I didn’t even think to check the window before receiving my visitor. I just unlocked all the bolts and pulled the entrance open, expecting a deliveryman’s greeting smile. When I saw Noel instead, I yelped out a startled gasp and jumped back, covering my braless chest with both hands.
The afterglow of my orgasm which I’m sure was still staining my cheeks fled to be replaced by horrified embarrassment. But, oh my God, had touching myself while thinking of him somehow drawn him to my house? What the hell kind of voodoo shit had been in those candles? I needed to buy more.
“I...” he started, opening his mouth wide as if ready to deliver some big long explanation of why he was here. But then his gaze shifted down and he left his mouth hanging open. No words came. The appreciation in his gaze as they traveled down my bare legs and back up stirred every organ in my body.
Now that my body knew how liberating and amazing release was, it was ready to experience another. And this time, forget the memory, I’d take the real deal: one Noel Gamble hand-delivered to my front door.
Which was totally, insanely wrong.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I exploded, pulling my arms tighter around myself because my nipples didn’t seem to care that the man in front of me could doom my entire career. Tight and pouted into hard points, all they wanted was to dive into Big O, Number Two. The selfish bitches.
“I...” he tried again, not getting much further this time because his gaze froze on my arms, where the skin had started to prickle into goose bumps. “Oh, fuck me sideways. You’re not wearing a bra, are you?” He glanced over my face before paling. “And you just got out of the shower, too.”
Keeping my girls securely covered with one arm, I released the other so I could push wet hair out of my face. “Bubble bath,” I corrected.
He whimpered, literally whimpered. Lifting one hand as if to command me to speak no more, he turned to the side so he wasn’t directly facing me and then covered his mouth with a fisted hand. “Jesus, you’re evil. Now I’m picturing you naked, covered in bubbles and surrounded by all these candles and shit while you’re reading a book.”
Damn, he was good.
“Don’t forget how incredibly wet I was,” I said because, hell, I always said stuff I knew I shouldn’t to this man. Why stop now?
He sliced me an incredulous glance. “You’re trying to kill me, aren’t you?”
Backing away, he sank into the wicker chair on my front porch, exactly where I sat on Sunday mornings and drank my cappuccino while I read. It usually swallowed me whole. But holding Noel’s large frame, it seemed small and ridiculously girly. Making him look even more masculine than usual.
“What the fuck am I doing here?” he muttered to himself as he buried his face in his hands.
I swallowed, feeling slutty and evil for what I’d just said and torturing him more than I should have. But he was the one who’d come to me; he’d started this.
As much as I wanted to rail at him for stirring up the hornet’s nest of our chemistry, I couldn’t stop thinking about how he’d been driving over to see me while I’d been getting off to a picture of him in my head. The person I’d been craving had actually been wanting me back. He still wanted me now. It was thrilling and heartbreaking and so beautiful to know; I slid down in the opened doorway to sit and pulled my legs up to my chest, hugging my knees as I watched him struggle through whatever battle was going on inside him.
He lifted his face to look at me, and seemed to crumble. “God, you are so...” He shook his head.
A warm glow flushed my skin. No one had acted so enthralled by me before. It sucked that the first person to show a spark had to be forbidden, but I loved the sensation it had on my ego, regardless.
He watched me for a second before shaking his head and saying, “Spend the day with me.”
I wanted to grin and sigh even as my shoulders fell. “Noel, we discussed this on Tuesday.”
“No, actually, we didn’t discuss anything. You just left and—” When I opened my mouth to argue, he held up his hand, “I totally understand why. But something’s happened since then.”
“Okay.” I nodded, hoping it was a miracle that had happened and Ellamore had changed their school policy to allow student-teacher relationships. “What happened?”
He didn’t answer immediately. Frowning after a long gap of silence, I opened my mouth to ask if he was okay, when he said, “I just got out of weight training...like, I came here straight from there.”
“O...kay,” I said slowly. He didn’t look as if he’d come straight from training. The other day, he’d been wearing his sweatpants and had wet hair. Today, he was rocking dark brown pants and a black and gray-striped shirt with long sleeves, which molded to the contours of his chest and made him look too yummy to be sitting on my front porch.