Chapter 22
Shay
Students will be able to question everything they once believed to be true.
We drove back to Noah’s house in silence with Gennie conked out in the back seat.
He set his hand on my thigh before pulling out of the high school parking lot and kept it there, his fingers moving in the tiniest of ways during the twelve minutes it took to cross the bridge, climb Old Windmill Hill, and turn down the gravel lane leading to his house.
Those twelve minutes were a hot, breathless eternity where I was quite certain I was a teapot on the stove, this close to whistling.
His palm spanned the thick of my thigh while his fingers extended to the seam running up the inside of my leg.
He drew his fingertips over the ridge of that seam, tracing it back and forth, which had the very pleasant effect of turning my entire body to boiling water.
That my body continued to have a solid form was nothing short of shocking.
My head was the site of a hearty debate over whether I should spread my legs for him.
There wasn’t much room between my legs—no thigh gaps here—which meant that every time he examined that seam, the backs of his fingers blessed the inside of my other thigh with his attention.
Not that I was complaining. No complaints.
None whatsoever. Though I was wondering whether he meant for me to distill down to vapor right here in his truck.
In the end, I didn’t move. I wanted to shift and wiggle and rock up against those fingers but I stayed exactly where I was, even when the heat spiraling through me made my legs shake.
I didn’t look at him when it started. I stared straight ahead while I prayed for that hand to move a few inches higher.
Just a little more. I didn’t need much. Just a little closer.
But if I open my legs a bit wider…
It was a fine idea and it accomplished the secondary task of announcing Yes, I am interested in all of this.
Maybe that was too forward. Too brazen. The problem with me—one of them—was that I didn’t have much bedroom brazen.
I wasn’t exceptionally vocal. I didn’t reveal fantasies.
Sex was great but I didn’t demand much from my partners.
I didn’t tell them I needed more attention after they finished and I didn’t ask to change things up unless I was notably uncomfortable.
I didn’t spread my legs in invitation.
I wanted to though. I wanted to say, clear and unashamed, that I needed the pressure of his touch deeper, harder, higher. I was boiling over here. Scalding so hot I could feel the seconds tick by in pulses between my legs.
And that was when his thumb joined the game.
Until now, it had sat stationary on the center of my thigh while his fingers caused all the trouble. But then he swept his thumb from one side to the other, drawing a band across my leg. Whether he meant it this way or not, that soft line whispered everything from here on up is mine .
I blinked and I rolled my lips together.
I didn’t want to play this game anymore.
I wanted to fill the silence with my chatter and his murmurs and growls.
I wanted to distract us—mostly me—from the heavy pressure building in my core.
I wanted to turn the temperature down and walk this back to a place that wasn’t simmering simmering simmering , so close to boiling over.
I never wanted this game to end.
When he hooked a right onto Old Windmill, the gravity of that turn had those fingers digging deeper into my thigh.
At this point, after a silence that stretched out like a secret, I had to swallow the sigh-moan-squeak his touch twisted out of me.
That was the deal, we stayed quiet. Couldn’t risk breaking this moment with the coarse reality of words or heavy breathing.
Noah drove past Twin Tulip, not even slowing enough to question whether I was sure I wanted to go home with him.
He traveled up the hill, past the signs for Little Star Farms, past the rows upon rows of apple trees.
When we reached the driveway leading to his house, he cut a quick glance toward me.
It was the only indication—other than that hand of his—that he was aware of my presence beside him.
I would’ve given anything to know what he was thinking.
We rolled to a stop, the glow of the lights on the front porch washing the cab in brightness and casting his touch in sharp relief. Together, we stared at his hand where it rested against the dark denim, almost daring him to end the game by moving or speaking.
And he did. He ended the game when he caught my chin in his other hand, leaned over, and sealed his lips to mine.
He kissed me like he’d been doing it for years, for always.
Like he knew the terrain of my body and knew all of my tells too because he gave me his tongue the instant I wanted it, nipped my bottom lip when I needed something sharp, swept his thumb over my cheek before I could float out the window and off into the night sky.
He gave my thigh a rough squeeze, one that seemed to gather up all the heat and desire inside me and anchor it to that spot—which happened to be within throbbing distance of my clit.
He could tip me over and pour me out.
Noah dropped one more kiss to my lips and met my eyes. “I’m going to try to get Gen into bed without waking her up all the way. Take my keys. Open the door for me.”
“Okay,” I said, though it didn’t sound like my voice. It sounded like soapsuds floating away from the kitchen sink, empty and iridescent before they popped.
He thumbed through the key ring until he found the right one. He held it up for me, his brow arched as if he knew all about my simmering, my boiling, my kettle just waiting to whistle. As if he expected me to spread my legs, to grab his wrist and show him where I needed him.
No, that couldn’t be right.
Noah was sweet and polite. He’d never—no. He wouldn’t.
Then again, the other night in the pantry wasn’t the textbook definition of polite.
“Go on,” he said, jerking his chin toward the house.
I took the keys and reached for the door handle. He didn’t release my thigh. A beat passed before I glanced down at his hand and then up, finding his eyes. “You’ll have to let me go.”
He swallowed. “I’d rather not.”
I shot a glimpse over my shoulder at Gennie’s sleeping form. “But some privacy would be nice, no?”
Slowly, he nodded. “It would be very nice.”
He rocked his palm against my leg before sliding it down to my knee and closing it into a fist on the center console.
I didn’t move. After living entire lifetimes in the minutes it took us to get here, I needed a breath before I could rely on these legs to carry me across the driveway and up several steps.
Once I was ready, I did my best to climb out of the truck without falling on my ass. It was simple enough, though with the compounding factors of the uneven gravel and the starlit darkness—plus the painful clench of my inner muscles—I held on to the door handle until I found my balance.
I made it up the steps and unlocked the door while Noah gathered Gennie, her head pillowed on his shoulders and her arms loosely ringed around his neck.
He carried her inside, one arm tucked under her bottom and the other holding her to his chest, and it struck me that Noah learned how to care for this girl within the past year .
If I didn’t know any different, I’d assume he was her father and he’d adored her since the moment she’d arrived.
He glanced at me as he moved toward the stairs. “Stay right there,” he whispered.
I stared at his ass as he went and I could still feel his hand on my leg. I could measure the distance between the tip of his pinkie and the apex of my thighs from memory. For a second, I let myself dip under the surface of this heat and let it soak into my skin.
For the first time in too long, I felt all the way alive. I wasn’t dried out. I wasn’t a husk. I wasn’t agonizing over all the things I’d lost. I wasn’t planning to scream out my rage when the ball dropped at midnight on New Year’s Eve rather than kiss someone.
I felt good and present and aroused, and I couldn’t put my finger on the last time that’d happened with another person.
I wasn’t interested in digging too deep into the last time I’d been with the ex.
It was buried in the past and I wanted to keep it there though I knew without much consideration that I hadn’t responded this way with him.
I wasn’t sure I’d ever responded this way.
Rather than spend a single minute contemplating that, I assigned myself the task of straightening up Noah’s kitchen.
Fold some dish towels, wash a pair of cups in the sink, wipe a smudge off the refrigerator door.
That was how I ended up opening the fridge—what if there were smudges on the edge of the door?
—and organizing everything I found inside.
I wouldn’t say it was dis organized though I turned all the jam jars so that their labels faced forward and lined up the juice boxes in two even rows.
“Hungry?”
I jumped back at the sound of Noah’s voice, low and rough enough to scrape down my spine and start a tremor behind my belly button.
“I’m organizing,” I said.
“You’re doing what ?”
“Organizing,” I repeated. I gestured to the open refrigerator doors. “Your juice boxes were chaotic and the jam was turned in twenty different directions.”
He glanced into the fridge. “I can’t have more than fifteen jars of jam in there.”
“Like I said.”
Nodding, he pushed the doors shut and moved toward me. Instinctively, I took a step back and then another until I hit the countertop. He followed, his eyes darker than I’d ever seen them. He dropped his hands to my waist and locked them tight there. “Can I touch you?”
A breathy laugh slipped out of me. “You’ve been touching me all night.”