Kiss an Angel by Susan Elizabeth Phillips Read Free Book Online Page B

charged dramatically into the arena, his black horse at full gallop. The sleeves of his white shirt billowed, and the jewels encrusting his sash blazed like bloodred droplets. The mighty horse reared. Defying gravity, Alexi raised his arms far above his head, staying mounted only by the pressure of his powerful legs.
    The horse came down, and Alexi disappeared. Daisy gasped only to see him reappear, dangling gracefully from the saddle. As the mount galloped around the arena, he performed a series of skillfully executed feats that were both daring and dramatic. Finally swinging back up into the saddle, he took the bullwhip that had been hanging from the pommel and cracked it in a great arc over his head, the sound so loud
    that the people in front of her jumped.
    Props had been set up in the dark during the ringmaster's introduction: a row of beribboned hoops topped with scarlet balloons. Circling the arena, he popped the balloons one by one, and an explosion of crimson glitter, like drops of blood, flew up into the air with each snap of the whip.
    One of the showgirls lit an enormous six-pronged candelabra. He whirled the whip in a hypnotic arc over his head, then put out the flames one by one.
    The audience applauded, and those in the back stood to get a better look. Alex leaped gracefully to the ground, and the horse trotted out of the tent. The lights dimmed until he was left standing alone in a bloodred spotlight. He picked up a second whip and started snapping both of them in rhythm, one arm up, one arm down, behind him, in front of him. And then he began to dance over the whips, performing the intricate movements with a deadly masculine grace that left her breathless. The dance built to a crescendo, his movements quickened, and as if by magic, the two whips became a single giant one. With a mighty twist of his arm, he cracked it above his head only to have it burst into flames.
    The audience gasped, the lights went out, and the fire whip danced a mad mazurka in the dark.
    When the lights came up, Alexi the Cossack had vanished.
    4
    What in the hell are you doing out here?"
    Daisy's eyelids sprang open, and she looked up into the same golden eyes that had plagued her nightmare. For a moment, she couldn't remember where she was, and then it all came crashing back to her: Alex, the wedding, the fire whip.
    She grew aware of his hands on her shoulders, the only thing that had prevented her from falling out of his pickup when he'd opened the door. She'd come here to hide because she didn't have the courage to sleep in a trailer with only one bed and a stranger with a mysterious past who brandished whips.
    Siie carefully extricated herself from his grasp, and in the process moved toward the center of the seat,
    as far away from him as she could manage. "What time is it?"
    "Past midnight." He rested one hand on top of the door frame and gazed at her with those strange amber eyes that had plagued her nightmare. Instead of his Cossack's costume, he wore ancient jeans and a faded black T-shirt, but that didn't make him any less threatening.
    "Angel face, you are a damn sight more trouble than you're worth."
    She pretended to straighten her clothing in an effort to buy herself time. After the final performance, she'd gone to the trailer only to see the whips he'd used in his act lying on the bed, almost as if he'd left them out for further use. She'd tried not to look at them as she'd stood at the window and watched the tent being taken down.
    Alex had both directed the men and worked alongside them, and as she'd watched the muscles in his anus bunch as he loaded stacks of seats onto the forklift and hauled on the rigging, she'd remembered those veiled threats he'd made earlier, warnings of unpleasant consequences if she didn't do as he said.
    Exhausted and feeling alone, she could no longer regard the whips lying on the bed as mere performance props. They were a threat to her, and that was when she'd known she didn't have the