had no intention of doing that. Those blue butterflies had returned, and they were everywhere, underneath every inch of my skin. They fluttered and sent warm, shimmery shivers in waves throughout my body. This was incredible.
Then he kissed me for real, his mouth sweet and impossibly tender, almost loving, but strong and insistent.
It felt like I was drowning in him, and I wanted to let him pull me under.
I made it an entire ten seconds before my nervous system freaked out. I tried reassuring myself, saying I was fine, but I couldn’t just mind over matter this thing. I wanted his kiss and hated that this was my response. Those ten seconds had been transcendent.
Because he’d been right—we both got to feel the same incredible sensations at the same time, and I loved that.
I pulled back and he immediately released me, taking his hands away and stopping all contact.
Which was not what I wanted.
So I put my arms around his neck and held him close. His breathing was labored and harsh in my ear. A second later his arms slipped around me and pulled me against his chest. When he breathed in, I felt the expansion of his chest, the way his heartbeat thundered against me.
All of this soothed me as I clung to him, letting this anxiety attack out and knowing that he’d do whatever I wanted, would support me in any way that I asked him to.
When his own breathing had calmed, he asked, “Are you okay?”
“I will be.”
I will be. I repeated the words in my own head. It was going to be true. I loved kissing Noah and how it made me feel during those precious ten seconds, and I was determined to keep doing it.
So an hour later we tried again with all his teasing and showing me what he’d called earlier his “best stuff” and just how capable he was. And we tried again an hour after that. Each kiss lasted a bit longer; each anxiety attack seemed a bit shorter and less intense.
After the third round, when I was feeling exhausted from pushing so hard, he was cradling me on his lap, holding me close.
“You’re really good at kissing,” I told him.
“I told you so.”
He had. I hugged him tighter. “You’re also the only person I’d want to do this with.”
He kissed my forehead. “Same.”
I settled into a pretty awesome routine—I spent my days cleaning up dogs and taking care of Sunshine, and my nights were all spent with Noah. We kept practicing our kissing, and things kept improving. My attacks were definitely lessening in intensity and length.
And he was so good at the touching and caressing and non-mouth kissing that he got me all worked up until I couldn’t think about anything but kissing him. And he made me want him and his kisses so badly.
I’d never imagined I would feel that way.
It was almost like exercising. The more we did it, the more comfortable I got, the less it seemed to take out of me.
Everything between us became more enjoyable and delicious. Like, I hadn’t known there were so many different ways to kiss someone. The light, delicate butterfly kisses. The playful ones that had us both laughing. The intense, hormone-driven kisses that drove me out of my mind. The exploratory, give-and-take ones where we discovered new things that we liked. The intimate ones that seemed to make us even closer. Where it was like he could see into my soul.
The kisses where he made me feel like I was the only woman in the world who mattered to him, and I always would be.
Our homemade exposure therapy was working remarkably well. I thought maybe we should write a book.
And when the two weeks with Gladys were up, I was actually delighted when she texted me from Montana and said that she needed to keep helping her sister and asked me to stay on for another two weeks for another fifteen hundred dollars. I happily accepted. I loved being this close to Noah and Magnus.
Some nights he cooked for me. Others we watched movies. A few nights he read out loud to me, and he was like the world’s best audiobook, because in addition to dramatizing the voices, he couldn’t help but make faces while he was reading—a wry smile, a raised eyebrow, a frown. I loved how expressive he was.
But most of them were spent talking. We laughed and shared stories and kept getting to know one another. One of