ChapterEleven
Morgan
My pulse thunders in my ears and pounds behind my ribs.My skin feels too tight and my stomach is fluttery and weightless and my nipples ache behind the flannel shirt.
Noah is shirtless, wearing nothing but a pair of faded, well-worn blue jeans that fit like a glove.He's barefoot, too, and somehow, that's just unbearably sexy.His chest is thick and hard and brawny, dusted with dark body hair growing in tight whorls.I rest my chin on his shoulder and look up at his face from a little too close, watching his dark blue eyes reflect his reaction—a clearing of confusion, arousal, amusement…but mostly arousal.
I trace the patterns in the way his chest hair grows, teasing and raking my fingernails lightly over his hot skin and hard muscle.
My own desire bubbles and percolates inside me—last night was an ignition of the pilot light of my libido, I think.
Being undressed, feeling his hands caress my flesh, his eyes devour my body.For the first time in what feels like a lifetime, I felt sexy.Feminine, in a way I haven't in so, so long.Even on the couple of dates I've been on, I never really felt…
Turned on.
Like a sexual creature.
The insecurities are still there.The vicious, nagging voice of my ex still whispers criticisms of my body, filling my psyche with doubts and fears.
But right now, attraction to Noah is louder.The way he kissed me?The way he touched me?I was on fire for a few moments.Delirious with need.Vibrating with arousal.Ready to take pleasure and give it.
I refuse to let the insecurity win.
Iwill not.
I just have to hope that Noah possesses enough patience to get past all that.
For a moment, his gaze flits away from me, staring at nothing."Like what?"he repeats.
Slowly, his attention focuses on me—starting at my face, my eyes.He searches me, and I hope he sees the desire I feel and not just the worry that I'll panic again, the fear that he'll get sick of my freight train full of baggage and not want me anymore, the terror that he'll suddenly find me as unattractive as my ex-husband did.
My lungs stop functioning correctly as I feel his gaze skitter down from my eyes to my throat, to the dip of my cleavage, to the curve of my thigh bared where my borrowed button-down ends.
His eyes return to mine.Bold.Assertive.Rife with desire.Instead of answering with words, he lets his gaze return to my thigh, and then his hand settles on my knee.I'm curled up in a tight ball, facing him, with my knees drawn up to my chest, angled toward him and resting on his thigh.
My mouth goes dry as he inches his hand up my leg.The calluses on his hand scrape over my skin, making me tingle all over.His eyes find mine again, assessing as his touch slides toward my bottom.My lower lip catches in my teeth as he carves his hand over my backside, cupping the curve of it.
"This, to start with," he whispers."How's this?"
I nod."I…I like it."Swallowing around the lump in my throat, I tilt closer to him, press my lips to the rough stubble where he trims his beard line at his neck."What else?"
"Morgan, if you start to feel—"
"I'll tell you."I trail my fingertips over his belly, above his navel."What else, Noah?'
He licks his lips, exhales softly.Searches my face.And then he's twisting in place, grabbing me by the hips and lifting me over him, settling me astride him.My thighs wedge around his hips as I sit tall on him.My hair is wild around my face, the tail of the flannel is riding up around my waist, baring the scarlet of my thong and the crease where my hips bend.With his eyes firmly locked on mine, he runs his hands up my thighs to cup my ass where it spreads wide on his lap.
"This."
I don't know what to do with my hands.I want to touch him, badly…but I want even more badly to feel his touch.To experience pleasure that I haven't given myself.I just don't know how to voice that—how to ask for what I want.
"I like that too," I whisper.
I shift my weight forward, so I'm not sitting so much on his thighs but on his lap.His crotch.I feel his arousal pressing against my core, a thick hard ridge behind the cold metal of his zipper.I hold his eyes, hiding nothing.Not my fears and certainly not my need.
His hands rest on my thighs again, pause, grip the creases, thumbs pressing into soft flesh just above the waistband of my thong.My breath catches—willing his touch to explore.
They do, just not where I was thinking.
