These Boots Were Made for Stomping (14 page)

He tried to glare at her, but he couldn’t see well enough yet. Meanwhile, facts began lining up in his brain. Except for the
bizarre fight this afternoon, she’d acted exactly to type. His inner Neanderthal noticed that her nipples were still tight,
her skin flushed, and her lips had that moist, dome look. His brain noticed that she was anxious, peering at his face and
muttering something about ice.

“What?” he asked.

“Back up. Let me get you some ice.”

Did she really think he had blood anywhere but in his cock? Or that he could walk upright? Apparently so, be cause she shoved
at his shoulders. He spun sideways and promptly ran into her stupid daisies. The vase toppled and shattered on her linoleum
floor.

“Shit!” she snapped. “This day just gets better and better.”

“Sorry,” he mumbled. “I’ll clean it up.” He needed something mundane and physical to do. Pushing around the corner, he heard
the crunch of glass shards beneath his shoes. She was halfway to the freezer—presumably to get him ice—when he noticed that
she was barefoot. At some point, she’d obviously stripped out of her ruined panty hose.

“Don’t move!” he snapped. “There’s glass everywhere!”

She sighed and pointed to the inch that separated the refrigerator from the counter. A broom and a Swiffer rested neatly in
the crack. “Just grab me that—”

“Don’t move!” he repeated more forcefully. “I’ll get your shoes. Then I’ll sweep.” He was starting to move more easily now,
though his mood had rapidly gone south. He grabbed her sensible black shoes—the kind that little girls wore—and watched as
she slipped them onto her feet. Thirty seconds later, he cursed as he realized he’d been staring at her dainty feet disappear
into the silly Chinese shoes. They were velvet black with a bright red Chinese character embroidered on the top, and her pretty
toes with their bright pink nail polish had slipped so easily inside.

And then—rather abruptly—everything got really strange.

CHAPTER FOUR

Micki tottered uncertainly as she slipped on her shoes. She so wanted to be a stronger woman, a capable woman. Someone who
was respected by her students, who exuded grace and skill. Someone who could clean up a kitchen, kick butt against gang members
and then still have the skills—and attitude—to jump this hunky cop without double-thinking everything. She sighed. She was
only herself, and yet—

She was herself jumping off the refrigerator, grabbing the broom and swirling the glass into a tight little pile. She kicked
the dustpan with her foot, flipping it into the air, then caught it one-handed. Swooping down, she pushed all the glass into
the pan, then did an elegant ballet leap across the room. The glass shards dropped into the wastebasket, then she tossed/spun
the broom back to its place in the inch between refrigerator and counter. Last—but definitely not least—she gave Joe a flirty
little wink before sashaying back to the bedroom. She didn’t stop until she was stretched out on the bed, her body arrayed
in a sexy, sideways lounge. She didn’t come back to herself until she felt her own hand at her blouse, making sure it was
open to her navel and showed everything. At that point she simply froze in place, one hand on her stomach, while Joe slowly
entered her bedroom.

She raised her gaze to meet his. He looked startled, aroused, and extremely wary as he stopped just inside the doorway.

“I’m possessed,” she whispered. “By the spirit of Jet Li and . . . and . . .” She looked down at her open shirt. “And Vampira.”

“Don’t people have to be dead before they can possess you?” he asked.

“Fine!” she snapped. “I’m possessed by some kung fu Mae West!” She abruptly closed her blouse.

He frowned. “That’s your explanation? You’re possessed?”

She blinked, startled and ashamed by the tears returning to her eyes. “Yeah, I guess it is. You got a better idea?” She looked
at him, praying he did. “And don’t go with secret undercover fed or anything,” she added. “You know as well as I do that’s
not true.”

He frowned as he moved slowly into the room. “I like it a lot better than possessed.” He settled slowly onto the base of her
bed. “You’ve never done
any
martial arts before?”

“Not even kick-boxing.”

“Huh.” That was it, the sum total of his response. And Micki was hard-pressed not to lose it completely. He must have seen
how close to the edge she was, because he abruptly scooted closer on the bed and said, “Okay, okay. I believe you. Not a fed.”

“Feds too tough to cry?” she taunted, for really no reason at all.

“Let’s just say you don’t give off the cop vibe.” He touched her arm. The stroke was tentative, but she felt it all the way
through her spine. “So, let’s go through this step by step. Have you ever . . . um . . .”

“Run across treetops before? Pivot-turned off my refrigerator? No.”

He nodded. “When did this start?”

“The fight this afternoon.”

“What about when I came into your classroom? You said you fell, but you managed to get Damian’s face. Was that a—”

“I kicked him. A solid round house to the face. I thought it was a lucky accident at the time, but . . .”

“Now you think you might have gone all ninja on him.”

She nodded.

“So, what changed between yesterday and today?”

She threw up her hands. “Nothing! Nothing at all. Same bagel and coffee this morning, same drive to school, same everything.”
Then her gaze dropped to her overstuffed wastepaper basket. An empty shoebox teetered half in, half out. “Well, new shoes,
but that doesn’t count.”

“No, that doesn’t count,” he agreed. “Unless you think the shoes are possessed.”

He said it as a joke, but then again she didn’t think he was taking any of this very seriously. She, on the other hand, knew
for a fact that she did not have secret kung fu skills of her own. Ergo,
something
was possessed with superpowers. Shoes made as much sense as anything else.

She scrambled off the bed to pull out the empty shoe-box. “I ordered them from some Web site. Here it is: www.hiheelia.com.
It promises shoes that will give and get a girl exactly what she needs.”

“You don’t seriously think it’s the shoes, do you?” He folded his arms across his chest and his tone was uber-ironic.

Resolutely ignoring him, Micki turned her attention to her shoes. They were black, Chinese-style Mary Janes. Not that exciting.
And yet . . . She toed them off, watching them drop to the floor with a slight
pfft
—as if power evaporated off her skin the minute she slipped them off. Then again, that might have been her overactive imagination.

Whatever. She squared her shoulders. “Punch me.”

“What?”

“Punch me. Right in the face. My plan is to block it, then . . . uh . . . slam my other arm straight for your nose, and then
knee you in—”

“We don’t need to go that far, do we?” His tone continued to be mocking, but he stood up from the bed. Apparently, he intended
to humor her.

“Okay, no groin kicks. But I swear to you, I’ll fight back for all I’m worth.”

He nodded and threw the punch. It was a slow punch, obviously half hearted. She met it with her palm extended—
smack
—but she couldn’t stop his forward momentum, and she certainly wasn’t braced for how very big he was. He drove her shoulder
backward to bang painfully against the wall. As for the cool arm-block move—she’d forgotten to do it. Within a half second,
she was pressed flat against the wall, Joe’s large hot body tight against her. She couldn’t even raise her knee. His legs
trapped hers quite nicely.

She swallowed and looked in his eyes. His honey-brown irises were dark, and his breath heated her lips.

“This wasn’t what I planned,” she said, her voice ten times huskier than she’d intended.

He arched a brow. “You sure?”

She nodded, though only by a fraction of an inch. She didn’t dare move or she’d be kissing him. Hell, her lips were tingling
from the desire, but she wasn’t going to go there. Because she wasn’t Mae West and she wasn’t that bold. No matter how much
she liked his weight against her.

“Ease off,” she said, pushing uselessly against the solid wall of his chest. “Let me put on the shoes.” She was able to stretch
the toes of her left foot to drag one shoe closer. A couple more seconds, and she would be able to slip it on.

Meanwhile, Joe wasn’t moving. If anything, he was dipping his face closer. “This doesn’t work, you know, unless you really
fight. Unless you’re really in danger. You could be faking—
umph!
”

With one shoe on, she suddenly discovered a zillion ways to escape. Whereas before he had been an unmoving wall of muscle,
now he was a man with vulnerabilities. She let one hand slip down, and she abruptly dug a single, pointy finger into his side.
He squirmed, resisting mightily, but it gave her the inch she needed to wiggle away. She simply slipped down, rolled her hips
around him—managing to tease him with her breasts in a strangely erotic move—and then elbowed his back hard enough to slam
him into the wall. Then she whipped around, leaned into his back, and pressed her groin hard against his behind.

“One shoe on, Joey, and I’m more than a match for you.” Her voice was taunting and frankly sexual. She’d never been so overt
in her life, but she suddenly liked it. Or she did until he shoved backward.

He’d caught her off guard and, worse, her balance was on her bare foot. Apparently, her bare foot didn’t have the same skill
as the one with the magic shoe. She slipped and fell backward. Magic foot still managed to kick out and nail him in the thigh,
but there wasn’t enough force in the move and she dropped to the floor.

He spun and began stalking forward, his eyes dark with intent, but also with an electric kind of hunger. He was aroused and
willing to fight for domination. So was she. And yet, the thoughts were so unlike her, she knew it wasn’t her. “It’s the shoes!”
she cried. “Joe! Put one on. You’ll see! It’s the shoe!”

He halted, looking down at her covered left foot. Then his gaze slipped to the abandoned right shoe. “It won’t fit me.”

“Maybe if you hold it. Put it on your hand.”

He arched a brow at her, but she simply echoed the look right back at him. “I can feel the difference,” she said with total
honesty. “My left foot has balance and power. My right . . .” She waved at her other foot. “It’s just . . . normal.” She twisted
a bit on her bottom so that her feet squared up with her nightstand. She kicked out with her bare foot. It connected awkwardly
with the old oak leg, then slid sideways off it, scraping the ball of her foot in the process. “Wow, that hurt,” she groused.

“Well, of course—”

Her other foot shot out. The outside ridge of shoe and foot snapped the oak leg clean in two. She hadn’t even been thinking
about kicking, and
wham,
the nightstand was broken. “It’s the shoe!”

He frowned at her, obviously unconvinced. But then he shrugged and picked up the black Mary Jane. He turned it over and over,
inspecting it from all sides. It really was a simple design. Rubber sole. Black velvet. The Chinese character embroidered
on top was done in a rich bright red. She wore “kindness” on her left foot. He was slipping “love” onto his right hand. And
yes, it looked really silly, but her heart kinda melted when he looked at her, a shoe on his hand.

“Well?” She straightened to stand before him.

“Well, what? It’s a shoe. On my hand.”

“You don’t feel any different?”

He shrugged. “I feel stupid. Why? Do you feel different with them on?”

She concentrated on her feet. A little bit of energy seemed to tingle up her left leg, but she thought it was because the
shoe fit really well. “Good shoes always give me a bit of a lift.”

He started to roll his eyes but froze at her grimace.

“Yeah, I’m a girl. I like shoes,” she said.

“So hit me,
girl,
” he taunted, spreading his hands, one shoe-clad, wide in the air. “Hit me like you mean it.”

Wham
. She did. She didn’t even think about it, and
bam,
her arm was flying out toward his face. He blocked it with his shoed hand. Then they were kung fu fighting just like in the
movies. It was just arms at the moment: Punch, block, double punch, double block, jab. It was too fast for her to follow even
as she was doing it. She saw his eyes widen in shock, and yet neither of them stopped. It was as if they couldn’t.

Then she cut under his punch, spinning to grab hold of his upper arm and throw him across the room. He countered by wrapping
his arm around her belly—but that was a critical mistake. It knocked the shoe off his hand. Meanwhile, she was too committed
to the throw to stop. She bent and catapulted him to her bed, but with his arm wrapped around her belly, she flew through
the air right along with him. They ended up flipping over, landing with a thud, Joe on his back, her on top.

But without the shoe, he didn’t have the dexterity she did. Plus, he might have been a bit winded from her full weight dropping
on his admittedly wide and muscular chest. She let her mind dwell on that—his large, studly body beneath her—because otherwise
she’d be thinking about her next move, and that was certainly the way to disaster. The magic only seemed to work if she let
it take its own course.

So, she concentrated on how she’d love to get Joe nicely naked beneath her as her body flipped around to land hard on his
hips. Then she leaned down to pin his arms, but he obviously wasn’t completely vulnerable—even without the magic shoe on his
hand. He muscled her over onto her back. She might have gained super ninja powers, but she couldn’t defy the laws of physics.
He had at least fifty pounds on her and she couldn’t stop their momentum.

But she could wriggle beneath him. And she did have amazing flexibility and abdominal strength as she kicked out at the back
of his head. He reared back but didn’t let go. She used his backward momentum to pull herself upright and neatly flip him
over. Except, he didn’t have the flexibility to land on his back with his legs under him. She was sure she heard his knee
snap—well, pop at least—and she immediately slid to the side, off him.

“Are you all right?” she gasped.

He was straightening, slowly, and so she reached out, gently supporting him as he came back up to his knees. Then he looked
at her, his eyes dark, his breath fast.

“That is the coolest thing ever!” He sounded like an eight-year-old boy. He leaned over and grabbed the shoe, popping it back
onto his hand. “Let’s go again.”

She grinned. “Don’t you think your knee has had enough?”

He frowned at his leg, then gingerly maneuvered off the bed and tested his knee. He slowly lunged forward, then again faster.
Deeper. Twisting. “It hasn’t felt this good in years!”

Micki bit her lip. “But what about when the shoe comes off?”

He paused a moment, slowly straightening to stand in front of her. “I don’t care. God, you don’t know what it’s like to be
suddenly whole again! To be strong and . . .” He shook his head. “I don’t care. This is too cool!” Then he frowned. “What
about the neighbors? We’re going to get noisy.”

Yesterday, she would have worried, but today she had magical shoes that let her live out her bold and brassy fantasy with
her perfect man. She grinned. “Let them suffer. Tonight, it’s my turn to play.”

He matched her grin. “And I do have some pull with the authorities. Professional courtesy between officers.” Then he lunged
at her. She hadn’t been prepared, but that didn’t seem to matter. She leapt backward and he crashed on the bed. But he arched
his back and flipped his feet over himself in a move that he probably could never, ever have completed normally without major
surgery. But he did it, and she was so stunned that she slowed to stare.

Was this really possible? Apparently so, because he was once again facing her, a grin making him look so much younger. “Ready?”

His joy was infectious. And exciting. She could see his pants were tented, and had a moment’s double take at his size. The
shoes couldn’t possibly be . . .