Page 50 of The Angel and the Agent

She locked eyes with him. “One. How about you?”

“None. Yet,” he said, then he cradled her face in his hands and kissed her.

Chapter 17

The kiss had the potential to be explosive, but the monkeys began to chatter. Ethan and Amelia pulled apart to look up, and the monkeys quieted down. They reached for each other again, and the monkeys started to scream.

“These must be Africa’s famous chastity monkeys,” Ethan noted, and Amelia laughed.

“It’s probably for the best. It doesn’t seem like the most productive way to spend our afternoon.”

“If you think kissing is supposed to be productive, you’ve missed the point entirely. Kissing is about kissing.”

“Kissing is never about kissing,” she argued. “Kissing is a question. Is it going to lead somewhere? Is it going to end there? Am I connecting with this person? Is he connecting with me? Could I kiss this person every day for the rest of my life?”

“You have all that running through your head when you kiss someone?” he asked.

“Don’t you?” she asked

He snickered. “No. If I hear anything at all from my brain, it sounds like giddy laughter, or possibly someone chanting, ‘more, more, more, see how far you can take this.’”

“You’re trying to tell me you can kiss any random person without having feelings for her?” She curled her lip.

“Uh, yeah, duh,” he said.

“Gross.”

“Can I remind you that within the first fifteen minutes we met, you shoved me in a pantry and nearly kissed me unconscious?” he said.

“That was a blip. I told you I didn’t normally do things like that.”

“When you say not normally, how often have you done that?”

“Including with you?”

He nodded.

“Once. Stop grinning like that.”

“Or what? You’ll kiss me and make the monkeys scream?” he guessed.

“It might surprise you to know I have never lacked for male attention. I have never once had to pursue a man, they pursue me,” she huffed.

“If you think it’s supposed to make me feel less cocky that the woman every guy wants wants me, you clearly don’t understand men at all,” he said.

“You make me so mad sometimes,” she said.

“That’s passion, baby,” he said. He inched up her robe to rest his hand on her leg when a monkey took aim and threw a nut at his head. “Ouch. How do you have all the animals in Africa trained to protect your virtue, Snow White?”

“They’re not doing it on my orders. My mom must have gotten to them,” Amelia said. She rested her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes. They lapsed into silence a while. The quieter it became, the deeper his thoughts grew.

“Amelia,” he whispered after a while. He wouldn’t disturb her if she was asleep, but she answered promptly.

“Are you whispering because you’re afraid of the monkeys?”

“No. Maybe a little. I have to ask you something.”

“What?”

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