Sexmex 24 10 11 Nicole Zurich Step-siblings Mee... -

Nicole’s breath hitched. The book slid from her lap and thudded to the floor, but neither of them moved to pick it up.

He smiled then—not the cocky, public smile, but the real, vulnerable one she’d only seen twice before. “Because for three years, I’ve watched you paint in the garage with your tongue poking out when you’re concentrating. I’ve memorized the way you say ‘good morning’ when you’re still half-asleep and your voice cracks. I’ve fought the urge to pull you into my room every single night you’ve walked past my door to get a glass of water.”

She finally lifted her gaze. His eyes, the color of a winter sky, were fixed on her with an intensity that made her stomach drop. “Maybe I’m just appreciating the quiet.” SexMex 24 10 11 Nicole Zurich Step-Siblings Mee...

“Yes, you do.” He stood up, the careful distance between them collapsing as he crossed the room in three easy strides. He didn’t sit beside her. Instead, he knelt in front of the window seat, his knees on the floor, so they were eye to eye. “You look at me like you’re afraid of me. And I don’t think it’s fear, Nic.”

“I can’t,” she whispered, the words barely audible over the rain. Nicole’s breath hitched

“Tell me to stop,” he said, his face inches from hers. His hand came up, trembling slightly, and his fingertips brushed a strand of damp hair from her cheek. “Tell me you don’t feel it, and I’ll walk away. We’ll go back to polite. We’ll pretend.”

That was all the permission he needed. When he kissed her, it wasn’t the gentle, tentative first kiss of a new couple. It was the collision of three years of unspoken words, of side-long glances and accidental touches that lingered a second too long. It was hungry and desperate and achingly tender all at once. His hands cupped her face, and her fingers fisted in the soft cotton of his henley, pulling him closer as the rain hammered against the glass, a deafening applause for a story that was only just beginning. “Because for three years, I’ve watched you paint

“The worst,” he agreed, his voice a low rasp. “Our parents are in love. We share a last name on legal documents. If this blows up, it blows up everything .”

Nicole laughed too, the sound wet and relieved. “The worst.”

The rain was a constant, gray sheet against the windows of the lake house, trapping them inside a world that felt suddenly, dangerously small. Nicole had claimed the window seat in the living room, a heavy book open on her lap that she hadn’t turned a page of in twenty minutes. Across the room, Zurich was methodically cleaning his vintage camera lenses, the soft click and twist of metal the only sound besides the rain.

She should. Every rational part of her brain screamed it. But rationality had left the building the moment he’d knelt before her like she was something sacred.