Kiss an Angel(56)

She shot him a warning glare.

“—without doing it, for god’s sake! Why?”

She toyed with the edge of the sheet “All my life, my mother had a revolving door on her bedroom.”

“What did that have to do with you?”

“Blatant promiscuity isn’t a nice thing to grow up with, and I rebelled.”

“Rebelled?”

“I decided to be the opposite of my mother.”

He sat down at the foot of the bed. “Daisy, taking a lover here and there wouldn’t have made you promiscuous. You’re a passionate woman. You deserved to have a sex life.”

“I wasn’t married.”

“So what?”

“Alex, I don’t believe in sex outside of marriage.”

He regarded her blankly.

“I don’t believe in sex outside of marriage,” she repeated. “Not for women. And not for men either.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m not judgmental about it, but that’s the way I feel. If you want to laugh, go ahead.”

“How could anyone in this day and age think that way?”

“I’m illegitimate, Alex, and that sort of thing tends to change your perspective. You probably think I’m a prude, but I can’t help it.”

“After what happened between us tonight, I would hardly call you a prude.” For the first time he smiled. “Where did you learn all those tricks?”

“Tricks?”

“Like that ‘hands against the wall’ stuff, for starters.”

“Oh, that.” She realized she was blushing. “I’ve read a few dirty books.”

“Good for you.”

She frowned, suddenly unsure. “Didn’t you like it? I can take constructive criticism. I want to learn, and you can tell me the truth.”

“I liked it a lot.”

“But maybe it wasn’t inventive enough for you.” She thought about the whips. “To be honest, I don’t think I can get much kinkier. And you should probably know right now that I’m not interested in physical pain.”

For a moment he looked confused, and then he smiled. “You’ve got a real thing about those whips, don’t you?”

“It’s a little hard not to think about them when they’re lying around all the time.”

“I guess I’m having a tough time believing someone who’s so interested in kinky lovemaking has such a narrow view of sexual morality.”

“I didn’t say I was interested; I was just trying to make certain we understand each other. And as to my narrow views—just before Mother died, she had lovers who were younger than me. I really hated that.”

He rose from the foot of the bed. “Why didn’t you tell me you were a virgin from the beginning?”

“Would it have changed anything?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. I sure as hell wouldn’t have been so rough.”

Her eyes widened. “You were being rough?”

The hard lines around his mouth eased. He sat down next to her and ran his thumb across her lips. “What am I going to do with you?”

“I have an idea, but you might not like it.”

“Tell me.”

“Could we—I don’t know exactly how long it’ll take you to recover, but, when you have . . .”

“Are you trying to tell me you want to do it again?”

“Yes, please.”

He smiled down at her, but at the same time, he seemed troubled. “All right, sweetheart, I guess anybody who’s waited this long deserves to make up for lost time.”

She parted her lips, eager for his kiss, only to have him pull back the sheet and embarrass her by telling her he wouldn’t go any further until he’d made sure she was all right. Ignoring her protests, he stripped off what remained of her tights and did just that. When he was finally satisfied that he hadn’t harmed her, he began to love her all over again. The rain tap-tap-tapped on the windows, and when they were done, she fell into the first restful sleep she’d known in months.



They had barely gotten under way the next morning before he began to cut her into slivers verbally. And all because she’d let him distract her before she’d had time to explain one small detail.

“I assumed. Assumed! God, what an ass I am. I deserve to be married to you. Why should I have assumed you’d get this right when you haven’t gotten anything else right?”

After the tender magic of last night, his attack was doubly hurtful. When they’d first met, his anger had been cold and quiet, but now a pressure valve seemed to have exploded.

“Couldn’t you have finished explaining?” he raved. “No, of course not. That would have been too logical.”

She blinked her eyes hard and hated herself with all her might for not being the kind of person who could scream right back at him.

“When you said you were taking birth control pills, you needed to finish the story, Daisy. You needed to tell me you’d just started to take them, that you hadn’t been on them for a full month yet, that there’s still a chance I could get you goddamn pregnant! Couldn’t you have finished the story, Daisy?”

She dug her fingernails into her palms to keep from crying. At the same time she cursed herself for letting him get to her like this.