Sugarbaby (18 page)

He . . . would?

“The minute your jet took off, I couldn't concentrate worth a damn. When you said you felt as if you were on a payroll, you were right in a manner of speaking. I didn't mean for that to happen, but it occurred to me that this is how I treat people. I have ‘fake relationships,' as you pointed out. You've been the first person to ever tell me that.”

Oh. “Your mom's not fake. Neither is Simmons.”

“Even Simmons gets the short end of the stick every so often, and I've been hard on him these past months.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Let me rephrase that. I've been an asshole most days to him. But that's all going to change.”

He looked at me as if he meant that I'd be the start of that change. But was I assuming more than ever now? And was I about to climb back onto this rollercoaster?

As he stood and lifted his hands palms-up in surrender, I thought,
Yes. I'm back on. Back in.

“So do you want me to get you that internship here instead of in New York?” he asked. “I could do that in a heartbeat. I want to make this up to you.”

“I don't want more things from you, Noah.” Was I nuts for turning down an internship? That wasn't the point, though. “I want . . .”

I faded, because if I said I wanted him to get real help for himself, I'd probably chase him out of the room.

Obviously, he didn't expect me to ask for something like that. “You want to know more about me?” he said. “Then here. Let's start with this.”

He bent to the coffee table and scooped up his fine leather wallet. After opening it, he took out a withered picture, walking over to hand it to me. It showed Nathaniel Reeves, young and tan and smiling in his resort clothes as he faced the camera with Harry Diamont, also young and healthy. But his smile . . . it wasn't right. Even in this photo it seemed as if he'd been planning to stab his friend in the back.

The past always manifests itself
, I thought.
The actions of the fathers are put on the sons
. We all paid for the past in some way, except, with me, I'd made my own sins that'd dogged me for months, and I'd wished I could right them.

Noah hadn't done anything to earn this.

His voice was strained. “This picture was taken long ago, and I carry it with me to remind me that people don't come up with plans overnight. Diamont had it in his eyes back then, and my dad never saw it.”

I gave the picture to him, and Noah stared at it. Then, out of the blue, he ripped it in half.

“Noah!”

“It's okay.” He held up the section that featured his father and dropped Diamont to the floor.

What did that mean? I must have looked bewildered, because Noah came to me, standing in front of me so that we were knee to knee. I pressed down on my thighs.

He slipped the half picture with his dad into his pocket. “I want my company back in my hands where it belongs, but I've been going about matters all wrong. And the way I've been doing it has ruined my life, pushing me into places that are full of hatred. You've seen what my hatred has done to me these past few days, and I don't want that.”

I almost said,
It's not just hatred, Noah. What if you
are
like your mom and dad? What if you need more help than you think you need?

“I'm going to get control of The Reeves Group,” he said evenly, “but you helped me see that I need to do it in a way that would make my dad proud. He wouldn't have wanted me to get down in the mud with Diamont. Thomas doesn't want that, either.”

“So Simmons suggested you come back down here to fish and ride while you wait for Silas to get his head on straight?”

“He already knew I wanted to be here for an entirely different reason.”

The pressure of his knees against mine was searing, working me up inside. How was I supposed to be having a reasonable conversation when my need for him was so damned unreasonable?

Trouble
, said my smart side.
That's what you're gonna get with him
.

“What else?” Noah asked, softer this time, his eyes green and beautiful and full of an emotion for me that I still couldn't believe, even if he'd come down here to share it. “What do you want to know, Jade?”

Now or never. “I read that you were hospitalized. Is that true?”

His smile weighed on him, and I was sorry I had to ask.

“No,” he said. “That was originally from a gossip column, and they retracted the item. But the rumor took on a life of its own. That was a big reason some of the board members had to be persuaded into backing me again.”

“Did Diamont start that rumor?”

“I've never been able to prove it, but I have no doubts.”

“No wonder you hated him, on top of everything else.”

“Let's stop talking about him.” Noah reached out, ran his fingertips over my rain-chilled cheek. “I came here because it feels like home, Jade.
You
feel so right to me, like a home.”

He left a trail of vibrations wherever he touched—my cheek, my jaw, my chin as he took it between his fingers, tilting up my head. The sound around us seemed to disappear—no more ticking clock on the mantel, no more rain tapping on the windows.

Just us, as if that was how it was always meant to be.

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.

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.