"Me, too."
"But we have work to do." Nolen sighed.
"Correct."
Careful not to knee him, I slowly slid off Nolen until I was in a seated position and got my first look at his lap.
The damn bulge looked bigger than it felt.
"You staring at it isn't going to help."
My eyes snapped up to his, and I gave him my best oops face.
I knew he didn't believe me when he shook his head.
"I need to go take care of this before we can get started."
Now I was thinking about Nolen stroking himself in my bathroom, and it made me want to follow him to help. Too bad I was too much of a chicken to follow through on that plan.
Instead I sat on the couch like a weirdo waiting for him to return.
When one minute turned into two and so on, I realized how awkward it was to just wait for him and decided to make myself useful.
Taking a slow walk into the kitchen, I went in search of something to make. I was mentally going over what I had in the fridge and quickly realized it wasn't much because I had yet to make a call to Ivan at the One Stop Shop for groceries.
With a sigh, I opened the fridge anyway and was pleasantly surprised to find it full.
When the hell had that happened?
I was still standing there shocked when Nolen entered the kitchen.
"Did you do this?" I turned to look at him as I pointed back toward the open fridge door.
"Yeah, I had one of the guys deliver it while we were at the hospital."
I wanted to cry. No one ever took care of me. Growing up, it was on me to care for Hannah, and even though we had our father, I did most of the cooking and household chores. And then when I finally moved out, it was just me. There was never anyone around to take some of the burden off.
"I didn't mean to make you cry." In two large steps, Nolen was in front of me, swiping away the tears that I hadn't even realized had fallen.
"These aren't sad tears.”
"Then what are they?"
I nuzzled my face into the hand that came up to cradle the side of my face.
"I don't know what to call them, but I never had anyone care for me the way you do. I'm a little out of my element here."
"Well, I hope you can get used to it because I have no intention of going anywhere."
That caught me off guard. I knew bubbling under the surface was chemistry but I honestly was just chalking it up to the fact that the two of us hadn't had sex in a very long time, but now I was thinking I might be wrong.
"I'm going to kiss you, now."
I liked that he didn't ask for permission but instead told me what he planned to do. It gave me a couple seconds to prepare, but truth be told, there was no amount of preparation I could've done for when Nolen's lips touched mine.
They were soft at first. Almost hesitant to see how I would react, but when I leaned into him, things went from gentle to all consuming.
That was the only way to describe the way Nolen kissed me. He wasn't just some active participant. He took control andpoured every emotion into the kiss. He showed me it wasn't just some kiss but true desire.
