“I hope I didn’t cause any problems with your friend,” Noah adds, pulling me from my thoughts.
My brow furrows. “My friend?”
“Liam,” he clarifies.
“Oh.” I’m searching his face for any signs of jealousy or alpha nonsense—but his expression remains frustratingly blank. “No, no. He’s really just a friend.”
Or at least, that’s what I thought before today.
“Okay,” Noah says evenly. “I was afraid I had overstepped with . . . you know.”
Ah. So he had been second-guessing it.
“You mean making out in the hallway?”
He flinches. “More or less.”
“You were just playing the part,” I say, mirroring what he texted me earlier.
“Right,” he answers immediately.
“It’s not like you were being jealous or something,” I laugh, passing it off as a joke even though part of me is perking up for his answer. “Right?”
It takes him a second to answer, but only a second. “Of course not.”
I consider it, reasoning that regardless of his reasons—I definitely didn’t hate him kissing me in the hallway.
“I think maybe we’re both probably walking on eggshells,” I admit. “I can tell you’re still worrying about last night changing things, but I think we got through it fine. I mean, you’re not mauling my male coworkers, and I’m not begging you to bite me, so all in all, I’d say it was a successful experiment.”
“I guess that’s . . . true.”
“And we both enjoyed it . . . right?”
I don’t miss the way his throat bobs with a swallow, nor do I miss the way his jaw tenses as if remembering. “I did.”
Okay. So we can work with this. Maybe it wouldn’t be so awkward if we laid out some ground rules to begin with.
“You know,” I start, moving away from where I’m standing to circle his desk, “there’s nothing that says we can’t help each other and also, you know, help each other.”
Noah looks up at me as I approach. “How do you mean?”
“I don’t think it will be the end of the world if we get a little enjoyment out of this relationship—even if it is fake.”
“Enjoyment?”
“I just mean . . . we don’t have to think so much about our little addendum.”
“We don’t,” he parrots, eyes on my mouth.
I press my hands on either side of his desk chair. “We both know what this is, and there’s no risk since we aren’t looking for anything to come out of it.”
“Right,” he murmurs. “Since I’m leaving.”
For some reason the reminder of the expiration date of our little arrangement gives me pause, but only for like a second. I remind myself that’s the best part of the whole thing.
“Exactly,” I tell him. I curl my body to bring my mouth inches from his, reaching to cup his jaw. “So let’s enjoy it until then. No more worrying about how I’m doing, okay?”
“If that’s what you want,” he breathes.
I close the distance, letting my lips brush against his in a lazy kiss that makes his scent bloom around me, making my knees wobble. I have to press my legs together when I pull away, and Noah’s expression says he’d like to do a lot more than just this. It’s a very different look for the normally taciturn Dr. Taylor.
It’s weirdly arousing, being the only person to know this side of him.
“It is,” I assure him. I give him another quick kiss for good measure before I pull away. “If you weren’t working tonight, I’d say that you could show me your place.”
The implication is clear, and thankfully, Noah looks much less wary than he did the last time I propositioned him.
“You want to see my place?”
I have to bite back a smile, my earlier uncertainty currently being washed away by anticipation. “For research purposes, of course. I need to be able to tell people with confidence that you don’t actually sleep upside down in a cave.”
He doesn’t laugh, but I think it’s because he’s looking at me now like he wants to pull me into his lap. Should I tell him I would probably let him?
“I could . . .” His throat bobs. “I could do this tomorrow.”
I do crawl into his lap then, my lips curving against his. “Noah Taylor? Procrastinating? Now I’ve seen it all.”
Turns out Noah’s mouth is an effective method of shutting me up.