| |
DINAH
Oh.
Oh, he was good.
I liked this aggressive Noah. I liked the way he didn’t even think and threw me up on the island kissing me fiercely. I didn’t care if this was casual or serious or whatever, I just knew he made me feel good and I hadn’t had that in a very long time. And...it was Noah! Sweet, kind Noah, who I loved hanging out with and was probably the reason that I was alive right now. Noah, my best friend who knew all of my secrets and had held me when I cried after going through an awful miscarriage and finding out I couldn’t have kids. The man with the kind eyes and the big heart who was always there for anyone in a pinch. Even if he didn’t really know them that well.
We heard a moan through the shared walls of our respective kitchens, and we both pulled away so we could cackle with laughter. Noah’s eyes were shiny with amusement. “I think it’s safe to say TJ thought I wasn’t sleeping in my bed tonight again.”
“Oh.”
Noah twirled his hand around my long hair. “Dinah, I’m not trying to pressure you to do what we did last night again. Okay?”
I nodded. “Okay.”
“We should probably have that talk, eh?”
I frowned. I really didn’t want to have this talk he wanted to have. Because deep down I knew what it would be. Noah was young and hot and he had his pick of all the beautiful women in this city. Why would he ever want someone like me? A pocket-sized sleep-deprived widow with a lot of baggage? No thank you.
He reached down to grab my hand and stroked his thumb across the back of it. “It’s not a bad thing, you know?”
“What isn’t?” I asked, generally confused about what the hell was happening. I just wanted him to keep on kissing me rather than talk about how this could never be real for him.
He sighed and put a shaky hand in his hair nervously. “Look, I really like you, always have, and I...well...it wasn’t just sex for me. So you let me know when you’re ready.”
I stared at him dumbfounded. “What?”
His smile crinkled around his eyes. “Dinah, I like you. A lot.”
“I like you too.”
He sighed again. “No, I mean, I want to leave what this is between us up to you.”
I stared at him some more. Oh...was he saying he had feelings for me but he wanted me to decide if we turned this into something more? I felt his big hands go to my cheeks and he kissed me softly. He pulled away so he could lift me off the kitchen island.
“I should probably go. You have work in the morning.”
It seemed like he wasn’t waiting for me to give him the answer tonight, and I wasn’t sure if I had an answer yet. I knew I liked Noah, I loved hanging out with him and I enjoyed kissing him, but something serious? Was I ready for that? Would Jason have been okay with me dating again?
“You can stay,” I heard myself saying.
His dark eyebrow shot up in question. “Don’t you have to work on edits?”
I glared at him and put my hands on my hips. “How do you know that?”
He chuckled. “You told me. I respect your writing time. I don’t want to ever come between that.”
My heart nearly flipped over in my chest at that. Who was this guy? Noah was unlike any man I had ever known before. The fact that he was so respectful of my time and my need to work on my craft meant so much to me. There was something inside myself that was digging into me, but I tried to push it down. Last night had not just been a physical thing for me either. Noah might be my best friend, but if we hung out and it continued to involve kissing, I was pretty sure I was going to fall in love with him.
I squinted at the clock on my stove, it was already ten-thirty but I could get some writing in before bed. It wasn’t like I ever went to sleep at a decent hour anyway. I looked up at Noah. “Can you give me like a half-hour?”
He nodded. “Whatever you want.”
I reached up on my tip-toes to kiss his cheek, but since he was an entire foot taller than me he had to bend down so I could reach him. I walked away and shut myself into my office. I opened my laptop and started getting to work.
My editor had emailed me big picture edits earlier today, but I hadn’t even looked at it yet. I opened my email and started making notes for where I needed to fix things. No one had really prepared me for what it was going to be like once I got my first book published. The first book was doing okay, not a bestseller or anything, enough that my publisher bought another book. I had to learn to pivot from edits on this current novel, to drafting a third novel. I wanted to write something completely different. Oh yeah, all of this on top of working a full-time demanding job in marketing that was slowly sucking my soul out. Seriously, I was about ready to just up and quit, but I kind of needed the job to pay my bills. I loved being a writer, but right now it wasn’t exactly a living wage.
I pulled my hair up into a bun so I could focus and shoved my headset on my head. The video game soundtrack I was listening to was going to get me through this. My fingers flew across the keyboard and I got into the zone working on a new chapter. I felt confident and good about it, but it might be a different story in the morning when I re-read what I had written.
“Hey, you there?” I heard Noah’s voice behind me and I nearly jumped out of my seat.
I yanked my headset off my head, and saw he was standing in the doorway of my office. His long and lean body was leaning up against the doorway and it made him look so sexy. God, what was wrong with me? I put a hand on my heart. He smiled at me sheepishly.
“You scared me!” I chastised him.
He crossed the room and put his hands on my shoulders. “You did tell me to give you a half-hour but I gave you forty minutes.”
I reached up a hand to my shoulder to rest on one of his. His hand felt warm and sent a shockwave of pleasure down my spine. I didn’t know if it was just hormones or if it was just my feelings for this man seeping out. “Thanks, I think I needed the extra ten minutes,” I thanked him.
“I know you have a real job, so you should get to bed,” he insisted.
I couldn’t focus on the actual words coming out of his mouth right now though, because his big hands were rubbing the tension out of my shoulders. He was a little too good at relaxing me, and he was really good at shoulder rubs. I saved my place and closed the lid to my laptop.
Noah continued to rub my shoulders. “Mmmhmm...you’re good at that, thanks,” I told him.
“Come on, come to bed, it’s late,” he urged and pulled his hands away from me.
I took his hand and he led me to my bedroom. Even though he saw me naked last night, I felt awkward changing into my pajamas in front of him. It was like exposing myself to him, but it wasn’t like this man didn’t know everything about me. He must have felt my self-conscious thoughts, because he distracted me by slipping his shirt over his head and taking off his jeans. I tried not to stare at the hard planes of tight muscle on his body, but damn Noah hid how built he was until you got him naked. I really didn’t want to think about all the other girls who may have gotten to look at this view right now. A stab of jealousy hit me in the chest when I looked at him, because I wanted to be the only woman who got to see him like that.
Whoa. Calm down, Dinah.
He joined me in my bathroom, where I handed him the extra toothbrush I had underneath the sink. We joked while we brushed our teeth and I washed my face. It was all so weirdly domestic. I mean, he was going to stay over again tonight and he wasn’t even pressuring me to get naked again.
Why wasn’t he pressuring me to get naked with him again?
I wanted to put my mouth all over him right now and ride his cock until he couldn’t handle it anymore. I sighed to myself, because he was the kindest and most decent man I had ever met. EVER. I swear, I built this gentle giant in a factory.
I slid into the bed and he pulled me close to him, my head lying on his chest and his big arm around me. I felt my eyes starting to close while his finger stoked up and down my arm.
“D?” he whispered into the quiet of my bedroom.
“Yeah?”
“What’s your day like tomorrow?” he asked.
My brow furrowed in confusion as I thought about what my schedule was like. I honestly couldn’t even remember. I pulled away from him to grab my phone off the nightstand and I scrolled through my work calendar. “Um...pretty okay. I have a meeting at three, but otherwise it’s open. Why?”
I wasn’t looking at him when I double checked that my phone was plugged in and my alarm was set for the morning. I set it back on the nightstand, and when I crawled back over to place my head against Noah’s heart he looked like he was thinking a little too hard. His hand absent-mindedly stroked my hair. It took all my composure not to moan at that, because seriously getting my hair stroked while a man I had feelings for held me in his arms was such an intimate gesture.
“You have lunch plans?” he finally asked.
I racked my brain for an answer. “I don’t think so...”
“Can I take you to lunch?” he asked, and I noticed a nervous hitch in his voice. God, he was adorable.
“Sure...wait, don’t you have practice?”
He shook his head slowly. “Nope! Let me take you to lunch tomorrow.”
I was nodding, but mostly because his stroking of my hair was hypnotizing me into agreeing with anything he said. He could have told me to get on my knees and take off my clothes and I would have done it. Not that Noah would have done that right now. Although, I wouldn’t have minded it.
“Okay, sure,” I agreed.
He kissed the top of my head gently. “Come on, let’s get some sleep.”
I let sleep take me, curled up into the side of the first man to sleep in my bed since my husband died. The man that I used to call my best friend, but I wasn’t sure what he was to me now that we crossed that line.