“Breathe,” Noah whispers, amusement dancing in his eyes, his lips tilted into the smallest of smiles.
I greedily suck in a deep breath and release it. I definitely needed that. Feeling red flush my cheeks, I turn my gaze to look at my feet, my toes fidgeting.
He finally takes a step back, and I instantly miss the heat of his body. Padding into the living room, he enters his bedroom. I follow him before he can send me on my merry way. He heads straight into the ensuite bathroom.
His bathroom still has some fog from his shower, and the mirror covering one side of the room is smudged, the black-and-white tiles wet with condensation.
“Sit,” I tell him, discarding the nervousness I was feeling. He needs to be treated. He can be angry later.
Startled, Noah almost drops his towel. “Fuck,” he lets out a curse under his breath. “Give a guy a warning, Andie.” He shakes his head, tightening his hold on the towel.
My lips lift in a smirk at him. Nodding my head at the counter, I indicate to him to do as I asked. Grumbling under his breath, he lowers himself, crossing his hands over his chest and his feet on the ground.
Putting the bag on the counter and grabbing the disinfectant, I pour a few drops on a cotton swab. I try to reach his forehead where there’s a gash, but his crossed legs in front of him, on top of his height, make it difficult for me.
With a shake of his head and a sigh, he parts his feet and pulls me between them, his hands on my waist, causing my breath to hitch.
With wide eyes, I can’t help but roam his face. Even with all the cuts and bruises, he’s still the most beautiful man I’ve ever laid my eyes on. “Go ahead,” he prompts me, breaking the trance I was in.
Patting all the spots on his face and neck, I discard the cotton and grab the ointment. Squeezing a dollop on my finger, I apply it over the nastiest cut on his cheek. “Sssss,” I hiss and scrunch my nose, as if it’s hurting me, while he stands there without a twitch in his eye.
He cocks an eyebrow in amusement at me, hands still branding my waist, the heat expanding to places it has no business expanding, like between my legs for starters.
“What? It looks nasty. I’m afraid that I’ll hurt you,” I tell him, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear.
“You won’t hurt me,” he whispers, his breath skating over my skin, sending a tremor wracking through me which I barely manage to hide.
“Okay,” I breathe out, getting back to work while his naked chest and tattoos taunt me,tempt me to lick them up.
Noah must see something on my face because he says, his jaw clenched, “Don’t look at me like that, Andie.”
Twisting back the cap on the ointment, I ask, “Like what?”
“Like you want to taste every inch of my skin,” he growls, reading my mind. How does he do it, I wonder.
I’ve always had to spell it out for others. But Noah, he takes one look at me and knows what I’m thinking. And it’s scary. Scary to know that I can get attached to him. I can get addicted to him, knowing he’ll never be mine, because to him, all I am is his best friend’s little sister.
Regardless, I don’t let my emotions run rampant and focus on the sexual tension reaching sky-high between us.
“Maybe I do.” I let my words linger in the space between us. Letting him decide how to proceed because his proximity has already made me delirious, and I can’t be trusted to make a proper judgment.
Standing straight, he picks me up and deposits me on the same counter he was leaning against just a moment ago. My hands land on his broadshoulders, searching for balance.
“You came to me like this?” Noah’s teeth grind against each other.
My brows furrow at his sudden change in topic, wondering what he means by that.
His dark gaze painfully roves from my face to my sleep shorts. He elaborates, reading the question on my face. “You came to me in theseshorts?” He spits the word as if it disgusts him.
His hands bunch my hoodie at my waist, as if holding on so that he doesn’t let himself be overtaken by whatever he’s feeling.
Do I look bad? I forgot to change in my hurry. I know there’s no gap in my thighs anymore, and they’re too thick.
“Yes,” I whisper, trying not to feel this sense of rejection as my head hangs low. I’ve been trying to love my body the way it is now, with all its stretch marks and my weight. I want him to think of me as beautiful.
Is that too much to ask?
His words bring me out of the reverie of my thoughts. “These shorts…they’re too short, Andie,” he says the words like it pains him. My heart rate picks up when his fingers play with the hem of my shorts, his knuckles brushing my thighs.