Page 98 of Make Me Dream of You

I turn it off and offer him that massage I was thinking about earlier.

It takes him a few minutes into the neck and shoulder rub to relax, finally close his eyes, lean his head back, and hum softly.

“If you’re just doing this to get into my pants, it won’t work,” he says, peeking one eye open.

“It won’t?”

He cracks a smile. “No, yeah. It will totally work.”

I giggle as he crawls up my body. He presses me onto the couch and covers my mouth with his, kissing me slow at first. Deep, gentle strokes of the tongue turn greedier and more impatient as we go on. Hands roam over clothes and up shirts. He urges his thigh between my legs, and I rut against it. Needy. Achy. Panting.

Noah pulls back, both of us out of breath, flushed, hot.

He kisses the tip of my nose. “There’s something I want to do with you tomorrow before we head into the shop. So, we need to get up a little early.”

“Oh?” What does he want to do? “I guess we should go to bed, then. I’m tired.”

“Me, too.” He sweeps hair off my forehead, his eyes searching mine. “I wish I could sleep with you every night.”

And I know he means sleep when he says it. I see the sadness in his eyes. The exhaustion.

I wish I knew when Bex was going to be home. She’s not working tonight, just out. I have no idea when she’ll come walking through the door.

The jingle of keys in the door handle alerts us and I sit up as Noah hurries off me and to the other side of the couch. He adjusts himself and it brings a smile to my lips.

“Wow, your place is so nice!” an unfamiliar female voice says. A tall brunette walks in, followed by Wood.

“Oh, hey guys.” He glances between us. Noah’s lip is a little red from where I bit it and I’m still breathless. “Don’t mind us. We’ll be out of your hair. Go back to what…ever you were doing.”

“We were just watching TV,” I say.

He looks at the black screen. “Mmhmm. You two have fun.” He winks, guiding the girl past us and to his room.

My eight o’clock alarm goes off far too early. It actually goes off at precisely eight o’clock, but that’s beside the point. We’re heading into work at noon, and Noah said the thing he has planned for us will take a couple hours, so here we are.

I turn the alarm off quickly to not wake up Bex?—

There is no Bex.

The bed is empty.

That’s weird. She always comes home, even if it isn’t until three or four in the morning.

Me:

Hey, noticed you didn’t come home last night, just checking in

I get up and as I’m walking to the bathroom, Noah and Wood are in the kitchen.

“Okay, so whipping the egg whites is the secret to light and fluffy waffles. You just want to beat them until they reach soft peaks.” Wood hands Noah the hand mixer.

“Soft peaks?”

“Yeah, so not hard peaks like in a meringue, soft peaks.”

“I don’t know what any of that means.”

I let them be and continue to the bathroom. When I come back out, the soft peak egg white situation must have been figured out because Noah is ladling batter into the waffle iron. Wood is humming “Party in the USA” by Miley Cyrus, slicing up an orange he adds to a plate that’s already loaded with bacon and a waffle covered in melted butter.

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