“Then what are you, Sayer?” he whispers, head dipped low.
“Your prisoner,” I whisper back. Caught in a trap of my own making.
Rubbing his jaw, Noah regards me in silence before looking behind me at the TV. They’re still talking about the Baron and something unreadable passes over Noah’s face.
He’s quiet from a moment until he says, “I want to show you something.”
I don’t know what it is, the softness in his otherwise hard voice, the fact that I’ve been home all night and have found myself actually bored and kind of restless, or the fact that he’s here now and I don’t want to watch him leave unless I’m right beside him, that has me nodding.
After a quick change out of the penguin onesie, I slip on my coat and follow Noah into the hallway and God knows where else.
Noah’s takes me to the Art District downtown, to Artwell Alley. A section of the city that’s dedicated to local artists who come and paint whatever they desire in a long alleyway between two buildings.
I used to come here all the time when I was feeling lost. The place that was my point zero. Where I felt centered. Some people do yoga and meditation to feel realigned, some turn to religion to guide their purpose. I came here.
Art was my center. My therapy. My religion.
Full of expression, love and pain, darkness and light, paintings are a reflection of the hearts around us, tales left to interpretation, forever feeling and forever changing. It’s how I found a purpose when I didn’t know who I was meant to be.
Noah doesn’t care about the art before us, stomping by them without a second glance while I trail behind at a slower pace, remembering. Remembering what it was like to get lost in a painting. The canvas was my church and the brush was my prayer. I’d spend hours at my church, feeding my creativity.
Until the day I found out my granddad was sick. I was in an art studio, working on a painting that is now in the back of my closet when he called. That was the last day I picked up a paintbrush.
Noah, noticing my snail pace, backtracks to where I am. Instead of forcing me to pick up speed, he simply walks beside me.
I look away from the art on the walls to take him in instead.
With the shadows hugging his sharp bone structure, he looks like a fallen angel in search of his reckoning with his hair in a mess and eyes aged in knowledge. More knowledge than a twenty-eight-year-old should probably have.
He’s irresistible in his appeal, the way the corner of his mouth is stretched a little higher than the other as he stares down at me. “Like what you see?”
Yes. I quickly turn back around. Returning to my safety net of beautiful things. The art.
And, surprisingly, he lets me. Whatever he wants to show me can wait.
From a goblin wearing a crown to a rotting sun. An outline of a lotus flower that holds drawings of various styles to script that reads he who roams the night walks hand in hand with the Devil.
The line strikes a chord.
Only my devil likes suits and wears black-framed glasses.
Speaking of…
I don’t feel him beside me anymore. The heat that usually accompanies him is absent, my coat no longer feels adequate to keep me warm by itself.
I pull it closer around me. It’s too quiet. The kind of quiet that comes with being alone.
I spin around with an anxious heart, thinking he’s walked farther down. He’s not.
Noah is no longer in the alley with me.
Not anymore.
“Noah?” I call out, spinning around again only to stare at a painting on the opposite wall. A bleeding medieval cross with a broken crown hanging from the top.
I start to walk back to the street, thinking maybe he’s out there when an arm goes around my waist.
I scream as a hand covers my mouth and pulls me into darkness.
A loud bang pierces the air. The sound of a door slamming shut.
My pulse spikes, breathing tight, but instead of letting myself panic I snap into fight mode. Kicking behind me, I connect with a shin. The hold around me becomes tighter and my struggling becomes more manic.
I bite down on the hand, hard. My captor doesn’t even flinch.
Instead, my hair is pushed aside, and cold words are whispered into the shell of my ear. “Careful, Baby Brooks. Pain turns me on.”
My heart feels weighted in my chest and my face hot despite feeling frozen moments ago.
Noah.
Now, after hearing his voice, I feel like an idiot. Of course, it’s Noah. My skin feels tight under his touch, recognizing him faster than my brain did. I panicked, blocking out all logic. For a moment I slump against his solid frame, only to pull away.
Spinning around, I push against his chest. “Don’t do that! You scared me!”
My heart still pounds with no sign of settling down anytime soon.
Noah’s chuckle is as dark as this unlit room. “But I enjoy it.”
“And I enjoy cheesecake, but you don’t see me…”
I trail off as the lights flicker on and I gasp as the room becomes illuminated.
We’re in an art gallery.
I turn to face Noah, only to find him watching me. “Why are we here?”
Without waiting for an answer, I look away from Noah to see more of the here.
So many paintings line the walls. A few are lined with an assortment of more modern paintings, but they’re few and far in-between.
The real pièce de résistance are the paintings that wear their age with pride.
My fingers reach out to touch the golden ornate frame, stopping myself when I’m only a hairsbreadth away.
An unsettling feeling overcomes me.
This belongs in a museum.
Noah steps close behind me.
“Where did you get these?” I breathe.
“These were donated for a local show by members of this fine city. Reeve’s hosting an event.” A pause. “You’re invited, by the way.”
Answering becomes hard when I feel Noah’s fingers curl around my shoulders.
“Why are you so quiet, Sayer?” His hands skim down my arms to link our fingers, pulling our joined hands behind my back. “Do I make you nervous?”
“Yes.” My voice is soft, honest.
He smiles against my ear. “Do I scare you?”
“No,” I answer without thinking. Still the truth.
Noah doesn’t scare me. He intimidates me, but he doesn’t scare me. Not like he should.
If anything, I’m scared by how much he intrigues me. I’m scared how he’s the one person I should keep my barriers up for and yet they always shudder, threatening to fall when he’s around.
Noah spins us around to face a portrait of two lovers draped in a red cloth with a blackish backdrop. “I think you’re a liar.” I feel his teeth graze my ear. “I think I do scare you,” he rasps. I shiver as my core tightens. “Just not in the way you want to admit. I think you’re scared of how I make you feel, craving it all the same.”
My heart is erratic, hammering against my chest.
He’s so close, his words are soft against my skin, edged with truths he knows I won’t admit.
“You feel like you shouldn’t want me.” He lets my hands go only to grab my hips, pulling me closer to his body. “Like you should bury those desires deep down because they’re not what you’ve been told to feel when it comes to me.
“Why?” His hands caress my hips in almost lazy movements stringing my body tight. “Is it because of your sister? Because you feel like honoring some unspoken code about sister’s ex?”
I don’t answer, not sure I can.
“We were never together. Not really. So your sweet, innocent heart doesn’t have to have that stain on it.” The bombshell he drops falls to the wayside as he presses against me and I feel his strained bulge against my backside and his hands continue their movements, creeping lower and lower with each pass.
“This painting,” he whispers. “Was donated by your pa
rents. It’s called, Secrets after Midnight.”
My heart’s beating like a lead hammer as Noah’s hands still. I bite my lip to keep my protest quiet.
“Look at the way he holds her.” His lips graze my neck.
Jumping, I do. Drinking the image in.
The man holds the back of her neck in a grip with so much passion as if he’s afraid she’ll disappear at any moment, while the woman’s head is thrown back in ecstasy, leaning into his possessive touch. Though he’s the one that holds her, it’s clear in the frame that she’s the one in control.
His passion would be nothing without her.
“What do you think their secrets are, Sayer?” His hands slip under my coat, slowly stripping it off.
“Do you think one of them was married?” My coat drops to the floor with a soft thud. “And that’s why they met at night? Why they’re cloaked in red?” His fingers trace down my spine, flirting with the zipper of my dress. “Are they the sinners of their time?”
“Why are you asking me this?” I whisper to the painting.
“Because I want to see you let go, to see what you’d be if you give into the sins you are trying to fight.” He kisses my neck, hard and quick. So quick I want it back. “Sin with me, Sayer.”
My shallow breathing is the only answer I can muster. I lean into him though, and Noah holds me tight. “If I reach under your skirt, I’d feel how wet you’d be, wouldn’t I, Sayer?”
The lights go out, bathing us in darkness once more.
I tremble under his fingers as they brush along my thigh, wishing he’d move them over, to add some friction to the need building between my legs.
Just when I think Noah’s going to do something, his hands leave my thighs.
Nooo. Put them back. Put them back. Put them back.
“What do you feel?”
“What?” My mind is too hazy to focus on anything other than where I want his hands.
“What do you feel?” he asks again.
“Like I want you to touch me,” I dare to say aloud.
“Where?” he questions, drawing his fingers in lazy strokes on my arm. “Here?”
I shake my head. No, not there. “Lower.”
He moves his hand to my waist. “How about here?”
Again, I shake my head, whispering the same command as before. Lower.
Noah’s hands finally reach the place I wish he had started at, tracing my entrance through my panties, making a satisfied noise when he feels how soaked the lace fabric is. “What about now?”
I nod, unable to think of anything other than his touch. A disappointed noise slips out when he withdraws his fingers instead.
“What about the contract?” There’s no missing the mocking quality of his voice.
I might wake up regretting this, but for now…it feels right. “Screw the contract—”
With a growl he spins me around, mouth attacking mine as he grips my thighs. Picking me up, he pushes me against the painting. The frame digs into my spine and I don’t care. Not when Noah’s mouth captures mine.
A man like Noah doesn’t kiss. He claims.
And claim me he does.
Never the gentleman, his lips are demanding and tongue greedy as he makes himself felt across every inch of my body.
I’ve never been kissed this way where I’m robbed of my senses and replacing it with sensation. Nothing exists outside of this, outside of Noah as his tongue meets mine, as his teeth nip my bottom lip. He’s the poison in my veins. Destroying me with every touch.
And I crave every moment of it.
Commanding and rough, he pushes up the skirt of my dress. A rumbling in his throat as his finger pushes my panties aside, teasing my entrance.
“So wet,” he growls with approval. “You’re practically dripping.”
He pushes his finger in and I gasp, grabbing onto his shoulder as my walls clench around him as he fills me down to his knuckle.
It’s not enough. I want more.
“Move, Noah,” I order, or at least try to, it comes out in a desperate plea. My nails dig into his shoulder and I feel his hardness pulse against my thigh.
He really does enjoy pain… And not just my own.
“You’re at my mercy, Sayer.” He withdraws his finger. “I could leave you like this, starved for my touch, for the release you want me to take. I could drop you and walk away.”
No. He’s not allowed.
Tightening my legs around him, I refuse to let that happen. Noah’s been a fixture in my head for too many days. Years, if I’m really being honest.
I want this. I want him.
He flicks my clit, and my back arches, sending heat up my spine. “How much do you want me, Sayer?”
His thumb brushes my clit again, and a noise I’ve never known escapes my throat. He’s playing me like an instrument, tuning me to the sweetest sound.
“Enough for me to hate myself a little,” I moan. Loathing mixing with lust, a delightfully lethal combination.
That’s it.
That’s all Noah needs to hear as he moves inside me with angry thrust after angry thrust, adding another finger in.
“Oh—oh God.” My head lulls back, hitting the painting as Noah stretches me, filling me.
His grunts are in tune with his thrusts. “So tight. So fucking tight,” he growls, his fingers pumping inside me.
I move against his hand, biting my lip to conceal how much he’s torturing me. Passion churns in my lower stomach, heating more and more. It threatens to boil to the surface.
We’re unable to see much with it nearly pitch black, only a thin veil of light from outside seeps in, but Noah’s still able to find my mouth, pulling, sucking at my bottom lip like it’s a piece of candy. “You don’t hide from me. Let me hear you.”
I don’t. I keep my moans to myself, satisfaction building alongside them—until Noah makes it impossible to stay silent.
His angry thrusts turn starved; a man who knows what he wants. And he wants me to come undone. He drops me to my feet as he gets down on his knees.
I’m panting as he pushes my skirt up, his head disappearing under it.
His lips press a kiss through the lace of my panties, the humming he makes in satisfaction fill my ears, pulling at my core. “Oh God.”
“God’s not here, baby,” he says, husky and still on his knees. His hands skate up the back of my thighs, grabbing my ass and hauling me to his mouth. “Just me.”
He pushes my panties to my side, replacing the job his fingers started with his tongue.
I almost buckle at the first swipe, his tongue gracing my entrance, teeth grazing my clit. He’s not shy about tasting me, quickening his pace to devour me.
I did this.
I’m the reason for the sounds he makes in the back of his throat.
I’m the reason his tongue is moving like I’m his last meal as he builds me up for my fall.
Unable to stay silent, unable to keep any thoughts, I rise and rise, screaming his name as I hit my climax, coming harder than I have with any lover.
Dimly, I’m aware of him crawling out from between my legs and his forearms cage me in on either side of my head.
I’m still feeling the aftershocks wrack my muscles as he swirls his fingers around my lips.
They’re still wet…
“Taste what I did to you,” he whispers and I’m too sated to put up a fight. Not that I want to.
Right now, I’d agree to anything from him.
My tongue darts out, tasting myself. It tastes like I want to do this again.
Noah’s thumb brushes my cheek. My eyes flutter. “Oh, we’re going to have a lot of—”
A ding interrupts.
Noah looks down at his watch and I hear him sigh. It sounds pissed. “We have to go.”
Taking out his phone, he turns on the flashlight. Noah swipes my jacket off the floor and holds it out to me.
He doesn’t offer any more information as I slip it on.
“
What about you?” My throat feels raw from my screaming.
He shakes his head, but the flashlight catches his face, highlighting the hunger that still resides there.
I’m sure mine mirrors him.
Not looking happy, Noah leads me through the maze of walls, out of the gallery and back into the alley.
I don’t ask any more questions, not really sure I’m able to form words yet. My brain is too rattled from what just happened.
Noah Kincaid just finger fucked me against a priceless painting. There was something daring and dirty about doing what we did in the complete dark.
I move to take a step when Noah grabs me and lifts me up by my thighs like he did inside and walks until my back is pressed to the alley’s wall.
With a quick glance, I see he’s lined me up so I’m dead center on the bloody cross.
Is this my crucifixion? Dying, only to rise anew?
“I thought you had to go,” I whisper, wondering if the words can be heard over my thundering pulse.
“Not before I do this.” He leans in close.
For a moment I think he’s going to kiss me again.
C’mon, lungs. Breathe. Don’t fail me now.
I can’t pass out, not when I’m about to have the second best kiss of my life. The first being the one inside the gallery.
My eyes even close in preparation.
I closed my eyes for a kiss that was never going to come.
Opening my eyes, Noah holds something in his hand.
Between two fingers sits the contract. The contract I never took out of my bag…
“Give that back!” I lean forward to make the grab, but he stops me. By using his hips. He’s still so hard.
“Uh-uh.” Noah shakes his head, stuffing it into his back pocket. “It needs to be amended now.”
I could argue, but I’d rather keep feeling like this.
Tomorrow, tomorrow I’ll be angry at myself for breaking the one rule I told myself was the only one I couldn’t. Only I didn’t just break it, I obliterated it.
He drops me to my feet. I lean against the wall as he shoves the contract into his pocket.
“This changes things.” He wraps a piece of my hair around his finger. “I own you now.”
My spine goes ramrod straight. “You don’t own me, Noah.” Voice as cold as the night.
Under the Lies Page 10