Page 40 of Angel’s Claim

I clean the wound as carefully as I can, dabbing away the blood and trying not to press too hard. Angel sits perfectly still, letting me work, and I can’t help but notice how close we are. My knees are pressed against his back. My face is inches from his neck.

"You hungry?" he asks after a moment.

"What?"

"It's almost eight, and we ended up not eating anything at all."

I am hungry, now that he mentions it. I've been running on adrenaline for so long I forgot to pay attention to my body.

"Yeah," I admit. "I could eat."

"There's a place in town. Mac's Grill. They have the best burgers you've ever tasted, and they make home deliveries."

Stay in. With him. Alone in my motel room.

"That sounds good," I say.

"Yeah?" He pulls out his phone with one hand, navigating to the app without moving his head so I can keep cleaning. "What do you want?"

"Burger with no pickles. And fries. Definitely fries."

He chuckles, and I feel the vibration of it through his back. "Woman after my own heart."

He taps at his phone for a minute, adding my order and his own. "They're saying thirty to forty minutes."

"Okay."

I finish cleaning the blood from his hair and sit back to assess my work. The cut is clean now, and the bleeding has mostly stopped. It'll probably need a bandage, but I don't have any.

"How's it look?" Angel asks.

"Not as bad as I thought. But you should probably still let someone else check it tomorrow."

"I will."

He turns around on the bed to face me, and suddenly we're way too close.

I'm still kneeling on the bed, and he's sitting on the edge, and when he turned, he brought us face to face. Maybe six inches between us. Close enough that I can see the lighter flecks of blue in his eyes. Close enough that I can count the small scars on his jaw and cheekbones.

Close enough that I notice his lips.

God, his lips.

They're full, masculine and right there, and I don't know what possesses me but I find myself leaning in. Just a little. Just enough that the distance between us shrinks to four inches. Three.

His eyes drop to my mouth.

Two inches.

I can feel his breath on my cheeks now, warm and making my heart race so fast I'm dizzy with it.

"Bree," he whispers, and there's a question in his voice.

I don't answer with words. I just close the last of the distance and press my lips to his.

For half a second, he doesn't move. Doesn't respond. And panic floods through me because oh God, I just kissed him and maybe he didn't want—

Then he kisses me back.