Kiss Across Chaos (Kiss Across Time #10) - Tracy Cooper-Posey Page 0,27

for coffee in Paris, first?” he said.

Temptation tore at her. “I would kill for a cup of Bertrand’s coffee.” She hitched her backpack over her shoulder. “But I’m already twitchy about leaving the house for as long as I have.”

“I can take you back to the moment after you left,” Aran said, rolling the sleeves of his shirt back to his elbows. He had strong wrists and the muscle in his forearms matched what she had seen of him on the beach.

“I know that intellectually,” Jesse said, “but my gut just wants to see the house and make sure it didn’t burn down while my back was turned.”

“Arlington it is, then,” Aran said. He came toward her, his arms raising.

Jesse caught her breath and it had nothing to do with the imminent jump, even though jumping through time and space was for her still a thing of marvel, while Aran and his sisters treated it like…a tool.

He pulled her up against him and almost at the same moment, he jumped. Yet just for a heartbeat or two before the jump stole her senses, she felt his body against her. Hard. Long. Male.

Then she was blinking and trying to wake up. She’d heard Taylor talk about emerging from a jump being like waking, too. There was always a second or two of disorientation, while she sorted out where she was. Time and her place in it.

It was the dining room. The table was beside them. And Jesse was still standing with her body against Aran’s.

She looked up, blinking.

His black eyes watched her. “Steady, there,” he murmured. “See? Right back to your desk.”

His arms were still loosely around her. He never did let go until he knew she was properly on her feet. She could feel the heat of him through his thin shirt, for her arms were around his neck, the way she always linked them.

So why did it feel different now?

Why was he not stepping away from her?

She drew in a breath that shuddered.

Who kissed who? Did it matter? Although in her heart, she knew it was she who swayed up to press her lips against his. But she thought…hoped…that he bent to meet her mouth with his.

Then she forgot the petty worry and let the magic of the kiss steal her thoughts and disperse the cold that had tried to eat into her the moment they had arrived here. She heard her pack hit the floor. Had it fallen? Had she dropped it?

Then she let the thought go. All thought became inarticulate. Sensory.

When Aran raised his head, breaking the kiss, she was trembling. How long had it been since she’d been kissed like that?

No one ever kissed you like that, Captain Hall! The tiny voice was bodiless. Breathless.

“You kiss just like you do everything else,” Aran murmured.

“I’m sorry, that was—”

“I’m not,” he growled. He pulled her back into his arms and kissed her again.

He held her head—there was no mistaking who was kissing who this time. His tongue pressed against her lips, slid inside and tasted her. She sighed into his mouth.

This time when they separated, Jesse pulled herself out of his arms and almost staggered over to the table. She leaned against the back of the tall dining chair, breathless and shaking.

Aran’s hand rested on the back of her shoulder. “Don’t go anywhere.”

She looked over her shoulder. He was gone.

Jesse fumbled with the chair, pulled it out and dropped into it, her hands clasped together between her knees and tried to command her breath to march steadily.

She still hadn’t properly recovered when Aran reappeared. He wore the rumpled jacket now, and he carried two of Bertrand’s coffee cups in his hands. He put one in front of Jesse. “You look like you need it,” he told her.

She reached for it and was dismayed to see her hand was shaking. Too late now—if she pulled her hand back, that would be even more of a declaration. She gripped the cup, not daring to look at him.

“Jesse…”

“It hasn’t been long enough,” she said quickly.

“It’s been four years.”

She looked up at him, startled. “I mean…Kyle.”

Aran’s eyes grew slightly larger. Then he frowned. “Ah. Kyle.” He put his coffee on the table and pulled out his phone. “Seven o’clock.”

“Don’t you just know that?”

He looked up. “Know what?”

“What the time is?”

He put his phone away. “Local time, measured by clocks cutting time up into man-made chunks? No. I know where I am in relationship to all other times and places, though. That’s how