ask, my voice barely audible. Wondering if this interest of his is going to disappear as fast as it's appeared.
"Since the first day."
"The first day?" I lean back with a doubtful frown. "When I brought reindeer cupcakes to the office and you made fun of me?"
"That exact day," he murmurs while pressing a soft kiss to the corner of my mouth. "But to be fair, it was the middle of June."
I shrug. It is fair, but they were reindeer cupcakes to celebrate his uncle’s last day and Nick's first day at the Reindeer Falls Toy Company, so it'd made sense to me.
"You're scowling," Nick says while simultaneously running his hand along my thigh. The thigh that's somehow found itself wrapped around his waist again. And we're no longer on the balcony, because Nick has somehow walked us backward a few steps to the alcove at the top of the stairs.
"I am not. I don't scowl. You scowl." I rub my chest against his and wind my fingers into the hair at his nape.
"It's not a scowl when it's directed at you. It's pent-up sexual frustration," he murmurs into my ear.
Oh.
Hmm.
"What are you doing?" I manage to ask when he's slipped his hand into my pants. I mean, I sort of get where he's going with this, but I have just enough sense of propriety left in me to wonder if we should change locations first. "Should we move this back to the hotel?"
"You can't wait that long."
Accurate. Still I manage to push the words "we're in a church" past my lips. But only just barely, because his fingers have slid low enough to part me while the tip of his middle finger brushes my clit with a gentle stroke.
"No one's around." He tugs the lobe of my ear between his lips as he murmurs into my ear. "Let me take care of you."
There's not a lot of speaking after that. It's mostly me breathing heavily as if I'm being fingered on the balcony of a church, because that is indeed what's happening.
"You've been driving me crazy since the day I got back to Reindeer Falls," Nick murmurs into my ear between erotic kisses that trail up and down my throat, pressing softly against my lips and running over my jaw.
Nick knows what he's doing with his fingers. He's focused and deliberate with each tap of his forefinger, each circle drawn, every slide downward to rim my opening. It's the most intense experience I've ever had with my clothes on, or off for that matter. He's gentle in a way that makes me take long deep breaths as sensation washes over me in waves. When he slips a single finger inside, my head drops back and I groan loud enough to echo.
"You're prickly and a little uptight."
"Am not," I deny. His thumb brushes my clit now that his finger is otherwise detained and this seems like a very unfair time to accuse me of being uptight. I'm the exact opposite of uptight. At least right at this moment.
"I'm into it," he says, his voice hot and gruff in my ear. I clench around his finger in a tiny needy spasm.
Okay. Maybe I am those things. "You're kind of a jerk," I point out.
"Maybe I am." He smiles against my neck. "But you're into it too." Then he covers my mouth with his so I don't have to respond. His tongue makes a slow sweep across my bottom lip and I shiver, not because I'm cold but because I'm so close to coming I might die from needing it. Because Nick knows exactly how to touch me, every movement precise and exacting. He adds a second finger to the first and pumps them into me, softly, stroking my inner walls with deft skill while his thumb brushes across my clit and his tongue wrangles with mine.
His fingers are coated with me, easing his manipulation of every sensitive nerve ending. And I know—even if I live to be one hundred I'll never experience anything quite like this again.
When he massages the exact right spot inside of me while pressing firmly on my clit with his thumb, I shatter. Because Nick is a master at eliciting my feelings. Annoyance, antagonism, indignation, passion, lust in one explosive bundle between my thighs.
I'm melted against him, one leg still on the ground but the entirety of my weight supported by Nick. My head is resting in the crook of his shoulder, my face resting against his chest