One corner of his mouth lifts in his signature half smile. “How else am I supposed to keep track of what you’re up to?”
I cluck my tongue. “Don’t you mean our grandparents?”
“No,” he answers without missing a beat. “Lately, my focus has definitely been on you.”
“Even before the red lipstick and curly hair?”
He groans as his gaze roves over me, the dilating of his pupils swallowing up most of the blue. “It’s more about the mouth and everything you say with it.”
Noah drives his long fingers into my hair, lifting it off my neck and grazing his nose across the sensitive skin as he takes a long inhale. The low noise he makes in the back of his throat robs me of oxygen, his voice a sexy grumble that turns my insides molten. “That determined gleam in your eye that means you’re about to let me have it.” His lips skim the fluttering pulse point where my neck meets my jaw. “And just when I think I can’t take it anymore, you go and fucking smile or laugh and I…”
Twinkle lights reflect in the dark pools of his eyes and, using his thumbs, he tilts my face to his. “I come undone.”
The unfettered desire in his features threatens to do the same to me, and rather than panic and throw up a wall of awkwardness neither one of us can break through, I lean into the confidence I’ve been rebuilding and lick my lips.
Even better, it’s easier to pull off the come-hither move than it’s ever been. Thanks to Sophia springing the photo shoot news on me yesterday, I read dozens of reviews from women who raved their photography sessions left them empowered and more in touch with their sensual side, but I figured they were from women like her, who were comfortable in the boudoir already.
“Hmm. They were right about the confidence boost,” I mutter, and Noah’s brow crinkles in response, so I speak aloud the inside thoughts that didn’t stay put. “It’s why I’m so made up—I got talked into one of those boudoir photography sessions, and I’ve never felt so pretty before.”
“But you’re gorgeous.” Noah states it as a fact, no wiggle room.
“I don’t always feel that way.” A nervous laugh titters out, my discomfort with taking compliments making it impossible to graciously accept them. “Strike that, Ineverfeel this way.”
“That doesn’t make any sense to me.” The grooves between his eyebrows deepen as he continues staring at me, suggesting he’s genuinely perplexed. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I was livid when I charged into your seminar.”
“Gee, why ever would I take that the wrong wa—”
Noah places a finger to my lips, cutting off the rest, and gently says, “I wasn’t finished.”
I cross my arms with an exaggerated harrumph, so the biddies’ dramatics are obviously wearing off on me.
He leans a fraction of an inch closer, and my heart flitters like a hummingbird all hopped-up on nectar. “And as I stood in the back of the gym seething,” he says, “all I could think was, ‘why does she have to be so hot?’”
“Well, it’s Florida, so—”
“Nope, nice try, though.” His heated breath stirs the hair at my temples, goosebumps erupting at the enticing contrast of soft lips and scruff against the lobe of my ear. “Every exchange since, I’ve thought it again and again. Why does she have to be so fucking hot?”
An ache pulses to life between my thighs, leaving me squirmingly aware of the diminutive amount of silk and lace to my thong.
I turn my head, my lips rasping his whiskered cheek as I whisper my bold line into his skin. “I’m still wearing the lingerie from the photoshoot.”
Noah goes completely still, save the steely fingers that dig into my hip.
I wait for the bashfulness to hit but instead find a level of do-not-give-a-fuckedness that both intrigues and worries me.
But then Noah’s mouth claims mine in a heated kiss, the swipe of his tongue rendering me entirely incapable of thought, even before he commands with his lips still against mine, “Show me.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Oh, if he wants a peep show, I’ll…
What? Give it to him?
My pulse thunders through my head like the hoofbeats of a herd of horses more certain of their destination than I, and I debate panties versus bra, assuring myself these are the sorts of daredevil antics my grandmothers trained me for.
Which might be the least sexy sentiment ever, so I delete, delete, delete in my brain while remaining perfectly still in my seat.
Noah’s frozen as well, staring back at me very intently, and I know that the idea’s to leap without looking, butlook at him.
