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Still, I can’t help but wonder… He planned this whole seduction for how long? Weeks? Months?
“Lauren?” He rolls to face me, the sheets whispering intimately, like a lover beckoning. “Talk to me, sugar.”
Talk to Noah, as in bare my soul? It’s tempting, but…I don’t know if I can trust him with my heart.
I look away and swallow against the hope shining in his eyes.
Edging to the other side of the bed, I put space between us and grab the sheet, covering every inch of my nudity possible. The scrap of linen doesn’t help much, considering he’s lying on the rest. And doesn’t appear to be in a hurry to give me more.
“You planned this.” My voice shakes. “The way you plan a conquer-and-overcome strategy at the office. You laid out and followed through on the steps of this…this deception.”
He frowns. “Deception? I planned this to show you how I felt about you, in a way I hoped wouldn’t weird you out about the fact it’s me. You said yourself that you would have run like hell if I simply told you I loved you and wanted to be with you.”
“Totally beside the point. Ask me out on a date, like a normal guy. Don’t manipulate—”
“If I merely asked you out and managed to catch you in a weak moment, you would have found a hundred ways to keep me at arm’s length so you wouldn’t have to risk your heart.”
“Because I’m not ready for this.”
“You are,” he disagrees. “I’ve waited and watched. I know you’re scared but there’s no reason. We’re going to be great together. We already are.”
“No. I don’t think you’re ready for this, either. You take the decision out of my hands and think everything is A-okay? You make choices for me, decide who I have sex with, when and how? That’s not great. That’s not love.
“Next, you talked to me about pursuing a gun-shy divorcée. Oh, wait. That would be me. Duh! How silly of me to assume you were honestly asking me for advice with a genuine problem.”
“So I didn’t go about this in the most straightforward way, but you being stubborn and stand-offish and needlessly afraid is a hell of a problem. Yes, I asked you for advice. Who better to go to than the source for accurate information?”
He still doesn’t see anything wrong with his strategy. Unbelievable. The fact he’s gone to all the trouble to ask my advice, to invent Mr. Mysterious, would be flattering if he really means it. But Noah doesn’t love me. Maybe he thinks he does. The truth is, he loves a challenge more. And between my disavowals of love and our past, he likely sees me as his personal Mount Everest.
“I should have guessed. You plan everything, even my seduction. Why didn’t I realize before now that you were using the very advice I gave you against me to conquer me? How damn stupid am I?”
“Conquer? Damn it, Lauren. I’m not some frat boy looking for a locker-room boast, and I’m not trying to ruin your life. I’m trying to love you, like I’ve been wanting to for ten fucking years.”
Ten years? “That’s not possible. I would have been married to Tim and—”
“Exactly.” He surges closer, erasing my personal space, his chest against mine, our foreheads nearly touching. Then he anchors his hand around my nape. “It was hell watching him slowly hurt you, day by day, little by little, withholding the attention and love I was dying to give you. All I could do was sit by while he shattered your heart and illusions. Knowing you cried at night, betting your body craved what I was aching to give you, damn near ate me alive. I waited for you to recover, and these last two years destroyed my patience and restraint.”
I have no idea what to say. His growl and the blast of heat from his blue eyes tells me he believes every word he says. Stunned doesn’t begin to cover my reaction.
“In all those years…you never said a word.”
“I couldn’t. You were a good friend’s wife. If I crossed that line—and don’t think I wasn’t damn tempted—you would have ended up hating us both for it. Remember the night Tim was out of town for your birthday a few years ago?”
One of the lowest points of my marriage. Tim had been gone for weeks. He’d flown home for two days, spent three minutes inside my body, an hour or two playing with the girls, then when I finished his laundry, he packed up and left again. And I cried for the lack of love in his touch, in his eyes. He’d been on autopilot, doing his duty, relieving his physical need. Moving on. I suspected then that divorce was imminent, but hadn’t mustered the courage to file. It would mean so much change…
The night of my birthday, Noah came by and found me crying. He persuaded me to dress up, asked his mom to watch the girls, then took me out. The place was loud and crowded and so much fun. Exactly what I needed. A bottle of wine later, I realized I hadn’t smiled like that in at least five years. I knew then that I had to change my life.
Of course, I awakened with a colossal hangover the next day, but my resolution remained. I followed through a few days later and filed.
“I remember.”
“That night, in the restaurant”—he takes a deep breath, and a muscle ticks in his jaw—“you looked so damn gorgeous. You smiled when everyone sang to you. You let me hold you close when we danced. I felt your heart race when I pressed you to my chest. I felt your hard nipples, too. That night, I could have brought you home and taken you to bed.”
I gasp and open my mouth to protest. Then I swallow it.
Though I wish otherwise, he’s right. He could have had sex with me that night. When he smiled at me, the stirrings of attraction I felt over the years blossomed. For the first time, I yearned to be a woman with him, rather than a friend.
Fast-forward to the present. Now, he’s way more than a friend. This past week, I’ve been a woman with him, learned him as a lover, experienced the touch of his sure hands, the full thrust of his cock as he penetrated me deep.
