Chosen by Christine Pope (free children's ebooks pdf txt) 📕

mind and body and soul, all those parts that had been aching for him for days…for weeks…they didn’t care so much. It was enough that here, in this moment, Jace was kissing me, and I was kissing him back, letting him know I’d wanted this, too, more than he could ever know. Every nerve and cell in my body seemed to be responding, pulsing with heat. Had it ever felt like this before? I didn’t know, because Jace kissing me seemed to have wiped away my memories of every other kiss I’d ever experienced.

A hissing sound interrupted us, though, and Jace let go of me abruptly. “The water’s boiling,” he said.

That’s not the only thing boiling, I thought, but I didn’t answer, only lunged for the pot holder so I could lift the lid on the stock pot and then turn down the heat to a more reasonable level. Those mundane tasks helped me gather myself a bit, although I could still feel the blood thrumming and throbbing in my veins. That wasn’t the only thing throbbing, either. I wouldn’t say I was the kind of person who got turned on easily — as my asshole ex-boyfriend had complained on more than one occasion — but right then I was so aroused that Jace probably could have laid me out flat on the kitchen counter and taken me there with absolutely no complaints.

He’d backed away slightly, though, seemed content to watch as I dumped some fettucini into the boiling water and then turned the sausages over once again. It was only after I gave the vodka sauce a quick stir that he said, “You didn’t…mind that, did you?”

“Mind it?” I asked. We now stood facing one another, my back to the stove. He looked calm enough, but I thought I could detect a certain hard, bright glint in his eyes that I’d never seen before. Arousal? I couldn’t tell.

I realized I didn’t know him well enough to guess. Yes, we’d been living under the same roof for almost three weeks now, but we’d always been careful around one another, making sure we didn’t cross any lines, didn’t blunder through any barriers.

Well, those barriers were pretty well knocked down now.

“I didn’t — I didn’t want you to think I was forcing you or anything.”

Now he appeared almost worried, the gleam gone from his eyes, leaving them sober and dark, so dark I couldn’t really tell where the pupils ended and the irises began.

Forcing me? That was a joke. I’d wanted that kiss, but had worried that my growing feelings for him weren’t reciprocated.

“I mean, after what happened to you in Albuquerque — ”

Time to disabuse him of that notion. I set the spoon down on the little stone rest we used to keep our cooking utensils off the counter, then went over and took his hands in mine, right before I went on my tiptoes and kissed him on the lips. A fast kiss, not like the breath-stealing, knee-knocking one we’d shared a few moments earlier, but still enough that he should understand that I liked kissing him very much indeed.

“This isn’t Albuquerque,” I told him. “And you’re nothing like…either of them.” To be fair, I didn’t even know for sure that the man who’d wanted to steal the Cherokee had the same designs on me that Chris Bowman did, but I’d gotten the impression his intentions weren’t exactly benign. “And I’ve wanted…this…for a long time. I just wasn’t sure it was what you wanted.”

The tense set of his shoulders seemed to relax slightly, and he even grinned. “Oh, I wanted it, too. But I didn’t want to push you. I could tell you’d been through a lot.”

“We both have,” I said simply. No need to go into it any more than that. He’d lost everything, and I’d lost everything. Through some miracle, though, we’d both come to this place, come to the one spot in the world where we’d be safe to grow into knowing one another, caring for one another.

And again I couldn’t help wondering if this was somehow the doing of my guardian angel, the voice. Had he given Jace the same prompting he’d given me?

Eyes flickering as he seemed to study my face, Jace asked, “What is it?”

Did I dare mention the voice? We’d just opened up so much to each other; the last thing I wanted was for him to think I was crazy, or at least slightly unbalanced by everything I’d experienced since the Heat stole everything I loved. But I didn’t want to keep it a secret from him, either.

“Did you….” I began, then stopped. He was still holding my hands, fingers strong and somehow comforting. I never wanted him to let go, although I knew he’d have to at some point, just to let me get back to making dinner. But that could wait another minute or two. His gaze was still resting on my face, expectant, wondering what I was trying to ask. And there was simply no good way to ask.

“Did you ever hear anything?” I blurted. “Afterward, I mean. Like a voice guiding you, telling you where you should go. Telling you should come here.”

A long, long pause. At least he hadn’t let go of my hands, but I could see him weighing the question in his mind, trying to see if I was serious. “No, nothing like that,” he said at last. “Like I said, I came to Santa Fe because no one seemed to be left in Taos, and I had a friend here. The world’s longest shot, I know.” He hesitated, then asked, his tone soft, “Did you hear something like that?”

I wanted to deny it. But that would also seem like a denial of all the assistance the voice…guardian angel…whatever…had given me. “Yes,” I said. “It’s how I found this house. I would never have gotten out of Albuquerque alive if not for the voice.”

“‘The voice,’” he repeated. Nothing in the calm, even set of his features told me what he was thinking, and so I could only stand there in agony, wondering when he was going to let go and back away from me. Away from the crazy woman.

Somehow I managed to stand there, waiting.

“You’ve been blessed, I think,” Jace said at last. “Some guiding spirit looked down on you and knew you were worthy, that you needed to survive.”

Relief washed over me. So he didn’t think I was crazy. Then again, although I’d never much believed in such things, I guessed that his people thought differently. The dividing line between our world and the world of the spirits was definitely thinner for them.

“You really think that?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper. Up until that moment, I hadn’t realized how important it was that he believed me.

“Oh, yes,” he replied, pulling me closer to him, his lips finding mine. “So let’s make sure our survival matters.”