Chapter Twenty-Six #2
His chuckle and light pinch of my thigh send my pulse on a high-speed race.
My stomach lifts as we careen around the pond, the golf cart headed in the opposite direction I expected.
I cling to his arm, wrapping as much of me around him as I can as we drive through the droopy branches of a weeping willow.
A few yards shy of the trunk, Noah flips our vehicle around, pointing us so we’re staring out at the pond and the soft glow of the solar lights. Leafy green curtains sway in the breeze, semi-obscuring our view and leaving us partially hidden as well.
As the noise from the engine fades, nature sounds filter through.
Birds, frogs, and crickets are getting noisy about their mating calls.
I can’t exactly blame them, as everything inside me screams longing and desire, too.
“What you’ve done with this space, Noah, it’s beautiful. How long have you been at it?”
He twists to face me fully, his knees caging mine. “Jan zoomed up to me when I was in the middle of trimming rosebushes a couple of Saturdays ago, and suddenly I’m building side-by-side zen and community gardens, which I gotta say, don’t seem like they’d go well together.”
I laugh. “Dude, she does that. Whenever I hear the motor of her scooter, I steel myself for all sorts of wild scenarios, and yet I’m never prepared.”
We both snicker at that.
“I thought I was getting better at drawing boundaries.” I sigh and melt against him. “Turns out, I just wasn’t around any manipulators over the age of sixty.”
His huff of laughter shakes his broad shoulders, and I get a contact high, suddenly sixteen again. “You’re not kidding. I earned my reputation in this city as the guy who says no, end of sentence. But then my grandparents split up, and somehow, I’ve become their go-between and errand boy.”
We’re holding hands again, and this time he initiated, snatching it off my lap and toying with my fingers.
I focus on the euphoric drag and the building heat, both beneath my skin and radiating outward. My mission tonight is to live in the present, and Noah Drayton certainly looks like a gift I’d like to unwrap.
“You never contacted me about that date.” All my willpower to remain in the here and now has been in vain.
With the words out in the air, leaving my chest achy and raw, I will him to confirm whether it was the project, if he’d lost interest until I was convenient again, or if I’d misread pretty obvious signals.
“I should’ve. Jan mentioned you wanted the gardens finished by the open house, so I…” He rakes his fingers through his hair, leaving it adorably disheveled as his eyes lock on mine. “I will. I just wanted you to have what you needed first.”
My heart flip-flops in my chest, and I say, “Thank you for that,” in spite of Jan ascribing deadlines I hadn’t given.
Although, for the record, by the open house would be my preference for everything.
At last check, occupancy rates were at 76 percent, very much improved, but far enough to go that it put additional pressure on these last few weeks. “You keep showing up.”
One corner of his mouth lifts in his signature half smile. “How else am I supposed to keep track of what you’re up to?”
I cluck my tongue. “Don’t you mean our grandparents?”
“No,” he answers without missing a beat. “Lately, my focus has definitely been on you.”
“Even before the red lipstick and curly hair?”
He groans as his gaze roves over me, the dilating of his pupils swallowing up most of the blue. “It’s more about the mouth and everything you say with it.”
Noah drives his long fingers into my hair, lifting it off my neck and grazing his nose across the sensitive skin as he takes a long inhale.
The low noise he makes in the back of his throat robs me of oxygen, his voice a sexy grumble that turns my insides molten.
“That determined gleam in your eye that means you’re about to let me have it.
” His lips skim the fluttering pulse point where my neck meets my jaw.
“And just when I think I can’t take it anymore, you go and fucking smile or laugh and I… ”
Twinkle lights reflect in the dark pools of his eyes and, using his thumbs, he tilts my face to his. “I come undone.”
The unfettered desire in his features threatens to do the same to me, and rather than panic and throw up a wall of awkwardness neither one of us can break through, I lean into the confidence I’ve been rebuilding and lick my lips.
Even better, it’s easier to pull off the come-hither move than it’s ever been.
Thanks to Sophia springing the photo shoot news on me yesterday, I read dozens of reviews from women who raved their photography sessions left them empowered and more in touch with their sensual side, but I figured they were from women like her, who were comfortable in the boudoir already.
“Hmm. They were right about the confidence boost,” I mutter, and Noah’s brow crinkles in response, so I speak aloud the inside thoughts that didn’t stay put. “It’s why I’m so made up—I got talked into one of those boudoir photography sessions, and I’ve never felt so pretty before.”
“But you’re gorgeous.” Noah states it as a fact, no wiggle room.
“I don’t always feel that way.” A nervous laugh titters out, my discomfort with taking compliments making it impossible to graciously accept them. “Strike that, I never feel this way.”
“That doesn’t make any sense to me.” The grooves between his eyebrows deepen as he continues staring at me, suggesting he’s genuinely perplexed. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I was livid when I charged into your seminar.”
“Gee, why ever would I take that the wrong wa—”
Noah places a finger to my lips, cutting off the rest, and gently says, “I wasn’t finished.”
I cross my arms with an exaggerated harrumph, so the biddies’ dramatics are obviously wearing off on me.
He leans a fraction of an inch closer, and my heart flitters like a hummingbird all hopped-up on nectar. “And as I stood in the back of the gym seething,” he says, “all I could think was, ‘why does she have to be so hot?’”
“Well, it’s Florida, so—”
“Nope, nice try, though.” His heated breath stirs the hair at my temples, goosebumps erupting at the enticing contrast of soft lips and scruff against the lobe of my ear. “Every exchange since, I’ve thought it again and again. Why does she have to be so fucking hot?”
An ache pulses to life between my thighs, leaving me squirmingly aware of the diminutive amount of silk and lace to my thong.
I turn my head, my lips rasping his whiskered cheek as I whisper my bold line into his skin. “I’m still wearing the lingerie from the photoshoot.”
Noah goes completely still, save the steely fingers that dig into my hip.
I wait for the bashfulness to hit but instead find a level of do-not-give-a-fuckedness that both intrigues and worries me.
But then Noah’s mouth claims mine in a heated kiss, the swipe of his tongue rendering me entirely incapable of thought, even before he commands with his lips still against mine, “Show me.”