She claimed his mouth with soft kisses that teased as much as they promised more to come. With the edges of her teeth, she nipped at his lower lip, then soothed the small sting with her tongue. He threaded his hands into her wet hair and moved them so that she was trapped between the tiled wall and his hard body, but even though the press of his muscles against hers shocked her with pleasure, she was intent on loving him the way he’d loved her. Her skin was slick enough that she could shimmy her way down his body, covering each muscle across his neck, his shoulders, his chest, with the same kisses she’d given to his lips.

As she began to drop lower to press kisses to his stomach and to glide her hands and mouth over him—all of him—he groaned her name into the steam rising both from the water and from their bodies. Before too long, though, he had her pressed up against the shower wall again, his hands threaded in her wet hair, his mouth devouring hers.

He had protection ready just when they needed it, only this time her hands weren’t steady enough to help him with it. In one quick move he was covered, and then she was wrapping her legs and arms tightly around him and he was licking, sucking, biting at the curve of her neck, then lower to the upper swell of her br**sts, as he found her wet and hot and beyond ready for him to take her.

She didn’t feel the hard tile behind her back as he thrust into her, barely heard her own gasps of pleasure over the pounding of her heart in her own ears. All she knew was that Noah had her...and she had him. In a rush of pleasure so sweet, so hot, so sudden that she was stunned by it all over again, Colbie came apart in his arms, with Noah less than a heartbeat behind her.

* * *

Ten hours later…

She’d just locked the front door of Indulgence after a fantastic second day in business, when Noah wrapped his arms around her and kissed the top of her head. "You’ve created something great here, Colbie."

She turned around in his arms so that he could kiss her mouth, too. Of course, when one kiss turned to two and then ten and then a hundred, she let him pull her into the back room for another round of sensual arguments aimed at winning her heart...this time on her desk with her legs wrapped around his waist.

"Now that is the meaning of indulgence," she murmured a while later as she worked to catch her breath.

"No matter where we are, no matter how many years go by, I’ll never stop proving my love to you," he told her, his eyes still so dark and hungry, even in the aftermath of their passion. "Every day. Every night."

"Even if I’ve finally decided?"

"Especially then."

Even though she knew he could see the truth of her feelings reflected back to him in her eyes, and that he had to feel it in the way she responded to his kisses, to his caresses, she wanted to give him more.

She wanted to give him everything he’d given to her, multiplied. Her faith. Her trust.

Her heart.

"As a little girl, I used to believe in love at first sight." She pressed a kiss over his heart, which beat hard and fast as she declared herself to him. "I think every little girl does. But then, slowly at first, and then faster and faster as I grew older and made bad choices, I lost that belief." She cupped his face in her hands even as she still held his body inside hers. "You gave it back to me on a snowy mountaintop on one perfect day. And then again, in one perfect night."

And later that night in his bed when he took her even higher than she’d been before and they flew together from peak to peak, she forgot to be afraid...because she didn’t need to be ever again.

~ THE END ~