Smart and Sexy Read online

  Serious danger.

  “Bailey—”

  Just then, from inside her pocket, her cell phone vibrated and chirped, signaling she had an incoming text message.

  Noah watched Bailey debate with herself on whether to look at the message in front of him or not, but she finally reached into her pocket and opened the phone.

  WHERE R U?

  “Where is he?” Noah countered, reading over her shoulder.

  “Hidden.” She looked away, and chewed on her lower lip in a gesture of nerves. “Hopefully.”

  “What does that mean?”

  She said nothing, and he sighed. “Bailey.”

  “After—” Her mouth tightened. “I told him to stay away. But now I’m afraid he’ll get so worried about me he’ll come back.”

  “Why didn’t you go with him?”

  “He’s fine moving around doing carpentry, which suits him. But my life is in California, Noah. I teach here….” She shook her head. “I really thought I could handle this.”

  She had courage and guts, and he didn’t like the way that softened him even further toward her. “Don’t,” he said when she hit reply. “Don’t text him back.”

  “What? I have to.”

  “Fine. But don’t tell him where you are.”

  “Why?”

  He just looked at her.

  Still shivering, she looked shell-shocked, frozen to the spot. “Are you kidding me? You actually think he—”

  “I don’t know what I think. Keep your location quiet.” Hating the fear on her face, he had to temper down on his bottle of emotions, of which frustration and impatience were leading the way. “If he’s really gone, then it doesn’t matter. Right?”

  She hadn’t moved other than to keep shivering. Her eyes were dilated, and she looked near shock. Steam drifted in from the opened bathroom. She nearly dropped her phone, she was shaking so hard. He had to get her into the hot water.

  To that end, he took the cell phone out of her hands and set it aside. Clothes next, he thought.

  “C—cold,” she said.

  “I know.” He shouldn’t care. She’d hijacked him, had really thrown a wrench in his whole ski-and-screw-his-brains-out weekend, but she’d been desperate and terrified, and he’d been helpless against those things. Still having no idea exactly what she’d been through, but more determined than ever to find out, he dipped down a little to look directly into her eyes.

  She tried to look away, but he simply cupped her jaw. “I’m going to help you,” he said, and ran his hands down her arms. “Starting with a hot shower.”

  “I don’t need help.”

  “Could have fooled me.”

  A sound of extreme exasperation left her lips, which he figured was a good sign. If he could piss her off, she wasn’t dying of hypothermia.

  “Okay, up until this point I needed your help,” she conceded. “But I’m fine now.”

  “Okay.” Leaning back, he crossed his arms. “Go ahead, get yourself warm, then.”

  She glanced through the open door at the shower, at the steaming air rising from it, and walked into the bathroom. She lifted her fingers to her sweater as she looked pointedly at the door, which he ignored. “I’ll be fine,” she said, her fingers trembling so that she could hardly grip the buttons on her sweater. “Just fine.”

  “Uh huh.” He followed her. Brushing her fingers aside, he went for the buttons, but there were a million of them, and they were tiny and slippery. He got two undone, just enough for his fingers to brush creamy, soft skin beneath. A muscle in his jaw began ticking. “Do these buttons even function?”

  “They did this morning.”

  He sighed. “Your lips are blue.” So was her skin, blue and mottled.

  “We’re not…doing anything.”

  Other than getting naked. That would probably be enough for him, after six months. “I know.”

  “Good. Because it’s been so long, I’ve forgotten how.”

  He stared at her, his brain whirling from the quick subject change, not to mention the subject itself. “How long?”

  “Really long.”

  “Really long,” he repeated, a little dumbfounded, still holding on to her sweater. He could feel her smooth skin beneath his fingers. Just from that, he got hard.

  “He lost interest,” she whispered.

  Jesus, how was that even possible? “Don’t take this the wrong way, Bailey, but Alan was a complete idiot.”

  She lifted a shoulder, and he vowed right then and there to somehow make sure she knew that there was nothing wrong with her, to prove exactly how desirable she was, but right now, he had another mission.

  Get her warm. Make her feel safe. Without letting her think on it too long, he tightened his fingers over the hem of the fuzzy soft material that had been clinging to her breasts for the past hour—not that he’d noticed.

  Shit, he was such a liar. He’d so noticed.

  He’d noticed and had found himself nearly poleaxed by the way her nipples, two tight peaks, pressed against the thin, wet, soft material.

  Alan had lost interest? Noah would have to lose his head. Both of them. The hot, brain-cell-melting kisses they’d shared hadn’t helped. No, those hadn’t done anything but make him want more.

  Then her eyes met his, wide and half wild, and he tempered down on himself and his ridiculous thoughts. This was about getting her warm.

  Not about the fact that he was hard from just looking at her.

  Nope, his needs had no place here, no place at all. Repeating that like a mantra inside his head, he lifted up on her sweater, forcing her arms up over her head.

  “Are you hurt?” he asked.

  She said nothing to that, which sent a foreboding down his spine. If someone had laid his hands on her…well, he didn’t want to think about it. He’d spent his entire life hating violence, and yet it was pouring through his veins now.

  “I just don’t want to be dead,” she whispered. “I want to stay alive.”

  He stared into her eyes, seeing all sorts of things there, things that somehow soothed the beast roaring within him, things that made him incredibly aware of his fingers resting on her sides, spread wide so as to touch as much of her as he possibly could. “Alive is excellent.” His thumbs were just beneath her breasts. If he moved them, he’d be able to feel those curves, take the weight of them in his palms and—

  And she was breathing erratically again, so he swallowed his own emotions, his arousal, and kept going.

  He pulled the sweater off over her head.

  Her bra…it was a barely there number, a pale, pale pink thing that just skimmed her nipples with satin and lace, like in his fantasies. Her breasts were two perfect pale curves plumping out of the bra, tipped with small, tight nipples poking at the satin, and her quickened breathing didn’t help any.

  Truth was, he was breathing as wildly and as loudly as she was. He could hear them both over the water hitting the tiles in the shower.

  Bailey stared at his throat while he took in the button and zipper on her jeans. Since she didn’t reach for either, he sucked in a breath and did it himself, trying to ignore the way her belly fluttered when he touched her skin.

  Pop went the button, and with a hard swallow he reached for the tab of her zipper.

  The rasp of the metal sounded incredibly loud in the room.

  Then he dropped his gaze to look down at what he’d exposed, and what he’d exposed was a wedge of soft, creamy, pale skin that he wanted to put his mouth to so badly he was shaking for it.

  For her.

  Yeah, way to keep your distance.

  Tightening his mouth, he hunkered down before her and pushed her jeans to her thighs, trying not to notice that he was at eye level with the most beautiful, erotic sight he’d ever seen—a pair of absolutely heart destroying pale blue string bikini panties with a satin ribbon over each hip and a little triangle that barely covered her mound. Trying not to stare, he shoved the denim farther, to her knees.