Sugarbaby

by Crystal Green

  This could be the worst choice you’ve ever made, said my safe side. The rollercoaster is only climbing a hill—you still have time to stop the ride and get off.

  But, in the end, Noah wasn’t the one who pushed me down that hill. I did it by myself as I lost all rationality and grasped his sweater, pulling him down to me so I could feel his lips on mine.

  So I could feel my belly flip as I descended into him.

  18

  Noah responded with as much pent-up passion as I had, threading his fingers into my damp hair and tugging out the band that was holding it in a ponytail. In the background, the rain pelted in a mad cadence against the windows and roof, imitating my pulse like tiny pistols banging one right after the other, never letting up . . .

  He was the one who broke off the kiss, breathing hard, taking me into his arms in an all-encompassing embrace. He held me so tight that the air squeezed out of me, and I thrilled in the sudden rush.

  “I can’t believe you let me back in,” he whispered.

  He couldn’t believe? I’d spent our entire upside-down relationship not believing, but now I did. I wanted to more than anything.

  I clung to him, urging him down to me again until his lips met mine in a ferocious explosion that I felt from the top of my head to the tips of my toes. I opened for his tongue, meeting it with a fierce, hungry rhythm, devouring him as much as he was devouring me.

  Out of oxygen, I gasped, leaning back my head, but that didn’t stop him. He pressed burning kisses along my jaw, down my neck where a vein throbbed in swollen ecstasy, echoing the rest of me.

  “Hurry,” I whispered. “Just hurry.”

  That slowed him down, though I didn’t mean for it to. But it was as if I’d reminded him that he was a so-called gentleman—even if it was one who had the ability to take down another man during a battle of numbers and words back in New York. A designer-suit warrior.

  “Are you commanding me?” he asked, murmuring it into my ear.

  “Yes.”

  “You know I go by my own rules.”

  As if he wanted to make me frustrated, he continued caressing me, slower, so much slower as he kissed me again, then spoke against my lips.

  “I haven’t seen all of you yet.” He eased his fingertips down my sides, then back up. “So that’s the first thing I want to do. And I’ll do it in my own time, Jade.”

  I wanted to see all of him, too, starting with his bared chest, just like that day in the gym when he’d been shining with sweat, as male as male could be. But I never got the opportunity to say that.

  He was working at the buttons on the front of my dress, undoing one, then another. With each pop, my heart blipped. So did something in my belly. Pop . . . blip . . . pop . . . Each one was a buildup to the next, coming faster and faster.

  His eyes smoldered with anticipation, and his desire became my desire. I could feel it between us, humming, heating.

  When he had me undone, he peeled back the top of my dress, exposing the camisole underneath. I hadn’t worn a bra since I’d sewn one in, and my nipples scratched against the cotton, straining.

  Noah got down to his knees, pressing his palms over my breasts, shaping them until I bit back a tiny sound that I only seemed to make for him.

  “You don’t know how many times I’ve thought about doing this,” he said. “It started after I looked up your number, saw your picture, then imagined you in that shower.”

  He started to unbutton the camisole, and as the air hit my bared breasts little by little, I could feel my nipples pebble even more. Then his hands were on my flesh, warm and tender, his thumbs circling my nubs.

  “You’ve got beautiful skin,” he said. “Smooth and silky, like it’s there for me to drink up. Every bit of you.”

  He knew what to say, and I wasn’t sure I ever would. My tongue was too tied. But who needed to talk when I could cry out as he took one of my tips into his mouth, sucking, making me arch off the arm of the sofa?

  While he tasted me, drank me in, my legs parted, and I pulled him closer, bunching his hair in my hands. His fingers were busy under the breast he was working, tracing the curve of it so lightly that my clit ached.

  He’d planned this out well, I thought. Then again, he was a strategist, and I was his conquest tonight.

  And I was going to let him take me over.

  When he slid his other hand under my long skirt, up my costume knickers and between my legs, I jumped a little, hauling in a breath. He sucked off of my breast to watch me as he ran a knuckle up and down the center of me, making the cotton there wet with my excitement.

  Like the last time he’d touched me there, I moved with his every motion, and he seemed enraptured by that, his lips parted, his eyelids heavy.

  “I told you to hurry,” I panted, “because I’m ready for you. I’ve been ready for you since the last time, and you showing up here tonight tells me all I wanted to know.”

  “It tells you that I can’t function without you.”

  Through the cotton, he ran his thumb through my folds, and I could hear my juices, my breathing, my flailing pulse in my ears, then his voice.

  “I shouldn’t have made you leave, Jade. I was wrong to do that.”

  I wouldn’t think of the reasons he’d let me go from New York—the signs of depression, the way he’d bounced back. Was he on a false high now because of me?

  I only knew my high was everlasting as he dragged both hands down my legs to my ankle boots. He paused there, stretching out my nerves as he sent me a wicked look. He untied one of my boots, then the other. He slipped them off my feet, inched off my anklet socks. Meanwhile, I braced myself, my dress open, my breasts bared.

  So wicked. So right.

  When he was done, he stood, then offered his hand to me, and I thought of a fallen angel again as the lamp lit him from behind, his face dimmed.

  Here to save me as much as I could save him.

  I grasped his hand, and he helped me to my feet, pulling me close, enfolding me, then swaying a bit like there was music in his head that I couldn’t hear.

  I fused to him as if I belonged there, a song about falling for someone playing in my mind, too.

  Falling, I thought. I was truly falling.

  Soon we were in my room, and he was laying me on my bed. Rain-spattered moonlight patterned the sheets around me as he smoothed the dress off my body along with the camisole. He pulled off my knickers, too, then took care of his own clothes.

  And there he stood in the near darkness, a muscled god who was as ready for me as I was for him.

  He’d slid on a condom, and when he came to me, he braced himself on his arms. I felt his hardness between my legs, throbbing, nudging me.

  I wiggled, eager for him to come in, but he had a different plan in mind—kisses on my face, my collarbone, down the center of my breasts and then my stomach and belly. Just as I groaned with impatience, he stopped the torture and, with a fluid thrust, truly became a part of me.

  I rocked up against him, and time paused as I got used to his thickness again. Then he was moving inside me . . . in . . . out . . . a slick, gentle driving force that made me dig my fingers into his hips.

  “Faster,” I whispered, the wickedness loose in me. “Faster!”

  He rammed into me, and I sucked in a shocked breath, abrading my nails up his skin until he moaned.

  From there, all I remembered was what spun through my mind as we moved together—flying up and up, toward a sky that was getting darker with every thrust, and just as I was about to touch it, light cracked through. As I floated there, suspended, everything pulsed back to darkness, back to light, but each time the brightness stayed a little longer, longer—

  With a splitting finality, a blinding field of white sent me spinning, and I fell down and down, farther and farther . . .

  Then I opened my eyes
to find Noah looking into my eyes, smiling like I’d never seen him smile before.

  ***

  “Did I wear you out?”

  His voice, drifting through the air to caress me. He’d been holding me for a while now—a half hour? More?—and neither of us had said anything the entire time. Words couldn’t follow up what we’d shared, since this hadn’t been just sex. This had been much more. Still, I was sorting through words in the afterglow, feeling his arm slung over my waist, feeling his breath as it’d evened out against the back of my neck.

  “I thought you fell asleep,” I murmured.

  “Mmm.” He snuggled, and I squirmed, my clit tingling and greedy for more.

  I’d never realized I’d had such greedy lady parts.

  Rain was still dolloping the windows, the texture of his hands rough but not too rough. The sensation made me want to stretch and smile.

  Freedom. This was what it felt like.

  But then reality peeked into me again: Noah’s apparent depression, the past manifesting itself in him, Noah needing happiness more than most people needed it.

  I turned on my side, toward him. In the moonlight, he looked into my eyes as he stroked the dip of my waist. Without hesitation, I touched the scar on his neck.

  He took up our earlier conversation where we’d left it before the big interruption.

  “The sins of the father,” he said. “There was a man who had to be fired from one of our electronics development divisions, a chemical engineer who specialized in nanotechnology. He’d said that Dad had taken advantage of his talents, and whether or not that was true, he wanted someone to pay. He tracked me and my Dad to a limo one day while we were preparing to go to a business-merger lunch. Before security could get to him, he tossed acid at us. It caught me here but missed Dad.”

  He laid his hand over mine, and we both covered his scar.

  I couldn’t speak above a whisper. “There was nothing online about that.”

  “The situation was quietly taken care of, like most of them are when you’re as high profile as my family is.”

  “You didn’t get surgery, skin grafts?” He could afford all of that.

  “What do you think I am? A pretty boy?”

  I laughed with him, but then he grew serious again.

  “I got some treatment.” His thumb stroked my hand. “But then I realized that I actually have a badge that says you can come and get me, but I’m going to survive. When people see this scar and if they find out the story behind it, they’ll think twice before throwing something at me.”

  I was almost intimidated by him now. Almost.

  He didn’t talk for a moment, then said, “The worst part, besides the pain, was knowing that you might’ve thought I did this to myself.”

  I shook my head. “If anything, I thought Diamont had something to do with it.”

  “No, his maiming is more of the emotional type.”

  The rain tapped, marking the seconds going by. As I caressed the roughness of his scar, a question crept into my mind.

  “Simmons,” I said. “Is he your bodyguard?”

  Noah laughed. “No.”

  “Okay.” I laughed softly, too. “He doesn’t look like one.”

  “I use protection for special occasions—you saw a team at the Hellfire Club—but you know I don’t get out much. At least not on a predictable basis.”

  “A security team would draw some attention.”

  He smiled. “Besides, I had some training over the years, after the attack. I never wanted to depend on someone else to save me again. I can take a fight.”

  Hadn’t I been thinking that I was here to save him? He’d be ashamed to know that I was even entertaining the thought. Noah Reeves took care of himself as well as his family and business. He didn’t need anyone.

  And that was his tragedy, because he did need help.

  The pitter-patter of the rain took over again, until he eased his fingertips down to my belly, skimming me just above my hair down there. My tummy jumped, my clit tightened.

  “So that sext you sent,” he whispered. “Did you ever want to invite me to hump in a shower?”

  I knew what he had in mind next, even before he pulled me out of bed and into his arms, heading for the bathroom.

  What followed was the best sext I’d ever sent.

  ***

  Since Carley and Diana had indeed cleaned the French food out of my refrigerator during my New York trip, I didn’t have much on hand except for some eggs, bread, cheese, soda, and butter. But Noah knew how to poach and toast, so the next morning he made me a small breakfast before we decided we didn’t need to eat and went back to the bedroom.

  I’d known it before, but it was crystal clear now—I was addicted. It seemed as if he’d imagined my body so thoroughly that he knew just how to make it soar now.

  When a text from Shelby came through, we were still lolling around.

  “It’s my friend,” I said. “She’s home from college this weekend, and I told her we’d get together today, but she’s wondering if we can switch to tomorrow.”

  That worked out fine for me. Noah was my everything today, and I couldn’t imagine leaving the house.

  Noah grinned. “Are you asking for my permission to leave and see your friends?”

  “No.” I frowned, sitting up, hardly minding that I didn’t have a stitch on. I’d gone from knickers to nudies in record time. “By the way, what do you mean by ‘permission’?”

  “Lighten up, Jade.” Noah tickled my thigh, and I squealed.

  “It’s just that . . .” I got serious. “Well, do we have rules? Because that’s what boyfriends and girlfriends do. Have rules.”

  I almost snapped my mouth closed. Were we boyfriend and girlfriend? Was I jumping to conclusions yet again?

  Relief filled me when he nonchalantly answered. “Then here’s rule one: You’re allowed to do what you want to do unless it involves seeing other men. How’s that for a start?”

  “It sounds good, unless you’re going to turn around and tell me that you’re allowed to see other women.”

  “Scratch being a doctor—maybe you should be a lawyer.”

  I nudged him, and he smiled. I hadn’t seen him in such high spirits since the last time we’d been in Aidan Falls. Maybe this place did have a positive influence on him.

  Maybe he should stay forever.

  “Another question,” I said, leaning over to put my phone on the nightstand next to his.

  “A question? From you?”

  Funny. “How do we handle our friends? What I mean is, I still have that NDA. Are you going to be my mystery man, sheltered away so I need to sneak off and see you in the shadows?”

  Noah rolled to his back, his expression thoughtful, his hands tucked under his head. For a moment, my body flushed and sputtered. The sight of him was just so raw, with his thickly muscled biceps and the hair underneath his arms. I fought the whim to run my fingers over him there, not so I could tickle him, but because he was so damned hot and I wanted to touch, touch everywhere—his chest, his ridged abs, and the happy trail of hair that stretched from his belly to his penis. I wanted to wake it up, have him inside me again.

  I’d never been brave with Rex like this, and definitely not with Micah, who’d been the aggressor. But, really, they didn’t matter anymore.

  No one else mattered.

  “This takes some thinking,” he finally said. “I told you I’ve never had a relationship before that lasted for any length of time.”

  “So you never met your sweeties’ friends? No one but your insignificant others had to sign those NDAs?”

  “Why? Do you want me to meet all your friends?”

  Before I responded, I couldn’t resist laying my palm over his stomach. I thought I saw him twitch down below. Bad me.

 
“They’d love to meet you,” I said. “You met one of them already—Carley.”

  “The waitress who abandoned the table when Simmons and I ate at the café. I don’t remember her much. My eyes were on you.”

  Getting bolder, I skimmed that happy trail over his flat belly, and he made a low sound of need.

  “What about my NDA then?” I asked, determined to get an answer out of him. “How do I handle that when it comes to my friends? Do I even tell them you’re back in town?”

  Now he looked pained, and I wasn’t sure if it was because I was turning him on or putting him on the spot.

  “Jade . . .” he started.

  “I know you’re in a tough place right now.” I stopped tormenting him, resting my hand on his hip instead. “You’re still out of the public eye and your plan is to keep laying low until you can make your grand entrance in The Reeves Group boardroom. So I ask again—does that mean you’re going to be my secret in the meantime?”

  “Unless you want your friends to sign NDAs, too, then, yeah. I’ve got to be your secret.”

  There it was—the reality again. But I didn’t want to face what was outside my door yet. I wanted to wallow in this place Noah and I had created for as long as I could.

  Resuming, I drifted my fingers down, coming to the grand prize, touching him, making him grow bigger as I traced his tip.

  “You’re killing me,” he said, his jaw tensing, his gaze going steamy.

  When a chiming sound came from my nightstand, I didn’t want to pay attention to it, especially since it wasn’t from my phone. Instead, I slipped my fingers under him, cupping him, but the text chimed again.

  “Shit,” he said, his voice a growl. “That’s Simmons’s tone.”

  Simmons, who was still in New York, watching over business.

  My heartbeat was muffled as I did what I knew I should do—got his phone for him and handed it over. My blood whomped through me, punishing me.

  Noah accessed the message, but when he didn’t react, my stomach knotted.

  Shit, I thought, echoing Noah but not saying it out loud. Here it comes. Trouble.