“I know.” I turned my head to look at him, but he had turned his too and, as a result, our noses missed each other’s by millimeters. It was a small double bed, and Noah was so large and broad that it made it even smaller. We both turned back to the ceiling again. Safer, that was. Less chance of nose-bumping.
“What’sFifty Shades?” I asked.
“You can’t remember it?”
“I think I do. I’m not sure.”
“It’s probably one of the most famous books and films of our time.”
“Well, I didn’t remember that Becca Thorne book. My memory is still weird and sketchy. So, what is it? And why are you and Mienkie not into it? Into what? And what injuries?”
Noah turned his head again, and I did the same. His cheeks seemed a little rosier this time. “You really don’t remember it?”
I shook my head.
“The characters in the book and film sort of engage in—oh, I don’t know what the right term is—practice! Yes, they practice bondage. You know?”
I blinked. “Bondage?”
He cleared his throat again. “Tying each other up, spanking, that sort of thing.”
“OH! Oh, yes. I’ve, um . . . read about that,” I said, remembering a moment inHeat of the Desert, Heart of the Sheikwhen Sheik Khalifa binds Amanda Stone’s hands with a silken cloth and blindfolds her eyes and . . .
Amanda had never felt anything like it. With her eyesight now gone, she could smell and feel and taste him so much more as he brought himself down on her, his heavy muscular chest pressing into her pink, peaked nipples. And because she couldn’t lay a hand on him, as he had bound hers, it made her want to touch him even more. To feel his swollen sword and unsheathe it.
“Okay, goodnight,” I said, and quickly turned over, feeling too hot and awkward to continue the conversation. I felt Noah turn and, because of the size limitations of the bed, his entire back now pressed into mine.
“Goodnight,” he said. And then we lay in silence again.
“What kind of injuries?” I asked.
“Uh . . . you know, this and that.”
“Like what?”
I heard Noah take a breath and felt his back expand against mine. “Well, there are a few we need to rush to the ER for, um . . . foreign-body removal, if you get what I mean.”
“Foreign . . . OH! Oh. Right!” I thought about my lipstick and melted into the mattress with embarrassment.
“And then the odd mishap with ropes, and once, a guy got electrocuted because his girlfriend tied him up with an electrical wire and the massage oil acted like a conductor.”
I laughed at this. Although I did feel a little bad doing it. “Poor guy!”
Noah laughed too and the bed wobbled ever so slightly as he did, forcing our bodies into each other’s a little more.
“Can I ask you something else, Noah?”
“You’re already asking me questions.”
“Would you really have let them kill you over me?”
“I guess that is what I said in the moment, isn’t it? Out of instinct, when my adrenalin was pumping, so I suppose yes!”
“Wait.” I turned around and Noah did the same, and now we were face to face again. “Are you saying that now you wouldn’t? Now that your adrenalin isn’t pumping?”
Noah smiled. “I kind of like living.”
“So if they burst through the door again with knives, what would you do?”
