Death Angel

He did a one-shoulder shrug. "To take you to lunch. Nothing more."

Like she believed that for a single minute. "Yeah, right. You probably don’t breathe without an ulterior motive."

"Staying alive is all." He lifted his head, sniffing the air. "Is the coffee fresh?"

"Fairly." She checked the time. She’d napped longer than she’d thought. "It’s about an hour old, so it should still be good." She could use more coffee herself, so she got up and went into the kitchen, taking her cup with her. "How do you take yours?" she called as she opened the cabinet door and reached for another cup, raising her voice so he could hear her in the living room.

"Black," he said right behind her, and she jumped, almost dropping the cup. He reached out to catch it, his hand closing around hers to steady her grip. Immediately, she pulled out of his grasp and lifted the coffeepot from the warmer, filling both their cups.

"Make some noise when you walk," she finally said flatly.

"I could whistle."

"Whatever. Just don’t sneak up on me." She was more unnerved than she wanted him to see, because the moment had reminded her vividly of when he came up behind her on the penthouse balcony and had sex with her right there, not even turning her around to kiss her. At the time, he couldn’t have made it plainer that she was nothing but a piece of ass to him, yet she’d let herself be seduced by sheer pleasure, and over the course of the afternoon built it up in her mind until she thought he would actually take her with him. She still felt scalded by the humiliation of his rejection.

She set down the cup and took a slow, steadying breath. "I think you should leave," she said baldly. "I need you to leave."

"Because I kissed you last night?" His gaze was shrewd as he studied her.

"Because you are who you are and I am who I am. I know what I was before, but since the wreck I’ve been alone-" Hell, he knew that; he’d been keeping tabs on her all this time. "And I think being alone is what’s best for me. I don’t make good decisions when it comes to men. Sad, but true."

"I’m not asking you to make any decision. You have to eat, don’t you? Let’s go to lunch. Or breakfast. We can always go to a pancake restaurant." His tone was mild and undemanding, and if she hadn’t been on her guard she might have been lulled into a false sense of safety. How dangerous could a pancake restaurant be? The problem was, there was no such thing as being safe with this man, at least not from him, and the reason for that lay as much within herself as it did with him.

She shook her head. "I don’t want to go anywhere with you."

"If you do, I’ll answer any question you ask."

She froze, furious with herself because the offer was too tempting to resist, and he knew it. Intellectually she knew she should stay far, far away from him, but let him dangle the opportunity to find out anything she wanted about him and she was all over it like a hawk on a bunny rabbit. He watched her with amusement glittering in his eyes and quirking the corners of his mouth, and he was so damned attractive like that, his guard down and his normally blank expression banished, that she actually quivered from the strength of his pull. Still, she tried to hold the line. "I don’t want to know anything about you."

"Sure you do, like how I got the tattoo on my ass."

"You don’t have a tattoo on your ass!" she snapped, glaring at him. She’d seen his ass, and as fine as it was she hadn’t been struck blind; she’d have noticed a tattoo.

He began unbuckling his belt.

"Don’t do that!" she said, alarmed. "You don’t have to-"

His lean fingers grasped the tab of his zipper, pulled it down.

Andie lost the thread of what she was saying.

He turned around, hooked his thumbs in the waistband of his jeans, and worked them down. His shirttail drooped over the round, muscled curves; he reached behind himself to pull up his shirt and there it was, high on the right cheek, some sort of abstract design that looked like a weird, curly maze. Her fingers twitched from a sudden, intense need to reach out and touch him, not because of the tattoo but because she wanted to feel the shape and coolness of his ass under her hands again.

She clenched her hands into fists and tried to sound unperturbed. "Strange design. What does it mean?"

He pulled up his pants and tucked his shirttail inside, turning back to face her as he zipped and buckled, his gaze amused. "I’ll tell you over food."

"Damn it," she snarled, whirling on her heel, and she went to the bedroom to get ready.

She was out in ten minutes, having done nothing more than brush her teeth and hair and exchange her pajamas for jeans and a pullover shirt with only one button left open at her throat because she didn’t do low-cut anything now, the scar on her chest a constant reminder that things were different. She didn’t bother with even minimum makeup, because she wasn’t trying to impress him or anyone else. Shoving her feet into a pair of flip-flops, she looked down at her unpainted toenails and gave a little snort. Her appearance was the polar opposite from the way she’d looked when Rafael gave her to him, but if he didn’t like it, then he could kiss her ass and leave.

He smiled when he saw her, actually honest-to-God smiled. "You’re so damn pretty," he said.

The compliment was so unexpected, so at odds with what she’d just been thinking, that she skidded to a stop, her mouth falling open in shock. "I, uh, thank you. But…are you blind?"

"No, I’m not," he answered as seriously as if the question hadn’t been rhetorical. He reached out and touched her hair. "I kind of miss the curls, but I like the color. You’re not as flashy now, not as brittle. That’s good. Your mouth still…never mind."