“Why isn’t the anomaly hot?”
Emily was pretty sure it was a rhetorical question, since he was the geek, not her. She waited without speaking, watching the expressions pass across his face. There were a lot to see. He appeared to have a lot of his mind. Be nice if she were in the mix. She tipped her head. He’d be taken for a bit stern if she didn’t look at his eyes. They were kind of…innocent. She liked looking in his eyes, even if they weren’t looking at her. And then they were looking at her and she saw plenty of heat simmering below his surface, enough to run the bowling alley for a long time. She kept expecting him to lean in and make a play, because that’s what guys did when they looked like that, only he didn’t lean. He looked.
And looked some more.
Maybe he needed more encouragement. Or she needed to back off. She considered her options. At some point they were going to be at odds. She wanted the bug. He wanted the bug, but for now they were allied. And she wanted the kiss. She leaned. The flames went higher but he still didn’t match her lean. Okay, he was a geek, a cute geek, but still a geek. The basic lean might be too subtle of an approach, though the ones she’d met at steampunk conventions were well versed in the basic lean—so well versed they saw leaning when no leaning was involved. Maybe he needed an advanced lean. She tried it. Now his breath mingled with hers and she saw dark blue specks mix with the light blue in his abruptly widened eyes, the pupils dilating in a most satisfying manner.
No question he was interested. If she didn’t know better, she’d think he didn’t know what to do. Or he needed encouragement on the level of skywriting. She didn’t have a plane or sky. She did have her lips. She leaned until the tiniest of gaps separated them. If instinct didn’t take over she couldn’t help him—
His arms clamped around her. There might have been yanking. It happened fast, so it was hard to know all the little details when his lips pressed against hers with satisfying, if belated, enthusiasm. He’d moved with too much speed for her to get her arms around him and she didn’t want to discourage him by appearing to struggle against his hold, so she let her lips do the reciprocating, while her arms wished they were clamping, too. She might not get another chance. He’d move on to whatever it was he did and she’d found her world famous museum…
Her ruminations faded as sensation built. At first, he seemed a bit inexperienced, but then something changed—for the better, not that he’d been bad. Maybe kissing had as much to do with right time, right guy, as experience. Or he was a fast learner. The faster he learned, the fuzzier her thoughts got. If her mouth had been free, she might even have asked a question. Or three. How? Why? When? The questions guys hated girls asking. But her mouth wasn’t free, didn’t look like it would be free for a while—
The Earth moved. Or maybe it shifted. And tilted. A sizzle like electricity kicked up the hairs on the back of her neck and her arms. He stiffened, his mouth still against hers, but she’d lost him. She felt it before he eased her back.
“Excuse me.”
And he was gone. She blinked. She knew he’d leave, just not mid-kiss. The earth moved and he leaves—the earth shifted again. More electricity sizzle. So maybe they hadn’t made the Earth move.
© 2011 Pauline Baird Jones All rights Reserved.