But he had to get on with his life. “Mind if I take the classifieds with me?”
She blinked. “Oh, sure.”
Glancing down to separate the sections, he took the plunge. “I’m going to look for another place to live.”
Her answering silence told him nothing. He had to shift his gaze upward. Their eyes met. Again, the silence stretched thin.
Finally, she turned away. “Orders all carried out then?” she asked, an odd tightness to her voice.
Noah frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“Wayne’s orders. He issued them, didn’t he? That’s what this has been about these months, I know that. That you helped me with everything after his death, that you helped me move here, that you thought you needed to check up on the situation with Cassandra and Nikki, that you…that you…” She made a vague gesture with her hand that seemed to encompass all manner of things. “That you did everything I asked for or needed.”
Hell. This wasn’t a conversation he wished to have. He’d merely wanted to make his plans known and then escape. “Of course the general talked to me about you and…what would come after. He was concerned.”
“So he came up with a plan. Told you how to carry it out.”
Noah tossed the newspaper onto the nearby counter. “I’m not here because of what the general wanted.”
Her head whipped toward him so fast her hair flew out like a golden banner. “Then why?”
Shit. And he’d been thinking he was so smart. Walked right into that one, Smith. He ran his hand down his face. “Juliet—”
“Be honest. How did it go?” she asked, her voice rising. “Because I’d really like to know. Did he say something like, ‘Give her time, soldier.’ Did he say, ‘Watch her, watch her closely, and there’ll come a day when you’ll feel free to walk away’?”
“It wasn’t like that.” Christ, didn’t she know he’d never be free? The rest of his goddamn life he’d remember her, he’d remember every moment with her, from the day he spotted her chasing after that feckless dog to those hours last night when he’d held her against his heart.
Her whole body pivoted to face him and she crossed her arms over the chest of her snowman sweats. They were thick, white cotton and so unsexy that his mind shouldn’t be drifting that way at all, but just the mere glimpse of the slender column of her neck had him thinking about how it had tasted under his tongue, how she’d slid her fingers through his hair and brought his head lower…
“Then what was it like?” she demanded.
Sweet, he remembered. And hot. So damn arousing. His mouth tingled and he almost felt the stiff nub of her nipple against his tongue.
“Noah?” Her voice was sharp.
He tried snapping back to the question at hand, but she was too quick for him. “Never mind,” she said, turning her back on him again. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Juliet, I’m sorry—”
“I said it doesn’t matter!” Then her voice cooled, slowed. “And I’m sorry, too. I had no right…not when you’ve done your job. You should feel good about that.”
He felt like shit about that comment. “It hasn’t been just a job, Juliet.”
She nodded. “I know. I get that. You’ve been a good, um, pal. Not just to me, of course. There was all that you did for Wayne, too.”
Pal? God, this was torture. Noah closed his eyes. “I liked your husband very much.”
“He was a worthy man.”
“The best.” Better than Noah, that was sure.
She turned to face him again, so damn beautiful whether it was in snow-sweats or Shakespearean velvet or bare-naked between the sheets of his imagination.
“Juliet…” There was so much he wanted, and so much he wanted to say.
She plowed on. “I hope you realize how much he thought of you, too, Noah. I know he considered you a real friend.”
“Yeah?” A real friend? Christ, he couldn’t take this. And worse, she was gazing on him as if he was some sort of self-sacrificing, decent-minded Dudley Do-Right.
“Yes,” she said, a little frown digging a line between her eyebrows. “A real friend.”
“God!” He shoved his hands through his hair, then let his arms drop to his side. “God!” He really didn’t think he could do this anymore. He really didn’t think he could play noble Noah for one more moment.
And who could blame him? Just hours ago he was inches away from wild monkey sex with the woman and he’d ended up with ashes instead—another man’s ashes. Jesus Christ, it was enough to provoke even the Boy Scout she considered him to be.
“Noah?” She moved forward and placed one cool hand on his forearm.
He steeled himself not to react to the touch.
“What’s the matter?” she asked. “Did I say something wrong?”
It was him, he was all wrong. But with her hand on him, with the thousand fantasies he’d had of her flooding his head, he couldn’t hold back an instant longer. “Christ, Juliet, do you suppose he’d still consider me a ‘real friend’ if he knew the truth?”
“The truth?” she echoed.
“Yeah.” He laughed, but there wasn’t an ounce of humor in it.
“What truth? What are you trying to say?”
“I’m trying to say I doubt the general would consider me a real friend if he knew how goddamn much I’ve always wanted to make love to his wife.”
There. That should do it. Those words and her shocked reaction to them would surely give him the push he needed to walk away from her.
Except she was only staring at him, as her hand slipped off his arm. “W-What?”
He shook his head. Christ. No wonder she was confused when he was still prettying it up. “Let me be clear, Juliet. I don’t want to just kiss your cheek or hold your hand. I want to go to bed with you. I’ve always wanted to go to bed with you. Bad.”
She blinked. “You have? You do?”
“Oh, yeah. And I wouldn’t be what you’re used to, honey. I’m no officer and gentleman outside the blankets or underneath them either. I’m a guy from the streets who likes his sex sweaty and raunchy and more intimate than you can imagine.”
Still looking like twenty-four carats of class, Juliet stared up at him. Why wasn’t she throwing him from the house or at least running, screaming, from it herself?
Noah dropped the veneer he struggled so hard to maintain when he was in her presence. “I want to touch every inch of your skin…I want to lick it with my tongue and roll across it with my cock, and when I’m done I want to use my mouth and teeth to mark every place I’ve been like a tagger marks a street corner.”
Now she stepped back.
Well, good. Good for her. Good for him, too. He took it as his invitation to leave. Gritting his teeth, Noah turned to the door. But then something caught at the back of his ancient army T-shirt.
Over his shoulder, he saw Juliet’s fist in the hem. He didn’t want to stay for what else she had to say. Eye on the door, he made to yank free of her hold.
Riiip.
His shirt gave way, and at the sound, so did his resolve. He spun, jerked her into his arms, and covered her mouth to take one last kiss before he left.
Eleven
To love is to place our happiness in the happiness of another.
—GOTTFRIED WILHELM VON LEIBNIZ
Except, Noah realized right away, this wasn’t a good-bye kind of kiss. Juliet had her arms around him, holding him close with the same kind of desperation that was driving him, and then when he took the kiss deeper, she did that thing that fired his blood and thickened his already-hard cock.
She sucked on his tongue.
He groaned, and when she sucked harder, he had to wrench his mouth away from hers before he did something more drastic like wrenching all the clothes from her body. His chest heaved as he stared down into her blue and green eyes, desire burning like fire in his blood and his erection pressing like heated iron against his belly.
It should be a crime to w
ant this much and have no chance at getting the prize.
Except—no chance? Because Juliet was still clutching his shoulders and her breathing was an erratic rhythm as she gazed up at him. She looked confused, maybe even bewildered. Dazed by surprise to find herself again in his arms or…dizzy with desire?
Is it too much to ask that I could have a man to hold me through one simple, single night?
She’d wanted that earlier, she’d wanted that man to be Noah, but he’d assumed the events that came after—Helen’s rejection at the restaurant and what Juliet had done at Zuma—had put that wish right out of her mind.
Is it too much to ask that I could find some way to prove that I didn’t die, too?
But now, now that the long night had passed, perhaps her need for proof had resurfaced.
Or maybe he was just kidding himself. Two-and-a-half years of fantasizing about the unattainable could fool a man.
She shivered, and hell, there was his answer. Time to go. So he moved back—but then she moved with him, her fingers digging into his muscles and her belly ghosting a kiss against his cock. Even that brief stroke sent lust punching through him like a syringe of adrenaline. Without thinking, he reacted to it by hauling her hips against his and taking her lips again.
She didn’t protest, no, not at all, because as he sank his tongue deep into her mouth, she sank against his body. Wasn’t nature amazing, he thought, his arms steeling to keep her upright. When he went pole-hard, she went pliant. When he needed in, she went open. And God, wasn’t that yin-yang opposition just so damn good.
As was that message her sweet pliancy, her sweet yielding delivered.
She trembled against him, but he knew what that signaled this time, and he petted a path up her back to tangle his fingers in her long hair. “It’s okay, baby,” he said, putting an inch of space between their lips. “I’ve got you. I’ll give you what you need.”
She buried her forehead against his chest and through his palm on her back he felt the hitch in her rapid breaths. “You know?” she asked, her voice a throaty whisper.
The husky note traveled down his chest to wrap like a hand around his dick. “Oh yeah, baby, I know. And I’m going to do you so good.”
At the bawdy words, she jerked against him, and he smiled over the top of her golden head. He’d laid it out for her before, he’d told her without a dab of sugary icing and in the crudest terms how and what he wanted, and he refused to back away from it now—because she hadn’t. Maybe part of what Juliet needed was a little slumming with Noah so it wouldn’t be anything like the sex she’d had with—
In the past.
He wasn’t going to think of her with another man.
He sure as hell was going to do his best to make sure she didn’t either. Noah had this one time to make her feel alive and he wasn’t going to let anything or anyone get between them.
And he wasn’t going to hesitate to get started.
Peeling her hands from his shoulders, he stepped back. There was color on her face, and her mouth was as rosy as he planned to make her nipples. His eyes on hers, he brought her fingers to his lips and ran his tongue along her knuckles.
“You’re cold,” he said, taking in their icy temperature.
Her breath hitched again. “Nerves.”
The word tightened down his control. While the thug inside of him clamored for sex as quick and dirty as a street-fight, Noah wrapped the urge in strong, thick chains. From the size of Juliet’s dark pupils and the continued tremor in her limbs, he figured he could take her down as fast as he wanted, but with only this one shot to have her, he knew he better savor it.
Oh, yeah, he was going to go so slow, inch-by-silken-inch, that she’d never realize how much of her she let him have, touch, taste.
He kissed the back of her hands. “I know a way to warm you up.”
“I should wash the salt and sand away,” she said quickly, looking down at her feet, still in rubber-soled flip-flops.
“Just what I had in mind,” he answered. “Shower or bath?”
A flush rose on her cheeks. “Not…”
“Together?” he kept his tone mild and tried to put out of his head all the questions starting to gather there. When was the last time Juliet had had sex? Had she ever stepped into a shower or slid into a bathtub with a man? And how slow could he take it if he had her naked and slippery and slick with soap? “We’re in California, right? Shouldn’t we be doing our part for water conservation?”
Biting her bottom lip, her head bobbed and then she let him lead her toward the master bedroom suite. Morning had finally found its way to Malibu, and sunshine poured like transparent gold paint through the trio of arched windows in the hallway and onto the hardwood floor.
“It’s awfully bright,” she worried aloud. “Maybe we should wait…maybe tonight…”
When there was darkness to hide behind, he finished for her.
His hand tightened on hers. “It’s a new day, Juliet.” This day that he thought was his, had become theirs. It’s our day. “And unless you’ve changed your mind—”
“No.”
“Then it’s like I already told you, honey. I’m no gentleman.” He gave her a wolfish grin and wiggled his eyebrows. “Your modesty doesn’t stand a chance against my wicked ways.”
She laughed like he wanted her, too, and it got them to the bedroom. On moving day, self-preservation had mandated he avoid any space so personal to her, and now he took in the pale walls and amber area rug as well as the queen-sized bed with its vanilla-colored bedclothes.
Juliet halted, staring at it with a frown.
Noah swallowed his groan. It was going to kill him if she balked now. If she tried, swear to God, he was going to summon every touch he knew, every technique he’d ever tried, to seduce her back into the mood. He did know there was a big whirlpool tub in the attached bath, and he could already see both of them inside of it, bubbles up to her breasts, his hand sneaking beneath the camouflage of the frothy stuff to explore the soft layers of her sex.
Yeah, it was going to take an agony of persuasion, he figured, an hour of kisses and surreptitious touches to get her there, but he would. He wanted it that bad.
Taking a careful breath, he squeezed her hand again. “Juliet? Okay?”
She glanced at him, and then around the spacious room. “It’s just so…so beige.”
Noah blinked at the disgust in her voice. “And, um…”
Um what? “And?”
She dropped his hand. “And I’m sick of it.” In a sudden flurry of movement, she spun to face the massive mirror hanging over a long chest of drawers crafted from some light-colored wood. “And look there,” she said, pointing to herself in that white sweatsuit. “More colorlessness.”
Without a pause, she reached down and whipped her sweatshirt over her head. “I never want to see myself in these again.” She threw the top across the room. Then she shoved down the pants and flung them away with her foot, one flip-flop going along for the ride. The other she tossed, too, and it thunked against the wall, marring the pristine paint.
She stared at the mark, her chest heaving again, and it gave him time to appreciate the underwear. She was wearing a matching—and demure—lace bra and bikini panties in an understated buff color.
He toyed with mentioning it, certain they’d be the next victims of her unexpected ire, but he wanted to save some unwrapping for himself. His mind spun off, thinking how best to accomplish that. Should he ease up behind her right now, or lure her into the bathroom? How many kisses until he could walk his fingers to the back clasp of that bra? Would he slide her panties off at the first opportunity, or instead slip his hands underneath the stretchy fabric to cup her sweet little ass?
She whipped around while he was still deep in the selections of his imagined sensual buffet. “I’m ready for sex now,” she declared, and marched past him to the bathroom. “Are you coming?”
Startled, he stared after her. Was he coming? Shit, he hoped so.
But man, even that might be in question, because by the time he’d reeled his tongue into his mouth and beaten back his surprise to hurry in her wake, she was already not only in the dim bathroom but was a shadowy figure behind the wavy glass of her two-will-fit-just-fine stand-alone shower.
The beige lace underthings lay flat on the floor like she’d removed then in haste and then stomped on them at leisure.
He flipped the switch to illuminate the stall and then he could see her better…still blurred by the shower glass, but that was definitely Juliet’s curvy outline and Juliet’s elegant back, the cleft between her perfect peach cheeks the only shadow that remained. God. His balls drew tight and more lust poured into his blood. Noah fisted his hands, holding himself back as the sexual gangster inside of him urged for a simple smash-and-grab.
Over the soft fall of water from the showerhead, Juliet’s unsteady voice reached him. “Those nerves I told you about…”
“Mmm?” His gaze glued on her unmoving figure, he started shucking off his clothes.
“I lost them.”
He smiled as he leaned over to unlace his boots, and was surprised by the sudden clumsiness of his fingers. “Maybe you misplaced them during your little strip show out there.”
“No,” her voice thinned. “I mean, I think I lost my nerve.”
“Ah, honey.” Naked, he put his hand on the stall’s door handle. “It’s just me.”
She let out a shaky laugh. “ ‘Just you.’ Oh, Noah.”
The door opened with an audible click and steam washed over him like hot breath.
Her head jerked around and she looked at him over one wet, creamy shoulder. “Oh, Noah.”
Her gaze whipped back around to the wall, but from that first, wide-eyed glance of hers, he knew it was going to be okay. He’d thought about this moment for years, showered with just this very fantasy more times than he could count, and though the hoodlum inside him wanted nothing more than to vandalize all that smooth and elegant skin with urgent touches and rough kisses, he found the control to approach her slow and steady.
One forefinger reached out to trace the bumps of her delicate spine. She shuddered, and he moved closer to lower his head and sip the water off her shoulder blade. Another shiver wracked her body and he chased goose bumps up the slope of her shoulder to the side of her neck. He took another lick.
Take Me Forever (Billionaire's Beach Book 2) Page 14