Friendship on Fire

by Joss Wood

  Hot damn, sailor. Or a hot sailor, damn. Both worked in Noah’s case.

  Seeing that Noah was concentrating on his blueprints, Jules pushed her hands under the large sketch pad and pulled her tight skirt up her thighs so that she didn’t feel like she was sitting in a fabric tube. An improvement, she thought. Jeans or jammies would be miles better but she’d left the Brogan and Winston offices earlier that day to meet Noah and Paris at Joelle, a see-and-be-seen cocktail bar that was housed in one of the chicest boutique hotels in Back Bay. Possibly in the city. They’d thought that it would be better for Jules to meet Paris on her own but their client had declared them a unit and insisted on a “Team Paris” meeting. Her words, not theirs.

  While Paris downed margarita after margarita, she and Noah tried to nail down Paris’s wishes, expectations and desires for her yacht and its interior.

  Two hours and four margaritas later, none of which had, sadly, passed their lips, they still had nothing. They were, however, handed a glossy invitation to a soiree Paris was planning at the end of the month. “Just a few friends, darling. Casual chic, be there by seven.”

  Through experience Jules knew casual chic could mean anything from ball gowns to beachwear, and seven actually meant later—much, much later. Everybody knew to add an hour or two onto Paris’s stated time.

  Jules tapped the point of her pencil against the white paper, leaving tiny dots on the surface. “She wants it to feel open but also cozy. Sophisticated but relaxed. But mostly, it has to look like it cost a fortune.”

  Noah lifted his head to look at her. Or rather, he looked at her after he eyed quite a bit of her exposed thigh. Jules thought about tugging her skirt down but then Noah would know that she noticed him checking out her legs, and he might also realize that she liked him looking at her legs. Aargh!

  Noah straightened and lifted his arms in the air to stretch, pulling his button-down shirt across his ridged stomach and wide chest. Through the white cotton she could, if she stared hard enough, see his flat brown nipples. Jules couldn’t stop her eyes from skating over his stomach, over his pleasing, and promising, package to look at his thighs covered by his gray suit pants. They’d be tanned and, as they’d been since he was fourteen, corded with muscle. Pleasantly furry.

  Man, her old friend/new colleague was seriously hawt. As in smokin’.

  And...none of this was helping her with her other problem, her real problem of not knowing what the hell Paris wanted.

  Jules dropped her head back and groaned. “I need inspiration.”

  Noah stood and rested his hands on his hips. “How can I help?”

  Jules lifted her head up and rubbed the back of her neck. “Did Paris say anything to you about the interiors when you first spoke to her about designing the yacht? Was there anything in those conversations that could steer me in the right direction?”

  Noah thought for a minute. “Not really. She told me to design something that would make her friends drool. Gave me the budgeted figure and said to come back to her when I had some thoughts. I’ve managed to pin her down to some specifics—what she wants the boat for, cruising the Caribbean and possibly the Med, and for entertaining, which means big reception and deck areas. Her eyes glazed over when I mentioned anything to do with engineering or design.” Noah frowned. “‘Design a boat, here’s a small deposit to get you started, make it spectacular.’

  “I don’t think she’s very interested in sailing.”

  Jules laughed at his deadpan comment. “What makes you think that?” she quipped. “So, tell me about the boat.”

  Noah walked around the desk to her and perched his butt on the corner of his desk. “I sent you the blueprints. All the specs are in there.”

  “Yeah, but I have no idea what the boat actually looks like. Maybe I can take some inspiration from your design...”

  “I didn’t send you the concept drawings of the yacht?” Noah asked, sounding shocked by his inefficiency.

  “Nope.”

  Noah frowned again before walking back to his drafting table and pulling a folder out from underneath his blueprints. Flipping it open, he removed a sheaf of papers and returned to his spot on the desk. Stretching out his long legs, he handed Jules the sheaf of papers, a hint of nervousness in his eyes. It almost seemed like Noah was seeking her approval, that he wanted her to like his work.

  Strange, since Noah was the most self-assured man she knew.

  Jules looked down and her breath hitched. Despite the roughness of the sketch she could see the fluid, almost-feminine lines of the yacht, the gentle curves, the sensuous bow. Moving on to the paper below, Jules tipped her head to the side. Noah took his rough design to his computer and the color printout in her hand looked like a real, already built yacht, just ten times more beautiful than the concept drawing.

  Sleek, elegant, feminine...spectacularly well designed.

  “Oh, my goodness, Noah, it’s...” Jules couldn’t think of an adjective that adequately contained how wonderful she thought his design was. She sighed, slumped back in her chair and looked into Noah’s intensely masculine face. “It’s... Wow.”

  “You like it?”

  “Are you kidding me? It’s gobsmackingly, shockingly beautiful. I have no words.”

  Pride flashed in Noah’s eyes. “I like it.”

  “You should.” Jules tapped her nail on the glossy paper. “You’ve put so much thought into the design, you know exactly what you want the interior to look like.”

  Noah nodded, so Jules picked up her sketch pad, found a clean page and picked up a bright pink pencil, prepared to make a list.

  “I thought about echoing the fluidity of its lines with a feminine interior,” Noah said, “but by feminine, I mean sleek and sexy as opposed to frilly and fancy.”

  Yeah, she understood. Long lines, gentle curves, no harsh edges.

  “I’d like comfortable white furniture with pops of color. Bold pinks or oranges or reds, feminine colors but strong tones. There are a lot of windows to show off incredible views so we have to consider the sea an accessory.”

  Noah tossed more suggestions at her and Jules wrote quickly, struggling to keep up with him. Interesting textures, hidden flat screens, storage space. He’d thought about it all. He eventually ran out of ideas—thank goodness because her hand was starting to cramp—and gripped the edge of his desk with both hands, his intense eyes locking with hers. “Make it feminine, sexy but soft. Accessible but with a hint of mystery. Look inside.”

  Her head jerked up at his last sentence and the air between them turned thick and warm. “What do you mean by that?” she asked, unable to disguise the rasp in her voice.

  Noah’s intensity ratcheted up a notch and... Zzzz... She was sure that was the sound of her underwear melting. “I look at the yacht and I see you. Sexy, slim, so damn feminine.”

  “Noah.” Jules pulled his name out into three, maybe four, syllables. It was a plea but she wasn’t sure what she was asking for. Please kiss me or please don’t? Please stoke the fires and make me burn or please hose me down?

  “What do you want, Jules?”

  Nothing. Something. Everything.

  Jules was unable to answer him, and when a minute or two passed—or ten seconds, who knew because time was irrelevant—Noah surged to his feet. Tossing her sketch pad to the floor, he gripped her biceps, lifted her up, and up again, so that her mouth was aligned with his. Still holding her, his mouth touched hers...sweet and hot and sexy and... Dear Lord.

  Jules wasn’t sure how his arms came to be around her waist and how her skirt got high enough to allow her legs to wind around his hips. All she knew was that her core was pressed against his impossibly hard erection, her nipples were pushed into his chest and his mouth was turning her brain to slush.

  She didn’t want to be anywhere else.

  For years she’d been kissing guys who made
her feel something between mild revulsion and “mmm, this is okay” but nobody turned her into a nuclear reactor like Noah did. Nobody had ever made her feel she’d choose making love to him over dodging a missile strike or a tunnel collapse. If she got to touch and be touched by Noah, she’d take her chances.

  Oh, man, she was in so much trouble.

  Noah’s hand ran up the back of her thigh, over the bare skin of her butt. “A thong. Nice.”

  It would be so much nicer if he got rid of that tiny scrap of material that called itself underwear. “Take it off.” Jules spoke the words against his lips, dipping her hands into the space between his pants and his lower back, wanting to go lower, to feel his butt cheek under the palm of her hand.

  Noah pulled back, his eyes intensely focused. On her, on making her his. She wanted that, to belong to him again, if only for this moment in time. “Jules...”

  She knew what he was about to say and she didn’t want to hear it. Yes, it was a bad idea. Yes, they’d only just reconnected. Yes, there was a lifetime behind them and they had no idea how to navigate the future. But she wanted this, wanted to know Noah before they reestablished their friendship. Because the yacht project had them spending so much time together, she couldn’t keep him at arm’s length, even if she wanted to. Which she didn’t. She wanted Noah back in her life, the hole in her heart was finally closing. They were on their way back to being friends.

  God, she hoped he knew there couldn’t be more between them, that this night and a burgeoning friendship was all they could have. They’d make love, get it out of their systems and accept that they could never go beyond a casual friendship.

  Because, as nice as it was to have Noah back in her life, she was never going to open up to him again in the way that she did when she was a child, then a teen. She’d trusted him once and he’d abused that trust when he left her, stayed away without so much as an explanation for an entire decade.

  Noah was going to leave again; it was what he did, and this time she wasn’t allowing her heart to leave with him.

  But sex, pleasure—yeah, she trusted him with her body. If she wanted to know passion, and she did, then it had to be now, today. Tomorrow could take care of itself.

  “I want this, Noah. I want you.”

  He opened his mouth to argue but Jules didn’t give him a chance, she just molded her lips against his and slipped her tongue inside his mouth to slide against his. She heard his deep, feral growl, felt his fingertips push into the skin of her butt. When the thin cord of her thong snapped, she knew she’d won the small argument.

  Or that Noah had let her win. She didn’t care.

  “One time,” Noah muttered, pulling away from her mouth to push his lips against her neck. “One time and we get over this.”

  Jules nodded her agreement and briefly wondered if Noah knew she would agree to selling her kidney on the black market if it meant making love to him. She was under his spell...

  Or for the first time ever she was finally experiencing the joy of really, really good foreplay. And if foreplay was this intense, sex itself was going to be fan-damn-tastic.

  Suddenly she couldn’t wait. She put a little distance between their bodies and attacked his shirt buttons, needing to see him, feel him. Whoops, button gone. Oh, well, tit for tat since her tattered thong was lying at their feet. Her thong was forgotten as Noah’s hand ran up the inside of her leg, skating past her core, making her squirm.

  Jules spread his shirt apart and placed an openmouthed kiss against the skin above his heart. Noah. God, she was making love to Noah. Suddenly scared, she rested her forehead against his chest, her hands on his belt buckle but making no attempt to divest him of his pants.

  Was this a mistake? She was sure it was...

  Noah’s hand stilled. “Second thoughts?”

  “Yes? No... I don’t know.”

  “If you want to stop, we can pretend this never happened. Or we can carry on and pretend this never happened. Either way, in the morning this can all be a wonderful dream or a fantastic memory.”

  “Do you want to stop?”

  Noah’s strangled chuckle rumbled across her hair. “Honey, I have a sexy woman in my arms, the one I’ve fantasized about since I first tasted her luscious mouth a decade ago. That kiss changed everything and I’ve been wanting to kiss you, taste you there and everywhere, since then. Hell, no, I don’t want to stop.”

  Jules looked up at him. “You thought about me?”

  Noah used one finger to push her hair off her forehead and out of her eyes. “More than I should’ve. I imagined you naked and responsive and the reality is a million times better than the dream.”

  “How can one kiss change us?”

  “God knows,” Noah said, lifting his hand to pull her silk T-shirt out of the band of her skirt. His hand trailed over her rib cage before covering her breast, his thumb pulling the lace of her bra over her already aching nipple.

  “Stop or carry on, Jules? Tell me now.”

  She wanted this. It was just one time and they’d forget it happened in the morning. Or was she deluding herself? When dawn broke, forgetting anything wouldn’t be easy to do but she was willing to find any excuse, clutch any straw to be with Noah. To know him intimately.

  Thinking that actions would say more than words, Jules gripped the edges of her T-shirt and slowly pulled the fabric up her torso, revealing her lacy white bra. She heard Noah’s intake of air, and when she looked at him, his eyes were on her breasts. Using one finger, he gently rubbed one nipple before transferring his attention to the next.

  “I guess that’s a yes.”

  “A huge fat gaudy yes,” Jules responded huskily.

  Jules gasped when Noah grabbed her hand and pulled her across the room and into a space between the wall and his drafting table. Pushing her into the corner, he placed her back to the wall and undid the front clasp of her bra. Then both her breasts were in his hands and she groaned. “As much as I like that, want to explain why we are in this corner?”

  “Windows. Marina. Can’t see us here,” Noah muttered, bending to suck her nipple. A hot stream of lust hit her core and Jules moaned. Noah couldn’t use long sentences and she couldn’t speak at all.

  Lord, they were in a world of trouble.

  To hell with it. Nothing was hurting now. And she wanted more. She wanted it all.

  Jules reached for Noah’s pants, undid his belt buckle and managed, somehow, through luck rather than skill, to flip open the button to his pants. Jules was very conscious of his erection under her hand and she couldn’t resist running her fingers over his length, imagining him pushing into her body, slowly and, oh, so deliciously. She slid the zipper down and then pushed his pants over his hips, wrapping her hand around his shaft and skating her thumb across its tip.

  Noah cried a curse and lifted her skirt to bunch it around her waist. They were half-undressed but they didn’t care, nothing was more important than having him fill her, stretch her, make her scream.

  “Condom,” Noah muttered.

  Protection. Yeah, that was important. Noah reached behind him and patted the desk, grunting when his hands closed around his wallet. Pulling it to him, he flipped it open, digging beneath the folds. Eventually, he pulled out a battered foil packet that Jules eyed warily.

  “That looks old.”

  Noah ripped open the packet and allowed the foil to float to the floor. “It’ll do the job.”

  That was all she cared about. Jules tried to help him roll the latex down his length but Noah batted her hands away. Covered, his hand slid between her legs and Jules shuddered. Oh, God, yes. There. Just like that.

  “Do you like that, sweetheart?”

  “So good.” Jules spiraled on a band of pure, undiluted pleasure and lifted her head, looking for Noah’s mouth. He kissed her, hard and demanding. Noah lifted her thigh over his hips and p
lunged inside her. Feeling both protected and ravished, Jules had the sensation of coming apart and being put back together as Noah worked his way inside her, as if she were spun sugar and liable to break.

  “Noah,” Jules murmured, her face in his neck, trying to hold on. In another dimension, Jules heard the vibrant ring of his phone. Focused on what Noah was doing to her, making her feel—she’d never believed it could be this magical, this intense—Jules ignored the demands of the outside world, but when the phone rang again she tensed.

  Noah clasped her face in one hand, using his thumb to lift her jaw so that their eyes clashed and held. “You and me, Jules. The rest of the world can go to hell.”

  Jules nodded as he pushed a little deeper, a little further and she whimpered. She wanted more, she needed every bit of him. “So good, No. You feel amazing.”

  “It’s going to get better, Ju. Hold on.”

  “Can’t. Need to let go... Oh, God.”

  Noah stopped moving. Jules whimpered and ground down on him, wanting to set the pace. Jules thought she heard Noah’s small chuckle but then he was moving, sliding in and out of her, the bottom of his penis rubbing her clit and she was done. The world was ending and it was...

  Stars and candy and electricity and fun and...

  Mind-blowing. And emotional. Tears pricked her eyes and she ducked her head so that Noah didn’t see the emotion she knew was on her face. This was only supposed to be about good sex, great sex, but here she was, trying to ignore that insistent voice deep inside claiming this was more, that it always had been, that she was a fool if she thought they could be bed buddies and brush this off.

  This is Noah, that voice said, your best friend, your hottest fantasy. He’s not just some random guy who gave you the best orgasm of your life. He’s the beat of your heart—

  No! No, he wasn’t.

  Those feel-good hormones were working overtime, her serotonin levels were making her far too mushy. She could not allow herself to allow the lines between sex and love to blur, to mix it up with friendship and good memories to make one confusing stew. Sex was sex; friendship and love had nothing to do with this.