Page 45 of Lovers in Lockdown

‘Are you okay?’ Noah pokes me in the cheek with a long finger, reminding me to pick my jaw up off the floor and stop staring wide-eyed at the television.

‘I feel like it’s looking at me.’

Noah snorts. ‘Stop looking at it then.’

I grab the remote and switch off the television, sighing in relief as my ex’s genitals finally disappear from the screen.

‘Sorry, I just wasn’t expecting to turn on the TV and see my ex displaying his dinky winky for the world to see.’

‘Dinky winky?’ Noah grins and I nod. ‘Suits him. I must admit though, I’ve always received the opposite reaction. I like to refer to mine as the Purple Helmeted Warrior of Love.’

His smile is cocky and self-assured. I’d accuse him of being overly cocksure and arrogant, except I know, even from the brief glimpse I caught of it all those weeks ago, that he’s not exaggerating at all. Dinky winky would be a wildly inaccurate nickname for the beast he’s packing in his boxer shorts.

‘I bet he didn’t even know how to work with it. He looks like a two-pump chump kind of guy.’ The competitive edge in Noah’s voice takes me by surprise.

‘You hit the nail on the head there, my friend.’ I grin at him in a bid to lighten the mood and move away from talking about my tiny-cocked, knobface of an ex-boyfriend, but Noah doesn’t smile.

Instead, his serious expression is taken over by a darker one. One that sends shivers through me, dissolving all my disgust at seeing Thomas’s balls on the television and replacing it with a delicious heat that floods my veins and pulses between my legs.

‘Honey,’ he growls. ‘Don’t go wasting any more of your precious time on men who don’t know how to treat you. You deserve a man with a big heart, a thick cock and the knowledge of how to use it. If you were mine, then baby, I’d make you come at least three times a night.’

My mouth falls open.

Holy shit.

My brain has turned to gloop, my mouth is dry, my eyebrows are in my hairline. The tension in the air is so thick, I can hardly breathe and, as much as I hate to admit it, I can feel my self-control leaving me like steam pluming from a cup of hot coffee.

My body is totally under his command and he hasn’t even touched me.

Noah reaches out and strokes his thumb down my cheek and suddenly the air is changing again. To something soft, tender, something reminiscent of the night we spoke about our upbringings.

His voice is barely a whisper, ‘You deserve so much more than that jackass, Hon. Not just better sex, but bettereverything. Because,fuck,’ he drags a hand down his face, ‘you have so many colours, like more colours than the solar system and the milky way and the entire fucking universe. And you’re so beautiful,so fucking beautiful, and your heart is bigger than anyone’s I’ve ever met, even if you can be a bit batshit crazy sometimes. But, Honey, please trust me when I say that that jackass was lying when he said that no one would want you. Becauseeveryonewants you, even those that know they can never have you, no matter how much they want to.’

And with that, all hope is lost.

Because now it’s not only my body that is completely under Noah’s spell, I’ve gone and lost my heart to him too.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Noah

Oh shit.

I shouldn’t have said that. Ireallyshouldn’t have said that.

It’s like my heart suddenly grew a mouth and started spewing all my secrets without getting permission from my brain first. I just have no control over anything where Honey is concerned.

She’s a magnet. And I’m constantly being drawn to her, no matter how hard I fight against it.

But I didn’t say anything that wasn’t the truth. If people were colours, Honey really would be them all. She’s like a walking rainbow. I mean, she’s basically the human equivalent of a unicorn.

And it’s hard to be mad at myself for being so inappropriate when she’s looking at me with wide and shiny eyes in a way that makes my traitorous heart flutter like the wings of a thousand birds. They pull me in, hypnotising me with their bright blue purity, until I can feel myself moving towards her, closing the distance between us that feels like the width of an ocean, despite us only being less than a metre apart. I need to be near her, feel her, touch her.

My brain makes a meek plea to remember why this isn’t a good idea, but I ignore it.

Because right now I don’t care that I’ll be moving back to China at some point, or that things might get even more awkward if we cross the line, or even about Reid and stupid bro code.

All I know is that if I don’t taste the sweetness of Honey’s lips again in the next ten seconds, I’ll combust and turn to ashes on the spot.

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