I keep waiting to wake up.

It has to be a fucking dream that Kristin is in my arms. Her fingers press against my neck, pulling me closer while I kiss her lips.

“Noah,” she says my name as her mouth moves to my neck.

This wasn’t my intention when I came here. I wasn’t even sure if I should come with Eli, but I needed to see if she was okay. Kristin stirs every protective urge I have. If that prick had hurt her, I was going to bury him.

I’d made a deal with myself that if she had been upset, I would give her time without me pressuring her. The last thing she needs is another person fucking with her head. We’d be friends, I’d do the article I was an idiot to suggest, and then we’d part ways.

When I saw her on the floor, smiling and happy to see me, there was no way I could walk away.

“I’ve thought about you all day,” I tell her as I kiss my way down her neck. “When my plane landed, all I could do was find a way to see you.”

She moans and drops her head back. “You have no idea . . .”

“About what?”

Kristin’s blue eyes meet mine, and I watch the confliction swirl in her gaze. “How much I think about you.”

“You’re not the only one, sweetheart.”

“Good.” She smiles as I drop my mouth back to hers, loving when she opens her lips and I can dive back in. I taste the sweetness of the wine against her tongue. Her fingers slide down my back, but they can only go so far since she’s still sitting.

My hands cup the back of her thighs, and I lift her. She yelps when I sit her on the table, giving me the angle to kiss her better. Instead of giving in to my urge, I take a second to look at her, amazed at all she is. How the fuck did I get this lucky?

How could one drunken reporter find her way into my heart with just a smile?

She runs the pads of her fingers against my cheeks. “I like this,” she muses as she scratches my semi-beard.

I like her touching me. I like everything about her.

“Yeah?” I ask.

She nods with her bottom lip in between her teeth, not meeting my eyes.

“What else do you like?” I ask as she moves her thumb across my lip.

“The way you kiss me.”

Well, I can gladly give her that again, but I know Kristin’s biggest issue is she was silenced. I won’t allow that. I want her to be confident and never worry that she has to hide anything.

“Like this?” I brush my lips against hers, pulling back when she moves in and tries to take over. She lets out a small whimper, and I wait for her to answer. “Is that what you want, sweetheart?”

She shakes her head, but that isn’t going to fly tonight. Nothing will happen unless I hear the words. I’m fighting every impulse to lay her on the table and make her lose her mind. I want to make her feel good, worshipped. My muscles are aching from restraining myself from doing just that, but Kristin has to lead how far this goes.

“I can’t hear you,” I urge.

“No,” she finally says.

“What do you want?”

There’s no mistaking her hesitancy. She wants to say it but doesn’t know how. I have to push her without breaking her. I’m not sure what the right move is to do that, so I move my mouth back to hers.

Her legs wrap around me, pulling me flush against her. My cock strains against my pants as she digs her heels into my ass. She breaks the kiss and runs her tongue against my ear. “That’s more like it,” she rasps.

“Fuck,” I groan as she repeats the motion against my other ear.

I’m teetering on losing my restraint and taking over. Instead of fucking this whole thing up with her, I have to stop this now.

I start to pull back, but she clutches me tighter.

“Kristin,” I say as I pull her wrists down. I take a few steps back, giving us a little space to breathe. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. What am I thinking? She got divorced today, and I’m here dry humping her on her goddamn table. “I need . . .”

“What did I do wrong?” she asks with pain in her voice.

“What?” I ask, moving back toward her.

“You . . . you stopped. I-I’m . . . I don’t know what I did. I’m sorry.”

Jesus Christ. She thinks I stopped because she did something wrong? “You didn’t do anything wrong, Kristin. I was wrong to do this to you today.” I move my fingers against her slightly swollen lips.

She takes my hand in hers, dropping it to her legs. “Do this to me?”

“You got divorced today, and I’m an asshole for touching you.”

Kristin lets out a mix between a snort and a giggle. I don’t know what the fuck it is, but it’s cute as hell. “You think you’re an asshole? First of all, I attacked you in my kitchen. Even if we take that out of the equation, you are the absolute last person I would call an asshole today. You want to know something?”

I want to know all her somethings. “What?”

“You helped me today without even being there. Scott, my ex,” she clarifies without needing to, “he tried to make me feel . . . well, like he’d normally make me feel, but you stopped it. What you said to me the other day, it meant more than you’ll ever know.”

Kristin’s eyes fill with tears, and my chest starts to ache. “Don’t cry,” I beg. A crying woman is my freaking kryptonite. Do you hug them? Tell them it’s okay? I’ve made that mistake before, told my girlfriend it would be all right before an explosion of how not all right it is happened.

She wipes her cheeks and sniffles. “I’m telling you that you’re not an asshole, Noah.”

“You don’t really know me yet.” I try to lighten the mood with a joke.

“Idiot.” She laughs.

“I am that.” I smile and remove the tear that’s about to fall.

It’s in my DNA to fix things. I’m a man; it’s what I do. If there’s a problem, then the solution is somewhere, and I’ll find it. Kristin crying because I stopped kissing her isn’t one I’ve encountered before.

I also don’t think kissing her to make it stop is the right choice.

Do I stand here?

“I . . . I liked kissing you.”

Maybe she does want me to kiss her. “Kris, I’m more than happy to kiss you,” I say pushing her brown hair back. “I’ll kiss you all night if it means you won’t cry.”

Her eyes lift to the ceiling and she grumbles. “Great. Now I’m guilting you into making out with me.”

I take her face in my hands, bring her head down, and wait for her to look at me. She looks lost. The free, sexy, confident woman who took what she wanted is gone. I want her back and will do whatever I have to in order to accomplish that.

“I want nothing more than to bring your lips to mine. I want to kiss every inch of you, make you forget everything except me, and then make love to you until we collapse. You don’t have to guilt me, you just have to say the word, and I’m right here.”