Kiss an Angel(65)

“I’m dirty and sweaty.”

“I am, too, so we don’t have a problem.” With one powerful motion he stripped his grimy T-shirt over his head. “You’re also overdressed.”

She kicked off her grubby shoes and tugged at her jeans, but she wasn’t working fast enough to please him.

“You’re taking too long.” Within moments, he’d stripped her so that she was as naked as he.

Her eyes took in his nude body with its whipcord strength and workingman’s tan. Strands of hair on his chest feathered around the icon he wore. She needed to ask him about that. She needed to ask him about so many things.

As he lay down beside her, she smelled the earthy scent of sweat and hard work on both their bodies and wondered why she wasn’t repulsed. There was something primitive about coming together like this that aroused her in a way she would never have been able to imagine. Her abandon embarrassed her. “I’m—I need to shower.”

“Not till we’re done.” He pulled a condom from a small drawer in the chest beside the bed, tore it open, and put it on.

“But I’m so dirty.”

He wedged her knees apart. “I want you like this, Daisy.”

She moaned and sank her teeth into his shoulder as he thrust into her. She tasted salt and sweat and knew he was tasting the same on her breasts. Her voice caught in her throat. “I really need to wash.”

“Later.”

“Oh, God, what are you doing?”

“What does it feel like?”

“It feels like you’re—”

“I am. Do you want more?”

“Yes. Oh, yes . . .”

The smells and tastes. The touches. The sweat and grit beneath her palms. The thrust and parry.

Her hair stuck to her cheeks, and a piece of straw poked her neck. He pushed his fingers into the cleft of her bottom and turned her on top of him, smearing grease from his arm down her side. He squeezed the backs of her thighs hard in his hands.

“Ride me.”

She did as he said. She arched and plunged, moving instinctively, and then wincing as she hurt herself on him.

“Slow down, sweetheart. I’m not going anywhere.”

“I can’t.” She gazed at him through the haze of her pain and passion and saw his sweat-slicked face, lips drawn thin and pale. Flecks of dirt stuck to those harsh Russian cheekbones and a bit of straw clung to his dark crisp hair. Sweat trickled over her breasts. She plunged again and gasped with pain.

“Don’t, sweet. Shh . . . take your time.”

He slipped his hands up along her back and pulled her down to stretch out over him, breasts to chest where he helped her find a new rhythm.

The insides of her thighs clasped the outsides of his, the icon abraded her skin, and she moved on his body, slowly at first, then writhing, loving the sensation of being in control, of dictating the rhythm and thrust. There was no pain, only sensation.

He gripped her bottom and let her have her way. She knew by the coiled tension she felt in those hard muscles beneath her what it cost him to relinquish control. He sank his teeth into the flesh over her collarbone, not hurting her, merely using another part of her body to fill another part of his.

She gave herself up to skin and sweat and musk. He made incoherent sounds and she answered in the same language. Both were lost to all that was civilized, thrown back to the jungle, the cave, the place of wildness until, for one suspended moment, they gripped creation’s source.



She left him as soon as she could and sealed herself in the bathroom. As the shower water rushed over her, she was shaken by this new barbaric part of herself. Was it sacred or profane? How could she have abandoned herself like that with a man she didn’t love? The question tormented her.

When she came out, wrapped in a towel with her skin scrubbed cleaner than her troubled soul, he was standing at the sink. Wearing only his dirty jeans, he held a beer bottle in his hand.

When he saw the expression on her face, he scowled. “You’re going to make this complicated, aren’t you?”

She pulled her clean clothes from the drawer and turned her back on him to dress. “I’m not sure exactly what you mean.”

“I can see it in your face. You’re having all kinds of second thoughts about what just happened.”

“Aren’t you?”

“Why would I be? Sex is simple, Daisy. It’s fun and it feels good. It doesn’t have to be complicated.”

She nodded toward the bed. “Did that seem simple to you?”

“It was good. That’s all that matters.”

She zipped up her shorts and pushed her feet into her sandals. “You’ve had sex with a lot of women, haven’t you?”

“I haven’t been indiscriminate, if that’s what you mean.”

“Is it always like that?”

He hesitated. “No.”

For a moment, some of her tension eased. “I’m glad. I want it to mean something.”

“All it means is that, while our minds may have trouble communicating, our bodies don’t have any problem at all.”

“I don’t think it’s that simple.”

“Sure it is.”

“The earth moved,” she said softly. “That has to be more than bodies communicating.”