I want to Kiss You

Aurora POV;

My sudden intake of breath made him hesitate, but only for a second. His other hand came up to my softly rounded chin and he tilted it up, just a fraction.

” he whispered as his mouth hovered “I want to kiss you as much as you want me to.”

“Re…really?” I choked.

He smiled gently. “Really.”

His lips teased over my full mouth, nibbling my upper lip while he tasted it with a lazy stroke of his tongue. I jumped and shivered. The contact was completely out of my experience. I’d

dated a few boys, but I didn’t seem to appeal to any of them physically. This was different. I wished I knew what to do so that he wouldn’t stop.

He lifted his head and looked into my rapt, expectant eyes. I was breathing like a distance runner. My breasts were shaking under the whip of my pulse.

" I thought you were experienced with the way you responded at your place, but it seemed I was wrong"

His thumb moved to my lower lip and tugged it down gently as his head bent again.

“We have to start somewhere,” he breathed as his mouth opened against my full, soft lips.

I shivered. My hands went to his arms, my fingers digging in.

He was muscular. He didn’t look too muscular in his suits, but I could feel the strength at this range. I moaned a whisper of sound that drew his head up.

His eyes met mine, and there was no teasing in them now. They were intent, darker, hungry.

My fingers lifted to his cheek, hesitantly.

“Don’t…stop,” I pleaded in a soft, shaky whisper.

A muscle in his jaw tensed. He bent again, I could hear the thumping of his heart racing.

“Aurora ” he whispered.

This time the kiss wasn’t teasing, tender, or brief. He ground his mouth into my soft lips. I moaned again, and this time my hands met behind his neck and dug in. His mouth grew demanding.

I moaned again inside his mouth, but this one wasn’t passionate.

His head jerked back. I reached down and grabbed my ankle. Just as Yow drew back, hissing.

“Yow!” Michael exclaimed, moving around the chair to shoo the cat away while he knelt and examined my ankle. It was bleeding.

“I’m sorry! I wouldn’t have had this happen for the world!” he said clearly concerned

“I must have stepped on her tail, poor thing,” I faltered. It was exciting to kiss Michael Angelox but it was equally exciting to have him at my feet, concerned for me.

“You were kissing me,” he corrected. “They’re jealous of any attention I pay to other people.”

“This has…happened before?” I asked miserably

"Mee sank her teeth into Cy Parks one day when he was having coffee with me in the kitchen.”

“I see,” she replied with a smug

He gave her a wicked grin. “I wasn’t kissing him.”

I burst out laughing

"I didn't say anything"

"But your eyes did" he replied

I burst out laughing again.

I caught myself thinking, how awkwardly soothing it was. I never thought I would ever be laughing so freely with him.

He stood up, pulling back my chair. He tugged me to my feet and before I could ask what he was doing he suddenly swung me up into his arms. I gasped and clutched at his shoulders.

"What are you doing?" I asked with a shaky voice

"I have to clean that and put antiseptic ointment on it,”

"I wasn't amputated, I can still walk"

"I can't let you walk like that, it would be painful. Besides you will bleed more and stain the floor"

"That was a joke" He quickly added

"I know" I replied

He raised an eyebrow rakishly. “Now it’s my ankles that will be in danger," he said as he turned and carried me down the hall toward the bedrooms.

He readjusted me in his arm

“I’m too heavy!” I protested.

“You’re not,” he assured me. He looked down at me in his arms.

He seems several inches taller. It was a delightful close-up. I enjoyed kissing him, I hope he enjoyed it and would love to do it again, but this wasn’t the time.

He put me down on the vanity in the huge, blue-patterned tile bathroom. There was a whirlpool bath and an enormous space that held a commode, vanity, chair, and linen closet, as well as a large medicine chest.

He fumbled in the chest for what he needed, tugged a washcloth out of a drawer, and proceeded to clean and bandage the wound.

Yow peered into the bathroom, her blue eyes huge in her triangle shaped face.

“No tuna for you tonight, young lady,” Michael told her firmly.

She flattened her ears and hissed at me.

“And none tomorrow, either,” he added curtly

Yow turned her back and flounced out. Mee, in a conciliatory tone, meowed at the door and walked in, watching the byplay curiously but without much antagonism.

“Beautiful girl,” I mused, lowering my fingers for the cat to sniff.

Mee sniffed them, rubbed her face against them, and then wrapped her lean body around Violet’s legs.

“You can have tuna,” Michael told the cat.

The purring grew louder. I stroked the cat, but her eyes and her heart were on Blake’s

bent head as he put a sticky bandage over the scratch.

“It should be fine,” he said.

“Of course it will be,” I assured him, smiling down as he finished.

“Thanks.”

“I’m sorry,” he said again as he gathered up the first aid supplies and put them away. “Yow’s spoiled.”

“I don't mind, I love cats,” I said, still stroking Mee. “I’d have loved to have some if Mama wasn’t allergic.”

“I don’t know what I’d do without mine. Although there are times when I’m tempted to try,” he added, with a glowering look toward the door where Yow had reappeared and was hissing again.

“You live alone,” I said. “It’s natural that they’d resent strangers.”

He bent down and drew me gently to my feet. “You’re no stranger,” he said huskily as his eyes searched hers. “I don’t think you ever were.”

I felt such elation that I could hardly get my breath. Just weeks ago, I saw him as my mortal enemy. Then, suddenly, we were almost intimate. It was a shock. It was…wonderful.

“Your eyes can’t hide anything,” he murmured, bending toward me

I glanced worriedly at my ankles, and he laughed.

He picked me up again, shifting me in his arms. “Feel safer?” he murmured, staring at my mouth.

“Much,” I agreed, and my arms tightened boldly around his neck.

With a long sigh, he bent his head and kissed me, very tenderly. His teeth nibbled at my lower lip until my mouth opened. He took immediate advantage of the opportunity, and I felt my whole body go hot as he dragged me closer, so that my full breasts rubbed against his muscular chest.

He groaned, and the kiss grew hotter, longer, more passionate. His arms contracted hungrily.

I gave him back the kiss with more enthusiasm than expertise, but he didn’t seem to mind. I sighed under the hard crush of his mouth and sank into dreams. It was sweeter than I had ever dared hope it might be.

I felt as if my whole body was shattering with pleasure.

His head lifted. He turned it, listening. That hadn’t been my imagination.

Something shattered loudly.

“Yow!” he growled.

He put me down and rushed back down the hall ahead of me, but I followed closely. We made it into the dining room just in time to see Yow feasting on my piece of cake, on the floor, in the ruins of the saucer it had been placed in.

“Yow!” he bit off

The cat jumped back and hissed at me. For good measure, she hissed at him, too, and ran quickly out of the room.

Mee, seeing an opening, rubbed against Michael's legs while she eyed the cake on the floor.

Michael picked up the saucer pieces. While he was putting them into the trash, Mee grabbed up a piece of cake and trotted into the

kitchen with it.

“That cat,” he was muttering.

I was chuckling, happier than I’d been in years, despite the cat’s antagonism. It was a rare look at Michael’s private life, at the man he was when he wasn’t working. It almost felt like I've known his whole life now. I liked what I saw. His affection for the cats was obvious, even through his frustration with Yow.

“They’re very different, aren’t they?” I asked while he took the lion’s share of the cake away from a frustrated Mee and put it in the trash, too.

“They’re maddening from time to time,” he admitted. “But I suppose they’d taste terrible, even if I do have infrequent visions of serving them up in a casserole.”

“You wouldn’t dare!” I exclaimed, laughing.

He shrugged. “Well, not sober,” he confessed.

I grinned at him, my whole face radiant with the sudden, new relationship that was building between us.