I turned and walked back towards the estate.
I don't remember the walk back to my room.
One minute I was standing above the ocean with the wind in my hair, the taste of him still lingering on my lips and my heartbeat behaving like it had completely lost adult supervision. The next I was back in my room, closing the door behind me and leaning against it like I needed a solid surface to remember how breathing worked.
My whole body felt electric. Alive.
“Oh God,” I whispered to the empty room, covering my face with both hands. “Oh shit. Oh no. Oh no, no, no.”
The silence didn’t help.
My brain definitely didn’t help.
I pushed off the door and paced a short, frantic line across the carpet.
What had I done?
What hadhedone?
Why had we both done it so well?
I pressed the heels of my palms to my eyes like I could force the memory to blur, but absolutely not, the memory was thriving. It was practically doing jazz hands.
The way his hands had framed my face.
The heat of his body pressed flush against mine.
“Oh bloody hell,” I groaned, collapsing onto the bed.
The mattress bounced and I bounced with it, staring at the ceiling as if it might contain some sort of emotional fire extinguisher.
I’d been kissed before.
Plenty of times.
Some of them even good.
But nothing, absolutely nothing, had prepared me for Noah kissing me like that.
Like he’d wanted it for a long time.
Like it had been sitting under his skin for ages, simmering behind every look, every almost-touch.
Like he’d momentarily forgotten that I was a wedding planner and he was… well, Noah Langston.
Grumpy Noah Langston.
Tightly wound Noah Langston.
The man who could stare down a broken irrigation pump without blinking but somehow turned to stone when feelings entered the chat.
And yet he’d kissed me like a man who finally snapped.
Like desire had muscled its way past logic and grief and whatever ironclad emotional vault he lived inside.
I flopped sideways and dragged a pillow over my face.
This was fine.
