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She cleared her throat. The silence that followed was deafening.
“Why chemistry?” he suddenly asked, his voice low, raspy.
“Like physics, it’s at the basis of everything. And I’ve always liked watching how elements react to one another. You know, if they’ll blend well, repulse each other, or create an explosion. Explosions are fun.” She chuckled again. “I’ve loved it ever since they took us to the science museum in St. Paul in third grade.”
His gaze rested on her as he just nodded at her words slowly, as if he was taking them in.
They stood less than a foot apart, and she could see every line and edge of his face and smell a hint of his aftershave and detergent. She ensured her gaze didn’t drop lower than his chin because, whenever it did, all she could think of was the small gap between his shirt and his skin.
“Why politics?” she asked. Maybe if she stuck to short sentences …
“Like chemistry, it’s in everything. And I wanted to influence the important things from within.” A small lopsided scoff clouded and disappeared from his face. “Are you happy with your choice?”
“Yes. You?”
“They say that politics changes people more than people change politics.”
She stared at him, sensing, not for the first time, an underlying element in him that made her heart thrum in her ears. It wasn’t just her body. She felt as if her heart had been breached.
His ensuing silence and penetrating gaze compelled her to speak again, to revert to things she understood. “By the way, I use reverse spherification in baking, too. It exploits a chemical reaction between the calcium ions and the alginate, which is what you have here.” She pointed at the counter, happy to break eye contact. “Did you know it’s a polysaccharide found in the cell walls of brown algae? When you add calcium, its ions will cause the alginate molecules to cross-link with each other and form a gel. It’s … very useful and better than gelatin”
“That simple?” He had a little smirk on and a spark in his eyes that held hers unflinchingly.
She shrugged and swallowed. “Yes, if you mix it right, then you can use it for all sorts of things in the kitchen … I just explained it.”
“Not in English,” he said, his smirk widening.
Their gazes were glued to each other like alginate molecules. The amber color in his darkened.
She was sweltering. “I could try to simplify it. If you compare the reactivity of …” She faltered. Somehow, Jordan was closer, and her sight blurred. She could feel his breath on her as her own breath shallowed. “Sodium and … calcium—”
Her heart rate spiked out of control when his breath intermixed with hers.
“The gelation process—”
His lips closed on hers, shutting her up mid-sentence.
God, his taste. She opened her mouth to his almost immediately, her body succumbing to her yearning to taste him, a yearning she had tried to defy. In damn vain.
And that was all he needed to back her up against the pantry door that was right there, pinning her between it and his strong body, slipping his fingers into her hair so he could meld her mouth further to his and deepen the kiss.
His tongue in her mouth, and the feel of his body against hers, sent clenches that were almost painful down her body, evaporating every logic, igniting and setting her on fire.
Her arms rose, as if by themselves, her palms landing on and trekking his hard biceps and wide shoulders over his shirt until she linked them around his neck. Sandwiched between Jordan’s hard body and the surface behind her, Hope’s head lulled back, and she heard a little moan escape her throat.
She devoured him shamelessly, her body humming, as if an electric wire ran through her.
Jordan slid his hands down her neck and shoulders, over the sides of her breasts, and down to her waist, gripping and pressing her harder against him. She felt him lingering on the thick waistband of the shaper that was felt through the fabric of her dress as he smoothed one hand across her waist. He then traced his hand down over her hips, along the shaper, as if searching where it ended, while raking his other hand under the hem of her dress, hiking it up her bare leg, his touch making her knees gel, until his fingers met the shaper at her mid-thigh.
Jordan tore his mouth from hers and pulled his head back a little. With less than an inch between their heaving mouths, he smirked and rasped, “Is that a protective armor?” His eyes were hazy, but a flame burned behind the dark honey.
“No,” she managed to croak.
He then slid his mouth along her jaw to her ear. “I didn’t think so,” he whispered, causing her eyes to flutter shut from the sheer force of the arousal that his raspy voice sent through every nerve ending in her body.
Jordan kissed the hollow below her ear then down the column of her neck and clavicle, his hand under her dress trailing in the opposite direction—up—until it cupped her shaper-covered ass, pressing her against him. He trekked his other hand over the underside of her breasts, his large palm splaying along her ribcage, while he trailed his lips over the cleavage of her dress where the pushup bra kept her breasts where they used to be two pregnancies ago.
Hope raked her hands up his neck then weaved them into his hair, pressing his mouth further to her. She bit her bottom lip, stifling the moan that hovered there.
