No one could ever accuse him of having a glib tongue. But at least it was an honest one. He threw himself on her mercy. “This isn’t coming out right.”
“Maybe it shouldn’t come out at all.” She yanked open the door to her vehicle. The sooner she got out of here, the better. She didn’t know what had come over her before, all but throwing herself at Kevin. Maybe she just liked exercising her feminine wiles, she didn’t know. All she knew was that she’d felt humiliated when he said he wasn’t going to kiss her. “Good night, Kevin.”
He caught her by the shoulders, turning her around to face him. “And maybe it should.”
Captured between his hands, she was standing very close to him. So close that he could feel her breath as it entered and left her body. So close that he found his thoughts rebelling against the perfect order he’d filed them in. Anticipation telegraphed itself along the nerves that networked through him.
He continued to stumble through his apology, wishing for all the world that just once, he could have been granted Jimmy’s smooth way with words. Jimmy was the operator in the family, not him. “If you’re angry because I didn’t kiss you—”
He’d pressed the wrong buttons. Or the right ones, depending on whose point of view was being observed. In any event, her blue eyes flashed at him: two tiny white-hot bolts of lightning aimed straight at his heart.
Furious, June yanked her shoulders free of his hold. “The hell I am. You think an awful lot of yourself, don’t you, Quintano?”
“No,” he told her quietly, his eyes never leaving hers, “I think a lot of you. A lot about you,” he admitted softly without meaning to.
The next thing he knew, his hands were back on her shoulders, holding her in place. Gently.
A second after that, he lowered his head and brushed his lips against hers.
Softly, wistfully. Achingly gentle.
All of her life, she’d tried to be tough. To be one of the guys, except with curves, although she’d played down the latter, hiding them beneath jeans and overalls because, other than on her own terms and fleetingly, the last thing she wanted was to enter this male-female game that always came at such high stakes.
Sure, her brother and sister seemed happy now, far happier than she’d ever seen her own mother. And her grandmother was never happier than when she was involved with a man.
But that wasn’t her way.
She wasn’t going to get tangled up in anything that had the capability of stripping her soul down to the last layer, of mortally wounding her so that she couldn’t recover, the way her mother hadn’t recovered after her father had left them.
The others thought she was too young to remember. But she remembered. Vividly remembered. The image of her mother, pale and wan, sitting by the window and staring vacant-eyed out at the lonely terrain, waiting for a man who never returned, waiting until the day she died, was firmly imprinted on her brain.
And it wasn’t going to happen to her.
Ever.
When she kissed a man, she kissed him on her own terms and then went on, free-spirited and unaffected. That had always been the case, without exception.
Except, that wasn’t happening now.
This wasn’t on her own terms and she wasn’t moving on at the moment of contact, wasn’t being disinterested or bored.
What she was being, was melted.
The very gentleness of the kiss was causing a huge core meltdown within her. So much so that she had to wrap her arms around Kevin’s neck and hold on for all she was worth before there was nothing left of her but a warm puddle pooling at his feet.
And when the kiss deepened, as neither of them had planned it would, it ensnared both of them even as they struggled to break free.
The woman tasted of desire and all that was forbidden, all that he’d denied himself these long years. All that he’d missed.
Without meaning to, he kissed her harder, longer, and felt himself falling down a winding abyss filled with every northern light that had ever been conceived.
And the path back to firm ground had disintegrated.
“He is kissing her!”
Excited, Yuri waved Ursula over to the window just as she’d completed her rounds, bidding Max and April goodbye.
“Come, Ursula, you are missing it.” He waved to Ursula again.
Enthused, Ursula elbowed her way through the crowd, moving far more swiftly and gracefully than women half her age. Her eyes were eager as she joined her current beau.
From his vantage point, Yuri had a clear view of the parking lot where June had left her vehicle. And where the young woman and Kevin were now standing, oblivious to the rest of the world.
The trim salt-and-pepper beard on Yuri’s cheeks spread widely as he pointed to the couple outside.
Ursula wiggled into the space right before him, then sighed.
“About time.” She nodded her approval. “Handsome devil.” Looking over her shoulder, Ursula slanted a glance at the man behind her. “Not as handsome as you, of course.”
“Of course,” he echoed, humor curving his generous mouth.
“But there’s a lot of potential there.” She turned away as the couple drew apart. “Hope they’ve both got the good sense to know that.”
“And if they do not?” He knew the answer to that. Hades’s postmistress was well-known for arranging people’s lives when things were moving too slowly for her liking. It only proved she cared.
One shoulder lifted in a half shrug. She knew what he was thinking.
“Nothing wrong in prodding a slow couple on their way.” She thought of her best triumph. “Like I did for April with my heart trouble.”
Yuri gave the love of his life a knowing look and chucked her under the chin fondly. “There are some things, Ninotchka, that even you cannot control. Although, those things are not many, I must agree.”
The indignation that might have been generated never materialized. Instead, her eyes crinkled into a pleased smile. “You do know how to turn a lady’s head.”
He laughed at the thought. “I do not want to turn your head. I want it just where it is.” He ran his forefinger over the outline of her mouth. “Within range of my lips. Home?”
“Home.” And then she looked out the window. “But let’s give them a couple of minutes.”
As always, he agreed. Yuri knew when he had a good thing going.
He had to come up for air.
The thought beat against Kevin’s brain even as reluctance to part from her flooded his veins. Air was not nearly as sweet, as heady, as kissing June’s lips.
But if he didn’t get some soon, he was in danger of having his knees buckle out from under him, and that would be an embarrassment he wasn’t sure he could live down. He had a feeling Hades wasn’t a place that let things die quietly. Movie theater or not, entertainment was in scarce supply here.
Steady, June, steady. She drew her head back as she felt him do the same. If she didn’t know better, she would have said they were having another earthquake. The ground felt as if it was shimmying beneath her feet.
But he wasn’t moving, so the earthquake had to be an internal one.
Hers.