Chapter 4 NOIA #2
“NO! I mean—he’s in my actual kitchen, Sash! Cooking bacon, handing me coffee and talking to me like he’s a real person. I tried to delete him, but it didn’t work! I rewrote his exit! I used the dramatic wind explosion and everything!”
She goes quiet.
“Sash?”
“You need a nap. Or drugs. Wait. Maybe not drugs. Did you start doing drugs?”
“Damn it, Sash. I swear to God, he’s real. He’s a living, breathing man standing in my kitchen. And he has abs—so many abs,” I groan. “Pretty sure his abs have abs.”
I stand from my crouch, lean against the island, letting my guard down for half a second.
Big mistake.
Reaching across the island, Ryder snatches the fucking phone right out of my hand and winks at me before he speaks.
“Hey, Sasha.” His voice is all sex and liquid silk. Jesus. “Quick question. Ever wonder what it would be like to talk to someone your best friend wrote into existence with an enemies-to-lovers trope?”
“WHAT THE SHIT?!” I hear Sasha shriek.
I dive over the counter like a female version of Jason Bourne, tackling him with all the force my robe-clad, chaos-fueled self can muster, crashing both of us against the fridge.
“Give. Me. My phone!” I growl, right before it drops with a clunk to the floor.
“Only if you say please,” he growls back, leaning in close, eyes bright with challenge.
“God! You’ve got to be the biggest asshole I’ve ever written.”
Grinning the biggest shit-eating grin I’ve ever seen, he spreads his arms wide. “Your doing, not mine.”
Snatching the phone off the floor, I scramble back across the tile like I’ve seen the devil himself, and put it back to my ear.
Sasha is laughing so hard I can barely understand her. “I told you the steam in your books was gonna bite you in the ass one of these days,” she gasps. “You better call your editor. Tell her you manifested a shirtless, sex fueled menace with perfect pecs and no off switch whatsoever.”
This bitch.
“I hate you so much right now.”
“And I love this for you. Bye-eee.”
After she hangs up on me, I drop the phone onto the counter.
When I turn around, Ryder’s gaze is zeroed in on me like I’m some kind of crazy puzzle he can’t figure out.
“What?” I snap.
Keeping my arms crossed, I do my best to keep my robe from falling open again. For some reason, every inanimate object I own is doing its best to betray me this morning. “Are you waiting for a standing ovation? Maybe a ‘World’s Sexiest Hallucination’ trophy?”
His eyes go from soft gray to full on storm before he pushes off the counter with lazy grace. With the easy confidence of a cat stalking its prey, he starts walking toward me.
My pulse picks up, skin tingling with heat under his steely gaze. I back up, heart thudding against my ribs, until the smooth kitchen wall meets my spine, halting any further retreat.
Stopping just a breath away, Ryder’s dark and stormy eyes trace every inch of my face. My lips, my throat—the spot where I know my robe is gaping open—again. I can almost feel it, like a fingertip sliding across my skin.
I can’t move. Can’t breathe.
My skin flushes and nerves dance in my veins as my entire body tightens in anticipation, waiting for him to pounce.
He leans in, brushing his lips along the shell of my ear, making me shiver so hard, I want to scream. Or come. Coming would be nice.
Shut. Up. Noia.
His voice is a low growl as he whispers, “You should really go take a shower.”
I blink and my heart drops.
“What?”
“Your hair is a rat’s nest, and you smell like booze and desperation.”
I gape at him, and he gives me a smarmy grin.
Shoving him in the chest, I stomp past him before I turn and flip him off. “You’re such dick, Ryder Blackwood!”
“Correction,” he calls after me. “I’m your dick.”
Turning on my heel, I run upstairs to my bathroom, slam the door and turn the shower on full blast.
The water is a little too hot, but I don’t care. I stand under the spray in an attempt to boil the memory of his smug face out of my brain.
“Yeah, well. You smell like a dark forest and every bad decision I’ve ever made,” I mutter-whine to myself, scrubbing shampoo into my scalp with way too much force. “And you’re acting like you own the place. Which you don’t. Because this is my house. My life. My story.”
I yank the conditioner bottle open with a vengeance.
“And you think you can just waltz in here, shirtless, self-righteous, and entirely too sexy for someone I created, and try throwing me off my game? Nope. Nuh-uh. Not gonna happen.”
Steam swirls around me as I slap a handful of conditioner into my hair, scowling at the wall of white subway tile.
“You’re not even that hot,” I lie to myself as the water beats against my back and my brain buzzes.
And then, mid-conditioner, it hits me.
My eyes widen, and I stop franticly running my hands through my wet hair. “Oh, my god.”
I have an idea. A brilliant, devious, chaos-fueled idea.
“If I can’t delete you,” I whisper, my voice full of malice. “Maybe I can distract you.”
A wicked grin curls at my lips.
Squeaky clean and fully alert, I wrap myself in a towel, and storm out of the bathroom full of pure, unadulterated spite.
Water drips from my hair and runs down my shoulders, leaving a trail of water on the floor in my wake.
Fuck it. I have a purpose, a goal, a loophole in the very laws of fictional physics.
If I can’t write Ryder Blackwood out of my world? I’ll write him into a corner.
A very erotic, tongue-filled corner.
Making a beeline for my desk, I open my laptop.
So he wants to play games? Fine. Let’s see how he likes kissing someone else.
Hands still damp from the shower, I crack my knuckles and type like my life depends on it.
Ryder stepped into the sunlit bookstore, eyes scanning the quiet corners of the shop until they landed on Lexi.
The barista-bookworm with legs for days and a mouth made for sucking his cock, turned, her eyes going wide when she spotted him. “You came back,” she breathed.
He took one step forward, then another, their chemistry igniting like sparks on gasoline. “I couldn’t stay away,” he said, voice low and rough.
And then he kissed her, slow and deep, devouring every inch of her mouth.
My lips twist into a satisfied smirk. Take that, Ryder Blackwood.
As soon as I hit SAVE, the air shifts and a static hum crawls across my skin much like the moment right before lightning strikes.
A floorboard creaks behind me.
No. Nope.
I spin in my chair and—
Mother fucker.
Leaning against the door jamb—still shirtless by the way—his arms are folded across his chiseled, tattooed chest, jaw twitching at his temple, eyes locked on my laptop. And his signature smirk? Gone.
His growl is low and dangerous. “Lexi? Really?”
My stomach drops somewhere between the keyboard and the entrance to hell.
“Oh,” I squeak. “Hey. Fancy seeing you here.”
“You wrote in Lexi?”
I lift my chin in defiance. “She’s a fully developed love interest with a mysterious past and great bone structure. She’s a sexy smart-ass, loves coffee, and—”
“You made me kiss her.”
“Well, yeah,” I snark, pushing a strand of damp hair away from my face. “You were getting a little too comfortable in my house. Figured you could use a distraction.”
Pushing off the door, he moves into the room, one slow, stalking step at a time.
“Let me get this straight,” he rumbles, voice full of danger and—god help me—sex. “You conjure me out of thin air—into a world where I don’t belong—and your first move is to pimp me out to some literary NPC with espresso breath?”
“I wasn’t pimping you out,” I snap. “I was creatively redirecting your attention.”
“To who?”
“Lexi!”
My heart jack hammers against my ribs as he keeps moving further into the room.
“To a woman who, technically, doesn’t even exist?”
“Well, technically you didn’t exist until I typed you into existence, so—”
He takes another step closer and I shrink back into my chair, heart racing as I glare up at him.
Then, to my shock, my towel slides open between my legs.
His eyes drop to my thighs. “Careful,” he murmur-growls. “Pretty sure that thing is hanging on by sheer willpower alone.”
My hands fly down to adjust the towel. “Eyes up, Casanova.”
“Not a chance. Believe me when I say, watching you try to outmaneuver me in your bath towel is the highlight of my strange new reality.”
I try to stand, but he’s so much faster.
Now towering over me, his hands land on the desk, caging me in. Heat radiates off his body, and I can smell the mix of sandalwood, leather, and midnight clinging to his skin.
Fuck me.
“You don’t get to control me like that.” His voice is quiet, edged with something primal. “Not anymore.”
I swallow, tilting my chin up to meet his eyes in defiance. “I’m a writer. It’s my job to control the narrative.”
“Once upon a time.” His gaze finds my mouth. “But I think something broke inside me when I showed up. I don’t want her, Noia.”
My breath catches.
“I want you.”
His words burn like a brand on my skin, searing through every nerve ending straight to my core. I’m surprised I don’t come just from the look in his eyes alone.
“I don’t—” But the words get stuck in my throat.
His face is so close, I can see the tiny flecks of blue in the gray of his irises.
My eyes track his tongue as it slowly drags across his full bottom lip. The tension between us tightens and coils like a live wire ready to blow into a million sparks.
Then he pushes away.
Just like that. No mind-blowing kiss. No heat-sparking climax. Just empty space and another smug-as-shit grin splitting across his handsome face.
“What the hell?” I gasp, breathless and flustered.
Reaching across me, he gently closes the laptop. “Try writing me into another woman’s mouth again,” he says softly. “And I’ll start rewriting the rules myself.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
His wink makes my clit pulse. “Guess you’ll have to wait and find out.”
And then he walks out of the room like he didn’t just steamroll my brain and body all at the same time.
I stare up at the ceiling and groan, “I’m so fucked.”