Page 15

"Arms up, sweetheart."

I lift my arms. The shirt goes over my head. Cool air hits my skin, and my nipples tighten under my plain white bra, the cotton kind from a three-pack, and I have one second of wishing I'd known this morning that someone would see it.

Then I see his face, and I stop wishing anything.

He's looking at me as though nobody in Copper Peak has ever unwrapped anything better.

"You're beautiful," he says, his voice rough.

"It's a three-pack bra."

"I don't care what pack it came in." He traces the strap down over my shoulder with one finger, and goose bumps follow it. "Can I take it off?"

I nod. I can't get a word out.

He reaches behind me, and the hooks give on the first try. I don't know how I feel about him being good at that. And then the bra slides down my arms, and I don't feel anything except his hands. He cups my breasts in his big rough palms, and his thumbs brush over my nipples. A sound comes out of me I didn't know I could make.

"There she is," he murmurs.

He bends his head and takes one nipple in his mouth.

I grab his hair. Heat shoots straight down from his mouth to between my legs, sharp and bright, and I arch into him without deciding to. He sucks, unhurried, then swirls his tongue around the tip and switches to the other side while his thumb keeps working the first one. My thighs squeeze his hips. I can feel how hard he is through his jeans, pressing against the inside of my thigh, thick and insistent.

That should scare me. It doesn't. It makes me want more.

"Arch." I don't know what I'm asking for.

He knows. He lifts his head, kisses me once, hard, and then he hooks his foot around the leg of the stool and drags it over.

The stool. The one he sat on today, reading Kenzie's letter.

He sits down on it in front of me, and suddenly his face is level with my stomach. He works my boots off first, one and then the other, and drops them on the floor. Then his hands go to the button of my jeans.

He stops. Looks up.

"Tell me if you want me to stop," he says. "Any second. I'll stop."

"I know." I do know. That's the strangest part. I've known him for two days, and I know it the way I know my own name. "Don't stop."

The button gives. The zipper. He tugs, and I lift my hips off the counter, and my jeans and my underwear go down my legs together and land on top of my boots. Then I'm sitting naked on the wrap counter at Lindgren's Toys with the paper rolls hanging behind me and the window glowing across the shop, and Arch's big hands are on my bare knees.

He eases them apart.

I want to close them. I want to cover myself with the nearest sheet of plaid. I put both hands flat on the counter behind me and make myself stay still while he looks at me, all of me, in the lamplight.

"Noelle." His voice has gone low and husky. "Look at me."

I look at him.

"You're perfect," he says. "Every inch. Don't hide from me."

Something in my throat goes tight. Nobody's ever looked at me long enough to call anything about me perfect. I don't hide.

Then he reaches past my hip and puts his hand on the carousel's key.

"What are you⁠—?"

"You wind it again." He turns the key, once, twice, all the way. "That's the point."