Page 53 of Sins of Innocence

Kieran steps past me, his big body making my ovaries wake up faster than my brain. Everything inside me zings into full awareness and there go my traitorous nipples. If I look down, I have no doubt I'll see the hard tips pressing against the thin fabric of my sleep tee.

But keeping my focus on his face, I hope Kieran will do the same and won't notice the way my body goes into instant hussy mode around him.

"Take those into the kitchen," I whisper, indicating the travel tray with four drinks balanced on top of a flat bakery box.

There's another drink carrier, this one with a handle and two drinks, dangling from his right hand.

If I were trying to carry all that, I'd end up with coffee all over the floor. I'd manage to save the pastry box though. Coffee might be the elixir of life, but pastries are pastries. Yum!

Despite my plan, I follow Kieran into the kitchen after I shut and lock the door. He's going to need help setting everything down, right?

Only, he deftly places the cup carrier dangling from his right hand onto the table before placing the pastry box down beside it and lifting the other drinks off the top and setting them on the counter.

Huh. "I don't think I could do that without spilling at least one drink," I admit, my voice a little above the whisper I used in the living room.

The walls in these apartments aren't bad and unless you're standing right outside the swinging door to the kitchen, you can't hear what's going on inside it. Mom and I always move into the kitchen for a cuppa after the girls go to bed if we want to talk about something without little ears hearing.

Kieran hands me a large cardboard cup. The heat only goes up two-thirds of the way and when I take off the lid, I see it's full to the brim with foam.

They put a medium coffee in a large cup to make room for my extra foam. I know whose idea that was and it wasn't the barista. I order extra foam all the time and they just put less latte in my cup to make room for it.

With a happy little moan, I take a sip of the vanilla latte, getting a perfect mouthful of foam with it.

"Did you check the peephole before you opened the door?" Kieran asks.

My eyes fly open and I take in dark ones narrowed and fixed on me.

Uh…"What?" Wow, talk about an intelligent response. Not.

"Your steps reached the door less than a second before you started unlocking it."

"How do you know that?" How could he know that? "I'm wearing slipper socks."

"The vibration of the floor."

Vibration of the floor? "Are you calling me fat?" I demand.

I mean. Okay, plus sized girl over here, but I don't make the floor vibrate with my steps!

"Joy makes the floor vibrate too."

"Because she jumps and skips more than she walks," I mutter, not at all appeased.

A herd of elephants has nothing on my daughter when she's feeling exuberant.

"I'm trained to be aware of my surroundings."

"I didn't know you could be trained to have the ears of a bat," I say drolly. "I thought that was more along the lines of getting bit by a radioactive spider."

"Wouldn't it be a bat?" he deadpans.

My own smile surprises me. "Touché."

"I didn't hear you. I felt you."

You'd like him to feel you all right, my inner hussy claims, triggering a wave of heat and clenching low in my belly.

I don't bother denying it. I'd know I was lying.