by Lisa Jackson
“I was planning on going over for dinner,” he responded. “Assuming I can get down my damn driveway.”
“Yes. Always assuming that.”
“Of course, my truck is going to be better equipped than that little thing you were trying to drive down the mountain.”
“Right. Well. No need to rub my face in it.”
“I don’t want to rub your face in anything,” he said. “I’m sorry that today was terrible.”
“Yeah,” she said softly, “you and me both.”
They only looked at each other for a moment, and the strange looming tension stretched between them.
But this was Noah, her friend, and there was no reason to be feeling tension. So she had told him that she was a virgin. What did that matter? She knew him well enough to know that he wasn’t one. Actually, she had always gotten the feeling that Noah was quietly expert at sex. At least, that was the impression she had gotten from the various women in town who had been with him and from his general nonchalance regarding the subject.
Why did thinking that all of a sudden make her feel hot? Without thinking, she pressed a hand to her cheek. Yes, she was definitely a little bit warm.
“Is everything all right, Meg?”
“Yeah,” she responded. “I mean, as all right as it can be, considering.”
“Right.” Noah took a deep breath and leaned against the island in the kitchen, staring over at her, his dark eyes serious. “What do you love about Charlie? I mean, God knows I like the guy; he’s the closest thing I have to a brother. But why do you love him? I’m not blind, Meg. I know you’ve always loved him. I knew it from that first moment. But what I don’t understand is why?”
“He’s . . .” She struggled to find words. And suddenly, the reality of everything tumbled in on her, and she wanted to cry even more than she had earlier. Because she couldn’t list a reason that wasn’t superficial. Like the fact that they had met each other when they were going through a hard time. Like the fact that he had been there for a lot of different turning points in her life. But the same could be said for Noah or a few of her other friends.
Charlie had actually been there least of all. Focusing on building his own company while she was starting her brewery. Missing out on her grand opening because he had been doing some kind of deal in San Francisco.
Standing there, facing down Noah, she was forced to admit—at least to herself—that she loved Charlie because it was a habit. Because she had told herself at fifteen that she did, and because he had told her that someday he would marry her and, in the very deepest part of her, she didn’t believe that anyone else would.
Habit. Desperation. Fear.
There were three of the worst reasons she could possibly think of to love somebody, and yet those were the only reasons she had left for loving Charlie.
Hell, she had even held on to her virginity all this time in spite of the fact that she had made out with him on couches late at night more than once. Holding back had always seemed an easy thing. And obviously, Charlie had been having sex with whomever he wanted, so it didn’t matter to him that she was withholding.
Now, standing in the desolate ruin of her years-long attachment to the man, she could see it all clearly.
She looked up at Noah. “Not a single good reason. And I’m not just saying that because I’m mad. I loved him from the moment I saw him and I never wanted that to change because there was something safe in loving him forever. Something so secure in having settled on that so long ago. And I . . . I would have married him, Noah.”
“Well,” he responded, clearly unsure of what to say.
And then he was saved by the kettle whistle.
He turned and pulled the thing off the burner, pouring her a mug of hot water and placing a tea bag inside.
Something built in her chest, and she couldn’t explain quite what. Anger at Charlie, mixed with anger at herself. A strange sense that there was some kind of timer ticking down in her life. On all those wasted years, months, days, moments, with Charlie. All those firsts. Her first kiss. Her first love. Her first heartbreak.
She could only be thankful that she hadn’t made him her first lover.
It had been her intention to have sex last night. And there was something hungry inside of her that was all but growling every time she looked at Noah.
She didn’t know what it was, and she didn’t know why. But she had felt the impact of him harder than she ever had when he’d opened the door to her earlier today.
And there had been all those things over the past months that she had ignored. Those strange little flutters when he had looked at her a certain way, when his hand had brushed against hers. Because she had loved Charlie and no one else. She had married herself to that notion with a myopic view.
She felt . . . free now. Released.
And it made her want to do something with that freedom.
She crossed the kitchen, moving to pick up the mug. Her heart was pounding wildly, her pulse throbbing in her temple. She turned to face Noah, who was appraising her closely, something intense on his face, the lines by his eyes deeper now, and . . . sexy.
That realization slammed into her like a freight train. Noah was sexy.
She had felt it, had known it, somewhere inside of herself for a while, but she had done her damnedest to ignore it.
The planes and angles of his face were well-defined, hard, and suddenly, her fingertips itched to learn the shape of it. To know what it was like to touch his beard. And maybe it wasn’t about him. Maybe it was about any beard, any new face. But she didn’t think so.
Because that sharp, insistent tightening that had become more and more persistent in Noah’s presence over the past few months was suddenly burning inside her, bright and intense.
She had pushed it down, and she had ignored it, because surely it couldn’t be attraction. She was in love with another man, their best friend, in fact, so feeling anything for Noah had to be an impossibility.
But as she stood there, looking at him, she realized that she did feel something. It didn’t center in her heart the way her feelings for Charlie did. No, these feelings originated from a much lower place.
Not that she didn’t care for Noah; she did. But this was something else entirely. Something completely separate from anything she had felt before.
“Noah,” she said, her voice unsteady.
“What?” he asked, but she didn’t miss the edge to the word.
“Can I . . . can I see something?” She swallowed hard and walked forward on unsteady feet, lifting her hand slowly and pressing her fingertips against his cheek.
A strange sensation shivered inside of her, low and deep, radiating through her in a way a simple touch never had.
Touching Charlie was always electric. A spark wrapped in insecurity. The emotional drama that was always rife in their connection, and the deep uncertainty that she always felt about what would happen next.
Would he say that he loved her? Would he say that right now there wasn’t anything standing between them?
When he came into town, would he rush right to her place? Or would he manufacture some excuse about being too busy to see her at all?
This was . . . It was something else entirely. And of course it was, because Noah was her friend and she’d had more than a decade of that friendship. But this current between them now was unlike anything she had ever experienced before. Unlike the feelings she associated with love, with attraction, and very unlike the feelings she associated with their friendship.
“Be very careful,” Noah said, his voice suddenly rougher. Unfamiliar. He didn’t sound like Noah anymore. Or, maybe scarier still, he did. But Noah in a way she’d never experienced him.
“Be careful of what?” she asked, her voice soft, almost a whisper. “It’s just me.”
She let her fingertips drift down toward his mouth, and she found her arm being caught in his iron grip. He stopped her exploration, his blunt fingers digging into her skin. Touching him was like st
anding in front of a furnace.
She looked up at him, her eyes wide.
“I don’t know what you think this is,” he nearly growled. “I don’t know what you think I am. If you talked yourself into believing that I’m part of some King Arthur bullshit, or if you just think I really am your brother.”
Her throat was dry, and she tried to swallow, and she didn’t know what to say, except for the most absurd thing. “That’s the second reference you’ve made to literature since I came over.”
He released his hold on her and dropped his hand back to his side. “What the hell does that have to do with anything?”
“Well, I was the one who was always reading about Camelot, and Odysseus, and I used to make you listen to me talk about it. You always told me it was boring. But you must have listened.”
He looked at her like she had grown another head. “Of course I listened to you. You’re my friend, Meg. If you talk to me, I listen. Even if it’s literary bullshit I couldn’t care less about.”
She felt as if someone had wrapped their hand around her heart and squeezed it tight. There was just something about that, that simple statement—crass and so very Noah as it was—that did something to her.
Because he said it so simply. That she was his friend and because she was his friend, he had listened to her. Listened to her talk about things that didn’t actually interest him. More than that, he remembered.
He remembered, and his skin had felt so good beneath her fingertips, and she had wanted to explore him more thoroughly. But he was her friend. He was right. So the impulse was messed up, putting it mildly.
Still, right now, her entire life felt messed up. It was Christmas Eve, and she had been determined to make herself a new woman this holiday.
Plus, Noah was her friend. More than that, she trusted him. More than anyone else on earth. She felt that with a deep certainty she didn’t even question.
And the way she had felt when she had touched him . . .
It hadn’t been that dramatic version of love she had always associated with Charlie. It had been something richer. Something more. And she wanted to figure it all out. To explore that possibility.
“What if I told you I didn’t want you to be a knight in shining armor right now?” she asked, the words slow and trembling.
“I’m not going to play a guessing game with you,” he said, his voice rough.
“I don’t mean to make you guess. It’s just that . . . I don’t . . . I don’t really know what I’m doing. I don’t really know what I’m feeling.”
She reached up again, putting her hand back on his face, sliding her thumb over his cheek. She had never touched him like this. They had hugged, more times than she could count, and there had been casual brushes of her hand against his, but she had never touched his face. It was such a strange, intimate thing. One of the few things that had always been off-limits with Noah. Touching.
“I can tell you what I’m feeling,” he said, sounding angry. “I’m feeling like if you keep doing this, if you keep testing me, teasing me, then I’m going to do something.... Meg, I’m sure as hell about to ruin our friendship. And, if you keep going, I can guarantee that you’re not going to spend another Christmas as a virgin.”
She wondered if he had said those words to scare her, because he certainly hadn’t said them to comfort her. But they didn’t do either, not really. No, those words hit her square in the stomach, the impact taking her breath away. Those words made her feel like a woman on the edge, trembling, dying for what might come next.
She had been ready. Ready to finally have the experience, and maybe it seemed nonsensical to transfer that desire from Charlie to somebody else so easily, but it only underscored the fact that actually her desire hadn’t been for Charlie in a very long time. She’d just been following those plans she had made so long ago when she was a girl and not a woman.
But she was a woman now. A woman who was experiencing desire, real, adult desire, in a way that she hadn’t ever before.
That was the difference. The difference between a fluttery, teenage girl’s infatuation and a woman’s sexual need. It had nothing to do with love, emotion, or the desire for marriage. Nothing to do with holding her body back, or giving it out to get a man to do what she wanted him to do.
She didn’t want anything from Noah. Nothing more than she already got from him, anyway. Because he was her rock. Steady and sure, and so much everything to her that she couldn’t even quite put it into words.
She didn’t need more from their relationship. And that was okay. But right now, she wanted him.
Right now, when she closed her eyes and thought of the word “sex,” it was Noah that she thought of. Noah’s body pressed against hers. She wanted to see it, touch it, learn it. Wanted to know if he had hair on his chest, to see if there was yet even more contrast between himself and Charlie.
She felt a stab of guilt over that. Charlie shouldn’t have anything to do with this. But her emotions were a little bit raw, even if she was sure she didn’t want him anymore. And it was less about Charlie and more about the fact that she had spent so many years fixated on one guy. So many years mired in an ideal she’d created as a teenager.
This was her moment to kick-start a new life, the moment to make a clean break. And who better to do it with than with a man she trusted so implicitly?
After she did this with Noah, there would be no going back. And part of her wondered if she needed that. If she needed to take this moment to slam the door completely on Charlie, and her decade’s worth of feelings.
“I don’t want to leave your house a virgin,” she said, the words choked.
He grabbed hold of her face, gripping her chin between his thumb and forefinger. “Why? You’ve never acted like you wanted me, Meg. We’ve been friends since we were teenagers, and you have never looked at me that way.”
“That’s not true,” she said, shaking her head. “Recently . . . I’ve been . . . It’s been so confusing, Noah, because I’ve been feeling things for you. . . . And I didn’t want to call it attraction, because I thought I was in love with Charlie and it didn’t seem right to feel something for you. You’re my friend.... I didn’t want to do anything to ruin that. But I don’t think anything could ruin us, could it?”
Her question might be more hopeful than anything else, but Noah was one of the few constants in her life. And if anyone could help her with this, if anyone could fix this, it would be Noah. He had been doing things like that ever since she was fifteen years old. Easing her fears, making her feel cared for when nobody else had.
Abandoned by her parents, who had loved drugs and alcohol more than they had ever loved their daughter, she’d found in Noah the most wonderful, blessed security.
Maybe now, maybe tonight, he could be that for her again. But they weren’t teenagers anymore. And what she needed from him was not the kind of comfort a girl needed. She needed him to comfort her the way a man comforted a woman.
“Noah,” she whispered, “I want you to kiss me.”
He didn’t release his hold on her. “If I kiss you,” he said, his tone full of warning, “we’re not going back.”
“Kiss me.”
CHAPTER 4
Even though Noah knew that Meg was responding to Charlie more than she was responding to him in this moment, he was a man, and he didn’t possess the self-control or the pride to care.
Because she was looking at him just the way he had always fantasized, standing there with her face tilted upward, golden eyes glittering, her full lips looking so lush and tempting that he felt he deserved a damned medal—or maybe canonization—for having never touched them with his own before.
Either way, he wasn’t going to refuse the demand now.
He walked toward her, and she took a step back, until she butted up against the cabinets. He placed his hands on either side of her, flat over the countertop, bracketing her in. And then he paused. He looked at her, giving her just a moment. Just a breath. J
ust enough space to decide if she really wanted this, or if she was going to run screaming from the room.
Because he knew the moment his lips touched hers he would be lost. So the chance had to be given now; otherwise it wouldn’t be given at all.
She didn’t protest. Instead, she just stood there, staring him down. And in that moment, he was reminded of Meg as she had been at fifteen. Wary, but hopeful in a way that he doubted he ever could be.
She had been like a feral cat that needed to be coaxed out from under the bed that first day. But there had been something about her that had made him want to do just that. Coax her. Befriend her. His own life had been marked by his mother’s addiction and her boyfriend’s violence toward them both. He hadn’t known any tenderness. Not shown toward him. And he hadn’t felt much inclined to show any to anyone else.
Until Meg.
He’d taken some of the money he’d earned working as a hand at a local ranch and bought her a package of cookies. She’d opened her bedroom door and looked at him with large eyes, saying nothing before grabbing the package and closing the door on him again.
But after that, they became friends.
Part of him would always see her that way, as that creature she’d been.
But layered over that memory was the reality of Meg as a woman. Beautiful. Mature. Lush. Everything he had ever wanted, everything he had ever fantasized about, and more.
She was demanding that he kiss her, and as much as he wanted to be noble . . . as much as he wanted her to do it because she wanted him, and not simply because she was angry with Charlie, a large part of him simply didn’t care.
The large part of him below his belt, currently growing larger and harder.
Yeah, that was the easiest way to think of it.
That his dick was all in.
But he knew it was more than that. It was evident. Completely and utterly obvious in the way that it was impossible for him to breathe. In the way each and every heartbeat felt like it was splintering something in his chest.
He had kissed a lot of women. But since he was seventeen there had never been a single moment spent kissing when he hadn’t wished, at least in part, he were kissing Megan instead.