Perilously Fun Fiction: A Bundle, Pauline Jones [top 100 novels of all time .txt] 📗

didn’t need a man in my life for contentment. So fate had set out to humble me, to teach me about need and unfulfilled desire, about how to want what you can’t have.

Kel sat down next to me, his arm sliding behind my head with a casual air that nine out of ten teenage boys would have given their virginity to emulate. There was a short silence. Now that we were no longer discussing murder and mayhem, I couldn’t look at him. What if he looked in my eyes and saw a longing for more than fax between us?

“I enjoyed your playing at the funeral,” Kel murmured, his husky voice turning lazy as he temporarily stood down as a spy. “Where’d you learn to jazz it up like that?”

“New Orleans.” His fingers moved in my hair, taking apart my braid and setting the strands free.

“You have wonderful hair.”

“Thank you.” I sounded so stilted, I wanted to die.

“Is something wrong?”

“No…no.”

He leaned closer, amusement filtering into his voice. “You don’t still think I’m trying to kill you, do you?”

“No, I’m fine, really.” I’m afraid you’re trying to break my heart is what I wanted to say.

“You’re wound pretty tight.” He began to knead the back of my neck, his touch strong, but gentle.

It felt really good. It also started a different kind of tension at a different place in my body. “Maybe you shouldn’t…I mean, well we kind of skipped a few preliminaries in our…”

What was it that wasn’t happening here?

“…association. I guess I’m just not used to it.”

His hand was warm against the back of my neck. So naturally I shivered. Or it could have been a shudder.

“Would you believe me if I told you this isn’t normal for me either?” he asked.

I didn’t hesitate. “No.”

He chuckled. We were so close together I felt it as a small, but very pleasant earthquake.

“Ian Fleming has a lot to answer for.”

“So, you’re saying you’re not Bond, James Bond with a babe in every exotic city and a Porsche that can fly?”

“Exotic city babes carry disease and my car doesn’t have that much under the hood.”

“So I just imagined that whole bed-Pavlov-dog-scene when you were under the influence of Mike’s doggie drugs?”

His eyes lit the way they had that night, only without the foggy part. His mouth smiled the way it had that night. My bones started to melt the way they had that night.

“I thought you said nothing happened that night?” he murmured, into my ear.

My ear tingled, my body quivered.

“Nothing did.” I swallowed dryly.

Embarrassment and desire don’t mix very well. He had me blocked in. I couldn’t disappear. So I closed my eyes. Big mistake. Gave him a clear field to make his move. He found my mouth easily. He’d been there before. I knew this, even as I let him draw me deeper into his terrifying, safe embrace.

It was like being in the eye of a hurricane, a place where I could experience the wild wonder of him without the danger.

Danger was out there, I just wasn’t in it. Yet.

Passive at first, I let him explore my mouth with his, shivered when his hands spread across my back. Then, made brave by the thick honey of desire in my blood, I launched my own quest for knowledge. It was necessary for my survival. If I hadn’t thrust my hands into the springy softness of his hair, they would have flailed about aimlessly.

I kept my lips from idleness by tasting the skin at his temple. He was checking out my jaw line, so our explorations aided each other. Thought and feeling disconnected when I tasted and found him good. Like Baby Bear’s porridge, like Eve’s apple. My hands fanned out on his chest, absorbing the heady sweetness of silk over flesh and blood, both warmed by a strongly beating heart. He recaptured my mouth and I sighed my thanks. And learned the eye of a man’s passion isn’t endless.

He matched my sigh, raised it a groan. Then took us out of the eye right into the storm. His mouth, his hands drove me back against the couch, tasting, touching, taking my passion and multiplying it so that I got back more in the exchange. No wonder no one wanted the secret to get out on just how delightful the delights of the flesh really are. All of the elements of a rampaging addiction were built right into my body, unleashed by his. I was on the fast track to biting the big one. You can imagine my surprise when I muttered, “I don’t—” when I obviously was.

He paused. “Ever?”

“Well, not,” I swallowed hoping to ease my dry throat, “yet.”

“I thought girls like you were an endangered species?”

Sanity was slow to return, but remarks like that helped. “It’s guys like you that made us that way.”

He laughed, his strong warm hand settling against my throat to register the giveaway pace of my pulse. “Why? You seem to have all the right instincts.”

“Yeah,” I admitted. “I noticed.” It was hard to put into words what I was feeling. “I don’t know you,” I finally said, even thought it wasn’t quite right. I did know Kel, I just didn’t know him.

“We already know what’s important.”

“And that is?”

“That we want each other.”

He wanted me. No, not me. My body. The fact that my body had a heart didn’t matter. Not when passion was running the show.

“Does it bother you that you want me?” he asked, huskily against my mouth.

Instead of answering this loaded question, I said, “Maybe I should go to Bible Study with Reverend Hilliard.”

“Reverend Hilliard?” He looked resigned. “Not another one?”

“It’s not my fault.”

The telephone rang, which was good because I had no idea how to explain the minister to the spy. It’s at this point I realized we were on the floor. I didn’t remember getting there. My clothing was askew. So were his. Didn’t remember that either.

“You’re dangerous,” he said, before scrambling up to answer the telephone.

I just hoped it was for