Chapter Thirty-One
After the heated discussion at the open house, Wanda let me know she and Rita were ushering my mom and my grandma home so I could wrap up the event and spend a couple of hours with Noah.
“I suggest you take ’em, hon. You’ve worked nonstop these past two weeks, so you owe it to us, as well as yourself.” She softened her bossiness with a wink, a trick I was going to have to learn and use. “I’ve got Diane and Mt. Saint Helens, don’t you worry.”
At the beginning of my time at Lakeview, I would’ve still played martyr, rushing home to help as fast as I could.
Tired, mentally exhausted, and in desperate need of getting my hands and lips on Noah, I didn’t bother claiming that wasn’t necessary—I wouldn’t want to lie to one of my grandmas, after all.
Noah slows the truck emblazoned with his company name, glancing over his shoulder before turning down a winding lane, and my pulse beats wildly as I drink him in.
When interest in the property grew bigger than Jan could handle—although it was mostly her desire to chat and find future friends combined with her utter disregard for sticking to a schedule—he jumped in and played tour guide to keep things moving.
Same when we were tidying up, me with my awkward finger brace, and him with those impressive arm muscles as I thanked him profusely for his help.
After I locked up, he told me he could take me out, drop me at my grandmother’s, or he could take me home.
“I’ve been out long enough,” I said with a flirty twirl of my hair. “Your place sounds perfect.”
He helped me into his truck, careful to smooth my skirt before closing the door. Too eager to be next to him, I scooted across the bench seat as he rounded the hood, my heart soaring higher once he fired up the engine and draped his arm around me.
But now we’re pulling up to his house, and my intrusive thoughts filter through and make me start second-guessing everything, from the looming situation with my mom to getting in deeper with Noah, and I never even checked with Arlene. “Is your grandma going to be upset about this?”
Noah’s low laugh vibrates across my skin, and he squeezes me tighter, until my side is plastered against his, only one booty cheek on the seat. “For finding me so devilishly handsome? No.”
“For other reasons?” I ask, passing up a perfectly good opportunity to mock his generous ego. “I never asked how she’d feel about us dating.”
Firm fingers coax my chin up, tipping my face to his. “As you’ve lectured me plenty of times, it’s nobody’s business. I think everyone was just surprised I came out on top—nobody more so than the doctor, from the looks of it.”
He’s so grunty about Carlos showing up, which shouldn’t leave me so giddy. “He wasn’t completely blindsided, although probably a little surprised. Not about the grandmas shoving us together—they’ve been doing that since I arrived. He’s a great guy and all, I just…”
Dang, I walked into that one, and this is why I plan out so much of what I say and do. I’m not even sure what Noah and I are, only that around him, my heart speaks louder than my anxieties.
“Fell for me instead,” he says so confidently, and it’s terrifyingly close to true.
How can he be so sure?
Perhaps it’s the way I’ve practically climbed in his lap.
If only our inconvenient attraction didn’t spring a dozen more concerns, all about that hazy, volatile bitch, the future. I’ve never not accomplished what I set out to do, and that’s return to Miami.
But there’s no denying I’m falling, like I tripped off a cliff I didn’t see the edge of until it was too late. I gnaw on my lower lip, afraid of speaking and not speaking what I’m feeling. I meet his steady gaze, laying myself bare as I whisper, “It sorta snuck up on me.”
“Not me. It smacked me in the face that night at the comedy club.” His smile spreads as he lowers his mouth to mine for the lightest brush of a kiss that leaves my lips begging for more.
“You’ve been about the only thing on my mind since.
Plants and Mia. Playing referee between my grandparents and wondering what Mia’s doing.
Mud and Mia, a combination I’m definitely interested in exploring further. ”
He holds me close for elongated seconds I wish to burrow inside of and live. With his arms around me, the warmth of his body seeping into mine, it feels like nothing can touch me. He has this mysterious way of sensing what I need, giving it to me so freely.
Rather than looking to me, he’d be the type to fix alongside me, tempting me to want things I gave up finding long ago—a partner, a best friend, a lover, my person.
“Ready?” he asks, dropping his arm from my shoulders to snag hold of my hand. The driver’s side door swings open with a light squeak of hinges, muggy air greeting us immediately.
I’m absolutely ready to get to the lover part with this rugged, ridiculously sexy man who keeps showing up for me.
So, giving myself a quick talking-to about not needing to know our entire story to live it, I nod, thinking how proud my grannies would be.
They’ve taught me a lot about regrets this summer, and according to the stats, people more often regretted the risks they didn’t take than those they did.
I’m due for a risk, especially one I get to choose for myself.
And before he’s even swept me inside to do deliciously wicked things to me, I already know that missing this night with Noah is something I’d regret forever.
I place my palm in Noah’s, accepting his help out of the truck and getting that fresh-from-the-rollercoaster feeling as the momentum sends me into his body.
Then my feet are off the ground, those impressive forearms of his banded around my middle as he gives me a spin.
Not that I’m complaining, but safety first, so I wind my legs around his waist.
He groans, and I lower my mouth to his for a kiss, more brazen in my affection than I’ve ever been.
With a firm hand planted on my ass and his mouth moving so enticingly against mine, he carries me up the sidewalk and to the front door.
He fumbles with the doorknob as I fumble with his shirt—it’s not easy to remove it while still in his arms and working against myself.
Giving up on yanking it off, I slip a hand beneath the thin fabric to get them on him, my pulse beating wilder and more uneven with each muscular dip and groove I find.
Air scented faintly of cedar and musk wraps around us as he steps inside, still carrying me like I weigh nothing. He kicks the front door closed behind us, the reverberations joining the throb of blood in my veins.
In the next instant, I’m pinned against a wall, his mouth on mine. My fingers drive into his hair, tugging at the ends as his erection notches perfectly against my center. Somehow, Noah manages to pour at least a week’s worth of longing into a kiss that takes me apart and puts me back together.
We come up for air, foreheads rested together, and I can feel how hard he is through the dampness of my panties, the promise of him inside me stealing every coherent thought.
Our eyes lock, any oxygen I sucked up gone in a whoosh at the passion inside his baby blues. So steady and intent, like he knows exactly what he wants and exactly how he plans to have it.
And it’s me.
Through my desirous haze, I begin to worry I’m getting heavy. “You could put me down, you know.”
“Mmm,” he hums. “The thing is, I’m enjoying having you right where you are.” He dips his head, gliding his tongue and the tip of his nose across my collarbone, and it’s a good thing he didn’t set me on my feet—I no longer have use of my limbs.
At my whimper, our sparking chemistry flares hotter, flipping some kind of urgency switch within him. Keeping me pinned in place with his hips, he hooks his fingers in the hem of my blouse, tugging up, up, up until the fabric’s somewhere behind us, forgotten on the floor.
“Damn, sugar,” he says, his voice quiet with awe, tingly heat following his gaze like a brand.
Then his whiskers are abrading my sensitive skin as he lavishes kisses on the column of my neck and swell of my breasts. Until both of us are panting, and I’m as deliriously dizzy as I can be, everything within me screaming more.
“You mentioned we don’t have a lot of time?” His fingers press into my ass cheeks on reflex, as if he’s not planning on letting me go.
“Yeah, but if you want to pause and give me the grand tour,” I tease, rolling my hips against the unyielding length of his arousal, “feel free.”
A groan spills from his lips and rumbles through me. “If you wanted to see my bedroom, Mia, all you have to do is ask.”
I place a palm on the side of his face and conjure the vixen unearthed through boudoir photography, finger-splint be damned. “Noah. Take me to bed already.”