Page 38 of Noel
Outside, snow drifts against the windows.The fire crackles.
The whole world feels like it’s holding its breath, waiting to see if maybe this is what a Christmas miracle looks like.
Because right now, in Noel Kane’s arms, I can finally believe in one.
Chapter11
Noel
For a second, I forget to breathe.
She’s in my arms—small, warm, trembling—but not from fear.
Her lips are still parted from the kiss she just started, and my world has gone very, very still.
Every rule I’ve ever lived by, every line I’ve drawn between duty and desire, starts to blur.
I should step back.
Iknowthat.
I should put space between us, call this what it is—an emotional reaction after a long, dangerous day.
But when she tilts her face up to me, eyes wide and shining in the firelight, that resolve disintegrates.
Because I want her.
Too much.
Too fast.
Too completely.
She fits against me like she was made to be there—soft curves pressed to hard muscle, her breath warm against my throat.
She smells like cinnamon and something sweetly floral, the scent I’ve been fighting since the moment she swung her purse at me in that parking lot.
“Tell me to stop,” I manage, the words rough against her hair.
Her fingers curl into my shirt.
“I don’t want you to stop.”
That’s all it takes.
I kiss her again—deeper this time, slower, letting myself sink into the taste of her, the sound she makes when my hand finds the small of her back.
Every bit of distance I’ve kept between us burns away in the space of a breath.
It’s not just want.It’s need.
It’syearsof silence cracking open in me.
Her hands slide up, fingers tracing the line of my jaw, and when she whispers my name, it undoes me completely.
“Tinsel,” I breathe against her mouth, the word almost a prayer.“You don’t know what you’re doing to me.”
She looks up at me, her voice steady even as her pulse jumps beneath my fingertips.
