Angel's Halo: Entangled

by Terri Anne Browning

  “Sorry,” she murmured. “I didn’t realize… Sorry.”

  Chuckling—because it was either laugh or cry with need at that point—I reached for the T-shirt I’d left on my bed and pulled it over my still damp chest. Figuring she had seen all of me anyway, I let the towel drop and pulled on boxers and clean jeans. I heard the hitch in her breathing but didn’t look at her until I had the jeans buttoned and zipped. “So you’re a Norman Reedus fan?”

  “More a Sean Patrick Flanery fan.”

  I dropped down on the edge of the bed beside her, trying to keep some space between us because I wasn’t as strong as I was trying to tell myself I was. If I so much as touched her knee I was going to be all over her. It didn’t matter that she was only seventeen or that she was Duke Blackstone’s daughter. That whole hand’s off rule? Fuck that shit.

  “Wanna watch it?” I asked, taking the DVD from her.

  Willa nodded. “Yeah. If you don’t care.” I stood and turned on the flat screen along with the DVD player. After putting the movie in I popped some popcorn in the little microwave that was in the corner of my bedroom. This wasn’t that much different from my apartment back in Creswell Springs, so I felt right at home.

  Willa didn’t seem to have a problem taking over my room. She scooted back against the pillows and lay down, snuggling under the blanket I took everywhere with me. Bash gave me hell about that blanket, but I didn’t give a shit. I couldn’t sleep without that damn thing. I handed her the bag of popcorn and a can of Pepsi that one of the sheep kept stocking in the mini fridge.

  Once she appeared to be comfortable I turned off the lights, made sure the door was locked, and climbed onto the bed with her. It was a good thing I’d seen the movie a hundred times before, because my attention turned to shit with her beside me. Every inhale I took was full of her clean, slightly floral scent. Every exhale made me aware that I was still rock hard and that jeans were not friends with a hard dick.

  “Got any chocolate?” Willa asked halfway through the movie.

  I opened the drawer of the bedside table and pulled out the bag of mini Snickers. My only addiction. She made a happy sound and started in on my stash. Chuckling, I snagged a few and popped one into my mouth. Seriously, the best invention known to man.

  The movie ended and Willa already had another one ready to be put in. Blade II. Yeah, I was a huge Norman Reedus fan. I had The Boondock Saints II as well as Messengers 2, Red Canyon, A Crime, and The Beatnicks. I didn’t go on a run without those movies.

  Five minutes into the movie, Bash hammered his fist on my locked door. “Hey, man. Dinner.”

  I glanced over at Willa. “You hungry?”

  “Not even a little. You’ve filled me up with popcorn and chocolate.” She yawned, snuggling deeper into my pillows. “You can go though.”

  No way was I going to miss a second of her in my bed. “Not hungry,” I yelled at Bash through the door.

  “Spider… We have to head out around midnight,” he reminded me, then I heard him stomping away.

  “Are you leaving?” She sat up, appearing no longer sleepy.

  I shrugged. “We have to take care of a few things.” No way was I going to tell her what we had to do tonight. It wasn’t going to be pretty and I didn’t want her to be scared of me. Beating information out of men wasn’t a pretty sight. Torturing them was even worse. It was a messy job, but it was the only way to get the truth. “It’s only six, though. We can still watch another movie when this is over. If you feel like it.”

  She relaxed. “Oh. I thought you were leaving. Going home or something.”

  “Not anytime soon, pretty girl.” I reached over and pushed her hair back away from her face. That she was upset at the thought of me leaving made something inside of me twist. The thought of having to leave her when this job was over… It scared the fuck out of me how my stomach knotted up at that thought.

  As my fingers skimmed over her cheek I realized I’d made a mistake almost instantly. One small, innocent touch and my body came completely alive. My brain shut down and a different head took over. Her skin was so smooth. Perfection. My fingers brushed over her jaw and down her neck. I felt her shiver and pulled her toward me. Just one tug and she came of her own free will the rest of the way.

  Her left leg wrapped over both of mine, her thigh brushing over my fly and making me grind my teeth at that simple pleasure. Her skin was soft and warm under my touch. Her tank top didn’t offer much protection from my seeking fingers as I outlined her body with my hands. This was dangerous. I was going to die a horrible death if her father found out she was even in my room.

  Fuck, I was going to die a happy man…

  My conscious was what stopped me. Even as I was slipping my fingers into the top of her shorts, that stupid voice that always told me what was right and wrong started screaming at me. This girl was special. She deserved better than a quick lay before I went out and possibly offed someone.

  Her head tipped back. Stormy eyes gazed up at me through thick lashes full of innocence and desire. I knew she was aching for me to kiss her. Fuck, I was aching for me to kiss her. But I knew that as soon as I tasted her it was all going to be over. I was going to have her naked and on her back within minutes as I pushed inside of her.

  “H-how old are you, Spider?” she murmured when I just kept looking down at her like the starving man I was.

  “Twenty.” I rubbed my nose against hers. It was such an innocent caress, but it made something twist in my chest. “But probably still too old for your daddy’s peace of mind.”

  Her hands rubbed over my chest, stroking, caressing. Learning the feel of me. No one had ever touched me like that. I’d never let them. For me, when I let a woman touch me it was about getting off and getting back to business. With Willa I was turning into a pussy, because I really liked this. “So my dad has been keeping you away from me? I don’t understand why. He warned me to not get near you. That you were bad news… But you don’t seem like bad news to me.”

  I pulled her closer, tucking her head under my chin so that she couldn’t read my face. I had my suspicions why her father didn’t want her around me. The last time I’d come through Vegas with Bash and a few other of Angel’s Halo I’d been the one who had ended up in Tasha’s bed. One full day was all it had taken me to get my fill of that crazy bitch. Sure it had been fun—in a depraved kind of way. Tasha was into some hardcore kink and had some serious talent in the bedroom. But it had only been about sex. The next morning we had both been bored with each other and she had moved on to another Angel’s Halo member while I had spent the rest of our visit working.

  That had been eighteen months ago.

  Duke probably thought that if Willa got involved with me, Tasha would have something more to cause trouble with. She most likely would too, but I wasn’t going to let her mess up whatever it was that was between me and the girl lying in my arms right now.

  “Your dad is just trying to look out for his baby girl,” I told her after a long pause. “If I had a daughter that looked like you I wouldn’t want her to be with a biker either. I would want her to be with some doctor or something.”

  “Too bad for Duke.” She pulled back to look up at me. Willa was smiling and her cheeks were slightly pink. “Unless you suddenly produced a doctor’s license I doubt I would ever want one.”

  Willa

  Time seemed to speed up. Before I knew it another two weeks had gone by, and what an eventful two weeks it was.

  I was avoiding my sister—mostly. She tried to drag me into arguments every time we were in the same room for more than two minutes. They were childish arguments that most sisters would have—when they are five. The few that weren’t childish only served to prove that Tasha was batshit crazy. The truth? I was kind of scared of her, but I would never willingly admit that out loud. It would only please Tasha and rev her up more when it came to tormenting me.

  Luckily for me someone had always been around when Tasha would start running her
mouth. My dad. Raider. Bash… Spider.

  My panties grew damp the minute his name crossed my mind. Over the last two weeks he and I had gotten to know each other pretty well. I knew he had an addiction to Norman Reedus movies, Snickers in any shape or form, and the scent of perfume on my neck. I knew that he would rather be sketching up some new design for a tattoo than almost anything else. He had killer talent and I had already asked him to do my first tattoo. Virgin skin. Virgin girl… Yeah, I wanted him to be my first on both counts. Something I had made no secret of to him.

  Only he wasn’t jumping to relieve me of either virginal states.

  I knew he wanted me. Felt his erection against my stomach every night as he held me on his bed and we watched movies and season one of The Walking Dead. When his fingers trembled as he stroked them down my arm, I knew he was fighting himself to not touch me other places. When he would get distracted from his favorite parts of a movie by staring at my lips, I could tell he was struggling not to kiss me.

  It was all my father’s fault. I knew that Spider wasn’t going to make love to me unless one of two things happened. One, Duke backed off and said it was okay for me to be with Spider. Or two—and the most likely to happen—I seduced the giant biker who was slowly killing me with wanting him so badly.

  While I was thinking of ways to do just that, I was also feeling like time was slipping through my fingers. I’d overheard Raider saying last night after dinner that their job would be over soon and they would be going back to Creswell Springs. My heart had cracked a little at hearing that. When Raider left so would Bash and Spider. Bash, I really couldn’t have cared one way or another if he left. He was polite, but he intimidated me. He was just as tall as Spider, but he was wider at the shoulders and so muscular that they seemed to flex with every breath he took. He radiated a feeling of danger when he walked into a room. His blue eyes were always electric, like a lightning storm lived inside of them.

  Plus… well, I’d heard him having sex with my sister. That kind of thing kept me from getting too close to him. Sexy as sin he might be, but when I looked at him all I could see was him with Tasha. Nasty.

  It was Spider I physically hurt over when I thought of him leaving. I wanted him to stay, for me. I wanted him to take me with him. Maybe it was because it was the first time I had ever felt like this about another human being, but I felt like I was going to fall apart at just the thought of not getting to see him every day. If I couldn’t lay with him in bed after dinner and listen to his heart beating under my ear as we watched Boondock Saints II.

  Tonight I was hoping to keep his attention more on me than Norman Reedus. I showered and shaved everything that a girl should keep shaved—especially when she was going to seduce the man she had fallen head-over-heels for. My hands trembled with a mixture of nervousness and anticipation. I was aching for his hands on my body, his lips on mine. I craved the feel of his hot, hard body under my fingertips.

  I dried my hair and straightened it, then put on more makeup than I normally would have. My eyes looked huge and wild, my lips pouty and kissable. The nightgown I put on was sheer and white, highlighting the fact that all I had on under it was a pair of silky white panties and nothing else. My breasts were nearly spilling out of the low cut top, and the rosy color of my nipples—hard and throbbing at just the thought of Spider seeing me like this—was easily seen through the sheer material.

  When I was satisfied that I looked sexy I pulled a bulky sleep shirt on over top and a pair of my track shorts. Only a few Red Dragons were hanging around downstairs, playing pool. I kept to the shadows like I had become accustomed to doing on my nightly treks to Spider’s room. His door was unlocked and I entered his room without knocking.

  The shower was running and I quickly got rid of my nightshirt and shorts, but when I stood there in the middle of his bedroom dressed in my nightgown my nerves took over. What if he just wanted to be my friend and nothing more? What if I had read the signs all wrong and he really didn’t want me after all? What if he sent me back to my room and never spoke to me again? What if…

  The bathroom door suddenly opened and all the ‘what if’ scenarios vanished from my mind as my brain shut down. My eyes started at his feet, huge and masculine, and traveled north without asking permission from my head. His long, thickly muscled legs were damp from the shower. I licked my lips as all the moisture left my mouth and traveled to that aching secret spot between my legs, making my silky panties uncomfortably damp. Who knew that calves could be so sexy?

  As my gaze traveled slowly higher I was unable to contain the gasp that escaped my lips as I discovered his very large, very beautiful cock hanging free and hard. It wasn’t the first time I had seen it as I’d been unable not to look at that perfect piece of maleness the night I had come here for the first time. But now I was unable to look away in embarrassment. I looked my fill, taking in the bulging veins that seemed to pulse with every beat of his heart. It was pink as if flushed with heat as hot as the heat that was starting to consume me.

  I bit my lip to keep from moaning and finally forced my eyes higher. Water trailed down his chiseled abs and I had the sudden craving to taste those droplets of water. The tattoo on his left arm, the brand that was the same as the patch on the back of his cut, caught my attention like it always did and my need to ink my skin increased as I thought of how painfully euphoric it would feel to have Spider marking my skin.

  Upward my gaze went until I saw the spider tattoo on his neck. That was when I noticed the change and I stepped back in surprise. He had shaved his head. All that thick, curly hair was gone and I was stuck between the feeling of loss over how much I had loved that hair and how sexy I found his shaved, smooth scalp.

  Finally my eyes met his black gaze. Or at least attempted to. His eyes were all over me, eating me alive as he raked me from head to toe in a caressing sweep. Spider’s mouth hung open and he was breathing hard and fast as he took a hesitating step toward me. “You’re trying to kill me, aren’t you? Trying to drive me over the edge until I spontaneously combust from wanting you.”

  A small, nervous smile tilted my lips. “Just following your example. I’ve been burning up for days now.”

  He choked back a groan and ran a hand over his bare head. My fingers tingled to do the same, to trace over the veins… To lick them. Whoa. I needed to cool my jets or I was going to attack him and start tonguing his scalp. Then he would probably think I was a freak and send me back to my room.

  Chapter 4

  Spider

  I was dreaming. That had to be it. Nothing this amazing, this perfect, happened to me in real life.

  If I was dreaming that meant that I could do what I had been aching to do from practically the moment I had laid eyes on the beautiful female standing in front of me right now. My eyes didn’t seem to want to leave her body, skimming over her from head to toe in her virginal-colored nightgown that barely covered anything. But it was her perfect tits that I found myself going back to over and over again. Those dusky pink nipples looked ripe and ready for my mouth. I wondered how she would taste. Like the fresh berries I smelled on her skin from time to time? Or would she have her own special taste? Would it be addictive? Would I survive the withdrawals if I did become addicted?

  My heart was beating hard, my lungs aching from how fast I was breathing. My dick was throbbing to the beat of my pulse and the tip was damp with the proof of how much I wanted the female standing before me. I’d tried to be strong. Tried to keep my hands, lips… tongue off of her. But whether this really was a dream or not I wasn’t going to be able to stay strong for another second.

  Muttering a curse under my breath, I reached for her and lifted her into my arms. Her legs wrapped around my waist after only the slightest of hesitations and her arms clung to my shoulders as I buried my face in her chest. She smelled clean, fresh, sweet. Not like the sheep that had been in the bar tonight as Bash and I had hung out, trying to sniff out the rat. Her skin was warm under my lips as I kisse
d across her collarbone and down between her breasts. Not like the cold flesh that I had carried over my shoulder as Bash helped me bury the body we had tortured for two hours before getting the information we needed.

  I shuddered in revulsion at myself. How could I go from burying a man just an hour ago to having this angel in my arms now? Yeah, this had to be a dream. One I desperately needed. Trembling fingers traced over my bare scalp and I groaned at how fucking good her touch felt. I’d gotten blood in my hair tonight and hadn’t been able to get it out even after showering twice. So I’d picked up my trimmer and started shaving. Even then I’d felt like I had that fucker’s blood on me and shaved it smooth before scrubbing my head until my skin ached.

  It wasn’t lost on me how insane this job was making me, and it was all because of Willa. Every night I felt more and more unworthy of her. With each beating I helped Bash dish out, with each kill that we had to make, I felt my chance of being with her slipping through my fingers. I was a killer. A monster. How could she stomach me?

  Warm, damp lips brushed over my ear and all thoughts of how unworthy I was vanished as my need for her ignited into an inferno that was soul consuming. “I want you, James,” she whispered. The use of my real name made me shudder and I tightened my hold on her. No one ever called me James anymore. Not even my own mother. On Willa’s lips? Nothing had ever sounded sweeter. “Make love to me.”

  With a growl full of all my pent up need I dropped down onto the bed behind me with her still in my arms. She straddled my lap, her damp panties rubbing against my hard as steel dick. She made a whimpering sound at the intimate contact, her teeth sinking into my neck roughly. My hold on her ass tightened, spreading her thighs wider as I worked her back and forward against me.