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“Fuck, Norah,” he says as he makes contact with the place he’s made me impossibly wet, and it’s only then that I feel him shaking ever so slightly.

We lock eyes, and his brows rise with a helpless laugh.

He’s nervous.

He’s looking at me like he would fall into the center of the earth for me.

I’ve been in love with him my whole life.

I can’t believe I ever thought this was just hormones.

And then he moves.

A slow circle with the pad of his middle finger, magnetically drawn to the exact spot that will undo me.

“Henry, this is—”

“—I know,” he says softly.

Another slow circle, maintaining deep eye contact. This is the most intimate moment I’ve ever shared with another person.

As I’m starting to get lost in him, a buzzing noise jolts us back to this plane of existence. My cell phone is ringing incessantly on the nightstand.

“Ignore it,” he whispers, kissing me like I’m something to be cherished, and instead of the panic I usually feel when my phone rings, stemming from the worst day of my life, I trust him and listen. My phone quiets, and I sigh into his mouth. But a moment later, the buzzing moves to his phone, on the other nightstand.

I slip his hand out from where I want to hold it forever. “You should answer.”

He takes an unsteady breath, and with one more look at me, he turns to grab his phone.

“Hello?” he says, winded, adjusting himself in his pants.

I can tell immediately that it’s Kristine.

“Oh, uh—Norah didn’t pick up? Uh, shower. She’s in the shower,” he lies poorly. A pause, then, “No, we’re, uh, still at the inn. We had to wait for them to dig out the driveway.” I look at him and gesture WTF? but he just gives me a nervous shrug.

I glance at my phone and realize it’s already after ten. Shit. That explains the missed call from my mom too. We should have been at the lodge by now, or at least close.

I was the only thing that was close. And goddamn, I was so close.

Henry says a few more reassuring things to his mom, and then he hangs up quickly. I already know what he’s going to say—we have to go. The moment has passed, and like two little kids, we’re in trouble with our mommies.

“I wish we could stay here all day and finish what we started,” he murmurs into my hair.

“We can’t,” I say, longing for any other way. “I have to shower.”

Henry raises an eyebrow at me.

“If you come into that bathroom with me, we will be decidedly more behind schedule than we already are.”

He concedes, kissing me once more so deeply I nearly go limp, then patting my ass to usher me into the bathroom.

As I let the water run over me, my whole body is still humming.

If it felt that way with just the touch of his hand, without even reaching climax, him being inside me will surely ruin us both.

Goddamn, Henry Cole.

How did we even get here?