Beyond Daring. Kathleen O'Reilly

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      SHELDON’S APARTMENT WAS ON THE Upper West Side. Counting on the crosstown traffic, the trip would add an extra forty-five minutes to his Monday morning commute, but Jeff had no choice. It was time for a meeting of the minds, simple as she pretended hers to be. He hailed a cab and set her inside.

      Firm and in control. He could handle it.

      “New rules. No more nudity,” he said, sliding in beside her, keeping his voice low in case the cabbie had big ears. Then he sliced his hand across his throat, just in case she wasn’t grasping the simplicity of his request.

      Oh, she understood. She batted her eyelashes at him, a gesture designed to hide the Einsteinian workings of her brain. The simpleton act had never tricked Jeff, due to the fact that he’d used it once or twice himself.

      “What’s wrong with the purity of the human body? We’re only animals at heart, Jeff.”

      “Don’t get all Darwin on me, Sheldon. Keep the clothes on. Keep the box closed.”

      Her mouth snapped together in a tight line. “You think I’m a slut, don’t you? You don’t approve. Are you a virgin, Jeff?”

      He shot her a look. “You know I’m not. Don’t you?” he reminded her, because the absentee memory of the night had eaten at him over the last few weeks. He didn’t forget sex. Ever. Even in the deepest lapses of alcohol. Ever.

      And with the one woman who had kept his cock throbbing in painful agony for what seemed like forever?

      No way.

      “Why does it matter if I have some fun?” she asked, which on the surface was a perfectly logical, rational question. However, Sheldon was neither logical, nor rational.

      “I have a job to do, sweetheart. Your father is paying my firm large amounts of cash to keep you out of the papers. Nothing more. I’m going to do it, too.”

      She crossed her arms around her chest, not that he looked, and slumped back in the seat. “It always comes down to money, doesn’t it?”

      “Not always.”

      “Ha.”

      There was an edge in her voice, a pain that he’d never heard before. “What happened to you, Sheldon?”

      “I use whatever I can to fight whoever I need to,” she said, studying her nails.

      The car slid to a screeching halt, smack in front of her building. Jeff paid the cabbie and told him to wait, he wasn’t done with the lecture. He still had a good hour of diatribe left inside him.

      They walked to the awning of her building, mere inches separating them, but the huge chasm loomed like an eroding fault line in the earth, just waiting to be split asunder.

      “Why don’t you stop fighting?” he asked, rubbing a hand over tired eyes. Playing bad-cop chaperone was exhausting and completely unrewarding.

      She waved to her doorman, but stopped far enough away from the public eye. An unexpected moment of discretion. He was surprised. And pleased. “You want me. Why don’t you stop fighting it?”

      “I don’t want you.”

      “Lying, much?”

      “Keep the sex out of it.”

      Her eyes warmed, and then heated. “Kiss me, then. Just kiss me. No tongues, no bodies. Just two mouths touching.”

      He didn’t want to kiss her, but she had laid down the challenge, and he would look spineless if he didn’t comply.

      So he kissed her. No tongues. No bodies. Just two mouths touching. Her lips were soft and pliable, and so was the look in her eyes. There wasn’t the usual vacancy in her gaze. Shockingly, there was innocence there. Vulnerability. Qualities he couldn’t pin on Sheldon if he tried. But there they were. Staring him in the face.

      His first instinct was to run. He even turned to go.

      “You shouldn’t fight it,” she whispered.

      “Go inside.”

      She started to argue, but maybe she saw the pleading in his eyes, maybe she saw the battered animal that lurked inside him, maybe she was just tired. It didn’t matter, she smiled at the doorman, and blithely went on her way.

      And Jeff felt himself breathe again.

      He returned to the curb, only to find his cabbie had disappeared, probably hoping to find an even bigger sucker than Jeff.

      Even cabbies had their dreams.