“You shouldn’t,” she says just as softly.
“I know,” I reply, rubbing her back, savoring her slow exhale. “But I do. I truly, irrevocably, genuinely love you, and nothing you say or do can stop it.”
“Oh, I don’t deserve you, Noah,” she croaks and squeezes herself into me. “But I…I…Noah, I…” She struggles to say what she fears but knows has already consumed her.
I nod and kiss her neck, feeling her shiver. “I know,” I whisper, letting my eyes close. “I know.”
Chapter Sixteen
I sign her out half an hour later. She is badly injured and won’t be able to walk around as much, so we’ll be having our last meeting over lunch tomorrow in the restaurant. Ellis was shocked and sympathetic when he saw me guiding Red into the hotel, who struggled using crutches the hospital gave her, and helped me guide her to her room. She swore she wasn’t tired or in pain, but I didn’t want to take any chances.
I am too tired to go to bed, so I grab my sketchbook and head down to the secluded beach. I want to catch the sun as it goes down, which according to my phone is about twenty minutes away. I give polite smiles as I weave through the pool section. Girls are still rocking their intricate bikinis and guys are getting their last grind before it gets dark and weird.
Chuckling, I weave past a group of gawking girls. I ignore them all with only one girl in the back of my mind, always there, always my daydream.
On the edge of the beach, I slip off my sandals and hold them as I head out onto the white sand. I normally despise the feeling of sand between my toes, but this beach has the soft kind that feels kind of magical. The slight wind feels amazing against my skin and ruffles my curly hair. I run a hand through it before dropping into a random spot. I pop in my headphones and put on shuffle; a Coldplay song blares. I want to drown out the party sounds by the pool.
Calmly, I begin drawing a sketch of the ocean, capturing the glittering whites dancing along the crystal blue water. A sense of tranquility washes over me with each stroke of my pencil. As I add tiny details and listen to the music, I feel truly happy and peaceful. I haven’t drawn in a shameful amount of time. I didn’t have any inspiration or feel the spark I need for those four treacherous months. It was like Red was my muse for all things good, and when she left, my creativity ran into a wall.
Ten minutes into drawing, I am so wrapped up in my thoughts and focusing on getting the seagulls scoping for their meals above the water that I don’t even realize she’s beside me. But I feel her warm skin spark against mine, and my breathing stops, as does my hand movements. I look at her through my peripheral vision, but I need to see the whole of her.
“Red.” I smile and take out my earbuds.
“Noah.” She smiles back.
I look around, confused. “What’re you doing here? I told you to get some rest.”
She scoffs. “You mean take a nap? What am I? Five?”
I just smile. “No, but it’s been a long day, though.”
She shrugs and looks at the water. “Not that long for me.”
“How did you get here? Did you hop on one leg the whole way?”
“No, idiot. I used the crutches the doctors gave me. Crutches are a bitch to use, but as long as I’m lying on a beautiful beach next to a subpar guy…” Her smirk is contagious, and so is her laughter when I playfully roll my eyes. I watch her stare at the ocean then gulp and continue sketching when she glances at me in her peripheral vision.
“Can I see what you’re drawing?” she asks, already peeking her eyes over my shoulder.
“Sure. It’s nothing special,” I tell her, blushing as I show her the page. “I’m just waiting for the sunset.”
“Nothing special? Noah, this is amazing.” She’s sitting extra close now; I can feel her warm breath on my arm. And she’s leaning so close to my chest, she can probably hear the marching of my heart. Is she trying to be this close to me, get a reaction out of me? Then she looks up at me with a grin that all but stops my heart, then makes it thunder as I try to catch my breath.
“What?” she says and pulls away, blushing.
She looks extra cute when she blushes, which could be considered off looking with her tattoos and piercings and fuck-away-from-me aura thing she has going on, but knowing her and witnessing the lighter part of her, she looks damn beautifully ethereal.
I smile. “Nothing.”
“Whatever, liar.” She sidles up close and runs a hand across the realistic ocean. “How do you do this? I can barely draw a freaking stick figure.”
“That isn’t true. Everyone’s secretly artistic. You just have to coax it out of you,” I tell her, shading in the sea.
“Bullshit,” she spits.
“I’m being serious.” I laugh at her wrinkled nose. Biting my lip, I rip out a blank page and hand it to her, but she doesn’t take it. “Here. Take it.”
“Why?” she asks hesitantly, taking the paper.
“I wanna see what you can do.” I hand her a pencil.
She rolls her eyes. “I already told you, I’m shit.”
“Just try,” I coax, flashing her my slight dimples. If there’s anything about me, it’s that my dimples can get anyone to do anything I desperately want. I’ve just never wanted to persuade someone as much as Red.
“Fine,” she huffs angrily and snatches the pencil from me. “But don’t act surprised when I show you my shit drawing.”
“What are you drawing?” I ask, focusing on the start of the sun descending. I wish I’d brought my art supply bag, or at least a few colored pencils. I plan to shade in the colors, so I look out at the sun dipping low into the horizon, memorizing the soft shades of orange and yellow and hazy blue.
Noticing her still silence, I look at her. She’s staring at me, but instead of blushing like the next girl, she smirks.
“You,” she says.
“Good luck trying to get all my handsomeness down right,” I joke.
“You are so cocky.” She shakes her head, grinning.
“Ooooh, getting frisky now, are we? You’re gonna add that too?”
Her eyes widen, and her laugh is chaotically beautiful, just like her. “Do not go there, Wells.” Just then, the wind blows tendrils of her hair that aren’t thrown up on her head. Some cover her vivid blues and natural pink lips. I give in to the burning desire to push them back behind her small ear.
“Too bad I’m already there,” I whisper.
I easily get lost in her eyes, then her parted lips, then her chest…she’s wearing a ripped-up black crop top and shorts, one sandal on the side of her, her crutches beneath them. I watch my hand caress her cheek then fall down the path of her long neck. I rest my knuckles against her thrumming veins. Down, down, down—my fingers run over her colorful tattoos, stopping at the ruby heart above her wrist.
“I always wondered…why’d you get this?” I rasp.
A sharp breath, then a quiet, “My mother loved rubies. I got it on my sixteenth birthday. Got wasted before getting it.” Hearing the sadness in her voice, I look up, but she has her eyes on the horizon. I move my hand to rest on her lower back, and her lips twitch into a glum smile. “My grandma almost whooped my ass.”
“It’s beautiful. How old were you when your mother died?” I ask curiously.
Pain flashes across her eyes, and I move to retract my question and apologize, but she answers before I can. “I was five, and my life sorta just plummeted to shit after that.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say even though no amount of apologies from me can do anything but soothe the aching within her a tiny bit.
She smiles softly. “Enough with the sad, sappy shit. Let’s get back to drawing dicks and suns.”
I catapult into laughter. Her sense of humor and raunchy side will never cease to amaze me. She watches me. Her smile is slight and pink, her eyes golden as the sun takes its sweet time plunging beneath the sea. I swallow the lump of desire in my throat.
“You are so beautiful.” My voice is a bare
whisper.
I know we’re friends and friends don’t randomly call each other beautiful…but we have a super-damn friendship, and she’s too gorgeous to not tell her. She needs to be reminded every second of every day until it’s all she knows. And I’ll gladly do the honors.
“Noah,” she whispers with an almost breathless smile. I duck my head and hover my mouth over her warm skin. She whispers a warning, but I don’t listen. I need to taste her. So I do. I kiss her shoulder, glide my needy mouth up the length of her shoulder, leading up to her neck. I kiss her there, run my hand along her lower back, caressing her creamy skin. She tastes so damn sweet, I want more…
“Noah, we—we shouldn’t,” she says but doesn’t push me away as I kiss under her chin. The corner of her puffy pink lips. Gently lick her cold lip ring. She shudders and pulls me closer by the collar of my unbuttoned tropical shirt. Our lips are so, so close—just one push and we’re kissing.
No, God. I need her lips. I need to taste her mouth.
I begin to move the half inch needed to finally taste her when she backs away and whispers, gripping my shirt with a fiery need or extreme anger, “We…can’t. I told you at the hospital.” Then, with a softer voice and golden-blue eyes, she says, “Can we just draw? Please?”
My heart splits into two, and I want nothing more than to pull her forward and claim her mouth, take her on this damn beach, guests be damned. But I also have great respect for her. So, pushing my needs aside, I grin and nod. “Yeah, of course.” I turn back to the sea, but she’s still staring at me. I let her for a few heartbreaking moments, focusing on my drawing.
“Great,” she mumbles. I can hear the sexual frustration in her voice, see it in her wide eyes. We both want each other, but she wants us to take things slow, figure things out. Even though I have things figured out—I want her. Badly.
I need to break this kind of awkward moment.
“Wanna see me draw a dick as a dolphin?” I ask, and she gasps, eyes wide with amazement.
“Do I?” she exclaims and leans on me again. But this time I let my heart thunder on and turn to a fresh new page. With her colorful commentary and the calming laps of the sea, seconds turn into minutes and minutes into lightyears—all because of my shining star, my Red.
Chapter Seventeen
When we get back on our floor of the hotel, it’s well past eleven o’clock. We didn’t mean to come back so late; we just got so caught up talking and drawing. Despite what she claimed, she’s actually decent when it comes to sketches. She drew my side-profile, and I was so impressed I gifted her with her own face profile. She cursed me for blowing her mind, and I couldn’t stop laughing as she rolled her eyes and complimented the drawing in an angry tone.
She is so perfect.
“Stop with the staring, prep.” She notices and nudges me in the stomach.
“I can’t help it, Rossa.” I nudge her back. I grab her hand and pull her to my room. “I won’t take long getting dressed. Keep me company?” I make sure to sound extra desperate and fish out those dimples she likes.
She groans and pushes into the room when I unlock it using my key card. Laughing and shaking my head, I enter the suite and lock the door behind me. “Which floor’s yours?” she asks.
“First,” I tell her, then pull out my vibrating phone. I read the text from Mike. “Fuck me.”
“I told you, Noah, we’re friends.” She flashes an irresistible smirk over her shoulder.
“It’s not that, it’s…” I follow her into the bedroom, and she falls onto the bed, elbows holding her up. I know she isn’t trying to, but she looks sexy as fuck. Hooded eyes, smirking lips, toned stomach, and slender legs on display. I want to part her legs and slowly roll into her with my hips and grip her hair and—
“Speak, boy.” She pokes my thigh using her foot. Her smile is mischievous enough that I’m pretty sure she heard my very naughty thoughts.
Blushing, I tell her, “We took so long on the beach that they already went to dinner without us. Which I get because tonight there’s this grand show with acting and singing and sparkler stuff. It was freaking awesome the last time I came here. But we can’t get in once they’ve started, which was about half an hour ago.”
“Damn you and your dick-dolphins.” She glares at me with a cute pout then gets on her hands and crawls over to a nightstand.
“What are you doing?” I ask, moving to the balcony doors. It’s kind of humid in here. The cool wind that curls through the air feels amazing against my face. I pull off my shirt and toss it on the ground.
“Getting room service,” she calls out. “What do you want?”
“Their shawarma’s pretty good. Chicken,” I tell her and look over the railing. The party scene by the pool is still thriving. But I get it; once you’re on vacation, time seems irrelevant. I stand here for a few seconds, listening to her order, before walking back in the room and squatting in front of the mini-fridge.
“Red or white?” I ask her.
“What? No blue?” she jokes.
Laughing at her lame joke, I pull out two wine bottles. “Which one, babe?”
Here we go with the babe thing again.
She, thankfully, ignores the pet name I insistently call her and taps her chin inquisitively. “Let’s be cliché and go for the red.” I put the white wine back and shut the door using the heel of my foot.
“Let me be even more cliché and say: I’m going to enjoy drinking you up.” I grab two champagne flutes, and she barks a single laugh. I redden with a smile and waltz over to the open balcony doors.
“Let’s get in the hot tub,” I suggest.
“No thanks,” she says. “And my foot’s not in the best condition, or did you not remember me crying in pain earlier?”
“You’re dramatic, you didn’t even shed a tear,” I say, “and you have on a waterproof cast. I think you’re good there.” I scoff. “Oh, and chicken.”
“Screw you.” Her voice sounds pissed off and close behind me.
I unbutton my cargo shorts and look over my shoulder to find her staring at my naked back. She doesn’t even look the least bit embarrassed, which makes me chuckle before pushing them down my legs. I get inside and let out a long, dramatic sigh.
“The water is amaaaaazing,” I breathe out, eyes closed. I hear her giggle and peek an eye open, smiling lopsided at her staring at me with hooded eyes. “Wanna get in now, love?”
“I’m not your love,” she snaps.
Hmmm—she’s cute when she fakes being upset.
“You’re right.” I pop open the wine bottle, giving her a long look. “You’re my Red.”
Her breathing visibly stops short, and her cheeks are red under the soft moonlight. “Shut up,” she murmurs like she does when I get her blushing just enough.
I chuckle and pour wine in the flutes on the edge of the jacuzzi. “Come on, get in. I’ll even close my eyes for you.” I slap a hand over my eyes. I don’t hear anything for a while and briefly assume she’s left, locking the double doors behind her like the little shit she is. But when I peek through my long fingers, she’s just wearing her sexy red bra and is wiggling out of her shorts.
“Hey! No peeking!” she shouts, catching me.
“Sorry, sorry,” I mutter, and it’s my turn to blush.
I hear a sigh, a curse, then her foot brushing my thigh as she climbs in next to me. When I feel her settle in beside me, I remove my hand and face her with a smile. The hair piled up on her head is safe from the fizzing water, but her beauty is so raw and powerful, I find myself reaching for her. Her lips part, and I want to hold her chin and bring her lips to mine, but I hear her rejecting me on the beach and instead reach for the flutes behind her head.
“Red wine for my Red.” I hand her one flute, watching her cheeks blaze with the color of her name. Hurt flashes across her eyes, but she doesn’t comment on it, just like I expected.
“Thanks,” she mutters. Our fingers touch, and the simple whisper of it sends goosebumps
across my body. She looks so beautiful, but I can merely smile and appreciate it wordlessly.
But as the wine is consumed and our punctual shawarma is delivered and devoured in one delicious go, we become anything but silent. The wine is crisp, the chocolate strawberries we ordered as dessert sweet on our tongues. I watch her the entire time. Admire her red-stained full lips move a mile a minute. Fast and slow and thoughtful and colorful language—I am captivated whenever she talks. That and I think I’ve had one too many flutes of wine.
We finished the bottle about an hour ago, and we’re sipping slowly on the white wine.
“Noahhhhh, quit with the staring,” she whines, tapping my nose. “It’s hard enough resisting you.”
“Is it?” I rasp, voice deeper than my love for her, which is already bottomless. My head is leaning against the back of the jacuzzi, my smile lazy as I watch her scrunch her nose and face me.
“Yeah.” She nods, eyes searching my face then staring at my mouth. Breathing out almost exhaustedly, she nods again and says, “How can it not be? I mean, you’re so sexy. So innocent, but so, so sexy. It’s your hair and your cute smile, those dimples—those little fuckers. Your chest, your hands. God, your hands…” she rambles and closes her eyes, getting lost in a memory.
My chest squeezes, and I smile, pulling her on my lap. “I like when you speak your mind like this. You’re pretty hard to resist too, you know.” I draw circles on her thighs. She moans and perks up and stares down at me with heavy blue eyes. I push her legs wider on either side of me, straddling her on top of me. I am so hard. God. She’s so beautiful.
I need her now.
“You’ve got something in your hair.” My chest is pressed against hers now, flushed and breathing hard. Swallowing thickly, I kiss the soft skin on her chest. Her breasts are practically calling me to lick them, play with them.
So beautiful…my pants feel tight against me.
“W-what?” she stammers, eyes wide and shining like the moon.
Red: Fiery Finale (Spectrum Series Book 8) Page 11