Alex and the Angel (Silhouette Desire)

by Dixie Browning

  He sounded so concerned, she was suddenly furious with him. Furious with Sandy for putting them through this, furious with Alex for sweeping her back into his life, and furious with herself for still caring. “No, dammit, it’s not something you said! I happen to be tired and sleepy and—and frantic with worry, and so are you, and if that child doesn’t march herself back home in time for breakfast, I—I—”

  She gave up. Her face crumpled. Angel hadn’t cried since her mother died. She hadn’t cried when her husband had been killed. She hadn’t cried when she’d found out that the wretch didn’t know the meaning of fidelity. She hadn’t even cried when her whole house had nearly burned down, but there was a limit, dammit, to just how stoic any woman could be!

  Gulping, sniffling and hiccuping, she told him so, and he tucked her head under his chin and resumed stroking her back while he murmured words that were probably meant to be soothing but had the opposite effect, with the flat of his hand burning a hole in her borrowed sleepwear.

  “I’m the one who’s supposed to b-be comforting you,” she said with a watery chuckle.

  “Right. Why else would I invite you into my bed?”

  As a joke, it fell flat. As a reminder that they were lying entwined in each other’s arms in a bed, in the privacy of his bedroom, the effect was electrifying.

  “Angel?” Alex whispered.

  Acutely attuned to every nuance of his voice, to every inch of his lean, hard body, she was blisteringly aware of the subtle changes in both. A moment ago his voice had been rough with worry and exhaustion. Now it was rough with something else altogether. They had both been unable to relax, but now his tension radiated a different kind of energy.

  “Yes,” she said simply, meaning everything. Yes, she wanted him. Yes, her heart ached for him because he was frightened and worried and so was she.

  Yes, she loved him. Not that he had ever asked for her love. Nor was he asking now, but if for a little while she could offer the comfort of her body—a momentary surcease, no matter how brief—she wouldn’t ask for anything in return. “Yes,” she whispered, letting her hands play down over his chest.

  When her fingertips found his hard nipples he caught his breath, so she kissed him there, swirling her tongue around the tiny button. She felt him leap against her belly and knew a moment of triumph that quickly fled under a deluge of more demanding sensations.

  “Ah, sweetheart, yes—please.” He groaned, rolling over onto his back, pulling her across his body.

  If she had stopped to think about what they were doing, it might have seemed wrong. Knowing that, Angel didn’t allow herself to think, only to feel. Stress magnified the urgency of her need and, if the mounting evidence could be believed, of Alex’s, as well.

  “Take off your shirt,” he rasped. He was panting as if he’d just run a three-minute mile.

  Tearing herself from his arms was agony, but she sat up in bed, in the dim gray light spilling through the windows, and tugged the stretchy garment over her head. Once free, she flung it to the floor and then cast a shy, sidelong glance down at the man beside her. He was still lying on his back, the sheet tented proudly near his midsection. He was watching her, and she felt her breasts tighten in response. She was already embarrassingly wet, throbbing with need, and he had barely touched her. To her heightened senses, the warm, musky perfume of sex seemed to eddy up around them, an intoxicating counterpoint against the fainter scent of waxed wood and clean linens.

  She waited for him to make the first move, and when he didn’t, she withered a little. Surely he wasn’t waiting for her to take the initiative. She didn’t know how. Cal had always hated it when she approached him, and she’d quickly learned to let him take the lead.

  Almost as if he’d read her thoughts, Alex said, “Come down here and kiss me.” If she didn’t know better, she could have sworn there was the echo of a smile in his voice.

  As desperately as he needed her mouth, needed her body—needed her in every way there was to need a woman—Alex was almost reluctant to begin, knowing that it would inevitably end too soon. The fuse had been burning too long. Since the first time he’d seen her backing out from under that magnolia tree. Since long before that, if the truth were known.

  Crazy as it seemed, nothing that had happened since had lessened that need.

  Nor, it occurred to him, had making love with Angel left him feeling depressed and empty. Not that he’d had much time to examine his feelings in the past twenty-four hours.

  Slowly, tentatively, Angel lowered her mouth to his, parting her lips and tilting her head to one side. His brittle control slipped another notch. Capturing her mouth, he turned her onto her back and moved over her, careful not to break contact. He was fiercely, achingly aroused, trembling with the need to bury himself inside her small, hot body before he lost what little control he still possessed. She was close to the edge, but he wanted her on the very precipice. It was vitally important to him for reasons he didn’t dwell on that she be with him every step of the way. No woman deserved to be left on the ground when she was capable of flying, and Angel flew. Goodness, how she flew!

  Without lifting his mouth from hers, he slid one hand down between their heated bodies and found her, found the nest of soft curls, pictured their fiery color, felt the telling moisture and groaned aloud.

  Yes, oh, yes! he thought distractedly when her hips lifted to meet his hand. Gently he stroked her, heard her breathing grow shallow and rapid as he brought her closer to the edge. He still couldn’t get over how responsive—how generously, tempestuously responsive—she was.

  “Alex, I need you,” she panted, grinding her hips against his hand, against him. “Now!”

  With his free hand, he parted her thighs wide enough to make a place for himself between them. He came into her in one powerful thrust, and then forced himself to wait. She moved against him, agitated, wildly uncontrolled, but he gripped her hips with one hand, forcing her to slow down until he regained his own control.

  “Wait,” he gasped, but it was already too late. While he was desperately trying to hang on, she was pushing him over the edge, twisting hotly beneath him, raking her teeth over his nipple. “Reckless woman,” he panted, a taut parody of a smile twisting his flushed features. “You don’t know how dangerously you’re living.”

  Either that or her hunger matched his own, which was too much to hope for. It had been his experience that women were slower to kindle, if they kindled at all. For reasons he didn’t take time to explore, it was vitally important that he bring this woman to the ultimate pleasure.

  Then she dug her heels into his ribs. Alex grasped her ankles and shoved them up over his shoulders. He rode her hard and fast as she began to convulse around him. “Angel!” he cried. He bared his teeth in a grimace just as her husky cries of release cascaded over him. He stiffened. His body jerked once, twice, and then he shuddered and collapsed.

  Eventually he rolled over, carrying her with him, but still he held her, held her as if he would never let her go.

  * * *

  It was raining hard when Angel roused to the distant sound of kitchen noises. She was disappointed, but not really surprised, to find herself alone. Someone, either Alex or Mrs. Gilly, was making breakfast.

  She would give her entire fortune to be able to crawl back into her cocoon again, but the world refused to go away. Sandy was still missing. And there was still Alex.

  Oh, blast, she had really gone and done it this time.

  Stiffly she sat up and shoved her hair from her face, squinting at the clock on the marble-topped dresser across the room. Here the morning was already half-gone, and nothing had been accomplished.

  Was that coffee she smelled? Rich, dark and fragrant, it suddenly seemed the most desirable thing in the world. But first she needed to soak the soreness from her body.

  No. First there was a call she had to make.

  She was still struggling with her priorities a moment later when Alex elbowed open the door. The
tray in his hands tilted dangerously as he stared across the gloomy old room filled with the furniture that had belonged to his parents and his grandparents.

  Dina had hated it, the way she had hated everything about the house. He had encouraged her to change whatever she wished to change, but she’d never gotten around to it. He knew now it had never been important enough to her.

  In Dina’s place, Angel would have turned his whole life upside down within six months. Without even trying, she lit up the darkness, brought out the sun, lifted his spirits in a way that should have been impossible, all things considered.

  But then, that was Angel. There’d always been something almost luminous about her. Even as a kid she’d had a way of making him feel good, with her forthright honesty and her irrepressible cheerfulness. He had always liked her, but once he started noticing her the way a randy kid noticed girls, he’d tried to keep a certain distance between them.

  And then he’d met Dina. The old trio had started to come unglued, and Angel had suddenly dropped out of sight, busy with her own life, according to Gus.

  Now here she was, sitting up in his bed with the rumpled bedclothes tucked under her arms, her elbows propped on her bent knees, chin resting in her hands. The same forthright, luminous Angel. She looked so damned delectable it was all he could do not to crawl in with her and seek forgetfulness in her arms again.

  “I thought you could start with coffee and toast and then we could have something more substantial,” he said.

  “Alex, have you talked to any of Sandy’s teachers? That Mrs. Toad—”

  “Todd.”

  “Whatever. Anyway, she just might know something that would help.”

  “Angel, I don’t want you to leave.”

  She gave him a puzzled look. “Then I thought I’d call Gus and see if—”

  “Ever.”

  “Alex, are we talking at cross-purposes here? Look, I think there’s a pretty good chance that—”

  “Did you hear what I said?”

  “You said—what did you say?”

  Endangering lamp and telephone, he slid the tray onto the bedside table and sat down on the bed beside her. “Listen, I know this is lousy timing, but if we wait, we might get caught up in something else, and I can’t take the chance of losing you for another ten or twenty years.”

  Angel was amazed to see that his hands were unsteady. There were shadows dark as grape jelly under his eyes, and he’d cut himself shaving, and she loved him until she thought her heart would burst, she really did.

  Only he was right. This was not the time. “Alex, listen to me carefully. The other day when Sandy was helping me out at the farm and Gus was doing something with my plugs, she started asking about where his house was, and who lived with him, and if I’d ever visited him there.”

  Evidently she’d caught his attention. Reaching past him, she poured two cups of coffee and fixed his the way he liked it. “So I thought,” she said, stirring in just the right amount of sugar, “I thought there might be a chance—”

  “In that case, Gus would’ve called by now, wouldn’t he?”

  “It depends on how long it took her to get there. If she caught a ride with a friend, then it wouldn’t take all that long. A few hours. But if she had to go by bus, it could take a lot longer. Longer still to get from a bus station to his house. And then, if she could convince him that we might—that is, in the stress of the moment, we might possibly—”

  “Find out we couldn’t live without each other?”

  Angel felt her face grow warm. Oh great. This was just what she needed. Her hair looked like a stork’s nest, she probably had hickeys all over her neck, and when she was embarrassed, like now, she turned red as a raspberry.

  Alex tucked a wild wisp of hair behind her ear, then took another and twisted it around his finger. His eyes had gone from pewter to silver again. “Did I tell you that when I came home from your place, she was waiting for me? She wanted to know if we’d slept together and if I was going to marry you, and why I hadn’t brought you home with me. Which, I’m beginning to believe, just might be the whole idea behind this crazy disappearance.”

  Angel pressed her hands against her burning cheeks. “So now I know, right?”

  “Now you know what? That she’s with Gus? I’m two jumps ahead of you. I tried to call his house first thing this morning, but there was no answer.”

  “Did you try his cellular?”

  He hadn’t had to try the cellular. He’d had a call from Gus while he was in the shower, saying that he was on his way down from the mountains with a passenger, and the two of them would be rolling into town in about an hour.

  “Call him. The number’s in my purse.” That wasn’t what she’d meant, however. She’d meant that now she knew why he’d sort of proposed to her...if you could call it a proposal. She would rather he hadn’t bothered if all he wanted was someone to help him cope with a teenage daughter.

  The distant sound of a car door reached them through the drone of rain on a slate roof. “Flora,” said Angel.

  “I don’t think so.” Alex grinned. That solid thud had come from something a lot more substantial than his cook’s little Honda. It sounded more like a heavy-duty pickup truck. Offhand, he could think of only one such truck that would be pulling up to his front door at this particular time, and it wasn’t the power company’s meter reader.

  Turning to the disheveled woman in his bed, he leaned over and braced a hand on each side of her thighs, pinning her tightly in place with the covers. “We’ve got maybe two minutes before they both come barging in on us. Now...do we strike a bargain before your brother and my daughter demand satisfaction, or are you going to watch the pair of them mop up the floor with my bleeding body?”

  Angel eyed him suspiciously. “Have you by any chance had a drink this morning?”

  Then of course, Alex had to tell her the whole story. By the time he finished, they could hear the clump of Gus’s boots on the carpeted stairs, along with Sandy’s excited chatter.

  “Quickly now—tell me,” he demanded. His eyes were laughing, and Angel couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen that happen. “Shall I lock the door and have another go at convincing you?”

  “This is absurd,” she said breathlessly, trying to sound indignant and failing miserably.

  “Daddy, are you in there?”

  “Last chance,” he said softly. “I’m not sure how convincing I can be with a couple of barbarians pounding on the door, but I’m willing to give it my best shot.”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about. Alex, I’ve never seen you like this before!”

  “I’ve never felt like this before.”

  “Dammit, Hightower, if you’ve got my sister in there, you’re in deep trouble!” Gus roared through the walnut-paneled door.

  “Go away, Wydowski!” Alex called over his shoulder. Leaning closer, he whispered, “Will you?”

  “Will I what?” Her voice sounded thready and breathless. Angel had her feet planted firmly on the ground—she wasn’t about to take anything for granted.

  “Will you make my day? Make my life? Be my Angel?”

  On the other hand, nothing ventured, nothing gained, she told herself, melting into his embrace just as two sets of fists began pounding on the bedroom door.

  * * * * *

  ISBN: 978-1-4592-8682-5

  Alex and the Angel

  Copyright © 1995 by Dixie Browning

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