Page 23 of Stick Move

Is it love you’re looking for?

As my internal debate battles on, he angles his head—no doubt once again thinking I’m losing my mind—but it prompts me into action.

“See you in the morning.” I practically run from Camryn’s room and dart toward the door leading to the hall.

“Before you go.”

At the door, I turn back around at the sound of his voice. “Yeah?”

“You said something about a weighted blanket.”

“Right.”

“Come on.” He walks toward me, and gives me nudge to set me into motion. We head down the hall to the living room. He snatches his laptop from the coffee table. “I wouldn’t mind getting one for Camryn, and guess it wouldn’t hurt to get myself one, either. Do you have any recommendations?”

“Oh, yeah, I actually do.”

He drops down onto the sofa and pats the cushion beside him.

“They come in different sizes and weights, and you can get ones that are heating or cooling.”

He looks over my body. Why is he doing that? Is he considering what my weight might feel like on his body? I gulp and try not to shift under his scrutiny as I consider the exact same thing.

“They go from fifteen pounds up to thirty,” I ramble on. “Camryn would need a children’s blanket, which of course isn’t as heavy. I actually have a twenty-pound adult one.”

“Yeah?” He scrunches up his face as he considers that. “You’re not very big, Brighton. That must restrain you.”

“It’s the restraint I like.”

Oh, dear God, what did I just say, and why is he shifting like he’s now the uncomfortable one? Wait, does that mean he likes or dislikes the idea of me being restrained under something heavy?

He clears his throat and boots up his computer. Needing a reprieve, and to take my foot out of my mouth, I jerk my thumb over my shoulder. “I can go get it.” He opens his mouth, and shifts forward. I assume he’s going to want to help so I hold my hand up. “Wait here, and I’ll bring it over. You can try it to see how it feels.”

He settles back into the sofa and reaches for his laptop on the coffee table. “Sure.”

I hurry across the hall and go to my closet—I don’t use the blanket in the summer—and gather it up. That’s when I remember how hard it is to carry a twenty-pound blanket. I try to toss it over my shoulder as I struggle to lug it back across the hall, wondering what the hell my life has become as I reach his door and try not to appear breathless.

“Here it is.”

His head lifts and my knees wobble. “Jesus,” he mutters, and sets his laptop down. The next thing I know he’s in front of me, and I’m trying to toss him the blanket. Only problem is, I’m also stepping on it, which results in me falling forward, the blanket around my shoulders giving me extra weight.

Noah tumbles with me, and we fall onto the hardwood floor with an undignified thud. Unlike his, my landing is soft, well relatively speaking. The man is, after all, two hundred pounds of rock-solid muscle.

“Noah,” I mumble quickly, heat flushing my face as well as other body parts I don’t want to think about—especially if Melanie was wrong about his interest. “I’m so sorry.” I wiggle and shift and struggle to get the blanket off so I can get the hell up.

But that’s when I notice something else is…up.

Ohmigod.

I don’t think Melanie was wrong.

But isn’t this all about revenge?

So, what if it is, girl? You might as well get something out of it.

We don’t have a future together. Heck, I don’t want one. But we do have tonight and sex isn’t going to change anything between us.

I stop moving as he removes the restraining blanket from my back, the heat in his eyes as they latch onto mine hits like the weight of a whole choir singing hallelujah between my legs.

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