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“You’ve been so patient and so sweet and instead of just being thankful you brought me lunch. All I can think about is how much I want to kiss you.”
“Then kiss me,” she said archly.
I put down my sandwich and got to my feet. She stood up and met me toe to toe like it was a challenge. I took her face in my hands and kissed her, softly at first. The zing of contact was stronger than I expected, the chemistry off the charts. Her hands wrapped around my forearms and when she gave a sharp inhale as I slid my tongue in her mouth.
My blood heated and my heart raced as I teased her with quick, deep kisses as I backed her up to the door. In seconds, I had my fingers skating along her rib cage beneath her shirt. She wrapped her arms around my neck and leaned back into the door like she’d be content to stay there forever. With sheer force of will I slowed the rhythm, made my touch lighter and more teasing. Her little gasps and the way her skin heated under the softest kiss pressed to her jaw gave me all the reward I needed.
I took her hands in mine and laced our fingers together, pressing them to the door above her head and kissed her again, slowing down so that each brush of our lips was electric. Teasing and tentative, my calculated gentleness seemed to unlock her. She tugged one hand free from mine to reach for my hair, the back of my neck, the sensitive spot just beneath my collar. When she brushed her fingers there, I couldn’t hold back a full body shudder that left her smiling against my mouth. Every lick and kiss was drawn out and savored, experienced with an intensity that rang through me like a tuning fork. Gone was my urgency and need to make things happen. I simply wanted to be here with her in this moment. I let myself tune in to the way her hands flexed in mine and gripped me back.
“I meant to take you out for lunch,” I said with a soft laugh as I brushed my lips against her neck. I felt her arch in response, canting toward me.
“We had lunch. And we could never have kissed this way in a restaurant.”
“We’d be kicked out,” I agreed, nuzzling her soft throat.
“If we had somewhere to go,” she began, a swift intake of breath, an effort to keep her voice light and playful while I was slowly undoing us both. I let go of her hands, untangled our fingers from one another and she hugged me, her arms around my neck and her face buried in my shoulder.
“I really did want to hear more about microloans,” she said, her voice a little shaky. I held her and stroked her hair.
“I’ve talked enough about finance. I wouldn’t say I’ve kissed you nearly enough,” I said.
“That’s fair,” she said. “I’d offer to meet you for dinner, but I have baking to do. One little batch at a time.”
“Could I help you?”
“I don’t know. Do you have hours of extra time to stand around my kitchen waiting for things to bake? Do you know how to mix muffins?”
“I can learn,” I said, “And I’d like to. Let me help you out.”
“Okay. If you still feel like it later, you’re welcome to come over and try your hand at cranberry orange scones.”
“Sounds like a challenge. I’ll be there,” I said.
7
ETHAN
The Tokyo project was coming along, but slowly. I’d had Zoom meetings at odd hours due to the time difference and it was starting to wear on me. It was good to sit down and have a beer with my brothers, watch a game.
“How is your coffee shop project coming along?” I asked them during a commercial.
Noah looked up first and gave a half smile. “Madison had lunch together this week and I helped her make some scones at her apartment that night. She’s having a hard time but she’s not complaining. She acts like we hung the moon or something, just for giving her a hand with the oven thing.”
“Yeah, it really bothers me that she has so few people in her life that treat her kindly. Makes me want to make a special effort to do things for her,” Leo adds.
“Trouble keeping it in your pants, brother?” I asked wryly.
“I’ve kept it in my pants,” he said, irritable. The aggravation in his voice proved he spoke the truth.
I knew they both liked Madison a great deal. What surprised me was how much I liked her and wanted to know her better as well. What could one woman possibly have that appealed to three men at once?
“I thought she’d be an opportunist. Some kind of seductress bent on scoring a free oven from guys who put their common sense aside for a chance to have her. I went to see her and knew from the first couple of minutes that she was too down to earth for that. What shocked me was that I stood around watching her work, seeing how she related to her customers and—”
“You got hard?” Leo said bluntly.
“You were attracted to her,” Noah amended more politely. I nodded to them both.
“I didn’t expect to like her, but here we are,” I said.
