Desire.

Everything inside him burst into a flurry of frenzied activity—heart pounded, blood raced, stomach clenched—but then it all froze in the next breath. He wanted to move, to say something, but couldn’t because he was afraid to break the spell. If he so much as blinked, she might disappear. Or he’d wake up and realize the past thirty minutes had been a dream, that he’d just fallen asleep on the couch after reading that damn book. He’d had dreams of her like this before and awakened disappointed many times.

But it couldn’t be a dream, because his sleepy imagination had never captured the pure sweetness of the way she was touching him now.

“Lexa,” he rasped.

The tip of her nose brushed his in response. And even though they were now so close that her features blurred in his vision, he didn’t need to see clearly to understand what was happening. His senses chronicled the moment by touch, by sound, by smell.

Her trembling fingers as they slid down the front of his shirt.

Her labored breaths as their mouths inched closer.

Her heated cinnamon scent as he breathed her in.

Warnings sounded in the back of his mind. Go slow. She’s vulnerable. Once you cross this bridge, you can’t go back. But even the most noble man would struggle to listen when the woman who held his entire heart was finally opening her own.

There were so few times in life when a man was faced with a decision of such stark consequences, but this was one of them. This was the moment when Noah had to choose.

Desire or restraint.

Passion or friendship.

Lexa or loneliness.

His brain knew the right answers, but his brain wasn’t in charge. His heart was. With Alexis, it always would be.

So it was his heart that pulled her to straddle his lap. His heart that wove his fingers in her hair. And when her lips nudged his—once, twice, not so much a kiss as a question—it was his heart that answered.

At long last, yes.

He molded his lips to hers, and every doubt evaporated into a certainty that this is what they had been moving toward all along.

Alexis sank into him and let him take the lead. His lips nibbled and massaged, cherished and explored. She kissed him like he’d known she would. Tenderly, passionately. One hot hand pressed against his back while the other clung to his bicep. When he changed the angle and went deeper, when his tongue swept inside her mouth, he heard a moan and realized belatedly it had come from him. Suddenly, she slipped her hand inside the front of his T-shirt. The next moan he heard was hers, and a thrill raced through him as she rasped his name, as if the mere acting of touching him was enough to drive her senseless. It was for him. Her fingers crept higher and higher until she spread them wide across his hardened nipple.

Oh, God. He shuddered, groaned, whispered urgently for her to do it again.

So she did.

In the next instant, he rolled her onto her back.

That’s all it took. The touch of her fingers against his nipples, and suddenly he was a man possessed. He dove deeper into her mouth and settled between her thighs. She tangled with him, opened for him, wrapped one leg around him.

Alexis let out another one of those moans that sent a surge of lust to his groin, and his body acted of its own accord. He tilted his hips, ground into her, and she gasped in his mouth, so he did it again. And again. And again. She lifted both her legs and wrapped them around his waist. Scorching heat and sweet tenderness blended in his chest, filling his lungs with a dizzying cocktail as she arched against him, panting and moaning for him to touch her.

So he did.

He slid his hand along her side until his fingers brushed the swell of her breast.

“Noah,” she breathed, tilting her head back. Then she tangled her fingers in his hair and dragged his mouth back to hers.

He could have kissed her forever. Languidly. Passionately. Any way she wanted. But when her fingers left his hair and began to fumble with the button of his jeans, the voice of reason began to walk around banging pots and pans in his brain, like a morning wake-up call that drowned out the urgent beat of his heart and the throbbing swell in his pants.

Forever screeched to a painful, remorseful halt.

What. The Fuck. Was he doing?

He couldn’t . . . They couldn’t. Not now. Not like this. Not yet.

With a strength he didn’t know he possessed, Noah wrenched his mouth from hers, rose above her on all fours, and squeezed his eyes shut. “Honey, wait.”

* * *

* * *

Suddenly, it was over.

One moment she was working the button of his jeans, desperate to touch him and feel him inside her. And in the next, he let out an agonized noise and told her to stop.

Her whole body went cold at the sight of his closed eyes. “Wh-What’s wrong?”

Noah straightened and sat back on his haunches. He covered his face with his hands. “This . . . We can’t.”

“Why not? What’s wrong?”

Noah turned and sank against the other arm of the couch. With a tortured noise, he dropped his head and breathed in and out through his nose as if trying not to puke.

The final, lingering hum of desire evaporated like the last puff of mist from her essential oils diffuser. He . . . He was rejecting her. Oh, God. What had she done? Alexis scooted to sit up and brushed her wild hair from her face. Noah opened his eyes and looked up with an expression that could only be described as abject horror. As if he’d just woken up from a blackout to find a stranger naked in bed with him.

She was the naked stranger.

Naked and exposed and totally, one hundred percent regretted.

Alexis tried to scramble off the couch but got caught in the blanket and only managed to roll onto the floor. She fell ungracefully on her knees.

Noah shot up straight. “Are you okay?”

Alexis scrambled to her feet. “I’m sorry.”

“Lexa, what are you doing?”

“I’m sorry. I—I shouldn’t have . . .” She turned away from him—from that look on his face—and walked as fast as she could without full-out running.

Behind her, Noah stood so quickly that a bottle fell over and began to glub-glub-glub its contents onto the floor. “Lexa, wait.”

She felt sick. Alexis wrenched open the back door. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I have to go.”

Noah managed to grab her hand and tug her back. “Don’t. Not like this. Alexis, please. Listen to me. This isn’t—”

She yanked free and began to run through the house so she wouldn’t have to hear the end of that sentence. Isn’t what you think. Isn’t what you want. Isn’t what I want.

Noah chased after her. Through the hallway. Out the door. Down the porch steps. Pleading the entire way for her to stop. “Alexis, wait.”

“I have to go. I’m sorry, Noah. I shouldn’t have done this.” She got in her car and started it without looking at him. Seconds later, she left him standing in the driveway, hands stacked on top of his head.

She made it all of two blocks before her phone rang on the passenger seat.

It was two a.m. before the ringing finally stopped.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“Wow. Are you okay?”

Alexis averted her gaze from Jessica’s when she walked into the café the next morning a half hour late. She set down Beefcake’s cat carrier, let him out, and then hung up her coat. “Fine.”

“You look like you’ve been crying.”

“Allergies,” Alexis lied.

Because, yes, she’d been crying. She’d cried all night. Big, fat sobs into her pillow and sometimes her cat. It probably wasn’t fair to ignore Noah’s calls and texts, but fairness wasn’t going to wash away the dark stain of shame and humiliation that colored every memory of last night in her mind. And did it even matter what he said? She’d thrown herself at him, and he’d rejected her. Just like she’d feared he would. She couldn’t talk to him. Couldn’t face him. No matter what he said, the truth had been written all over his face when he pulled away from her last night.

He’d been horrified. There was no other word for it.

Maybe that’s what stung the worst. He’d looked suddenly like a stranger to her.

Jessica hovered nearby as Alexis grabbed her apron and looped it over her head. “Are you sure—”

“I’m fine, Jessica. Let’s just go to work.”

Jessica reacted as if Alexis had yelled at her.

“I’m sorry,” Alexis said, reaching over to squeeze her arm. “I’m not fine, to be honest, but I can’t talk about it right now. Okay?”

Jessica nodded, her features relaxing again. “I’m here if you need to, though.”

“I appreciate it.”

Alexis wished she’d thought to grab a ball cap to wear today. Maybe it would shade the worst of her dark circles and red eyes.

Jessica gave her one last look before nodding and heading out of the kitchen. Alexis tried to lose herself in the routine of opening the café, but just when she’d finally settled in, Jessica walked back in. “There’s someone here to see you.”

Alexis’s head snapped up. “Noah?”

Her tone managed to convey both hope and dread, a combination that sent Jessica’s eyebrows up.

“No. It’s some old guy.”

That could be anyone over the age of thirty. Jessica’s gauge for what was old was a lot different than Alexis’s.

“I lied and told him you wouldn’t be in until ten,” Jessica said. “He said he’d just wait.”

Alexis pushed open the kitchen door and followed Jessica’s point to the tables outside. Her breath lodged in her throat.

Elliott.

He sat on a bench in front of the café, leaning forward with his hands clasped between his knees, staring at the small fountain that decorated the middle of the sidewalk welcoming visitors to East Nashville. The sunrise glinted off the gold band on his left hand and turned the gray in his hair into white sprinkles.

“I’m sorry,” Jessica said. “I tried to get rid of him. I know you’re probably not up for talking to anyone.”