“Good morning. There’s coffee.”
I step around the island, pulling the coffee pot out and filling an oversized white mug before leaning against the counter top and tipping my head towards the stove.
“And bacon?”
“Yeah,” he says, teasing the whimsy around us. “Are you hungry? I snagged a few things from the main house when I went over there for more coffee.”
“I could eat.”
Easy breezy is a lot harder to manage when you have someone like Noah making the extra effort to find and make breakfast in a house that isn’t even ours.His.There is nothing that’sours.Except maybe the mess of whatever sleeping together is turning into. Suddenly the broken vase is more like an omen than an accident.
He takes the now full dustpan and dumps the remaining shards into the garbage under the sink before he stands up to wash his hands. The confidence I summoned before stepping out here is fading fast; everything about the way he moves around me whispers of what we did, every sensual touch and desperate whisper.
I settle onto one of the barstools, sipping my coffee and gazing out at the garden in an effort to keep my attention on anything but him. Noah tends the bacon and then flips on one of the other burners before he turns. His hands press into the countertop as he leans forward, his face serious.
“I think maybe we should talk.”
I swallow hard, the gulp burning down my throat. Oh god.The talk. I hate this part. Between the awkward brush off andthe tempering of expectations, there tends to be a landmine of emotion and missed intimacy. Not for me, of course, but for people like Noah.
“Right. Yes. We should.”
“Last night . . .”
“Last night,” I mimic.
He straightens and runs his palm down over his mouth before lacing his fingers behind his neck.
“It’s okay. You don’t have to say it. I understand.” I set my cup down and curl my fingers around it, letting the heat distract me from the brush off. This is what needs to happen. Keeping my eyes trained on the nearly black liquid, I finish the thought. “It was a one and done, no biggie.”
“Is that what you want?”
My gaze pops up to meet his, my mouth going dry. “Isn’t that what you want?”
His smile crinkles as he shakes his head, so slight that if I wasn’t searching his body for any ounce of his true thoughts, I would have missed it.
“No,” he says, finally. “I think it’s what I should want, but no.”
Shit.
Of the options I thought I was facing, this is definitely not the easier one. This honesty and silent invitation for more is like standing on the edge of the cliff, a vast canyon of unknown spreading out below me and threatening to beat me into pulp if I fall. We can’t. We shouldn’t. And yet . . .
Noah’s voice is quiet, hesitant. Hopeful as he asks again, “Is it what you want?”
I bite my lip, the careful elation after his confession not enough to lift the dread. If I say yes, he would respect it. He would slip back into the gentlemanly role he carried so carefully before I matched his challenge last night. Once more I am leftfacing the choice between lying to protect myself, or risking honesty and opening myself up to what that might bring.
“I don’t know.”
It’s as honest as I can afford to be, but it doesn’t sound like enough. The raw vulnerability of Noah’s confession is like a knife in my belly and I squeeze the coffee mug tighter in my hands. He can admit it, why can’t I?
“Alright,” he says, turning back to the stove and reaching for the carton of eggs.
Alright? Alright, what? Determining what we want is barely the first step of figuring our way through this, and we don’t even have a firm grasp on that.
“I—”
Words form and fail; I don’t know what to say.
Noah turns, the bowl of eggs propped in his elbow and a whisk clutched in his other fist. The sight distracts me entirely, the playful grin tugging his cheeks up enough of an answer. Who needs to know what’s next when you have a tall, muscular man who can pull multiple orgasms from you making you breakfast? Why am I stopping this, whatever it is, before it gets started? And then I remember. Breakfast is only the beginning of what will inevitably hurt one or both of us. There is a reason I don’t do morning afters. As if reading the panic on my face, Noah offers a solution.
