by S. Ann Cole
Regardless of how he pretends, and how I mess with him, I know, underneath our little dance around each other, that he cares for me on a different level. As a friend. As a person. As a citizen. He just cares.
He’s kind to people. He’s always been kind. An all-time supporter of good education. A known philanthropist. Although he’s Noah today, Nate Van Der Wells was a known giver. He doesn’t have to be in love with me to want to murder a douchebag on my behalf.
His veins at his temples pulse visibly, a byproduct of his restrained anger. I see the fisting of his hands on the mattress, I see the tightness of his lips, and I decide it prudent to curtail my tale. He doesn’t need to know it all. I don’t think he can manage hearing it all. The regular black eyes and the busted lips, the broken finger, the fractured ribs, the punch in the throat, the time I was pounded unconscious for over fourteen hours. Nope, he definitely does not need to know it all.
“Once the evidence of his abuse is healed, I guess he sees it as kind of a blank canvas that needs to be painted on. So for the simplest of things, he would paint me black and blue. If he cheated and I argued about it, I got painted. If I tried to run, he wouldn’t stop until he found me, and then I got painted red.”
I’m so proud of myself for not crying or shaking or stammering, as I usually do whenever I so much as think about Andrew. Strangely enough, I feel safe around Noah. I feel safe in this penthouse. I feel safe under his stare, even though he looks as if he’s about to breathe fire like a dragon right now.
“That’s why you were so terrified in the park that morning,” he muses. “That’s why you wanted to live in.”
Eyes downcast, I nod. “I saw you and I remembered that you lived in a penthouse on the other side of the city. I figured if you hired me as your live-in maid, I’d have the security of the penthouse, and I’d be safe at least until I saved enough money to leave for Brazil.”
In a swift and sudden move, Noah jerks to his feet and begins pacing. Waves of ire emanating from him, blasting me. Back and forth, back and forth, he attempts to speak, to voice hatred, to swear, but he keeps tripping over his words, unable to articulate. Righteous anger can do that to one’s speech.
On about his tenth attempt to speak, he gets out, “What’s the son-of-a-bitch’s name?”
Uncrossing my legs, I get up on my knees in the bed, cautious, alarmed. “Why?”
He stares at me as if my brain just jumped out of my head and rolled away on the floor. “What do you mean why?” he barks. “After what you just told me? I’m going to find that bastard, and kill him. What’s. His. Name?”
See? Now what if I’d told him everything?
Even though I kind of believe him, I roll my eyes to keep things light. “No, you’re not going to kill anyone. You’re an estimable proprietor of a multi-billion dollar company with a lot to lose and plenty to live for. People depend on you for their paychecks, for their survival. So swallow a chill pill and sit your ass down.”
“I don’t care, Lotty. I won’t let him hurt you agai—”
“He won’t,” I assure him. “Muscles will help me.”
Head jerking back as if I’ve slapped him, he stops pacing, lips thinning. “Are you saying Muscles can protect you and I can’t?”
Expelling an exasperated breath, I sit back on my heels. “Noah, you’re being ridiculous. You are paying Muscles to protect me. So technically, you are protecting me. You don’t need to do anything else. Just sit back and let your head security do his job.”
He scrubs both hands down his face, turns in a slow circle before facing me again. “Do you want him?”
Taken aback by his question and sudden digression, I blink four or five times before answering, “No, I don’t want him. I wanted to have sex with him. There’s a difference.”
He works his jaw. “But you don’t anymore?”
“No.”
“What changed your mind?”
Remembering his kiss, I touch my fingers to my lips. “You.”
“Me.” It’s a musing, not a question.
“Yes, you.” I transfer my fingers from my lips to the base of my throat. His gaze follows. “You kissed me.”
“I kissed you.” This, another musing, eyes still on my throat. “You seduced my soul, and now I don’t just want to have sex with you...”
“You want me.” This is said with a single nod.
“Yes,” I admit. “I want you.”
What did I just admit to? That truth came out of nowhere. No, no, no. It’s not supposed to be like this! I’m not supposed to want him. I’m not supposed to care enough to be honest with him, or spare him the sordid details of my abusive relationship because I’m worried he won’t be able to handle it, or care that he wants to jeopardize his reputation in defense of my honor.
I’m not supposed care this much about him, so why do I? I’m not supposed to want him, so why do I? I’m not supposed to tell the truth about anything, so why did I?
“You’re right,” he says after a while. “I should let Muscles do his job. That’s what I pay him for, right?” But even as he says this, I know they’re just words. He doesn’t mean a thing. He has his mind set on doing something stupid. “Just…Just know, Lotty, that you’re safe with me. Sorry I made you relive that. I had no idea things were that terrible for you. I just…I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
“I’m still standing,” I tell him. But it’s all bravado. I didn’t break a sweat or shed a tear when skimming through my past just now because admitting to abuse is embarrassing enough, let alone bawling along with the memories. But the truth is, I’m terrified of Andrew. I’m terrified they won’t be able to protect me and he’ll get to me. Going back to a life with Andrew is t-e-r-r-i-f-y-i-n-g. I am afraid, in my thoughts, in my skin, and that’s the real truth.
He gifts me a firm, respectful nod. “You are. You’re so strong. So mature. So different from the pushy, manipulative, I-get-whatever-I-want rich brat I used to know.”
“And do you like this new girl?”
One corner of his lip kicks up in a half-smile. “No. I’m proud of this new girl. ‘Night.”
He spins on his heels and begins to leave, but I’m up and off the bed in 0.00089 seconds. “Uh, hang on there, buddy. Where do you think you’re going? We had a deal.”
His audible groan stinks of defeat, reluctance in his posture when he turns back around. “You thought of a reward?”
“Yep.” I point to the bed. “Get in.”
“What’s the reward?”
“Get in.”
As he starts to object, I hurriedly assure him. “It’s not sex.”
He visibly relaxes, but still eyeballs the bed with reluctance.
“If you don’t get in, Noah, I’ll never trust another word you say. A deal is a deal.”
Scratching his chin, he thinks this over, and then shrugs and pads over to the bed. Stretched out on his back, fingers laced behind his head. “Now what?”
My teeth bite into my bottom lip as I consider, my gaze sliding over his long, ripped body. “Take off your shirt.”
He looks, for a second, like he’s about to argue, but then thinks better of it and curls upward from his core, hauls his T-shirt over his head, tosses it at my feet, and resumes his position.
Bending at the waist, I snatch his shirt up, bring up it to my nose and inhale deep, a low moan leaving me, eyes dipping to a close. This man’s scent, oh god, his scent. I need to find out what it is, though I doubt he’ll tell me that secret.
My eyes open again and find his stare hot on me, a taint of a smile to his lips. “It’s nameless,” he tells me.
“What?”
“My fragrance.” His chin jerks to his shirt in my grip. “I had my own fragrance concocted. Solely for me. Took a lot of tries to get it right.”
“Do you put it in the vents in your closet?” I ask. “Because the whole room smells like this.”
He laughs. “No. I have plugs-in in the sockets. Every hour they automat
ically release a small amount to permeate the air, my clothes absorb it. That way I don’t have to spritz from a bottle.”
Albeit impressed, I mumble, “Rich people.”
He’s grinning at me, as if I amuse him. “You were rich, too, you know. Spend three years of your life poor and suddenly you’re turning your nose down on your own kind?”
“I don’t have a kind.” I flip him the bird and then tug on his shirt. It falls a couple of inches below my butt-cheeks. “And I’m not turning my nose down at anyone. I just know what it’s like to be broke and hungry, so I’ve learned to appreciate things more.”
Moving to the nightstand, I switch off the lamp. The glow from the hallway streams in anyway, and I don’t want to scare Noah by closing the door.
I climb on the bed from his side, pausing astride him.
His hands comes to my hips, an automatic reaction, I presume, because he just a quickly removes them.
I stare down at him.
He stares up at me.
A hum starts up between my thighs. “Will you kiss me again?”
Instead of answering, he brings his hands to my hips again, raising his head, leading me on, only to shift me right off him so I tumble on my side.
“You’re mean,” I complain through a pout.
“What next?” he prods.
Scooting up to his side, I splay my fingers on his chest and smooth my palm across his pecs. “I’ve always wanted to do this.”
I can feel the rhythm of his heartbeat changing under my touch. “All I want is to do lay my head right here tonight…” Snuggling closer, I lay my head on his chest. “And sleep. Is that okay?”
A pause yawns through the full sixty seconds of a minute. “That’s it? That’s your reward?”
“Yes, Mr. Van Der Wells,” I sigh out.
His chest rumbles with a chuckle. “You know if you’d asked me for a Bentley, I would’ve given it to you, right?”
“Okay, I lied, there’s one more thing.”
Now he laughs full-out. “What, you want the Bentley?”
“I have no use for a Bentley in New York. But I have so much use for you, Abercrombie.” I slip my hand down, down my body, under his shirt and into my sleep shorts and underwear. “The second part of my reward is my sleep-aid.”
“Sleep-aid?” His voice comes out hoarse, as his eyes are trained down, watching my hand buried under my garments.
“Yes. An orgasm,” I tell him. “I always need one to fall asleep. But since you’re off-limits, I’ll just do what I do every night and give myself one. Right here. Right now. While you watch, and listen to the sounds I make as I pleasure myself…as I come.”
My hand is no longer there to feel his heartbeat, but the change in his breathing is evidence enough that he’s affected.
“Oh…” he gets out. “Okay.”
My head still rests on his chest, and I’m still on my side, as my fingers meet and greet with my already wet and quivering heat. I let out a whimper as the tips of two fingers skid over my clit. In this side position, with my legs closed, I know I’ll come fast. I normally spread my legs wide apart to delay my orgasm. But I don’t want to part from Noah, he feels too good, so a quick orgasm it will be.
Eyes flutter closed as my fingers glide over and back, around and around the tip, dipping as deep inside as I can in this position, breath quickening; soft, pleasure-filled sounds slowly escalating to audible noises.
Something akin to a grunt or a groan from Noah’s throat touches my ear, but I’m too into myself right now to mind it. My thighs squeeze together as my orgasm nears. I’m ready for it to take me, so I take hold of my clit and rub the tip fast, and frantic, my cries loud, words jumbled, until my orgasm seizes my whole body in return.
Pressing my face to Noah’s chest, I scream the height of my pleasure into his skin, as I use three fingers to press down on my bud, my body shuddering against him.
As the crippling sensations slowly fade, I become aware of his arm around me, holding me tight to him, as though he’d been riding it out with me.
I don’t open my eyes, don’t look at him.
A satisfied, felicitous sigh leaves me, as I throw one of my legs over his and settle in for sleep. Sight isn’t needed to confirm he has a hard-on. Maybe if I wasn’t so satiated, I would reach down and grasp it and fist it.
“I know you’re hard,” I sleepily mumble to his chest, “and you’re probably wishing I’ll touch you—touch it. But too bad. This is my reward, not yours. Sleep tight, Mr. Van Der Wells.”
No response. Nothing but the thuds of his erratic heartbeat slowing down to normal pace.
Just before I slip into sleep, though, I can swear I hear him promise, “Payback’s a bitch, Little Lotty.”
SIXTEEN
“LOTTY.”
An urgent tap on the curve of my bum.
I shake it off and snuggle closer into the comfortable heat beside me.
“Lotty.”
Another tap on my bum.
“Whaaaat,” I whine, as I blink open my eyes and peer up from the hard chest pressed to my cheek.
Noah is awake, groggy and tousled, and all kinds or early-morning scrumptious, but he isn’t looking at me; his abash-tinted gaze is trained to the doorway.
Not wanting to let go of him, cleave from him, ever leave these arms, I crane my neck to see what has his attention.
Upon realizing it’s not a ‘what’ but a ‘who,’ I jackknife up, jerking away, putting some distance between Noah and me.
Gloriel. Standing in the doorway, sheer perfection as ever, Sunday dress fitted seamlessly to her healthy, well-maintained body, arms folded in front of her, a scowl of disapproval emblazoned on her faultless features.
“Gloriel,” I murmur, at the same time Noah groggily mumbles, “Mom.”
Exhaling a deep sigh, she drops her hands and responds, “Good morning, Charlotte. Nate, I’d like to have a word with you, please.” She turns and leaves before either of us can utter an explanation.
Noah groans, and I glance over at him. He has his hand over his eyes.
“Are we in trouble?”
He widens two fingers to peek through at me. “Me. I’m in trouble. She adores you too much to give you hell.”
“Adores me too much?” My laugh is transitory. “You’re her blood. I’m the stranger.”
He sits up now, leaning back against the headboard. “You’ve never been a stranger, Lotty, and you know that.” The heels of his palms go to his eyes and rub. “Just…put yourself together. I’ll deal with her. It’s not like anything happened.”
As he slips out of bed and starts for the door, I take note of the defensiveness that broadens his shoulders, the determinedness of his steps.
A conjecture pops into my head, and as ridiculous as it sounds, I inquire anyway. “Noah?”
He pauses, glances over his shoulder at me, quizzical. “Is…Is your mom the reason you’ve been holding back? Because you know she won’t approve?”
He looks to the side, looks to the floor, and then continues out without answering.
On purpose, I take a lifetime sorting myself out. To both give Gloriel ample time to chide her son, and cool off.
I find her sitting in the kitchen, reading. But I almost trip over my own feet when I zoom in on what she is reading. Not a magazine. Not the daily newspaper. But my journal. My freaking journal. How did she get that?!
With no regard for how rude my action might come off, especially to someone who’s been nothing but kind to me, I stomp over and grab it from her.
Her head whips up in surprise at this, as though she’d been engrossed in my private words that she missed my entrance.
“That’s private,” I say, as politely as my clenched teeth allow.
She doesn’t apologize. “It was in the knife drawer.”
Hmm. Must’ve left it there by mistake. Sometimes I journal right there in the kitchen while I cook. “That doesn’t make it any less private.”
A
nod. But still no apology. “I made breakfast. Help yourself.”
My appetite is nonexistent now, wondering how much she’s read, how much she now knows. Nonetheless, I help myself with breakfast, just to occupy my mouth and hands so I don’t rail at her or bitch slap her.
I sit two stools away from her at the island and force myself to chew and swallow and sip.
Gloriel is watching me straight, not even being surreptitious about it. Much like her son.
I know what she wants to ask, but my chest constricts just thinking about it. I’ve mentally sealed off that part of my life with impregnable unemotional blocks, so high and impenetrable that if I ever attempt to scale or break through it, I’ll fail.
I’ve never talked about it. I’ve never cried about it. I’ve never felt about it. I’d treated it like just another inconvenience in my messed-up life that I had to deal with.
Gloriel’s stare is without pity but unwavering and unnerving and loud, as though her eyes can speak.
With a clanking of silverware to porcelain, I throw my fork down, shove my dish aside, and snap out, “Okay. Go ahead. Ask me.”
Gloriel blinks momentarily to the side, setting her coffee cup down. “You’ve been writing her every day since she died?”
Squeezing my eyes shut, I take a moment. My journal isn’t exactly a “Dear Journal” journal. All my entries begin with, “Dear Mom.” All letters to my mom.
“No,’ I finally get out, opening my eyes, swallowing past the golf-ball in my throat. “I’ve been writing her since before she died.”
Confusion hangs like a sheer curtain over Gloriel’s face, so I expound, “When Dad died, she gave up all hope. She stopped trying, she stopped caring, she stopped living. Then once she found out about the cancer, she stopped talking. I had no one but her. I was being abused by my boyfriend. I was struggling to take care of the both of us, and I was just a teenager who was yanked from a life of wealth and privilege and thrown into a low, dark and ugly kind of life I never knew existed. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was just doing. I had anxiety attacks, nervous meltdowns, I cried all the time, and sometimes I just needed my mother. I just needed her. She was right there with me, but she wasn’t. She never asked questions when I came home battered, she never spoke, she never cared.”
