double cheeseburger.
“I just wish I understood the rules.”
Tucker swallowed. “Of what?”
“Of us touching. Like, we know it happens when your heart is bleeding—as long as you’re not wearing the necklace.”
“We know it happens when you’re getting all badass and protective,” Tucker said, smiling a little.
“Or when you’re holding hands with ghosts,” Angel said, also smiling.
“That was both of us, Angel.”
“Oh yes!” Angel brightened. “I’ve got it. I think I get it.” He frowned. “I’m pretty sure I get it.”
“Well, then, would you give it to me?” Tucker finished off his cheeseburger, and silence descended on the cab of the truck.
And the tumblers clicked, unlocking the erotic potential of what Tucker had just said.
“Is that how you like it?” Angel asked, sounding coy. “Do you want me to give it to you?”
Tucker gasped. “I knew it! I knew that’s why you picked that form.”
Angel disappeared and came back as the redheaded woman. “What form?” he asked guilelessly.
Tucker broke into a cackle of laughter he almost couldn’t stop. “Oh my God, Angel. I know your secret!”
The redhead disappeared, replaced by the Angel Tucker was most familiar with. “What secret?” he asked carefully.
Tucker sighed. “Not the big one. I still don’t know what you are. I was talking about the….” He couldn’t fight the flush, so he gave up and let embarrassment sweep him. “You want to top. You want to… to….”
“To give you pleasure,” Angel said humbly. “Yes. I’d like to experience it from you, but….”
“But what?”
“But you have given so much. I just wanted to give you something.” After experiencing pleasure at Angel’s hands, Tucker could smell the heat washing through him. “And it seemed like a very pleasurable thing for me too.”
“Having, uh, gotten it from both ends, as it were, I can vouch for both those things.” Instinctively Tucker reached over to squeeze Angel’s knee.
And his fingers met the resistance of flesh.
He almost cried. “If there was a place to pull over so we could put our boy parts where our mouths have been, I would so do it.”
Angel grabbed his hand. “I would probably enjoy that. But I do not think it’s what you really need.”
Tucker squeezed back. The warmth, the physical reassurance of having a real person there in the car seeped into his soul, and he could breathe again. Finally he could admit he’d been battling the loneliness—the terrible, life-draining loneliness that had wrapped him in grieving for over a decade—since the women had faded from the graveyard on the hill.
“I’m grateful,” he whispered.
“For what?”
“That you’re at least here when I’m bleeding.”
Angel stroked the back of his hand until he needed it to steer again.
TUCKER PULLED up to the Greenaways’ little ranch-style about twenty minutes later, grateful when he saw Rae’s minivan in the driveway, with a little Ford truck behind it.
“So the sedan really was for Andy.” Tucker had guessed, but apparently the Greenaways’ oldest bird had really flown the coop.
“Do you think Josh misses the truck?” Angel asked.
In answer, Josh came running out of the house, barely waiting until Tucker had stopped before patting the beaten quarter panel. Tucker gave Angel’s hand one last squeeze before throwing the door open in time to hear Josh say, “Oh, baby! Did you miss me? Don’t mind the other truck in the driveway, baby—she’s a harlot and means nothing.”
Tucker met Angel’s amused glance. “Yes,” he said. “I think he missed the truck.”
“Shh,” Josh whispered, draping his body across what must have been a fairly hot hood. “She thinks this is forever.”
“Is your sane half in the house?”
Josh grinned at him, but he didn’t stop hugging the quarter panel. “Indeed she is. She’s working, though, so it better be important.”
“It’s a little bit important,” Tucker said. In his peripheral vision, Angel was nodding like mad.
“You go on in.”
They turned, and Josh frowned. “That’s weird. When you drove up, I could have sworn there were two of you in there. I was going to ask you to introduce me to your friend, but….”
Tucker stared at him.
Josh stared back. “Please tell me I was seeing things.”
“Sure.” Tucker nodded. “You were seeing Angel.”
“Goddammit. I do not want to get sucked into this. It’s fine for Rae and the kids to think that shit’s real, but—”
“That shit’s real,” Tucker said, no bullshit in his voice. “And it could be dangerous. Just have a little respect for it, okay?”
Josh patted the hood mournfully. “I’m probably going to want to hear whatever you and Rae are talking about, aren’t I? Dammit, baby, I thought