“Is that the only way I look at you?” He canted his head. It caused the moonlight to silver the short ends of his black hair. His laser-like focus made her feel like there were two red sniper dots on her face.
Those sniper dots moved down as he let his eyes travel past her mouth and shoulders, over her breasts, down to her hips, and finally back up again. He didn’t try to hide the heat in his eyes. He let her see it for what it was.
Heaven help her, he wanted her like she wanted him. The difference between them was that he wasn’t trying to hide it.
“No.” She swallowed. “It’s not the only way you look at me. There’s that too.” She pointed to his face.
“Damn right there is.” His gravel-road voice had gone guttural, and she wondered what he’d sounded like before the vocal cord scouring. Had his voice been deep and smooth? Rich and resonant? It saddened her that she would never know. “And now I am going to kiss you, Sonya.”
Her thighs quivered as heat coalesced between them. She should have told Angel to keep his gorgeous mouth to himself. She should have told him she had a headache…or head lice. But instead she heard herself ask, “Why?”
“Because you want me to.”
Boy oh boy, did she ever. It’d been so long since she’d been kissed by a man. Longer still since she’d been kissed by one she wanted the way she wanted Angel. It was a bone-deep lust that confused her as much as it frightened her.
Why do I crave him so badly? Is it as simple as pheromones? One healthy animal responding to another? Or is it that he reminds me of Mark? If so, how twisted is that?
Oh, and speaking of twisted, there was a little something she felt duty-bound to remind Angel of. “But you don’t like me.”
He snorted and it happened. It happened! His expression softened. It turned his beautiful face into something downright ethereal. She realized why he had assumed the name Angel, and she wouldn’t have been surprised had a choir of heavenly hosts started singing Ahhhhhh in perfect harmony as a beam of holy light illuminated his face.
“I seem to be coming around,” he rumbled. “But before you feel my lips on yours, before you know what it is to be kissed by me, I have to know one thing.”
“What?”
“Something true.”
She matched his stillness as a little alarm bell sounded shrilly inside her head. “What?”
“Do you truly love your jewel thief?”
She swallowed and, for once, considered her response before answering him. The company line said she should hold fast. But something in his eyes, something mysterious and intangible, told her the truth would serve her better.
“No.” She shook her head. “I have only ever truly loved one man.”
“Then why?” he demanded. “Why did you help the thief escape? Why do you let Grafton intimidate you, keep you?”
The whole story beckoned to be told. But she’d already given him all she dared. “You asked for something true. One thing. Now you have it. I won’t give you more.”
He did it again. He popped his jaw, and too many beautiful, painful memories tried to swarm her brain.
Closing her eyes, she wondered how her body could want the man standing in front of her while her heart still hurt for…longed for…another. It made no sense.
When she blinked open her eyes, she found Angel’s gaze once more on her lips. It was hot. It was hungry.
It was also a little perturbed.
She hadn’t given him everything he wanted. In retaliation, would he deny her his kiss? If so, it would tell her a lot about who he truly was, if he was a man who would—
He bent his head and claimed her mouth.
She could have resisted him. She could have.
Until she got her first taste.
After that, she was dunzo. Gone. Lost in his flavor and his power, in the palpable peril and animal magnetism emanating from his every pore.
She didn’t realize her water glass had slipped from her nerveless fingers until Angel broke the kiss and caught the glass before it could hit the tiles and shatter.
