Kissing a fed

Some of the best chemistry occurs when characters have valid reasons to stay away from each other--but seem drawn together anyway.

In my novel, Trouble Under Venus, Randi has enrolled in an experimental time-travel program so she can go back to 1980 Miami and meet her father, who's been a Missing Person since she was 4. She's suspicious of Mitch, who arrived late for the time travel classes and she suspects he's undercover FBI hoping to shut down the program. One evening while he's out swimming laps, she goes snooping in his room, hoping to uncover the dirt on him, and finds a full report about her in his email. She's reading it when Mitch catches her there:

Might as well face my history and see what Mitch would soon know about me.

Criminal record, Miranda M. Reed.

1992: Trespassing to build an illegal—

With a rough jerk, my left arm was pinned behind my back, my right thrust tight into my chest. My mouthful of candy lodged in my throat. I hacked and struggled.

“You have the right to remain silent, a right I have no doubt you’ll forfeit.”

Mitch. If I didn’t know the voice, his hairless, chlorine-smelling arm would have been a dead give-away.

At last I got the peanuts swallowed and went lax in his arms. As soon as he loosened his hold, I bucked against him, pinching his belly with my scrunched left hand and trying to duck under his right arm.

“Hold still or I’ll pin you face down on the bed,” he growled.

After a few more spastic attempts at freeing myself, I stilled.

“I can scream loud enough to get security here,” I warned.

Mitch chuckled against my hair. “Go ahead, if you want me to press charges.”

“I didn’t take anything.”

“No, but trust me, you’ll be out of this program faster than you can say ‘breaking and entering’, if I turn you in.”

I couldn’t, absolutely, couldn’t get expelled from Sudo’s program. I thrashed against him and clutched what felt like the lower end of his six-pack.

“Dammit!” He shoved me face-down against the lumpy bedspread, pulling my right arm

behind me and linking it with the left. Wetness from his Speedo soaked into my shorts as he sat on my rear end. I lay pinned with my head turned to the side, catching my breath. My shirt scrunched way up my backside, and judging by the breeze, my shorts had crept down during the fracas. “Why the hell are you in here?”

“You’re not a volcanologist.”

He pushed against my hands. “Jesus!”

“You work for the government.”

“Volcanologists can work for the government too. Ever hear of the US Geological Service?”

“Yeah. That was the lamest story I ever heard of, you needing to go back to get ash samples from the rivers. As if thousands of scientists and meteorologists all over the country didn’t already do that in 1980! Please. It was not the Stone Age. You’re undercover doing something.”

“So tell me, Endee, what the clues told you?”

“It’s Randi, dork. Not Andi. And I never said you could call me by my nickname anyway.”

“Not Andee. En Dee. For Nancy Drew.”

“Oh.”

“Anyway, you call me Mitch.” His grip on my hands loosened as he pulled one of his free and used it to tug my shirt down and then my shorts up. “I wish you’d stayed out of this,” he said, sighing.

“What are you gonna do?”

His weight lifted off me. He rolled me over, then pinned my hands over my stomach and sat on my legs. Shaking his head, he looked from my hands to my face, then at my chest. Once again, he adjusted my top, tugging it down toward my shorts. When his hand grazed my bare tummy, I got butterflies. The laptop had gone quiet again and he must have heard my breath catch. His eyes met mine. Without the glasses hiding them, they were a deep green. To my eternal embarrassment, my nipples went hard, tickling against the knit eyelet fabric.

His turn for the rough sigh.

My question as to what he intended to do still hung in the air between us.

I knew what I wanted, what I’d wanted from him almost since the first time he’d spoken to me. That slick body of his pressing mine down into the mattress, his mouth—

His mouth descended toward mine. When his face was directly above me, he broke into a grin I could only describe as confident and boyish. A dimple appeared on his right cheek as he came lower. He let my hands go, leaned on his forearms on either side of my head, and his fingers brushed hair away from my face. He was still hot from his swim, the warmth radiating out from him to me.

His mouth was as smooth and firm as the rest of him. He tasted and smelled of pool as his tongue slipped between my lips, then teeth nibbled my upper lip. Sighing a sigh of contentment yet to be had, I opened my mouth to him, met his tongue with mine, arched my body up to meet his damp-suited area.

He groaned and then sat up. “We’re not wearing enough clothes to be doing this,” he said.

“Enough? Don’t you mean we’re wearing too much?” My body hummed with desire it hadn’t known in months, maybe in years. I indulged myself and rested my palms on his pecs, which instantly tightened under my touch.

He gave a wry smile and shook his head. “Let’s see here…” Still seated on me, he moved his gaze to the computer screen. “…the charges for trespassing and building an illegal rope bridge over the Colorado River in 92 were dropped.”

My hands dropped back to my chest. “Don’t tell me you’re going to ruin this moment by reading my criminal record?”

Everyone who emails me this weekend at piper.autumn@gmail.com will be entered in a drawing for one of my books (your choice which one, and there'll be 3 winners).

Autumn Piper

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