The Cinnamon Bun Book Store (Dream Harbor, #2)(29)

‘Like what,’ she breathed.

He brushed the hair from her face and her eyes fluttered closed. ‘Next time, I want to lick between your thighs and see how you taste.’

Hazel trembled against him.

‘I want you completely naked so I can see how beautiful you are. I want to suck on your sweet little nipples. I want to make you come again and again until you beg me to stop.’

‘Shit, Noah.’ She breathed out a long sigh and opened her eyes again.

‘Yeah.’ He cleared his throat, pressing a hand against his aching erection. This was a bad idea.

‘That was hot.’ She smiled up at him.

‘You are a little bit kinky, after all, Hazel Kelly,’ he said with a wink, needing to steer them back to safer ground before he really did come in his pants in the middle of the beach.

She sat up with a laugh and he sat, too. The sun had dipped lower in the sky, painting the water gold. It had gotten chillier, but their recent activities had kept him warm. Now, with no blood left anywhere else in his body, he was feeling the cool air.

Hazel nudged him with her shoulder. ‘This was a really fun day.’

He peered at her from the corner of his eye. The sea breeze swept through her curls, tossing them around her shoulders. Goosebumps ran up and down her legs.

‘It was very fun.’ He picked up the back half of the blanket and flipped it up and over their shoulders. Hazel leaned into his side and he put an arm around her so they were snuggled beneath it as they gazed out at the water.

‘I mean, even before that last part.’

‘So do I. I think you’re better at having fun than you think you are.’

He could feel her shrug against him. ‘Maybe. I think you bring it out in me.’

‘Happy to help.’ He turned and pressed a kiss to the top of her head and it was that touch, that kiss, that settled into him even more than anything else they’d just done. This moment right here, him and Hazel tucked together under his old beach blanket, this was the one that would haunt him.

Noah could do casual sexual encounters. He did them all the time. But this was different. Hazel was different.

‘I really appreciate you helping me with my little quarter-life crisis. You help me get out of my head. I don’t take everything as seriously when you’re around. It’s nice.’

She put her head on his shoulder and he knew she meant the words as a compliment. She was having a good time. She was doing things she didn’t usually do. He was happy to help with that, he really was.

But he was doing things he didn’t usually do, either.

He was falling hard for Hazel Kelly.

And it wasn’t exactly what she said, but her words twisted in his mind, turning over until he was convinced she wouldn’t take him seriously, either. She didn’t see him that way. She couldn’t. Noah was her adventure guide until she turned thirty.

And then what?

What more could Noah offer other than orgasms on the beach? Certainly not as much as a girl like Hazel deserved. She was smart and sweet and deserved a guy with more than a battered boat and a half-baked idea to renovate some old fishing shacks. He’d be better off if he remembered that. This thing with Hazel was temporary.

He gave her a little squeeze. ‘Happy to help.’





Chapter Twelve





‘What do you think, Hazel?’

Jacob’s question, shouted across the front half of the bookstore, snapped Hazel out of her daydream. She blinked. It was a wildly inappropriate daydream. Well, not so much a daydream as the vivid memory of Noah getting her off on the beach yesterday, playing over and over in her head.

‘Uh ... what do I think about what?’

The members of the Dream Harbor Book Club grinned at her from their seats around the little coffee table Hazel had set up in the reading nook. They sat in various chairs they’d pulled from other corners of the shop for their weekly meeting. Their books and coffees were scattered across the table. They had been here for nearly an hour already dissecting their latest read. The one with the pirate.

The way their eyes were lit up, their cheeks pink with delight, she knew whatever they were asking her was also wildly inappropriate for a Wednesday morning.

She came out from behind the counter and hurried over to where they were set up before Jacob had the chance to yell his question again.

‘We were wondering,’ he said, his mouth tipping into a nearly evil grin, ‘What do you think about sex in a hammock? Personally, I think there wouldn’t be enough resistance, you know ... for the thrusting.’

Hazel’s cheeks went up in flames. The Hazel that existed on the beach, the one that kissed Noah, the one that let him debauch her on a public beach, was not here. That Hazel seemed to only come out when Noah was around.

‘I think the rocking motion might be nice, though,’ Linda weighed in, oblivious to Hazel’s growing embarrassment. Linda smiled at her wife, Nancy, and Hazel was sure the two were silently sharing some kind of memory she didn’t want to get into in the middle of her place of business.

‘I told you before, you need to keep the conversations PG.’ Hazel glanced over to where a mother was shopping with her toddler in the kids’ section. She gave them a little wave and turned back to the giggling group in front of her.

‘Sorry, Hazel,’ Jeanie said, the pirate romance clutched to her chest. ‘We’ll tone it down.’