so far in the pool, it was going to be fantastic. We fell into a kiss as soon as our lips were no longer laughing and smiling, and this was the kind of kiss we hadn’t shared yet. Because this one was filled with so much lust and longing that I knew it wouldn’t be able to stay just a kiss for much longer. And it didn’t. His lips left mine and soon they were traveling down my collar bones and my breasts and my stomach, and that’s when it hit me.
“Wait!” I put my hand on the back of Noah’s head.
He stopped what he was doing and crawled his body back up over mine. I looked at him and swallowed, hard. I stared into his blue eyes, and I wasn’t sure I knew how to say this to him.
“Uh . . .” I started and then looked away.
Noah sat up. “What?” He reached down and touched my cheek with his fingertips.
I lifted myself up onto my elbows and fixed my eyes to a spot on the wall, unable to make eye contact any longer.
“Tell me,” he urged, taking my chin gently in his hands and tilting my face towards him. I kept my eyes down for a while, and then slowly lifted them back up to meet the blueness of his. The first color I had seen after my accident in the elevator. I pursed my lips together tightly. I didn’t really want the words out. I knew they needed to come out, but . . .
“I’m not sure if I want to have . . . sex yet,” I heard myself say. The expression on Noah’s face didn’t change at all.
“I mean, I do. Don’t get me wrong. I really do, but I also don’t. I know that probably sounds ridiculous, and it’s hard to explain. The first time I had sex I just did it because everyone else had done it and I didn’t even feel that way about the person, not really. And the second time, I did it because I thought it was something I was supposed to do after six dates. And I know this feels like the perfect moment in the romance novel where the characters are meant to have sex, like when Amanda Stone and Sheik Khalifa finally made love in the Bedouin tent and everything was perfect, with the candles and the roses. And I know everything is perfect now—well, except for the monkeys—but it’s perfect and you’re perfect and that means it’s supposed to happen, but . . .” I took a deep breath, I needed one. I had been talking so fast that all the air in my lungs was almost depleted. I was just about to take another breath to continue when Noah stopped me.
“You don’t need to say another word, Zoe.” Noah brought his face all the way up to mine. “Not. Another. Word.”
“You’re not . . .” I couldn’t quite bring myself to say it.
“No, I’m not,” he said. “How can I be? Look where I am. I’m on a date with a gorgeous woman, in the most beautiful hotel room in the world, and we have a National Geographic Documentary happening right outside our window.” He smiled, and I felt a sense of relief wash over me immediately. I could see he meant this. Every. Single. Word.
“You sure?” I looked at him and felt myself falling even more. Slipping down a waterslide, falling.
“Besides, we have to move onto season two of Game of Thrones.”
“I thought you would have finished it by now.”
“No. I didn’t watch anymore.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “I was waiting to watch it with you.”
I raised myself higher on my elbows. “Really?” I reached out and put my hand on his cheek. “Did you miss me?”
“Yes. I did. I missed you when you were gone.”
I could relate to that feeling. “I missed me when I was gone too,” I said. Because for those few days that I was away from Noah, I had been missing.
“Besides, it wouldn’t have been fun to watch it without you,” Noah said, laying his hand over mine.
“I don’t know why, but that’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.” I thought Noah would smile at this, but he didn’t.
“Clearly, the bar has been set very low then. Because I think I could say a hundred things to you that are much, much nicer than that.”