What the hell was he thinking when he agreed to this?
One thousand feet. He could see the truck now. It pulled out and slowly built up speed as he steered left and right, lining up on the flatbed.
Five hundred feet. Two-fifty. One hundred.
His heart crashed in his chest. He let go of the fear, the noise, the bright sunlight in his eyes, and narrowed his focus to two things: his feet and the X marking his landing spot on the flatbed.
He needed more speed; the truck was outrunning him. He eased up on the braking of his chute and felt the pull as his speed increased.
At ten feet, he centered himself over the landing zone, said a quick prayer and reached for the clasp that would release his parachute.
As he pulled the clasp, the truck’s brake lights flashed on.
“No!” He had time only for that single thought, that single syllable, before his momentum carried him off his landing spot and into the back of the cab of the truck. He hit with a grunt, and pain exploded in his ribs, his back, his head. He tasted blood in his mouth and felt it running down his throat when he was yanked violently to the side.
Something was dragging him toward the edge of the flatbed. Abstractly, as if it were happening to someone else, he looked up and realized that one of his arms was tangled in the cords of the parachute that had not blown completely free. The other ends of the cords had dropped down beneath the truck and wrapped around an axle.
In seconds, he, too, would be pulled beneath the massive wheels.
Pushing her way to the front of the crowd lined up along the fence outside the airstrip, Rosemary spotted a familiar gray head and weathered face.
“Jasper? Jasper!” She waved and shouldered past a big man with binoculars trained on the sky to stand beside Zane’s pilot—former pilot. “I didn’t think you’d be here.”
Jasper cast a worried glance at the sky. “Damn fool kid.”
“I know. I’m worried about him, too.” She rubbed the older man’s shoulder. “Can he really land a jump on the back of a speeding truck?”
Jasper clenched his fingers in the chain link when the loudspeaker barked out the jumper was away. “Yeah, he prob’ly could. It’s something he’s thought about doing for a long time. On a perfect day, with the right team and a lot of time spent working out the details, he’s good enough to do it.”
She frowned. “I take it you don’t think today’s that day.”
“He threw this together too fast. They’re not ready. And he’s been a little…off…lately.” He kicked at the grass.
“He’s had symptoms from the aneurysms?”
Jasper’s gaze snapped up. “He told you?”
Rosemary nodded.
“He’s been having headaches and such. It’s why he ended up in the drink with you the other day. He’d never have miscalculated the burn on that parachute if he’d been feeling right.”
Rosemary felt as if she’d swallowed a stone. It sunk slowly to the pit of her stomach. “He doesn’t think he’ll be around long enough to get another shot at this.”
And she was beginning to wonder if he might be right.
Zane’s parachute came into sight, and both she and Jasper pressed closer to the fence for the best view of the truck as it ambled down the runway. Zane pulled on his steering cables and zigged left, then right.
“Come on, kid,” Jasper grumbled. “Line ’er up.”
She put one hand over his on the chain link as Zane drifted closer to the bed of the truck. As his feet were about to touch, she held her breath and squeezed Jasper’s hand until her knuckles went white.
For a second, it seemed he would land the jump perfectly, and then all hell broke loose. The truck slowed, and Zane kept going forward until he hit the back of the semi with a thud, and slumped to the bed of the trailer. The sound of fabric ripping could be heard even over the truck’s engine, and Zane was slowly dragged toward the edge, and then disappeared underneath the behemoth vehicle.
High-pitched screams from the crowd mixed with the squeal of the truck’s brakes. Before Rosemary knew what he was doing, Jasper started to scale the six-foot fence.
“Oh, God. Oh, Jesus. Christ.” He pulled Rosemary up the chain link with him.
Together they ran across the field and onto the runway. The truck had finally stopped. Trey MacAllister had gotten out of the cab and disappeared under the front wheels of the trailer. By the time Rosemary and Jasper got there, they were both breathing heavily.
“I still don’t see him!” she panted. “Do you see him?”
Jasper shook his head, his face pale. A knife appeared in his hand, pulled from a sheath on his belt, and he dove under the trailer. From somewhere in the distance, Rosemary heard the wail of sirens as she ducked down after him.
The darkness disoriented her for a moment while her eyes adjusted. She smelled grease and rubber and her own fear. Her heart threatened to kick out of her chest before she was able to make out Zane on the ground, his right arm tangled in parachute cord and stretched up toward the axle. Jasper hacked at it with his knife while Trey MacAllister leaned over Zane, a hand on his chest as if to comfort him.
Rosemary knew better.
With one great lunge she shoved MacAllister back on his heels. “Get away from him!”
Trey grunted at the impact. “Hey!”
Rosemary fumbled on the ground for Zane, pulled his head into her lap. Blood smeared his face from his nose to his chin. “He can’t be dead. He’s not dead.”
Her hands shook so badly she couldn’t find a pulse, which only increased her panic. “Please don’t be dead.”
“N’t dead.” Zane’s weak voice was music to her ears. When she looked down, his sleepy hazel eyes were the most beautiful sight she’d ever seen.
Trey crawled an arm’s-length closer. “You can’t just cut in—”
“Get out of here!” she snapped, tightening her hold on Zane and rocking slightly. “Get out and don’t ever come back!”
Jasper finally cut through the parachute cords, and lowered Zane’s right arm down to this side. Then he held up the knife, the tip pointed toward Trey’s chin. “The lady said, ‘Git’!”
Mumbling a curse, Trey backed away. Rosemary could hear doors slamming and the sound of boots on pavement, and knew the medics had arrived.
One corner of Zane’s mouth kinked up weakly as she rocked him. “Gr’dian ang’l,” he slurred happily, looking up at her, and then his eyelids drooped closed.
Chapter 9
YOU should be in the hospital,” Jasper grumbled as he helped Zane up the stairs to his apartment. On the landing, Rosemary fumbled with Zane’s keys, trying to find the one to unlock the door.
“No way,” Zane argued, gently pushing Jasper’s arm away. He sounded stronger. “Hate those places. Sleep in my own bed.”
“Uh-huh,” Jasper said, and caught Zane as he stumbled on the top step. “If you can get there without falling on your face, that is.”
“I’m fine. Just a little groggy from the pain meds.”
Amazingly, the worst of his injuries from the fall had been a strained shoulder and a broken nose. The ER had released him, despite Jasper’s vocal protests.
How he had avoided being crushed under the truck’s wheels, God only knew. All Rosemary knew was that he hadn’t died today after all, and as she’d recently come to understand, every day on Earth was to be cherished.
As she and Jasper led Zane to his bedroom, she got a good look at his apartment. It was masculine and efficient, decorated in navy blues and deep greens. There wasn’t an abundance of belongings sitting around. Not that it was stark by any means, but everything had a place and served a purpose.
The only indulgence might have been the king-size bed with its polished posts and cozy down comforter folded at the footboard. When Zane stretched out, Jasper plumped the pillows while Rosemary leaned over and began to untie his shoes.
Zane cringed and pulled his legs up. “All right, enough with the hovering.
I’m fine.”
Jasper eyed Rosemary at the end of the bed spreading the comforter over Zane and tucking it around his legs. He lifted one eyebrow. “I can see that.” He smiled at her, then turned back to Zane. “You behave for once. Do what the lady tells you. And you take care of my boy,” he added for Rosemary.
“Always,” she promised.
Once they were alone, Rosemary wasn’t quite sure what to do with herself. “Are you hungry? I could make you some soup.”
He wrinkled his nose. “Soup?”
“You really should eat.”
“I was thinking more like steak, baked potato, salad. I’ve got some great Greek dressing I bet you’d like. I’ll do the meat if you handle the rest.” Like that, he was out of bed again, and she sighed. The man never stopped.
In the kitchen, while the steaks sizzled in the broiler and the microwave hummed as the potatoes cooked, Zane reached for a bottle of wine.
She stopped him with a hand on her arm. “Not a good idea while you’re on painkillers.”
He patted her on the head. “Just getting some for you, Mom.”
Dinner passed companionably and the wine went to her head. With her belly full and a light buzz, she didn’t know how long they’d been sitting in silence until she finally became aware that he was staring at her, bemusement and some other emotion she couldn’t define etched in his expression.
She looked down to see if she’d dribbled salad dressing down her shirt. “Something wrong?”
“No. Everything is perfect.” His voice had a husky edge that chafed over her nerve endings, making her whole body tingle.
Suddenly restless, she jumped to her feet, collected the dishes, deposited them in the sink and started rinsing. She jolted when a pair of strong arms wrapped around her from behind, and a broad chest pressed to her back. “You don’t have to do that,” his voice rumbled in her ear. His warm breath bathed her neck. “I’ll get them tomorrow.”
“There’s no reason to—”
“Shhhhh.” He pulled her hair over her shoulder to hang down her chest and then traced a single fingertip down her spine from her hairline to her nape, triggering a string of explosions as he passed over each vertebrae. Involuntarily, she audibly gasped for air.
“Scared?” he whispered as his lips replaced his fingertip.
“Yes.”
“Me, too.” Was that his…tongue curling over her spine now? “Want to stop?”
She shook her head in the negative. Speech was beyond her for the moment.
“Good.”
He turned her in his arms and his mouth covered hers, soft and moist and unrelenting. He was perpetual motion, always adjusting, always seeking, always giving, and she followed his lead, accepting all that he offered and softly demanding more. When both their chests were heaving, he abandoned her lips to kiss a trail down her neck and murmured, “You know all I have to offer is one day at a time.”
She let her head fall back to give him better access. “I’ll take it.”
He slid his hands down her sides to her hips and back up again, catching the hem of her shirt and sliding his hands beneath until his thumbs brushed the undersides of her breasts. “All I could think about during that damn jump today was that I didn’t want to die without ever having a chance to do this.”
She arched her back, bringing her harder against him, and tunneled her fingers through the waves of his hair. “I don’t want you to die at all.”
He stripped her shirt off and ran his hands up her rib cage again. This time when he reached her chest, he palmed her breasts and lifted them, bringing his mouth down at the same time to kiss the swells.
If Rosemary thought she had experienced the gamut of human sensation this past week, she’d been mistaken. Nothing, nothing she’d seen, heard, tasted, smelled or touched compared to this. It was as if her very blood had become electrically charged. Everywhere her pulse beat, her body tingled.
Zane’s hips met hers, pushed against her rhythmically. The counter bit into her back giving her no retreat. No relief from the pressure, and the tingle became a burn.
With the current inside her sizzling hotter with every nip on her breast, every touch on her neck, her ribs, her stomach, she forgot about retreat and went on the offensive. Sliding her hands over his shoulders and down his arms, she hooked her fingers in the belt loops of his jeans and pushed, stepping forward as he walked backward so that they never lost that luscious contact.
His shirt came off in the living room, and she explored miles of smooth skin and hard muscle with her fingertips. Her pants were lost in the hallway and she discovered what delicious friction denim made against bare skin. By the time they made it to the bedroom, they were down to just their underwear, and those didn’t last long. Zane gave an appreciative smile for the black lace—or maybe it was for what lay underneath—when he flipped off her bra and tossed it on the nightstand.
Finally unencumbered, they lay on his big bed, their bodies entwined, enmeshed so that one was indistinguishable from the other.
Rosemary gasped at each new nerve he discovered. Each new sense he titillated. She remembered how sensitive she’d been to too many stimuli when she’d first taken on this human body, how she’d feared she would drown in the sensations. Now all she wanted to do was dive in headfirst.
She made a game out of eliciting the same responses in him that he won from her. Everywhere he stroked her body, she stroked his. Everywhere he kissed, she kissed, carefully avoiding the little white bandage across the bridge of his nose. Every nibble was returned with equal fervor. Before long he glowed with a fine sheen of sweat and her skin glowed as if she had a fever. She spread her legs and hooked one knee around his hips seeking the contact that would be the final bridging of their two bodies into one.
He rolled gingerly onto his back, protecting his sore shoulder as he pulled her on top, and brushed back the damp hair that was stuck to her forehead. “You’ve never done this before, have you?”
His voice had that rumble to it again. The one that passed over her skin like silk, exciting every nerve.
She bit her lip. “Is it that obvious?”
“No,” he whispered, palming her breasts again and tweaking the nipples until she moaned. “Just a lucky guess.”
Her hips bucked of their own volition as he toyed with her. His erection lay against his stomach before her and she took matters into her own hands.
“Well,” he said, his voice strained, “I was thinking the only reason you would still be a virgin was that you’d spent your whole life locked in a convent. But apparently that’s not the case.”
She leaned down and tongued the center of his chest, then the spot just above his navel. “Not as far off as you might think,” she whispered through a curtain of hair.
He pulled his head back and gave her a quizzical look.
She gave him a light squeeze to distract him, then leaned down and nibbled on the shell of his ear before whispering, “Guardian angels don’t get a lot of chances to consort with mortals.”
Smiling, he wrapped his arms around her back and scooted down the bed until his shoulders were between her thighs. “Then we’d better make the most of what time we have.”
At his first touch, her hips flexed of their own accord. At his second she was mindless. She devolved from a complex creature of intellect to something much more primitive. There was no thought, only sensation exploding white and hot within her body, and need. Desire so strong it stole her breath.
When Zane climbed back up to kiss her lips again, leaving a void of emptiness below, desire became greed and she swallowed him with her body. Enveloped him with her soul.
Time became meaningless. Yesterday irrelevant and tomorrow impossible to contemplate. She was awash in a hot molten river of now.
The fury rose. Heat and light boiled beneath her, around her, inside her until the desire detonated. It lifted her up, and away, scattering her until she settled slowly back to Earth like ash in the wind.
>
Chapter 10
ZANE could have lain in bed all night, watching Rosemary sleep in the dim light that slivered in around the edges of the curtains. She lay with her head on his shoulder, her breath tickling his chest, one arm draped over his waist and a smooth leg laced between his. If perfection existed, this was it.
Or almost it. Lying still gave his muscles a chance to stiffen, and his body was beginning to protest this afternoon’s abuse. His head hurt and his shoulder ached. Much as he hated to let go of the moment, he needed to get up.
In the hallway he grabbed his jeans off the floor and slid them on, then grabbed the Tylenol from the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. He didn’t bother to turn on any lights as he headed toward the kitchen to get a glass of water. He didn’t need them, and he didn’t want to risk waking Rosemary.
As he leaned over the tap, filling his glass, he felt something warm drip onto the back of his hand. Well, damn. He was bleeding again. Damned broken nose.
Not thinking much of it, he grabbed a paper towel to wipe up the mess, then walked over to the table to sit and tip his head back. The legs of the chair scraped over the tile as he pulled it out, and a wave of dizziness hit him. He fell more than sat down, blinking hard to clear the white spots in his vision.
When he could focus again, a dark puddle the size of a dinner plate stained the floor between his feet.
Double damn. Probably not just the broken nose, then.
His heart kicked into high gear. Now? God, why now? Why tonight?
Why him?
Pounding his fist against the kitchen table, he tried to stand, but his legs had turned to gelatin. The glass still in his hand shattered on the ceramic tile and he found himself lying on the floor staring up at the light fixture.
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