Noah definitely was in a hurry. He even asked me about how committed I was to the idea of driving the speed limit. “I’m against tickets, so I’m practically married to it,” I told him.
“I could pay the fine,” he said and I wanted to laugh, but he was kneading the back of my neck with his long, clever fingers and his touch was turning me into a pool of jelly. We weren’t going to break the law; I was going to get us into an accident.
It seemed to take forever to get back to his house, but when we arrived, everything happened very quickly. In a matter of minutes, Noah had paid Joe and sent him on his way, put the food away, and grabbed dinner for the dogs. While I stood in the kitchen and watched him. Like his touch had numbed my mind and made it so that I wasn’t thinking clearly and couldn’t pitch in and help.
He took off his bomber jacket and hung it up on a hook.
Then he came over and said, “Let me help you with your coat.” He turned me around and slid it off slowly, and it fell to the floor. Then he pushed aside my hair with one hand and pressed his lips to the back of my neck.
It was like being held against a live electrical wire—sparks popped all along my skin. It felt incredible.
“Oh, wow” was all I could manage.
“This is pretty good for me, too.” He murmured the words near my hairline and those sparks turned into currents, snaking along my nerve endings. I closed my eyes against the onslaught of sensation from him running his lips across that sensitive skin.
“I can, uh, I can see why people pay you to be the romantic lead in movies. You’re very, very good at this.”
I felt his smile against my neck. “You’re not even getting my best stuff.”
“Someday, I will.” And whether that was a promise to him or to my misfunctioning brain, I didn’t know.
Thinking of him in the movies prompted me to ask him something I’d been wondering about. “You said once that you could be anyone I wanted when you kissed me. What did you mean?”
“I meant that I could be, like, aggressive.” One of his hands went to my hip and pulled me straight back against him, and I gasped at the contact. “Taking control. Knowing exactly what to do to push all your buttons and drive you wild.”
He released me and then gently ran his fingers up my right arm. “Or I could be shy, unsure of myself, but eager. Using light, feathery touches until I figured out what you liked.”
I turned around to face him. We were so close together that I could practically feel him against my skin, even though we weren’t touching. I drank in his warmth, his strength. “What would you, Noah, do when you kiss me?”
He framed my face with his hands and just looked at me, and his expression . . . I couldn’t have named it, but it felt soft. It caused a lump in my throat and made my limbs shaky. “I would be gentle and kind and patient for however long you needed it.”
My heart skipped at his words. “I think I like that one the best.”
And my breath caught in anticipation when he reached down and rubbed his nose against mine, breathing me in. The fear was there; I worried the fear would always be there. But it felt different. Manageable. It felt more like an echo than something I had to worry about.
Again, like he could read my mind, he asked, “Are you feeling afraid right now?”
“I’m not going to dignify that with a yes,” I told him. “But, a little bit. Although it’s not like before. This is different. Like it’s changing.”
“I’m glad,” he said.
So was I.
“Come on,” he said, moving to take my hand. “You should be sitting down for this.”
I followed him but said, “Oh, should I?”
“Yes. I noticed what happened last time.”
When my legs had given out on Gladys’s porch? What could I say? He was right.
He led me to the couch in the library and sat us down close together. He was stroking my hair, almost like he was trying to calm me down. To reassure me that everything was fine. I was all pins and needles waiting for him to make his move and kiss me. To see how