NOAH
We’ve been sitting in the car, parked on my block, a few houses down from my little ranch house. After her admission about her family we were quiet a few minutes, but a handful of questions about her writing got her talking again.
She shifts in her seat and asks, “Can I ask you a question?”
“Anything darlin’.”
“Why aren’t you a model?”
I feel my brows reach into my hairline. “No one has ever asked me that before.”
“Maybe most of the men around here look like you, but back home…” her voice trails off as she shakes her head. “I’m sorry, that was probably awkward and perhaps rude. It’s just, I spend a lot of time looking at hot guys on the internet.” She holds up a finger. “Part of my research as a romance author is to know what women in general find attractive. Plus it helps me get a feel for what a certain character looks like.”
I tilt my head and grin at her. “So you think I’m hot?”
“Yes! Ridiculously so.”
“Well, thank you, darlin.’ I gotta say that I think you’re pretty hot yourself.”
She blows out a breath, then frowns. “There’s no need to pay me a baseless compliment, Noah, just to reciprocate. I’m quite familiar with what I look like.”
“I’m looking right at you. And I can see that you’ve got beautiful hair the color of honey and your eyes look like the most expensive whiskey I’ve ever tasted. Your skin looks impossibly soft and that mouth, that mouth was made for kissing.”
“I have a gap between my front teeth.” She smiles to prove it.
Damned if she doesn’t look even prettier. “It’s sexy.”
Her phone buzzes from her lap and she reads it, then frowns. She glances at me, frowns again.
“What’s the matter, darlin’?”
“You wanna explain this?”
She turns the phone to face me and I see it’s a text from Sam. I scan back a little to read the whole conversation, which started just before I picked Poppy up.
And then, undoubtedly, the text that just came in.
Busted. I grin at her.
“Don’t give me that smile. I’m serious, Noah, what the hell are we doing if we’re not on a stakeout?”
I reach over and grab the bottom of her braid and twirl it around a finger. “I wanted to spend time with you, but I didn’t have a legitimate claim on your time because you came to visit Sam.” I run a knuckle down her cheek and her skin is so soft I want to kiss her all over. “In all honesty, I’ve done stakeouts before. At least the military version and this is pretty accurate. It’s a lot of sitting around drinking coffee.”
“You wanted to spend time with me?”
“Yeah, darlin’. I thought I made myself pretty obvious last night that I’m attracted to you.”
Her brows furrow again. “Then what was that face you gave me when I first came out of the hotel? You looked me up and down, then didn’t say anything.”
“I was trying not to go all caveman and toss you over my shoulder and bring you back into your hotel room.”
“What?” she whispers.
There’s this little tremble in her voice, like she doesn’t believe me. And it about guts me. How is it possible that this gorgeous, funny woman doesn’t know how irresistible she is?
“You look unbelievably hot right now. The braid, the pink shoes, those sexy yoga pants that mold to your curves.” I look into her eyes, those amber-colored eyes that search my face for the truth. “Poppy, I want you.”
Suspicion flickers across her expression. “Weren’t you the one who gave this big speech earlier about how if you want something you should just go for it?”
I have to chuckle, because of course she’s going to call me on my bullshit. Of course this brave and sassy woman is. “Well, now. I guess I was talking about Jason, who’d been pinning away for Sam for so long. It’s a little bit harder when you’re talking about a woman you just met.”
She makes that thoughtful, humming noise again.
I slant a look at her. Ah, hell … in for a penny, in for a pound, I guess. “And when that woman is an heiress and so damn far out of my league, well then—”
This time, she’s the one who laughs. And it’s not a wry sardonic laugh like mine, but a full laugh of surprise, complete with snort. “I am not out of your league.”
I give her braid another tug. “Yeah, you are. But maybe you wouldn’t mind slumming for just a few days.”
“A vacation fling?” she asks.
When I nod, she launches herself at me and then we’re kissing. Her hands are in my hair and my tongue is in her mouth. Kissing her is everything. Her lips are soft and perfect and the slide of her tongue against mine makes my dick rock hard. I grip her hips and want to get her on my lap but this damn car is too small.
She pulls back and stares into my face. Her pupils are blown and her lips are red from our kiss. She gives me a wicked grin. “Hotel?”
“Definitely.”
I give her a quick kiss, then she sits back down, buckles up and we’re on our way. Ten minutes later we haven’t spoken and we’re stepping into the elevator. Thank God we’re in there alone because if I don’t get my mouth back on her right now I’ll lose my fucking mind. I pull her to me and kiss her.
I’d swear on my life she tastes like honeysuckle too. I grip her ass and lift her. She wraps her legs around me and moans. Her ass fits perfectly in my hands.
“I’m too heavy,” she says pulling away from my mouth.
“Darlin’, your ass was made for my hands.” I give her a squeeze to show her. “I think I’ll just carry you around like this for the rest of your trip. That won’t be awkward for Sam, will it?”
She tosses her head back and laughs and the sound is like a live wire of lust through my body. This woman.
The elevator dings and I step out, still holding her like a baby koala wrapped around my waist. There’s an elderly couple waiting and as we walk by them, I smile. “Have a good evening.”
Poppy giggles and buries her face in my neck.
“I think she’s going to have a good evening,” the old lady says from behind us.
“She most definitely is,” I say to Poppy. “Which room?”
She rattles off the number and I walk her down to the end of the hall. I reluctantly set her down on her feet so she can dig through her enormous purse to find the key.
“What do you have in that big bag of yours? Did you smuggle in some rare British fruit or something?”
She chuckles. “No, I just like to be prepared.”
Once we’re inside her room—nope, this is definitely a suite—I toe off my boots. I come up behind her and grip her hips, lean down and do what I’ve been longing to do since I met her. I run my nose up the side of her throat, inhaling her sweet, delicious scent. “I can’t get enough of the way you smell.”
“I hope that’s a good thing.”
I bump my erection against the plump cheeks of her ass. “It’s a very good thing.” I kiss her neck, licking and nipping along the tender flesh. “I’ll stop whenever you want me to. And we don’t have to do anything. You don’t owe me.”
“What do you want to do?”
I spin her around to face me, then tip her chin up so I can look into her eyes. “Everything, darlin’. I want to spend the rest of the day on that enormous bed making love to you.”
Her cheeks blush prettily.
I pick her up again, because I can and then turn us so I’m sitting on the edge of the bed and she’s now straddling my lap. I kiss her hard, keeping one hand on her ass and bringing the other up to cup her face.
I simultaneously want to toss her on the bed and fuck her so hard and be slow and meticulous and discover every inch of skin that makes her moan. My dick is so hard that if I didn’t know better I’d think I was about to come in my pants. I can’t remember a woman I’ve wanted more.
I pull back from our kiss for just a moment to take off my shirt. Her honey-colored eyes roam over my exposed skin.
“Wow,” she whispers. Her fingertips draw down my chest and then she traces each of my defined abdominal muscles. Everywhere she touches, my skin burns.
I lift her t-shirt and toss it on the floor next to mine. Her bra is black with a small amount of lace, but mostly it’s serving its purpose of holding up her fantastic tits. She reaches behind her back and unhooks it, then lets the straps fall down her arms.
Once her breasts are bared, I can’t take my eyes off of them. They’re perfect. Pale and creamy with light pink tips. Her nipples are hard and I lean in and capture one in my mouth. I suck her in hard and weigh the other with my palm.
“Noah,” she breathes my name like a prayer, and in that moment I’m struck with the thought that I don’t want her to go back to London. I want her to stay and see if this can be more than a hot fuck in a hotel room.
But I’m getting way ahead of myself. And I don’t do relationships. I don’t know how. I try to remind myself of that very real fact, but her tits taste so good and she’s rocking herself against the hard line of my cock behind the fly of my jeans.
The denim is too thick for me to feel anything more than pressure, but judging from the noises she’s making, she’s close to falling apart.
“Are you going to make yourself come, rocking on my dick, darlin’?”
“Yes,” another nearly prayerful whisper. Then her head tosses back and she chants my name as her body quakes on top of me.
When her climax subsides she looks back at me, then dives her hand between us to open my jeans.
“Slow down, darlin’, we’ve got plenty of time. I have a lot more exploring I want to do first.”