by Laura Kaye
Noah stroked his hands over her thighs, her belly, her breasts.
“I want you to use my body to get off,” he said, cupping his hand behind her neck and pulling her in for a wet, claiming kiss. “Whatever you like, however fast or slow, I want you to come on my cock.”
His words licked over her skin like a blow torch. “God, Noah. You feel so good,” she said, her hips shifting so that her clit dragged against where they were joined.
“That’s it, baby. Use me.” One hand still holding her neck, the other gripped her hip again, helping her move. They were so close that she felt his breath on her face, and his gaze absolutely blazed up at her.
Looking at Noah, it was almost as if she’d never had sex before. Because staring into the eyes of the man who knew her better than any other, with whom she had a nearly life-long history, while she took him inside her body—it was the most intimate and intense experience of her entire life.
Heat and emotion rushed through her in equal measure. Affection. Red-hot desire. And maybe something more. Something she couldn’t let herself think about right now. Wouldn’t.
“Oh, God,” she cried, throwing back her head and breaking that suddenly too-close connection. Lifting and lowering, she moved faster and grinded herself against him harder. Her breasts bounced, and Noah shoved her closer to the edge by pinching and sucking at her nipples.
She was totally and utterly overwhelmed, overloaded, overcome by sensation. By everything. By Noah. And then she was right there, hanging on the edge until she could barely breathe.
“Oh, I…I’m gonna—”
The orgasm shattered her. Just ripped her into a million floating pieces.
“Fuck, yes,” Noah said, suddenly lifting her hips enough that he could hammer up into her.
Dizzy, Kristina collapsed forward, her arms bracing her above Noah as he fucked her through the clenching spasms of her orgasm.
He banded an arm around her back and flipped them over. And then he pinned her legs open with his thick arms and her body down with his tall frame and his greater weight and fucked her so hard and so fast that all she could do was hold on and take everything he gave her. And it was so freaking good that she came once more almost immediately. She cried out into his ear, and he turned and pressed a wet kiss against her cheek.
“Can’t get close enough,” he rasped, his hips flying, his arms slipping free of her legs and curling under her shoulders.
The sentiment behind those words, the needful, yearning tone, the relentless, demanding friction of his hips…Kristina came again, a longer, drawn-out release that stole her breath and made her clutch her arms and legs around him.
“Don’t want it to end,” he rasped. “But you feel too fucking good.”
Kristina’s brain was in a whirl. From the orgasms. From the frenzy of Noah’s body. From the fact that she just thought she heard him say that she didn’t want it to end.
Did that mean…?
What did that mean?
“Fuck!” Noah shouted, his grip tightening, his hips slamming into hers on a series of mind-numbing punctuated thrusts.
Kristina pushed the thoughts away and turned her face to his. “Come in me,” she whispered into his good ear.
Noah pressed his face to hers and yelled his release, his big body shuddering in her embrace. She held onto him with everything she had, loving the feeling of his cock jerking deep inside her, loving knowing that she’d made him fall apart every bit as much as he’d made her.
Words rushed to the tip of Kristina’s tongue. About how good they were together. About how right they felt together. About how she’d never experienced anything as meaningful as being with him.
“Fuck,” Noah rasped. He blew out a long breath, then pressed a kiss against her cheek.
She shifted to look at his face in the now-dim room, and he looked so damn…at ease. If she let any of those words loose, would she mess that up for him? Because it was the last thing she wanted to do, no matter that her heart felt too big to remain inside her chest.
“Food. Water. Sustenance,” he said.
Kristina chuckled, following his lead and keeping the tone light. “I did promise to make you dinner.”
“You totally promised to make me dinner.” He lifted off of her, and she immediately missed his heat, his presence inside her. “Let’s go eat ice cream while I watch you cook.”
Despite the mess in her head—or her heart—that made her laugh, and she smacked his arm. “Ass.”
Noah slid off the bed and headed for the door. “You need an anatomy class.” He pointed to his exceedingly fine backside as he kept walking. “This is my ass.”
She forced herself to get up as she heard him close the bathroom door.
Keep it light. Keep it fun. Just sex.
Right. She could do this. She was doing this.
Clicking on the bedside lamp, she saw Noah’s black T-shirt discarded on the floor. She slipped it on and glanced at herself in the mirror. Lips swollen. Cheeks flushed. Hair a mess. Wearing a shirt miles too big.
She was a wreck, even if she secretly loved that it was Noah that had made her look this way. Except, then, why was her throat getting tight? She turned away.
When she heard Noah come out of the bathroom, she made her way there, grinning at the gob-smacked look on his face as he noticed what she was wearing. In the privacy of the bathroom, she cleaned herself up and then once again looked at her reflection in the mirror, intent on bolstering her resolve.
“It’s just sex, Kristina,” she whispered to herself. “No matter what, you’ll always have this. Don’t fuck it up.” She nodded and took a deep breath, and then she put on a playful smile, made her way to the kitchen where she found him eating from the carton of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream wearing only a pair of unbuttoned jeans, and ate dinner with him, just like she’d done a thousand other times.
Chapter Thirteen
Noah wasn’t sure what had awakened him, only that—for once—it hadn’t been a nightmare. He suspected he’d only been asleep a short while, despite the fact that he felt more rested and more peaceful than he had in a long time.
Staring into the darkness, he wondered what time it was, but he was too tired and comfortable to even thinking about moving to find out. Not to mention that he didn’t want to disturb Kristina, whose heat blazed all down his back where she pressed up against him.
Kristina. They’d had sex three more times after dinner—once in the shower—and then Noah had used his mouth on her to see how many times in a row he could make her come on his tongue. It turned out the answer was four, and even then he only stopped because she was afraid the neighbors would call the cops from her inability to stop moaning and screaming.
Best sounds he’d ever heard.
A hollow ache took up residence in his chest. Because they were also the worst.
How would he go on without ever hearing her come again? Even worse to contemplate, how would he be able to stand the thought of any other man making her make those sounds?
And she had that fucking date coming up soon. God, he didn’t want her to go. Maybe he should ask her not to. But, then, there’d have to be a good reason to do that, wouldn’t there? He couldn’t ask her not to date if he wasn’t planning on stepping up to be with her himself. That would just make him a selfish prick.
Except, how realistic was it to think he could actually have a relationship right now? Half the time he couldn’t sleep or eat. There were times when paranoia and anxiety plagued him for no good reason. There were days when finding the motivation to simply get out of bed was beyond his reach. Christ, he could barely take care of himself these days, so how could he be a part of taking care of someone else? At least, the way she deserved.
And Kristina deserved everything.
Shit, Noah didn’t even have a job—or even a firm idea of what the hell he wanted to do. He lived on freaking disability checks and his savings. And despite the fact that seven months had passed sin
ce his discharge from the Marines, some of his symptoms seemed to be getting worse lately, not better. Like those fucking flashbacks. It was as if the fireworks had opened some kind of twisted Pandora’s Box in his brain that he couldn’t get closed again.
Sonofabitch.
A few amazing hours aside, the truth was that Noah was a wreck right now. No matter what he did or how much he improved, he would always be a partially blind, partially deaf man who suffered at least some of the consequences of a traumatic brain injury.
He’d heard what his docs had said and read enough online to know that, for most people with TBIs like his, the consequences were life-long. You could learn to manage them—though he was a long fucking way from that—but the reality was you would have to live with them. Because there wasn’t any other choice.
Intellectually, Noah knew he was lucky or, at least, luckier than a lot of other guys had been. Because others had head trauma and ended up in long-term care facilities learning to talk and feed themselves again. But it sure as hell didn’t feel that way. And, on top of it all, feeling sorry for himself made him feel about a million times worse. Fuck.
How had he gone from that peaceful ease when he’d first woken up to the shit storm now whirling through his head?
But that was his reality, wasn’t it? That’s who and what he was. At least for right now. At least for the foreseeable future. And maybe forever.
Noah shifted and stretched his neck, then heaved a deep breath. The change in the position of his head lifted his good ear from being pressed against the pillow, which was the only reason he heard it. Kristina, talking in her sleep.
He turned his head a little more, trying to bring his ear closer to where she lay behind him. And then he heard his name.
“Noah.”
He froze, listening hard for anything else. She said it again, and it made him remember demanding that she repeat his name as he’d kissed down her body. He’d wanted her to know that it was him kissing her, pleasing her, worshipping her. No one else. Him. And he had to admit, he liked hearing her say it in her sleep, too. It meant Kristina was thinking of him, dreaming of him, keeping him close even when she was asleep.
Low murmurs continued to spill from her lips every few minutes, and almost had him smiling into the darkness. He was totally going to tease her about this in the morning—
“But Noah,” she said a little louder, a little clearer. Prickles ran over his scalp and he nearly held his breath to see if she’d say anything else. And then she did. “You’re everything to me…”
For a moment, silence rang loudly in the room.
And then Noah’s heart was thundering so hard that the beat of his pulse in his ears was all he could hear.
Everything? He was everything to her?
How the fuck could that be, when he felt like so much…nothing?
His chest tightened. Restlessness flooded through him. His skin flashed hot. His quickened pulse had him breathing faster, and faster, until a sweat broke out on his forehead.
Suddenly, an aching in his knuckles made him realize that he was fisting his hands so hard that his fingers were falling asleep.
His chest got tighter. A ringing started in his ear. Pain bloomed behind his eyes.
Fuck. A goddamned panic attack. Because she’d revealed, unconsciously or not, just how much she cared.
Did you really need her to say the words to know?
You’re everything to me.
Running the words through his mind again made his gut go sour. The words hurt. Because friends didn’t let friends fall for a broken wreck of a man. And that’s exactly what Noah was. And it didn’t matter that her kiss had pulled him out of the flashback or that being with her tonight had soothed him, because there was no fucking way he was going to expect Kristina to make him better. It wouldn’t be fair to burden her with that kind of responsibility.
And it wasn’t realistic either. Because despite all she’d done for him tonight, here he was again, right back at the beginning—fighting for a deep breath, fighting the urge to strike out at the unfairness of the world, fighting for normal.
And losing.
It took everything he had to move slowly, but Noah eased himself away from her and to the edge of the bed. He rose and immediately listed to the side as the world went topsy-turvy due to a moment of perfectly timed disorientation. As if he needed the additional evidence of his failings to bolster his resolve.
He’d left his phone on her nightstand earlier, and he used the light from its screen to collect his clothes. He carried everything into the bathroom and made sure not to look in the mirror as he dressed. If he did, he was likely to punch his reflection in the face. Really, the only downside to that was that it would wake her up. And seeing Kristina when he felt like this was the absolute last thing she or Noah needed.
He stole out of the apartment, making sure the door was locked behind him. Down the stairs, out onto the sidewalk, into the parking lot. Which was when he remembered for the first fucking time that he didn’t have his car.
He could’ve screamed. He could’ve railed. He could’ve sank to his knees and just declared himself done.
Instead, he tore his cell out of his pocket. 5:12 AM. He opened the Uber app, hoping there was a car somewhere nearby at this hour. Closest was eight minutes out. He glanced over his shoulder at the windows to Kristina’s apartment. Since he’d have to wait for a pick-up, he didn’t want there to be any chance she’d catch him standing out here. So he started walking, and only when he was three buildings over did he call for a car.
And then all there was to do was wait.
Kristina came awake on a stretch, and the movement revealed that all kinds of places on her were deliciously sore.
So worth it.
The feeling and the thought had her opening her eyes and looking for Noah in the bed next to her—
Empty.
“Noah?” she called, pushing herself into a sitting position. The clock on the nightstand read 6:01. She reached over and turned off the alarm, set to ring in another fourteen minutes.
She swung her feet over the edge of the bed, and immediately noticed that her bra, panties, and sandals were the only clothes still scattered over the floor. Noah’s clothes were gone. And his phone was no longer on the nightstand. Her stomach squeezed.
Maybe he was just out in the kitchen. Kristina got out of bed, wrapped her robe around her, and went looking, calling his name again as she went. But her apartment was small. It only took ten seconds to determine that she was all alone.
He’d left without saying good-bye. She found herself searching the kitchen counter, the table, the coffee table, her dresser—looking for a note to explain why he’d gone. Nothing. My cell phone! She unplugged it from the charger in her room and thumbed into her messages, but the last one he’d sent was from the morning before.
She sat heavily on the edge of her bed, her robe pooling around her.
Granted, they’d agreed the sex would just be for one night, so it wasn’t like he owed her anything. But it wasn’t like him to leave without a word, was it? And it wasn’t like they were the traditional one-night stand, either.
For a long moment, she stared at the blank text box, and then she typed, Are you okay? She hit Send and waited, but ten minutes later, he still hadn’t responded.
“Okay, don’t jump to any conclusions,” she said to herself. The words sounded loud in the otherwise empty room. “There could be a hundred reasonable explanations. Or at least a dozen. Or a couple.” She rolled her eyes at her ridiculous solo conversation and tossed the phone to the bed.
But as she showered and dressed for her day, Kristina couldn’t help but worry that she wasn’t going to like his reasons for leaving the way he had. Like, that he regretted sleeping with her. For one.
Which of course had her worrying about their friendship. Which then had her getting mad at herself for even suggesting the whole “just sex” for “just one night” thing because Idiot!
>
How the hell had she thought that made sense? Or that it was even possible for her to share so much of herself without her emotions getting involved.
Because, oh baby, they were involved, all right. All the freaking way.
But in the heat of the moment—a moment during which he’d radiated pain so intensely that it’d nearly been a physical force in the room—the only thing she’d cared about was making it better.
Standing at the bathroom sink, she applied the last of her mascara and then gave herself a good long look in the mirror. Had she made it better? She didn’t know. But there was something she did know…
I love him.
The admission lodged a jagged knot in her throat. Kristina pressed a hand to her mouth and fought against everything inside her not to let loose the emotion attempting to rip up her throat.
I love him and he left.
She shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut, knowing she was smudging her mascara but not caring.
Dropping her hands, she shook them out, as if she were suddenly filled with a restless energy that needed to be exorcised. “Okay, okay,” she said. “Stop freaking out. Everything will be fine.”
Of course it would be. This was them. Noah and Kristina.
Right.
She fixed her make-up and, even though she told herself not to, checked her phone for messages again. Nothing.
Still nothing by the time the school day had ended.
Sitting on the edge of her bed that night, she texted him again. She typed out and deleted about a half a dozen things before settling on the all-purpose, Hey.
Casual. Friendly. No big deal.
Even though his silence felt like a really big fucking deal.
Maybe it wasn’t supposed to matter that they had sex five freaking times. Or that he’d given her so many orgasms that she’d lost track of the number of them. Or that he’d called her baby.
But it did.
And even if none of those mattered, their friendship should’ve been more than enough to warrant a freaking Hey in return.
