Page 10 of Noel I Won’t
I followed soon after, ready for a hot shower and sleep. I went into the guest room across the hall, still smelling musty from being closed up with nothing but a stack of old boxes for months on end.
I stripped down to my boxer briefs and grabbed my towel that I’d slung over the duffel I’d packed for the few days Noel would be here.
I stepped out into the hall at the same time as Noel. He paused, eyes wide, hair slightly messy as if he’d been lying on it in bed.
His flannel pants clung to him in all the right ways, but the scowl on his face ruined the attraction a bit.
“What the hell are you stilldoinghere?”
“Again with the glaring,” I drawled. “Is my presence really so difficult for you?”
“Your presence isconfusing.” His gaze dipped from my face, landing somewhere in the region of my pecs. He swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing, as his gaze slipped lower and lower.
Somewhere around the time he locked onto my half-hard dick, I remembered that I was wearing only underwear. I shifted my towel in front of my waist.
“Eyes up top, sweetheart.”
He jerked his gaze up, cheeks blazing red. “Go the fuck home, Hopper.”
“Sorry to tell ya, Noel, but Iamhome.”
I left him gaping at the doorway behind me with a horror-struck expression.
If I couldn’t play nice, I’d just have to play dirty.
CHAPTER 5
NOEL
I stumbledbleary-eyed down to the kitchen for a cup of coffee. Broad shoulders and a shaggy head of dark hair brought me up short.
Fucking Hopper.
In my house. In my kitchen.
Drinking out ofmymug!
“Hey!” I strode toward him, full of self-righteous fervor. “Give me that!”
I yanked the mug from his hand, sloshing hot coffee over my hand.
“Ow!” I glared at him. “That’s hot!”
“Christ,” he muttered, grabbing my wrist and pulling me over to the sink. He turned on the faucet and thrust my hand under the cool water. “Youburnt your hand when you stolemycoffee.”
“Inmymug! I made that in fifth grade, you know.”
Hopper cast a dubious glance at the misshapen, brown lump of a mug. “Looks more like a first-grade project.”
I drew myself up with a huff. Howdarehe malign my artistic talents! Maybe my gifts lay more in the culinary arts than molding clay, but I’d like to see him do better. Ha! He probably drew stick figures.
“You— you’re so?—”
He raised an eyebrow. “Yes, Noel? I’m so what?”
Suddenly, the memory of seeing him last night, in the hall in nothing but his underwear, rose in my mind, and I tripped over my tongue. My cheeks went blazing hot.
Ridiculous. I was not some blushing schoolboy. I hooked up with men when I found the time, and I’d never been accused of being clumsy or awkward. That was Noel, the teenager, not Noel, the man.
