Chapter 17
You really are the alpha to my omega, aren’t you? —Noah Hardaway
“We may have a slight problem.”
I smile sweetly at Gabe from where I’m attempting to paint a sunset scene across one wall of the soon to be yoga-Pilates-Zumba studio. “Sorry, I’m not taking problems today. Please come back when you’ve got unicorns pooping rainbows and hundred dollar bills.”
He laughs out loud. “Thanks. I needed that.” But his brow is still furrowed. I drop my paint brush down into a tray and brush off my hands. “What’s going on?”
Gabe sighs. “The grant I resubmitted to the state got denied again. I’ve made four different corrections to this one, but they find something new wrong with it every single time I send it in. Can you take a look?”
“Sure, of course.” I follow Gabe through the center and into his office, doing my best to keep some quivering nerves at bay. These grants are important to the center, and it feels like a good sign for my employment here that Gabe’s asking for my help with them. I hope I can find a solution for him.
An hour later, though, I’ve got absolutely zero solutions. Only a heck of a lot of confusion. “This makes no sense,” I mutter to him as we both stare at the computer screen together. “You’ve got everything here the application asks for. What’s the denial letter say again?”
Gabe groans. “Something about our operating budget from last year. But I clearly say in the application that we haven’t opened yet.” He throws down the denial letter he’s holding in frustration. “Maybe I just need to let this go. Focus on the fundraisers completely.”
“Let what go?” Milo peeks into the office, Bear at his side. She lets out a yip when she sees me and darts across the floor, dragging her leash with her.
Gabe pats Bear’s head absently as she leans into my leg. “This state grant for the after-school programs,” he tells Milo. “It got sent back again. But neither of us can find anything that’s actually wrong with it.”
Milo frowns and crosses his arms, and I do my best to remind myself that I am at work and it is not professional to stare at the line of perfect skin between your co-worker’s hoodie and jeans, the one that appears when he shifts his arms just enough to raise up the hem of his shirt.
No, I should definitely not be thinking about that right now.
Unfortunately, I’ve been having a harder and harder time concentrating on anything since Milo dropped to his knees and put my entire cock in his mouth a few days ago.
I still can’t believe he saw me, all of me, like that.
And not only did he not laugh, or comment, or ask questions—no. Nope. He didn’t do any of that.
Instead, he called me beautiful.
Ever since that afternoon, I know he’s wanted to ask me more about that day, about my reactions, about what I was thinking when he lowered my pants for me.
Because Milo seems to notice every single part of me, somehow, and of course he would have noticed how nervous I was just before he took down my boxers and made me see stars.
But I’ve been putting him off every time he starts that conversation. I do want to tell him the truth. All of it. At some point. But for the last few days I’ve just been enjoying being with him in every way I want, without feeling weird or strange or nervous anytime he sees me naked.
Gabe leans back in his chair and rubs his temples. “Man, I don’t need this right now. We’ve got so much planning to do for the prom, and the gondola event, and there are still more inspections to get ready for, and—”
“Hey,” I interrupt. Because Gabe hired me for my social work background and expertise, and it seems like a good time for me to put that to use.
“Listen, don’t worry. Take care of the planning stuff.
Let me try going back to Montpelier.” I squint down at the application heading.
“To the Agency of Community Development. I’ll see if I can talk to someone who’s actually helpful. ”
Gabe frowns. “Are you sure?”
Am I? Absolutely not. I may have done some grant work during my externship, but I’ve definitely never gone to battle with a state agency over one. I open my mouth and will myself to say the words “I can do this.”
“I’ll go too,” Milo says easily. “Don’t worry, Gabe. We’ve got this.” He glances over and sends me a small wink. “Don’t we, Noah?”
And just like that, all the doubt sweeps from my system. It’s like Milo is the magic antidote to my greatest anxieties. Is that possible? Can another human being be a person’s anxiety antidote?
But there isn’t time to wonder about that now. Milo and I have a job to do. “Yes,” I say as I stand up. “We can do this.”
First, though, we have to get through the nearly two-hour drive.
“More construction?” Milo lets out a long groan and drops his head down onto the steering wheel. “How is I-89 always, always, always under construction?”
Bear, from her perch on the back seat, whines.
“Maybe we figure out a way to use the time?” I let my hand drift across the front seat of Milo’s SUV so that it rests over his knee.
He flashes me a crooked smile. “Getting awfully fresh all of a sudden, aren’t you, Chucks?”
I blush, of course. But I don’t pull back my hand. Because the truth is that touching Milo is like touching sunshine: impossible and perfect. Even when it’s just my skin against the rough fabric of his jeans, I relish the sensation of his body this close to mine.
“You’re a little minx, you know that?” he teases. “Don’t think I don’t see exactly what you’re doing, Noah Hardaway.”
“What’s that, Dr. Milo Warner?” I tease back.
He rolls his eyes. “Why, Noah Hardaway, I think you’re trying to seduce me.”
I frown. “Is that a line from something? Am I supposed to know that?”
“Oh, shit.” Milo throws back his head and laughs. “Like I don’t already feel a million years old around you.” He winces.
Shoot. It never occurred to me that our age difference might bother him that much.
Honestly, I don’t think about it an awful lot.
Milo and I fit together in so many different kinds of ways; sometimes it’s hard to remember that he was a teenager when I was born.
I frown. “Maybe,” I tell him. “Our ages are exactly what they were supposed to be when we met, even if they aren’t the same number. ”
Milo crooks an eyebrow at me. “Is traffic making you philosophical, Chucks?”
I laugh. “Maybe.”
He shakes his head and smiles slightly. “Okay, then. Settle in and prepare to entertain us with some big ideas, because I think we’ll be moving at about a mile an hour for a while here.”
Maybe spending an extra thirty-plus minutes on I-89 should bother me, but honestly?
It doesn’t. The sun’s out right now, casting light down on the mountainsides that are glowing with more and more pockets of color.
Sure, that conversation with Ezra, those flowers from the unknown sender, are hanging over me like a cloud that won’t quite let down its rain.
And yes, Milo and I may be about to do battle with a state agency, and I’ve been around politics long enough to know that battles with state agencies are about as much fun as having a cavity filled.
But I’m sitting next to a man who looked at me this week, all of me, and called me beautiful. A man who encourages me to walk behind him into crowded rooms and never thinks I’m weird for doing it. A man who stares at me like I've hung the moon every single time I make him a sandwich.
It’s hard to worry that much about a bouquet of flowers when Dr. Milo Warner is what you wake up to every morning.
Milo lays a hand across mine as he inches the car forward behind a giant pink Jeep. “Hey,” he says. “Can I ask you about something?”
“Sure.”
He purses his lips slightly and frowns. “The other day, when I went down on you in the kitchen?” Drat, just hearing him describe our morning together like that has all my nerves on high alert.
“I was wondering,” he goes on. “You seemed like maybe there was something you weren’t telling me that day, Chucks. ”
I drop my hand over the back seat to pat Bear’s head, and she pushes in against my palm. I do my best to draw some strength from her quiet comfort, and then I do something that feels very nearly impossible: I tell Milo the truth.
“The thing is that I usually don’t show people all of me like that. Not that part of myself anyway.”
He frowns and sends me a peripheral glance even as he’s driving. “Why, Chucks?”
I rub my fingers through Bear’s fur. “Because,” I finally say. “I’m not like other guys down there. I’m not like you. I’m, uh…”
I can practically see the moment when the lightbulb smashes headlong into his brain. “Noah, have you been stressing about the size of your dick?”
“Is ‘size of my dick’ the official medical term for my condition?” I ask wryly.
“Shit. Hang on. I need to concentrate on you for this conversation.”
Milo clicks on the turn signal, and a moment later he steers us off the freeway and into a Park-N-Ride. He shuts off the car and turns to look at me.
“What condition are you talking about? Noah, that cock of yours is fine. More than fine, actually. The way it fits perfectly into my hand?” He shudders slightly.
“The fact that you had enough trust in me to let me hold you like that… holy hell. Pretty sure I’ve never been that turned on in my damn life.
And I figured out how to hack porn sites when I was thirteen. ”
I burst out laughing. “You’re just saying this to make me feel better. Make me feel like less of a freak.”
He lifts my chin with two fingers and gently nudges my head upward until I’m looking directly at him.
“Noah, you’re not a freak.” I can see him hesitate, just for a moment.
“Listen,” he finally says. “You’re not the only one in this car who’s got something about them that some other people in the world would probably label as ‘freaky.’”
I wrinkle my nose. “Are you talking about dancing? Did kids make fun of you for that or something?”