Jill Shalvis - Smart And Sexy

Bullshit, she was fine. The car ride might have begun to warm her up, but it hadn’t fully done the job, and he needed to do something. Clearly she was pulling the shy card, but it was too late for that.

“N-no need for a shower,” she said through chattering teeth.

“You have to get warm.” He lifted his hands to his own shirt, which he unbuttoned.

Her eyes widened. “Um-what-”

“I don’t know about you, but I’m just about done with being cold and wet.”

“Yes, but-”

“Hurry.”

Her gaze locked on his chest. “H-hurry to what?”

“Strip.”

Bailey could not have possibly heard him right. Strip? Strip? Was he insane? Suddenly being too scared to think and too frozen solid to imagine ever being warm again took a backseat to this new and entirely disconcerting situation.

She was alone in a house with a man she hardly knew, a big, strong, tough man who knew his way around trouble, who looked like sin on a stick, oh, and he’d unbuttoned his shirt.

Strip…

How was it even possible she wanted to do just that? She’d seen men naked before, so she had no idea why the sight of Noah undoing his shirt, revealing a wedge of bare torso, made her mouth suddenly dry, but she wasn’t sticking around to find out. “Noah-”

He took a step forward, and she took one back, which had the high mattress hitting her in the butt.

As if that had been his plan all along, his hands went to either side of her hips, resting on the thick bedding, his body close enough to share some of that heat he had radiating off of him, not to mention the sheer, hard strength of him pressing against her.

Strip…

She wanted to, she really did, and it had nothing to do with impending hypothermia and everything to do with how he made her feel when he looked at her, touched her.

Kissed her.

God. She was really losing it here, as surely as the room was beginning to warm from the hot air coming out of the heater vents, enclosing them in an intimacy she wasn’t sure she could face. He couldn’t really want her, could he? Not after what she’d done, dragging him here.

Putting his life in danger.

That last thought made her breath catch, made her hug herself and close her eyes until he lifted her chin. He was close enough that his broad shoulders blocked out the light. “Just want to warm you up, Bailey.”

She was cold, beyond cold, and shaking so hard she could feel her brain cells rattling together.

And still, she could think.

And what she thought was that things were worse than ever. She hadn’t found the money. One resort down, two more to check. And now that Noah had helped her lose the men on her tail, she should go immediately. That meant going back out there…

Closing her eyes again, she weaved in exhaustion, then felt his hands on her arms again. “Hey,” he said, bending a little to peer into her face. “Hey, it’s going to be okay.”

“Really? How?” She didn’t pull away. She no longer had the energy; the cold had sapped it right out of her. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I have to go. I need to call a cab, or-”

“No. Hell, no.” With that he dropped his shirt to the floor and pulled her into the heat of his body. “No one’s going anywhere, not tonight.”

She resisted-barely-the urge to bury her nose against him and inhale him up like a forbidden treat. But she couldn’t resist the heat of him. “I have to-”

“Stay,” he commanded quietly. “You have to stay. Tomorrow is soon enough to figure it all out.”

At the thought of turning it off for the night, she nearly melted. She was helpless against the pull of him, and couldn’t help but lift her arms and wrap them around his waist.

When she did, he sucked in a harsh breath. “Your hands are frozen.”

Yes. Yes they were, and to prove it, she ran them up and down his back, gliding them against sleek, smooth skin and sinew, thinking, Yum.

“Christ, woman.”

At his tortured tone, she laughed. Laughed. She couldn’t believe she’d managed to find anything funny about this night, hell, about her life, but he’d made her laugh.

But then he wrapped his fist in her hair and gently tugged her head back to meet his gaze. His eyes weren’t laughing, but oh, so serious, and her smile slowly faded.

He just looked at her, a look that brought a whole new meaning to anticipation, and she shivered, a bone-deep quiver that had him letting out a low sound filled with regret, concern.

And arousal.

It brought her own to the surface, and then suddenly he was even closer, running his nose along her jaw, pressing his cheek to hers, and then finally, finally, kissing her.

There was nothing, nothing in the entire world, like kissing Noah Fisher. His mouth touched hers at the corner, and then his tongue, and she opened for him, opened and dove in, and lost herself. The night had been so monumentally bad, a nightmare. The only thing holding her together was him: his heat, his strength, his unbelievable wit and ease in any situation.

Only when air was necessary did they break to breathe, and again he lifted her face to his, gaze serious. “Back to that whole stripping thing.” He stroked a finger ever so lightly over her jaw, then down her throat, her shoulder…nudging her sweater off as he went.

Oh, God. She’d never toggled back and forth between fear and arousal before, but she’d been doing just that since she’d stepped onto his plane, watching him pilot without knowing he had an audience.

He was looking into her eyes, and whatever went through his mind, his jaw went tight, and he moved into the bathroom and cranked on the hot water in the shower.

“Kick off your boots,” he said, coming back to her.

“Um-”

His eyes held…things, lots of things, and that was when she realized. She wasn’t so much in danger from the bad guys at the moment, but from within her own self.

Serious danger.

“Bailey-”

Just then, from inside her pocket, her cell phone vibrated and chirped, signaling she had an incoming text message.

Noah watched Bailey debate with herself on whether to look at the message in front of him or not, but she finally reached into her pocket and opened the phone.

WHERE R U?

“Where is he?” Noah countered, reading over her shoulder.

“Hidden.” She looked away, and chewed on her lower lip in a gesture of nerves. “Hopefully.”

“What does that mean?”

She said nothing, and he sighed. “Bailey.”

“After-” Her mouth tightened. “I told him to stay away. But now I’m afraid he’ll get so worried about me he’ll come back.”

“Why didn’t you go with him?”

“He’s fine moving around doing carpentry, which suits him. But my life is in California, Noah. I teach here…” She shook her head. “I really thought I could handle this.”

She had courage and guts, and he didn’t like the way that softened him even further toward her. “Don’t,” he said when she hit reply. “Don’t text him back.”

“What? I have to.”

“Fine. But don’t tell him where you are.”

“Why?”

He just looked at her.

Still shivering, she looked shell-shocked, frozen to the spot. “Are you kidding me? You actually think he-”

“I don’t know what I think. Keep your location quiet.” Hating the fear on her face, he had to temper down on his bottle of emotions, of which frustration and impatience were leading the way. “If he’s really gone, then it doesn’t matter. Right?”

She hadn’t moved other than to keep shivering. Her eyes were dilated, and she looked near shock. Steam drifted in from the opened bathroom. She nearly dropped her phone, she was shaking so hard. He had to get her into the hot water.

To that end, he took the cell phone out of her hands and set it aside. Clothes next, he thought.

“C-cold,” she said.

“I know.” He shouldn’t care. She’d hijacked him, had really thrown a wrench in his whole ski-and-screw-his-brains-out weekend, but she’d been desperate and terrified, and he’d been helpless against those things. Still having no idea exactly what she’d been through, but more determined than ever to find out, he dipped down a little to look directly into her eyes.

She tried to look away, but he simply cupped her jaw. “I’m going to help you,” he said, and ran his hands down her arms. “Starting with a hot shower.”

“I don’t need help.”

“Could have fooled me.”

A sound of extreme exasperation left her lips, which he figured was a good sign. If he could piss her off, she wasn’t dying of hypothermia.

“Okay, up until this point I needed your help,” she conceded. “But I’m fine now.”

“Okay.” Leaning back, he crossed his arms. “Go ahead, get yourself warm, then.”

She glanced through the open door at the shower, at the steaming air rising from it, and walked into the bathroom. She lifted her fingers to her sweater as she looked pointedly at the door, which he ignored. “I’ll be fine,” she said, her fingers trembling so that she could hardly grip the buttons on her sweater. “Just fine.”

“Uh huh.” He followed her. Brushing her fingers aside, he went for the buttons, but there were a million of them, and they were tiny and slippery. He got two undone, just enough for his fingers to brush creamy, soft skin beneath. A muscle in his jaw began ticking. “Do these buttons even function?”

“They did this morning.”

He sighed. “Your lips are blue.” So was her skin, blue and mottled.

“We’re not…doing anything.”

Other than getting naked. That would probably be enough for him, after six months. “I know.”

“Good. Because it’s been so long, I’ve forgotten how.”

He stared at her, his brain whirling from the quick subject change, not to mention the subject itself. “How long?”

“Really long.”