Jinxed by Inez Kelley Page B

one last hard kiss, she laid her head on his shoulder and pressed tight to him. He knew she felt how hard he was growing. Her hips were planted snugly against him.
    “We need to talk about last night.” Though soft and quiet, her words held awesome power and his breath froze. That didn’t sound good.
    “Okay. Let’s talk.”
    She pulled back to look directly into his face and bit her lip. Her fathomless brown eyes, so much like smooth southern whiskey, stared into his soul. A voracious thirst consumed him and he craved the blissful oblivion of her love. Please believe, Frannie . Her fingers walked up his chest, crossing his pounding heart, where a few drops of drying blood rested. She looked so serious.
    Uh-oh.
    “Things kind of got out of hand. I—we need to slow down a bit.”
    Jinx mentally heard an old-fashioned record slam to a stop, skriiiitch, its needle grating across the grooves. Slow down. She wanted to slow down. As in slow down. As in slow. Down.
    “Slow,” he repeated as his balls sank in stunned rejection. He was so damned hot for her he could pop and she wanted to slow down?
    Before he could say anything more, his heart stood up and smacked him in the head—both of them. If she needed slow, then slow is what she would get. He had the rest of his life to make love to her. The prolonged delay before the first time would make it much sweeter when he finally delved into her.
    “Slow is good. We can go as slow as you want.” He hoped he sounded convincing. Although he didn’t want to push her too fast, it didn’t mean he wasn’t disappointed. He foresaw a lot of frigid showers in his future. Her beaming smile was almost enough to make him feel better. Almost but not quite. “I’m glad you used the mailbox key. How long have you been waiting?”
    Glancing at the microwave clock, Frannie calculated. “Oh, about three hours now.”
    “Three hours? Damn, Frannie, when I asked you to come over early I didn’t mean the asscrack of dawn. I must have just missed you. I left a bit after seven.”
    “Yeah, I wondered where you had gotten to. I figured maybe you had another girlfriend and stayed over at her place.”
    He started to protest but the stiffness she had to force into her lips to hide her smile must have given her teasing away. His brows almost met in the middle from an exaggerated frown but he could not maintain the pretense. One long finger tapped her on the nose as he laughed. “Of course not. I went to the gym early and then had a few errands to run. I thought I’d be back sooner but traffic’s a bitch.”
    “Hmm, ’tis the season, you know,” Frannie murmured absently, dismayed how pleased she was he hadn’t been with another woman. The thought hadn’t even occurred to her until she used it to bait him. She had no rights to him, told herself she didn’t want them. Still, his denial had sent waves of joy through her. Her relief should have scared her. It might have if she took enough time to examine it. Instead, she changed the topic.
    “So what do we have to do for this shindig of yours?”
    “Nothing. Everything I needed to do, I did last night.” He looked sheepishly at her. “The housekeeper was here yesterday, so there wasn’t much and I had a lot of energy to burn off when I came home.”
    Frannie blushed and avoided his eyes. Energy was one way to put it. Flaming hormones from hell was another.
    Beneath half-lowered lids, she watched him and secretly smiled. Phase one of Operation Bedding Jinx had been initiated. By telling him she needed to cool things down, she had sent his mind reeling. She could almost taste his disappointment. But it opened the door for all those innocent accidental flirtations she had planned for later. He would never see it coming.
     
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    “You’re crazy.”
    “What? It’s cereal.”
    “Jinx, these are my groceries. I don’t like Cap’n Crunch.” Jaw in a stubborn thrust, Frannie grabbed the cereal box and handed it to him.
    He put it