“But…Gennie,” I said. “She thinks we’remarried.”
“And I’ll schedule some extra sessions with her therapist to talk it out,” he replied, still occupied with my ass. “She’ll be okay.”
“You’re sure about that? Because it wasn’t long ago that you were telling me how Gennie had to stay far, far away from this mess of ours.”
He growled against my neck, and for a minute it seemed like he wasn’t going to respond. Eventually, he said, “Yeah. It would’ve been better that way. Better forher. But this is where we are now. Gennie and everyone else knows, and we can’t change a damn thing about it.”
“But what happens when this ends?”
The soft, fluffy cloud of sex hormones we’d been floating on for the past twelvish hours disintegrated with those words. Noah shifted his hands to the countertop, flat on either side of my backside, and leaned back so that only my knees pressed to his hips. “I’ll handle it.”
Again, I said, “But…Gennie. How are we going to protect her from that?”
He folded his arms over his chest. “I don’t know.” He nodded and dropped his gaze to my shirt. I knew he was staring at my nipples. Anyone within twenty feet would be staring at my nipples because they were tight, tender bullets that were testing the limits of this shirt. “Do you want Lollie’s farm or not? That’s the question you need to answer, Shay. I can protect Gennie. I’ll figure it out. Just don’t make her any promises you don’t intend to keep.”
“I wouldn’t.”
We stared at each other for a long moment, the shadows of last night climbing up around us, pressing into every notch and groove between his body and mine. Everything was different.Wewere different. But here, it didn’t feel different. It felt like we were on opposite sides of the bargaining table, every one of our unwinnable battles lined up, waiting for someone to make a concession.
“If you want Lollie’s farm,” he started, his words clipped, “we have to go down to Thomas House, get your things, and move you in here today.” He lifted a hand, let it fall back against the arm banded over his chest. “I have an engineering crew scheduled to visit Twin Tulip this week and survey the site. Tell me now if you want me to call them off.”
“I don’t want you to call them off.” I shoved my fingers into my hair. God, I needed a shower. I needed to sit in the shower and think for five or six hours. “But I don’t want Gennie’s world turning upside down. Or yours, for that matter.”
“Of all the changes Gennie and I have experienced in the past year, this will be the least dramatic. It will turn your world upside down far more than it will ours.”
With a petulant sigh, I said, “I can’t just move in.”
He eyed me, his brow arched up and those forearms just begging me to run my fingertips over the cords of muscle. I ignored that begging. “Yes, you can.”
“And—and what will I do here?” I sputtered. “We can’t play house, Noah. That’s crazy and we already have enough crazy.”
With a slow, indulgent blink, he said, “You’ll do whatever you want, Shay. Come and go as you please. There’s a spare room upstairs. I wouldn’t force you to sleep with me, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“It’s not what I’m worried about.” A tiny, desperate part of me wanted Noah todemandthat I sleep with him. Wanted his hand around my neck and his hips pinning me to the bed. Averytiny part. The rest of me knew that getting between the sheets with him again wasn’t the answer to our problems. “This is your place. I don’t want to intrude.”
“I don’t mind.”
“Maybe you should,” I said.
“That’s tough shit because I don’t.” He rolled his eyes toward the ceiling, muttering something to himself I couldn’t make out. “Come on, wife. I’m teaching you how to make pancakes now and then I’m breaking the news to Gen that you won’t be taking the top bunk. Brace yourself for that storm.” His jaw tight, he ran a glance up my legs, over my borrowed shirt, across my face. “You’re not intruding. Stop thinking that. And stop pouting. You know I can’t function when you do that.”
“I’m not pouting.”
He cupped my jaw and traced the pad of his thumb over my bottom lip. “You’re pouting and I can’t suck your nipples through this shirt right now because I don’t want to stop at your nipples and—oh my fucking god, I said that out loud.”
“And what else?” I whispered. “What was the next thing you were going to say?”
He dropped his hand as he stared at the floor. “Shay. Please.”
“Tell me. I want to know. What would you do after you suck my nipples through this shirt I stole from you? What would come next?”
He shook his head. It seemed like this conversation was over when he blew out a ragged breath and said, “We don’t have time for that this morning.”
I couldn’t stop pushing. Even if I pushed us all the way over the edge of a cliff, I couldn’t stop. “What don’t we have time for?”
He gave a dry, stuttering laugh. His cheeks were beet red. “That’s enough out of you, wife. I need you to stop making that face and go find a bra unless you want me dragging you out to the barn and fucking you up against the wall.”
Was it still a gasp if it came from the lusty region of France or was it just a sparkling moan? “Well—”
