Midnight Angel

  Douglas stilled immediately. He was immense and hard between the lips of her sex, his hands tight at her waist. She could feel the tension in the hard striated muscles of his chest. It was like sitting on a massive powerful engine, revving, ready to take off.

  For just a second, a fraction of a second, Allegra was afraid. She’d said no. Not just to anyone, but to a very powerful man, massively aroused, muscles tight with need.

  She hadn’t meant to say no, it had just come out, her deepest feelings. Right at this exact moment, though she was aroused, she didn’t want him to enter her.

  A wisp of memory drifted across her mind, a ghost of a thought, gone almost before she could grasp it. Only a fleeting emotion remained, but it was enough.

  You don’t say no. You can’t change your mind. You don’t tease. Otherwise…

  She shivered, suddenly cold. “Sorry,” she whispered tensely, “I didn’t mean—if you want, of course you can—um…”

  He was immobile, an immense, warm, hairy, marble statue. “That’s okay.” Her hands were over his pectorals and she could feel the vibration of his deep voice.

  “No, no, sorry,” she said hastily. She took his penis in her hand, shifting to her knees so she could rise up above it. It was so stiff she almost couldn’t lift it away from his stomach. This man was seriously aroused. Maybe he would be in pain if he couldn’t have sex. “It’s okay, I don’t mind. Honest.” She braced herself over him, trying to ready herself for penetration, though she wasn’t aroused enough. She hoped it wouldn’t hurt.

  “Stop,” he said quietly. All the muscles in his body relaxed, except for the big one between his thighs. That stayed incredibly hard. His hands gentled. He wasn’t holding her so much as he was touching her. He slid his hands up and down her back, softly, more to reassure than to arouse. “There’s no problem, honey. We don’t have to fu—make love now.”

  “No, really, I don’t mind.”

  “This is just fine.” His hands whispered up her back, rubbed her shoulders, traced down the curve of her spine to her waist again. “More than fine. Has a little magic all its own.” She couldn’t see him, but there was a bit of a smile in his voice.

  “Sorry,” she whispered, miserable. Allegra bit her lower lip. “I don’t mean to be a tease. It’s just that I’m a little—”

  “Sore? I thought you might be.” He shook her, just a little. “I asked, too. Remember?”

  This was so complicated. She hadn’t realized precisely how sore she was until she’d sat up, until they were halfway toward making love.

  He kneaded her shoulders gently.

  “Oh.” Allegra’s head tilted as she leaned back into those big hands. It was really hard not to melt into a spineless ball of wax. “That’s nice.”

  “Mmm. Oh yeah.” He purred. That was the only way to describe the extraordinary sound. Like a lion in the savannah, lying in the sun. Those large, rough, warm hands were gliding over her back, somehow drawing the tension out of her muscles. “This is really great. I love touching you.”

  He made no effort to make it sexual. He didn’t try to rub her breasts, or touch her sex. Though it wasn’t sexual, it was deeply sensual, a feast of simple warm human contact in the quiet of the morning.

  “I don’t ever want you to do something you don’t want to with me, honey. I want you to promise me that.” The deep voice was so steady, so sure.

  Allegra closed her eyes. Not to shut out the world—the world was shut out for her permanently. She simply wanted to savor this moment of utter trust and human warmth.

  “Allegra…answer me.” His hard abdominal muscles tightened as he prepared to lift his torso. “I want your promise.”

  “Okay,” she murmured on a sigh. “I promise.”

  “That’s my girl. You don’t need to feel you have to do anything with me. Don’t ever pretend. I don’t want that, don’t need it. Just being with you like this is an incredible pleasure. Now relax for me.”

  That last was said almost as an order. Well, he was probably used to giving orders, having been in the Navy. He must have been instantly obeyed, too, because Allegra could actually feel all her muscles relaxing even further, one by one.

  This was so delicious.

  He wasn’t asking her to perform, to become turned on, to do anything but sit there on him, enjoying the feel of him between her thighs, enjoying his hands on her.

  The simple human contact was so wonderful. She hadn’t really touched anyone since…the accident. Not really. Oh, she’d taken Claire and Suzanne’s arms when they were out, but just to negotiate obstacles. She never went for long walks with them. She couldn’t orient herself and was too scared that they’d forget to tell her about a curb or a hole in the sidewalk. So what she’d had was a hand in the crook of a coat-covered elbow. A kiss on a cheek. A quick hug. That was it.

  Only now could Allegra face the fact that she’d been so lonely, so starved for human contact.

  She was making up for it big-time now. There was a lot of Douglas Kowalski to touch.

  Lightly, hoping he wouldn’t mistake it for a sexual advance, Allegra ran her hands over his shoulders. She’d touched him all night last night, but this was different. This wasn’t clinging to him in the throes of wild passion. She wanted—needed—to touch him, to get to know him.

  The muscles over his shoulder bones were deep and hard. There was no way to perceive the bone underneath. How on earth did a human being develop muscles like this? He must lift weights for hours every day.

  Every single aspect of his body was so utterly unlike her own.

  Long, powerful, striated muscles with no give to them at all. The sculpted, delineated contours of a hard male body. The textures of smooth skin and hair-roughened skin.

  It was fashionable nowadays for men to shave their chest hair but Kowalski obviously hadn’t heard that, because there was a thick mat of rough curly hair covering his chest from the top of his pectorals down past his stomach. She followed the line of hair, dreamily, until her hand brushed against his penis just below the belly button. She jerked her hands away in the instant she heard his breath leave his chest in a whoosh.

  “Sorry,” she whispered, as she heard him swallow.

  “Touch whatever you want, honey. However you want to.” His voice was low, steady. So incredibly reassuring.

  Allegra’s hands returned to his chest, outspread fingers reaching up to his shoulders.

  She hadn’t been to bed with many men and they’d all been musicians, like herself. She remembered untoned bodies, definitely not ripped. Her last lover, Steve, had been rail-thin. She couldn’t remember what he felt like. She could hardly recall what he looked like.

  He had a pointy face, she remembered suddenly, with a wispy little beard.

  What did Douglas look like?

  Her doctor had told her that blind people learned how to build up a mental image of a person by touching them. She’d seen that in movies, too. How did they do it? Maybe she should have practiced on Suzanne and Claire, whose faces were as familiar to her as her own. Touching noses and foreheads, outlining mouths—would that let her learn how to “see” a face?

  She had to try now. She desperately wanted a mental image of Douglas in her head. In only a few short hours, he meant more to her than any other man she’d ever met, yet she had no idea what he looked like.

  Allegra suddenly had to know what Douglas looked like.

  She knew what his body must look like. She knew he was tall and incredibly broad-shouldered. He had very long limbs. His arms seemed to be twice the length of hers. She knew firsthand the strength in the deep muscles. She knew his hands had rough, calloused skin but were incredibly gentle in their touch.

  And his face?

  Allegra ran her fingers gently over his collarbones and up his neck. He had stubble. It started halfway up his neck, leaving only a short space of smooth skin between his chest and facial hair. The pads of her fingers moved upwards…

  Douglas caught her hand
s in his, his fingers closing around her wrists, like warm, living manacles. He wasn’t hurting her, but she couldn’t move.

  “Douglas?” she whispered and tugged lightly. There was no give at all to his hold. “I want to know what you look like. Let me touch your face.”

  That swishing sound must be his hair rasping across the pillowcase as he shook his head. She didn’t need to see to know what it meant—no.

  “Douglas?” She pushed a little against the implacable hold on her wrists.

  He made a strangled sound deep in his chest.

  “No.” The word lingered in the air, stark and hard.

  “Why?” she asked softly.

  “I’m…ugly.” The words came out low and harsh, guttural. As if between clenched teeth. As if from a terrible place inside him.

  “You’re ugly?”

  “Very.”

  The idea shocked her. How could Douglas be ugly? He seemed the very epitome of attraction, a true alpha male.

  He had the physique of a god. He was almost over-endowed—in every way, she thought with an inward smile as she wiggled over him.

  In response, he surged up against her, hot, hard and huge. He subsided immediately.

  Of course. She’d said no and he was honoring that. He was an honorable man. Now that was attractive.

  He loved music and was knowledgeable about it, too.

  He had a sort of old-fashioned chivalry, choosing to carry her to his car rather than letting her get her feet wet.

  He’d been willing to die for her. And for his friends. Thanks to his courage, there hadn’t been a bloodbath at the Parks Foundation. Bud and Claire and John and Suzanne were alive because he’d been brave enough to face armed men unarmed.

  He had the most delicious male voice she’d ever heard. After a two-minute conversation, she’d been halfway to falling in love with him on the basis of his voice alone.

  And he was ugly?

  “Let me touch you, Douglas,” she whispered. “You can’t possibly be ugly. Not to me.”

  He was silent, fingers around her wrists, preternaturally still. It seemed as if he’d even stopped breathing.

  “Please, Douglas,” she pleaded. “I need to touch your face. I don’t know what you look like. We’ve made love. We’re on this bed together, naked and…and I can’t picture you in my mind.”

  There was no way on this earth Allegra could force Douglas to do something he didn’t want to do. All she could do was ask and wait.

  His fingers around her wrist tightened, briefly, then he let her go, arms coming down to his sides to rest his big hands on her thighs.

  “Okay. Touch me if you want.” The deep voice was flat, emotionless. “Go ahead.”

  Hesitantly, Allegra bent to him, hair falling forward over her shoulders.

  What were people’s faces made of, anyway? The basics were all the same, for everyone on earth, unless they were disfigured. Two eyes, two ears, one nose, one mouth. Eyebrows and lashes. Beard and moustache, sometimes, if they were men. Or sometimes even if they weren’t men.

  Allegra thought of Rosa Mancino, the Parks’ housekeeper. Rosa’s sister Elena did pretty well in the beard and moustache department.

  How do you feel what someone looks like?

  Her hands drifted, gently, building up sensory impressions.

  She feathered her fingers over his neck, corded with muscle and tendons, tense. Then she ran a finger lightly over a raised vein, following it up to the underside of his jaw and back down again. He had raised veins everywhere, the kind Olympic athletes had. Something about carrying more oxygen to the muscles, she’d read somewhere.

  She could feel his life’s blood pulsing through the vein, in time with the steady, slow heartbeat under her right hand, which had come to rest on his chest.

  Now she brought both hands up, to feel his jawline.

  Her wrists were caught again in that gentle, unbreakable hold. She didn’t try to break it or push against him, but simply waited.

  “I have…a scar.” He bit the words out.

  “Do you, Douglas?” she asked softly. It made sense. He’d been a soldier, of course he’d have scars. “You know what? I don’t care.”

  She had her own, by God. It’s just that hers didn’t show.

  She waited patiently, hands encircled by his. He was the one who had to allow her this intimacy. They’d made love—had sex, she corrected herself. There wasn’t a part of her body he hadn’t touched, fondled, caressed. And yet he was upset at the thought of her touching his face.

  There was nothing she could do but wait while he battled whatever demons he had inside him.

  Allegra knew all about battling demons. It’s what she did, all day, every day.

  There was utter silence in the room, save for the faint sound of her own breathing. Douglas was so still, so silent, he could have been dead. If it weren’t for the fact that she could feel his chest expanding between her thighs with every breath he took, she couldn’t even be sure he was alive.

  “Go ahead.” He released her with a small exhalation of breath and her hands landed gently back onto his neck, to continue their journey of discovery.

  He did indeed have a scar, on the left side of his jaw, a big, ugly one. It was like a road map of pain, wide and long, running the length of his jawline, hairless, very thick and smooth, a large raised welt. Irregular lines crossed it. Sutures? If so, the surgeon had been a clumsy one.

  “This must have been very painful.”

  He didn’t answer, but gave only a small shrug.

  Allegra knew that she herself had been given the best possible medical care. She’d spent the better part of three months with her jaws wired shut and yet she was told that nothing showed on her face.

  This scar must be very visible on Douglas’ face.

  “Do you care? About the scar?”

  “No.” His voice was curt, leached of all emotion.

  Allegra ran her finger over that deep scar, backwards and forwards, while he lay utterly still beneath her. It was as if she were trying to draw the memory of the pain it must have caused away from him, absorbing it through her fingertips.

  Finally, Allegra bent to the task of figuring out her lover’s face. How to do this? She lightly circled the contours. It was broad, square-jawed, the lower half bristly with the new growth of beard.

  She ran her fingers into his hair. It was short, but not a military-short, a razor-cut.

  “What color is your hair?”

  “Dirty blond.”

  “And your eyes?”

  “Light brown.”

  The coloring probably came from his Slav ancestry, as did the high, broad cheekbones she could feel. He had a high, large forehead with a few deep wrinkles. There were deep wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, too.

  “How old are you?”

  “Thirty-eight.”

  Then the deep wrinkles she felt were those of a man who’d been out in the sun and wind too much, not those of a man edging toward old age.

  Allegra continued touching, lightly following the lines of his features, feeling the textures of his skin, tracing his eyebrows, his lips. His nose was big, broad, the cartilage crooked.

  “Your nose has been broken,” she said.

  “Couple times, yeah.”

  She couldn’t seem to put all the sensations together to form a picture in her head. But one thing was clear to her, and it went way beyond the actual shape and form of his face. What was clear was that he had a face that matched his body—hard, unadorned, purely male.

  She sat up, acutely aware of her nakedness and his. Aware that somehow the light touches of his face had become caresses. Though he hadn’t moved under her ministrations, she’d felt his penis swell impossibly larger between the lips of her sex when she touched his mouth. The friction aroused her, too, made her wet and soft.

  Somewhere deep inside, she was preparing herself for him. Maybe in a little while she could…

  But first, there was something s
he had to do.

  “Douglas?”

  His fingers tightened on her thighs when she ran the tip of her index finger over his upper lip. “Yeah?”

  Allegra bent forward completely so that her breasts rested against his chest, his penis a hard cylinder between their bellies. She lowered her face until her nose bumped against his. Her curved hands framed his face. She could feel the hard knobs of his cheekbones, the deep wrinkles fanning from his eyes, the bristly beard. She could feel his breath washing over her face, his utter and complete stillness.

  How she wished she could see him.

  “For the record, Douglas, I don’t think you’re ugly,” Allegra said softly. “As a matter of fact, I think you’re beautiful.”

  He bucked, once, powerfully. Suddenly he was kissing her wildly, without any finesse at all, holding her head as he ate at her mouth, teeth grinding against hers, tongue thrusting deep. Between their bellies, his penis rippled and swelled. He moaned deeply, harshly into her mouth as he surged into orgasm. She could feel the wetness as he jetted semen over her stomach and his, and with an excited cry, she climaxed, too.

  Chapter Eight

  Allegra was singing something in the shower. Something complex, yet oddly simple too, heartbreakingly beautiful. Haunting. As enticing as a siren’s song, luring him in.

  No way. Shit, no.

  Kowalski didn’t want to go anywhere near the bathroom. He didn’t want to go anywhere near her. As a matter of fact, if he had even the smallest shred of sense, he’d walk right out of this house. Hell, he should quit Alpha Security now and move across the country because even being in the same city with the woman was dangerous to his mental health.

  He should stay far, far away from this woman.

  Kowalski had had well over five thousand orgasms in his life, yet nothing—nothing!—could have prepared him for the explosive, totally out-of-control fireball of emotion in his chest when he’d come. And he hadn’t even been fucking her. Didn’t make any difference at all that he hadn’t even been in her. It had been devastatingly powerful, and for a second there it felt as if he’d died.

  He’d been unbearably moved, watching her try to feel her way over his face. So absorbed, so intent, trying to learn to see through her fingers. It was clear she’d never done that before. His was the first face she’d tried to see by feeling with her fingertips since she’d been blinded.