It had been humming in the air between them. Carly had been fighting her own feelings so hard she hadn’t registered Noah’s fierce hunger. Or maybe he was just better at masking his feelings when it counted. But now the pretense was over. The simmering heat between them burst into full flame when his mouth covered hers.
There wasn’t a lot of space with the console dividing the front but Noah seemed to have decided that the lack of space was the console’s problem, not his. He sprawled across it to get to his goal. How he managed it, she couldn’t guess. But it really didn’t matter.
She closed her eyes as the kiss went on and on, the better to just feel. The heat of his mouth seeped into her. The muscular rasp of his tongue tangled wetly with hers, tasting of French fries and cherry pie. It was a full body contact kiss, no urgency greater than the need to be lip to lip. It took her a moment to realize she was only touching him with her mouth. It seemed so much, so intimate, but ultimately not enough.
Her arms slid around his torso, careful not to touch the weapon holstered under his left arm and then she was holding handfuls of his shirt, trying if possible to get closer. The heat of his body lit fires along her nerve endings, making her shiver with desire.
Harley, feeling no doubt left out, was the first to voice a complaint. He jumped forward into the space between the front seats and landed all ninety pounds of his furry weight on Noah’s back, whining as if he thought he was needed to referee whatever game the two humans in the front seat were playing.
Noah broke the kiss to say sharply, “Harley, down.”
Reluctantly, the shepherd backed off and subsided onto the backseat.
“Stay.”
Ears twitching, Harley rested his muzzle on his forepaws. But the high-pitched whining continued for a few more seconds.
Breathing hard, Noah looked back at Carly. He didn’t kiss her again, but he didn’t release her either. As he eased back across to his side, he brought her with him until they embraced across the console. There was no caress to his touch, or even encouragement. He seemed focused on containment. Of his feelings, or hers?
“I shouldn’t have done that. But I needed to know if what I’m feeling is real. That you’re not just some fantasy I dreamed up because my life is so screwed over I can’t see my way clear.”
His gaze fixed on hers, he took her hand and laid her palm flat against his shirtfront over his heart. “You feel that?”
She nodded. “That’s just hormones racing because you’re about to get lucky.” Carly prayed her voice sounded lighter than the heavy hammering of her own heart in response. “Don’t look so grim. It’s just sex.”
“That’s not what your mouth says.” His gaze focused on the fullness of her lower lip. “It says I matter to you.”
“All that in a kiss?” She meant to sound skeptical. She sounded uncertain, and astonished. He was right. She’d never been about casual sex. One-night stands began and ended with her first three experimentations with no-strings encounters. They gave her too little of what she hoped for, and nothing worth repeating. But where was her self-possession when it came to Noah? Burned up in the consuming heat of his kiss.
He was staring at her hard, but his expression said he was still fighting the raw lust between them. “Carly, I—”
“You’re right. Getting together was such a bad idea. On every level.” Her voice shook from the combustibility of her feelings as she prepared to release him.
She dragged her hand down his shirtfront, intending to pull away from the warmth of his body beneath. Instead, her fingers found his belt buckle and curled into it to hold on to him. “Does it have to have words? Can’t it just be?” There it was in her voice again, a sound desperate and breathless.
He brushed his thumb across her lower lip. He was so close she could see herself reflected in his gaze. “So what do we do?”
She turned a hand palm up and held it before him. “There’s a saying, if you love someone set them free.”
Noah cupped her hand in his, and stared into her palm. “I’m not sure which half of that sentence scares me more. I do know I don’t want you to set me free. Not until we’ve had a few meals, played Frisbee in the park with Harley, seen a few movies—ones you’ll hate or I’ll hate but we’ll watch because the other picked it, argued over … I don’t care what.”
“You want normal?” That was the scariest idea yet.
“Yeah. Normal. Whatever the hell that is.”
He hadn’t mentioned the first part of her sentence. If you love someone … Too soon, much too soon. Why had she said those words aloud? She usually kept things at bay that scared her, even when doing them.
Time to change up the rhythm.
She ran a finger back and forth along the top curve of his belt buckle. In the light from the dashboard she saw that it was made of heavy German silver with a raised gold rope edging, chased silver scrollwork, and the star of Texas in gold at the center. She hadn’t seen it before. But then she hadn’t seen much of him—well, not dressed, anyway.