Crazy Kisses Read Online Free Page B

was practically famous now, her paintings showing on both coasts and selling in five figures. Three months ago, she’d done an
Esquire
magazine cover of Brad Pitt as one of her fallen angels. Kid had seen it in Bogotá, and it had been incredible.
    Fucking Brad Pitt. Who would have believed? Nikki’s mentor, Katya Hawkins, was taking her straight to the top of the art world, exactly where she deserved to be. He’d watched Nikki work once—work a guy over—and it had made him sweat and all but turned him inside out. He hadn’t known a girl could be so freakin’ fierce.
    Yeah. He’d kept up with her career, with her life. He’d been discreet, but he’d kept up, asked a few questions. Her sister was married to another of the Steele Street operators, Quinn Younger, although Quinn hadn’t gone out on many missions since he and Regan had hooked up.
    It was a helluva price to pay for a woman, but under any other circumstances than the ones he’d found himself in last summer, he might have done it for Nikki.
    She hadn’t come straight out and asked him to take fewer chances, or even quit his job, but he’d seen it in her eyes every time she’d looked at him. He’d known it every time she’d cried because he was going away. So freakin’ fierce, and yet so fragile.
    Hell, she’d probably made the right choice with the basket weaver guy, but yeah, sure, he could have done it, backed off on the job and turned himself into her boy toy, gone back to school, and become . . . something.
    Something other than what he was: a highly skilled weapon of the United States government. The months he’d spent with Hawkins and Creed, tracking down and taking out his brother’s killers, had changed him. Superman and the jungle boy had changed him. They’d taken everything the Marine Corps had taught him and honed it all to a razor sharpness.
    He wasn’t a bona fide superhero, not like Hawkins, and he wasn’t three-quarters wild like Creed, but he didn’t have to do much more than stand there and look at her to know he was still in love with Nikki McKinney.
    God, what lousy news. And it didn’t change a damn thing. It only made things harder.
    He was going to have to keep his distance. Be professional. Stay cool. Play it smart. Get her back on a plane ASAP—and for God’s sake not do anything stupid and spontaneous.
    Like kiss her.
    Or run his tongue up the side of her neck.
    Or put his hand on her ass.
    He took a breath, ran through the “don’t” list one more time, and was good to go—up until she suddenly turned in her chair, startled like a bird taking flight, feathers flying, sequins shimmering, and looked straight at him. He saw the shock on her face, saw her mouth form his name, and his quickly laid plan started sliding out from under him like beach sand in a riptide.
    In combat, “tunneling,” focusing on one thing and losing track of everything else that was going on around you, was a good way to get killed.
    Apparently, the same rule applied in love, because he was slain. The transvestites went into a butchered rendition of “La Vida Loca,” and he could barely hear it. The other hundred people were laughing, talking, singing along, their glasses clinking, their sequins shaking, and all they were was a blur. Loose feathers floated in the air, beer spilled, women squealed—and all he could see was Nikki. All he could hear was his heart beating, slow and steady and strong. He knew what he felt, and there were no words for it. Not this.
    Her tiara caught the lights and glittered in her wild, dark hair. Pure bed head, pink feathers, and a couple of purple streaks, strands going every which way. It wasn’t an accident. She fixed it like that, moussed it and blow-dried it all into an artful mess. He’d watched her do it, teased her about it, kissed her between the moussing and the blow-drying—and loved every second of it.
    She had five earrings in one ear and three in the other, always, and none of them ever