CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Noah raised his fist ready to knock and then shoved it back in his pocket. He walked away, shaking his head. He was an idiot. And in this case, he didn’t know exactly what idiotic thing he’d done or said, but it had been enough to get Cat to stop flirting with him and become desperate to get away from him.
He paced back to the trailer door. He could hear the TV on inside. Or was that voices? Maybe she had someone in there with her. Maybe she had a boyfriend, and he’d been misreading everything since Day One… or whatever day he’d decided he wasn’t going to keep fighting this attraction to her.
Maybe it wasn’t a boyfriend. Maybe it was a hookup.
Oh, god. He paced to the back of the trailer. Was he coming here for a hookup? Or was this something more? Why would Cat be up for something more? She had a life in New York. She had a TV show. A glamorous, busy schedule that didn’t leave room for a torrid, long-distance affair with a boring Connecticut city manager or being a stepmother to a 12-year-old.
Noah tripped over a cable running beneath two trailers. Well that had mentally escalated quickly. He rubbed the back of his neck. He went from thinking about having sex with Cat to thinking about having a life with Cat.
See? His inner conscience blared at him. He wasn’t cut out for flings or one-night stands. He was a boring, monogamous guy who just wanted to settle down and build a boring, stable, predictable life around himself.
Definitely an idiot. He needed to leave. Thank God he hadn’t humiliated himself by knocking. Noah wasn’t exactly sure what he’d planned to do once she’d answered. Demand to know why she got weird at the dinner? Start taking his clothes off in hopes that she’d follow his lead? Break into a dissertation on all the reasons they would be better off not having sex?
He hated that he went stone hard the second he thought “sex” and “Cat” in the same sentence. He was no better than a teenager.
Yeah, he was going home to take a cold shower and let this thing die a natural, uncomplicated death.
“You’re wearing a ditch in the asphalt.” Cat’s calm observation came from where she leaned against the doorway of her trailer.
“Oh, I was just uh…” What? Inspecting the parking lot? Looking for permits?
“You might as well come in, Noah, before you freeze to death trying to come up with a lie.”
Cat stepped back from the door, and Noah felt that he had no choice but to follow her inside. He shut the door behind him with a bang and was relieved to note that it was the TV he’d heard and not the dulcet tones of some Latin lover Cat had flown in to satisfy her needs. She was watching a Christmas movie.
A tiny fiber optic tree was plugged in in the corner shifting from pink to blue to green.
“Why do you look sick and mad?” Cat asked, flopping down on the small couch.
She was wearing a tight white tank with nothing, zip, zero underneath it. The thin straps looked like they might break under the strain of her very visible, very full breasts. He’d never wanted to touch anything so much in his entire life. He’d slide his palms up over her stomach to the lower curve—
He was instantly harder than he could ever remember being.
She wore cropped sweatpants that ended just below the knee. There was an inch of skin visible between the waistband of her pants and the hem of her tank top. And Noah wanted to run his tongue around it.
Her face was bare, hair piled on top of her head, and she was surrounded by papers, a laptop, and a tablet.
“Yoo-hoo?” Cat snapped her fingers, and Noah woke from his breast-induced trance.
“Sorry. What?”
She looked amused. A woman like Cat would be used to having men slobber over her. It was part of the job, wasn’t it? Being attractive, being a brand. He hated that he was just one more man lusting after her. He wanted more than that for them both.
“I was asking what you’re doing here,” Cat reminded him.
“Why did you close up at the fire hall?” He blurted the question out forgetting each and every carefully crafted segue he’d worked on in his head since she walked away from him.
“Noah, you can’t be serious.”
“We were flirting, talking. And then you just clam up and walk away,” he argued.
“Yes, we were flirting, and I was thinking about inviting you over tonight so I could run my tongue over every inch of your body.”
Noah’s knees buckled, and he slid bonelessly into one of the chairs around her miniscule dining table.
“W-what?”
“Oh, but that was before you confessed to still being in love with your ex-wife.”
Noah blinked. He wasn’t sure if he’d been struck dumb by Cat’s breasts or her announcement about her intended plans regarding her tongue. But either way, he had no idea what she was talking about.
“I’m in love with Mellody?” he asked.
“Yeah. You already told me,” Cat said, leveling those pretty hazel eyes at him.
“That’s—that is not what I meant or said. You asked…” He brought his fingertips to his eyeballs behind the lenses of his glasses. If he kept his eyes closed, he wouldn’t be hypnotized by those breasts that seemed to be begging for his hands, his mouth. “You asked if I still loved Mellody.”
“Yep,” Cat said, clearly not thrilled with the outcome.
“I said yes.”
“Oh, I remember very clearly,” Cat said picking up the remote and flipping through the channels as if she didn’t have any stake in the conversation.
“You didn’t ask if I was in love with her,” Noah pointed out, rising out of the chair.
Cat’s eyes narrowed. “What’s the difference?”
Could the woman really know so little about love? he wondered. “You love your nonni, right?”
“Uh, duh.” Cat rolled her eyes at the stupidity of his question.
“But you’re not in love with her… although I could see why anyone would be. She’s a firecracker.” He was digressing and forced himself to reel it in. “What I’m saying is, I love my ex-wife as the co-parent of my daughter and within the awkward friendship we’ve been cobbling together since the divorce.”
Cat blinked, frowned. “Well, why in the hell didn’t you say it that way in the first place?” she demanded.
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you get me a little tongue-tied when you look directly at me,” Noah pointed out.
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m serious, Cat. You’re the color in a gray day. I don’t know how else to describe it. I look at you, and I see all this passion and joy and fun and excitement. I’ve never met anyone like you. Including my ex-wife, who I care for and respect but have no desire to be married to anymore,” he clarified.
Noah didn’t know how he’d expected Cat to respond, but it certainly wasn’t jumping into his arms and locking her legs around his waist.
“Let’s try less talking,” Cat suggested, a millimeter away from his mouth. “Less room for misunderstanding.”
He gave his assent by gripping her sweatpant-clad ass and squeezing.
She brought her mouth crashing into his in a tangle of teeth and tongue and want. Blindly, Noah stumbled forward, pressing her against the entertainment center cabinet.
She tasted like danger. And for once in his life, Noah wanted to slide a toe over the line onto the wild side. He squeezed her hips, her ass, yanking her tight against him. She responded with a muffled moan against his mouth.
Noah whirled and pressed her hard against the closed door, losing himself in a ravenous kiss. The way she moved against him, writhing and sliding. The sexy noises that clawed their way up from the back of her throat. He wasn’t going home tonight. Unless she wasn’t sure…
“Are you sure about this, Cat?” he murmured, his lips dancing over hers.
“Stop. Overthinking. And have sex with me.” She shoved her fingers into his hair and gripped hard.
He felt the shock of pain, saw stars behind his eyes. And then lost his damn mind.
He spun them, desperate to lose the layers that separated them. He stumbled against the dining table and spread Cat on it as if she were a feast ready for the sampling. She wouldn’t let him pull back, her fingers digging into his shoulders, her thighs holding him in a death grip.
Noah shoved a hand under her tank, reveling in the smooth flat of her stomach. The warmth, the silky texture of her bare skin finally beneath his. It was an exquisite torture being so close to her yet still not close enough.
“Lose your shirt, Noah,” Cat commanded.
Happy to oblige, he reached behind his head and dragged the pullover off.
“So much better.” She reared up to rain kisses and bites across his chest. “So built,” she murmured.
“Back at you,” Noah said, sliding both hands under her shirt and yanking it up and over. “Fuck. I don’t know if I can survive this.” Reverently, he trailed his hands higher over the ridges of ribs to the swell of her perfect breasts.
“They’re not going to break,” Cat said breathlessly as Noah splayed his fingers over the heavy bottom curve of each breast.
“No, but they deserve to be savored,” he promised.
“I don’t know if I can handle savoring,” Cat warned him, a hitch in her voice as his palms blazed a trail to her pebbled nipples.
She dropped her head back onto the table with a thunk. “Oh, God.”
Noah took his time lowering his mouth to her. He dropped a circle of kisses around one pink, aching point.
“Killing me,” Cat groaned.
Finally, Noah gave in to the desire to taste. He lapped at her nipple with the flat of his tongue. Her hips bucked against him, lining his throbbing cock with the wet that seeped through the cotton of her pants. He flexed, testing.
“Noah!”
“I’ve barely touched you, tasted you, yet,” Noah teased.
“Touch and taste faster, or I’ll make you,” she threatened.