not the angry red bracelet it had been last night under the lamps.

              Michael had thought, for so many years, that what his mother had suffered at the hands of his father had been the worst kind of abuse. He’d been wrong, of course. Holly was living proof of that. She’d survived worse –
survived
. She was a living, breathing, warm girl in the bed beside him. After all that she’d endured, she’d been whole enough to welcome him into her arms, to dig her nails into his skin and whimper against his mouth when she wanted more.

              How?

              His head was empty save for that question. How was she this sweet, soft thing who’d never seen
The Wizard of Oz
? How was she the girl, of all girls, who leaned into him rather than away?

              How was he going to explain to his president that he’d killed three possible sources of information because he couldn’t stomach the idea of them drawing another breath?

              He reached with one fingertip and traced the scar at her wrist. Felt the faint rough texture of the skin there. Felt the small steady beat of her pulse.

              Her eyes opened. Michael saw the split second in which she reminded herself where she was and who she was with, and then she smiled at him, the gesture drowsy and content and a little shy. “Morning.”

              “Hi.”

              “Did you sleep alright?” she asked. “This mattress is kind of old and lumpy.”

              “It was fine.”

              His finger shifted, gliding up into her palm, following the line in the center of it. Holly’s fingers closed over his.

              “I had a dream,” she said, her eyes coming to his face. “That your wings were real; that you could fly.”

              “Wouldn’t have much need of a bike then, would I?”

              She gave a quiet laugh. “No, I guess not.” Then she sat up.

              His eyes fixed to the way the covers slipped down, and the gray light curved around the full globes of her breasts, the cold-tightened nipples throwing little shadows. She shook her hair out and he saw the faint pink lines of scars on her naked back: marks from the belt.

              “I’d better get up if I’m going to make it to the store before work,” she said, reaching for the terry robe hooked on the bedpost and sliding her arms into it.

              He frowned. “Store.”

              “To get stuff for our dinner. I don’t keep turkey and stuffing on hand all the time,” she teased.

              “Oh.” He sat up beside her, raked at his sleep-flattened hair. “What do you need? I can go.”

              She paused and turned to him, her eyes wide. “You can?”

              He felt his frown deepen. “I buy eggs and coffee somewhere, don’t I?”

              “Well, yeah, but I…” Thinking better of it, she nodded. “I’ll make you a list.”

              She swung out of bed, belted her robe and walked to the kitchen to do just that.

              In the pure spill of light from the window, she looked like a carefully crafted miniature of a person, a little figurine. The robe sagged open a bit in front, giving him a view of the insides of her breasts and the smooth flat of her belly. He swore he could see the tunnels his fingers had dug through her hair last night.

              With pen poised above a pad of paper, she said, “Oh, look, it’s snowing.”

It was a light snow, but a snow nonetheless, shaking out in slow handfuls that caught in the breeze and swirled at the windshield. Michael drove Holly’s car; he dropped her off at Bell Bar, then went to Kroger, a decision he regretted as he walked through the sliding glass doors. The place was swamped with last-minute grocery shoppers. He was jostled around amid the mothers with screaming babies and husbands with long lists, clutching his own list in white-knuckled fingers to keep from losing it in the crowd. Most people, when they turned and got a good look at his scowling face, gave him some space. But he was involved in a crush of humanity he would never normally endure.

              Damn it, Holly.

              Damn her Christmas dinner.

              “Do you need someone to help you to your car with this?” the cashier asked him as he paid.

              He gave the teenager his deepest frown and said, “What do you think?”

              From the store, he went to his place, stocking everything away in the fridge and freezer. He showered, changed clothes. He tidied up.

              He sat down at the kitchen table, watching the snow fall beyond the window, and he called Uncle Wynn.

              “Either you’re calling to say you picked up a ham on the way, or you’re not coming,” Wynn greeted after the second ring. There were dogs barking in the background, the sound of big paws scratching at the front door. Same old Uncle Wynn. He laughed. “You’re gonna miss Christmas, boy.”

              “I am,” Michael said. “Uncle Wynn, I can’t get away this year. I’ll have to come out to the farm sometime after New Year’s probably.”

              A beat passed, and Wynn sighed. “That club of yours stop believing in Christmas?”

              “No, it’s not because of the club,” Michael said without thinking, and wished he could pull it back.

              “It’s not?” Surprise in his uncle’s voice. “I can’t remember the last time you did anything that wasn’t for the Lean Dogs.”

              This wasn’t the direction he’d wanted the conversation to turn. “Yeah, well…”

              “So what’s up? What’s so important you can’t have Christmas with your family?”

              “There’s just something I need to take care of first.”

              Wynn’s tone became suspicious, worried. “Michael, what’s wrong, son? You don’t sound like yourself.”

              Then who the hell did he sound like, he wanted to know. He was damn certain his voice was normal. Unless the old man was turning psychic in his old age – a decent possibility with Wynn – there was nothing to read here. No difference.

              “I’m fine,” he said tightly.

              Another pause, while one of the dogs whined in the background, then: “I worry about you, you know.”

              “I know.”

              “Are you at least going to eat with somebody? You won’t be all by yourself will you?”

              Michael felt a quick stab of guilt. Because he was staying in town, Uncle Wynn would be alone. He counted all those dogs as family, but their company only comforted up to a point.

             
I ought to invite him
, he thought.
Tell him to get in the truck and bring his favorite Dane if he wants and he can eat with Holly and me.

              But he didn’t do that, because he had no idea what Holly would make of his country uncle, and what Wynn would in turn make of her. It felt too soon; Holly was too fragile. Holly was…

              He didn’t know what Holly was, at this point, in relation to him.

              “I won’t be alone,” he said.

              “Good.” Wynn’s tone shifted, became teasing. “You didn’t get yourself a girlfriend finally, did you?”

              Michael smiled to himself.
Girlfriend
wasn’t the right word; it wasn’t descriptive enough.

**

“My babies,” Maggie called when the wind drove them into the back door. She left her steaming pots at the stove and came to greet them with hugs and cheek-kisses. She had to stretch on tiptoe to reach Mercy, and he obligingly lowered his head so she could press her lips to the side of his face.

The kitchen was hot and teeming with spicy food smells, the windows all fogged against the chill outside. There were pine boughs draped over the windows and along the tops of the cabinets, twinkling with white lights.