Bending The Rules: Stewart Island Book 10

by Tracey Alvarez

  He eased out of her. “Til, I’m sorry. We have to go.”

  She dipped her head in a quick nod, shuffling herself away from him on the platform so she could wriggle her panties back in place. “Of course we do. You’d better go first while I wait here for a few minutes.” She sat up with a self-deprecating chuckle, but kept her gaze averted. “My legs are a little shaky.” She pulled her knees up and smoothed her dress down over them.

  “Mine, too.” It was as close as he could come to letting her know how much she affected him. How much he struggled with the idea of just throwing her over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift and taking her deeper into the wilderness and claiming her in the most primitive of ways.

  He swung his legs over the edge to the first ladder rung. “I’ll…”

  He’d what? Meet her later? Talk to her later? Finish screwing her brains out later?

  “I’ll see you at the main stage,” he finished lamely.

  The small smile she offered didn’t reach her eyes. “Okeydokey.”

  Damn. He was losing her, thanks once again to his inability to open up, his emotional constipation.

  I don’t want to leave. You’re amazing and so beautiful you make every part of me shake with wanting you. I don’t know how I can last one more moment without kissing you again. You unravel me in the best possible way.

  The words swirled around his brain, made it down to his throat where they burned, but ultimately choked him into silence. His gut slamming down to the soles of his boots, Noah descended the ladder and walked back along the tree-lined path. He couldn’t change who he was at the core—damaged goods with a short use-by date—and it felt as if he were wading through quicksand.

  Chapter 14

  Tilly didn’t attend the prize-giving at the main stage. Tilly didn’t even finish wandering around the gala or buy one of Mrs. Taylor’s prize-winning jars of blackberry preserve. And she completely forgot to buy one of Jade’s little paintings—this she realized speed-walking away from the playing fields.

  As her dad would’ve said, “You’re so discombobulated you don’t know whether you’re Arthur or Martha.”

  Discombobulated, yes. But with every trembly, orgasmic aftershock that made her feel as if she were floating two inches above the ground, she definitely knew she was one hundred percent female. Instinct told her to get home before anyone glimpsed her face. Because if they did…busted. Men would guess what she’d been up to by her molten-hot cheeks. Women, the ones she was getting to know a little, anyway, were likely to spot the glaze of confusion in her eyes.

  Tilly swept into her house and headed straight for the shower, lathering up with her smelliest body wash to mask Noah’s musky scent. She dried off and even though it was early afternoon, she slipped into her pajamas. Work. That was what she needed to do to keep busy for the rest of the afternoon. Tomorrow she flew to Auckland to spend the rest of Easter weekend with her mum and then attend the dreaded team meeting scheduled for Tuesday morning. By then she needed something juicy to present to the team.

  She opened her laptop, laced her fingers together, and stretched them over the keyboard, preparing to knock it out of the park via the blank page. The cursor flashed. Flash…flash…flash. Something juicy. Her character was a homicide detective whose mother had been murdered when he was a teenager and he was driven to solve the cold case of a young prostitute who worked on K-Road ten years ago.

  She crinkled her nose, fingers hovering over the keyboard. Nope. Been there, done that.

  Her character was a small-town cop who the viewing audience knew wasn’t just a small-town cop. There was something about the walled-up look he sometimes got in his eyes—he was hiding a deep, dark secret—and wild horses or bringing a woman to a screaming climax with his fingers wouldn’t drag it out of him.

  Tilly blinked in time with the flashing curser.

  Oh, hell no.

  Noah Daniels was not getting any head time when she needed to work. But no matter how hard she stared at the screen, no matter how many lines she typed and then deleted, she couldn’t stop thinking about him. About the way he’d gone from passionate to aloof within a heartbeat.

  “Stop it, stop it, stop it,” she told the blank screen.

  Being only a machine it didn’t respond, so she quit out of her work file and opened her screenplay. She’d just relax her brain’s writing muscle by working on something she actually loved for twenty minutes, then she’d get back into the K-Road world.

  Six hours later she resurfaced when her stomach growls grew louder than the space battle taking place on her laptop screen. She stretched the crick out of her spine and glanced around the kitchen. She was sitting in the dark, the glow of her laptop illuminating the circle of granola bar wrappers spreading out on the table and the stained mug from umpteen cups of tea she barely remembered making, let alone drinking.

  Huh.

  She checked her phone—set to mute, of course—and there were three unread texts. None of them from Noah. She’d cut him a break for not showing up at her doorstep that afternoon since Wade was around. But not even a today was awesome, let’s hook up later text. Or even a missed seeing you at the main stage, r u ok?

  Her stomach twisted itself into a knot thanks to the red warning flags popping up and down her stiffening spine. This was classic Jonas behavior: hot one minute, cold the next. She never knew what the hell was going on inside his brain because sharing feelings was apparently reserved for the perky redhead Tilly had caught him boning in his office after hours. He’d been telling her most vocally that he loved her, baby.

  A quick trip into Aunt Mary’s room—she’d discovered a few days earlier she could glimpse Noah’s house through the trees—confirmed lights on at his house. Good. She’d make him explain why the attitude shift even if it meant she had to pry one word at a time from his sinfully sexy mouth.

  Tilly powered down her laptop and got dressed, keeping it simple with jeans, a pretty moss-green sweater which brought out the green in her eyes, and her favorite pair of high-heeled ankle boots that made her legs look leaner than they actually were. She pulled on her puffa jacket since the evening had turned nippy, and slipped out the door. Hands stuffed into her pockets, she turned onto the path beside Noah’s carport and his parked ute.

  “I’m done discussing the old man. Leave it alone.”

  Tilly froze mid stride at Noah’s voice carrying across the darkness. A heartbeat later, his outdoor sensor light clicked on, giving her a perfect view of Wade stalking out of Noah’s front door. Crap!

  He swung around and stabbed a finger back the way he’d come—to Noah leaning against the doorframe, arms folded, jaw carved from granite.

  “We’re not done talking about him, so tough,” Wade said.

  If either of them glanced toward the sidewalk, they’d spot her hovering. She didn’t need a genius IQ to figure out her company wouldn’t be welcome in this family discussion. She backed up a step, gaze locked on the brothers who continued to eyeball each other.

  “We’re not talking at all. You’re lecturing me, even though you know as well as I do that Dad doesn’t really want me there.”

  Tilly used Noah’s reply to take three more silent steps backward—ask how tricky that was in heels—until tree shadows covered her easing off the path. She ducked behind the truck’s bumper, out of sight of the front door. She’d just peel off her boots and scamper back up the road before anyone was any the wiser.

  Two sets of footsteps echoed along the path and her fingers stilled on the boot zipper. Double crap! She didn’t have time to race silently along the sidewalk and now she was committed to Noah not seeing her blatantly eavesdropping.

  Tilly scuttle-tiptoed around the ute, away from the sidewalk, and crouched down by the big vehicle’s side panels. With any luck, Wade and Noah would be too busy butting heads to notice a woman-sized lump hiding in the shadows.

  “You’d know that isn’t true if you and Dad would both remove the stick from your asses a
nd just talk to each other,” Wade said.

  “He talks to me like he’s giving orders to a JB instead of his son.”

  Wade snorted. “He talks to all of us like that, junior boys or not. You’re the only one who gets pissed off about it but pretends not to. You’re so much like him.”

  Both men appeared on the sidewalk. In darkness it was hard to tell one big silhouette from the other, but the frustration one shape displayed by kicking a dropped soda can into the gutter was distinctly different from the second, who strolled onto the road and picked it up again.

  “I’m nothing like him.” Noah’s voice remained mild even as he crushed the can in his fist and tossed it into the trash can positioned by the curb.

  “Just how serious are things between you and Tilly?”

  Tilly’s mouth dropped open at Wade’s abrupt subject change.

  “No comment,” Noah said in that same bland tone.

  “Like I said, just like him.” Wade’s silhouette shook his head then turned and walked downhill—right past Tilly’s hiding place.

  “I’m going down to the pub. Coming?” Wade called over his shoulder.

  “Nope. Gonna hit the sack early after that workout at the gala.” Noah struck his usual arms-folded pose by the ute’s bumper.

  He was close enough that a night breeze brought a wisp of his cologne to her nose. She crinkled it, then frantically pinched her nose as she felt the tickle of a sneeze approaching.

  “How the hell did you make it through selections? You big pussy.”

  “Later, asshole.”

  Wade lifted a hand and continued to walk, quickly disappearing out of her line of sight. The tickle subsided and Tilly remembered to breathe again. She slanted a sideways glance toward the rear of the ute, expecting to see Noah turning away to walk back inside.

  Only he was no longer there.

  * * *

  Maybe Noah had gone inside.

  Maybe he’d walked up to her place and any second she’d hear him hammering on the front door.

  Maybe.

  Do you remember being a kid, alone in your room in the middle of the night, convinced that monsters were silently slithering toward you? Tilly did. Especially because of a childhood imagination she’d never really grown out of, her monsters were pretty damn scary. Except, crouched in darkness, every one of her five senses on high alert, she wasn’t scared. Just hyperaware of the crisp, salty air, the rustle of wind-stroked leaves, and the soft scritch of a couple of gravel chips moving under the ball of her feet as her weight shifted.

  “Ready or not, here I come.”

  Noah’s deep voice came from behind her. As in, right behind her.

  A steam-whistle shriek flew out of her at the same time she lost her balance. Arms flailing, her fingers finding nothing to grab onto except the smooth metal side of the ute, she toppled backward. Two strong hands cupped under her armpits and hoisted her to her feet. Her breath whooshed out and she sagged onto the warm, solid wall that was Noah’s chest.

  For a count of three. While he chuckled, his mouth close to her ear. Then she wrenched out of his arms and spun around, her racing heart jitterbugging around her rib cage.

  “You!” She glared up at him, slapping a palm against his chest, which apparently was covered in some sort of invisible superglue as she couldn’t seem to pull it away again. “You…sneaking sneaky sneaker.”

  “What?” He chuckled again, dropping his hands to her hips and reeling her in until she was tucked into him. “I thought we were playing hide and go seek.”

  The thought of resistance crossed her mind but evaporated at the heat transference between his good bits and hers. Oh my. Every bit of him that pressed against her from breast to thigh was good. And hard. In a good, good way. For a woman who wrangled words for a living, her brain was having a terrible time coming up with any adjective other than good.

  So, so good.

  “Amazing.” Damn. She’d said that aloud. She thunked her forehead onto the Noah wall but all that did was, A, squish her nose—ouch—and, B, fill both nostrils with his amazing male smell, which should be bottled and sold as an aphrodisiac.

  “What’s amazing?” he asked.

  Total blank. You are. She couldn’t say that. She lifted her head from his chest and turned her grasping hand on his chest into a crooked finger which she tapped over his heart. “How you managed to creep around your vehicle and scare the living daylights out of me.”

  “What can I say? I’m light on my feet.” His mouth kicked up in the corner. “Never saw me coming, huh?”

  “Didn’t hear you coming. It’s too dark to see much.”

  A hand slid from her waist to rest on her hip. He dipped his head, angling it toward her ear. “I saw you, sweet cheeks.”

  “Oh.” Her voice slipped into a whisper and her stomach loop-de-looped. “I’m sorry—I really didn’t mean to spy on you.”

  She hadn’t had time to process what she’d overheard, but Noah’s shutdown response to his brother about where they stood in regards to a relationship were clear. His personal business was not hers to pick apart, the way one might uncover someone’s life layers when you were invested in forming something more long term. This attraction between them was strictly physical.

  And that was okay, she told herself. That was all it could possibly be.

  “I didn’t think you were,” Noah said mildly. “Spies generally don’t wear patent stilettos that catch the light and nylon jackets that rustle with the slightest movement.”

  “All right, all right. You’ve established I suck at espionage.”

  “Really suck.”

  He laughed, which made her laugh in response.

  Wow. He truly did have an incredibly sexy laugh—low, rough, straight from the belly. It was contagious and without a hint of mockery, and it made her want to dredge up every knock-knock joke in her arsenal, just to hear it again and again. She swayed into him, her laughter turning into not-so-attractive piggy snorts followed by slightly nervous giggles.

  No man had ever made her laugh so unselfconsciously. She wasn’t going to read anything into that, though. Nope. Her giggles tapered off as he gently fisted her hair and tilted her head back to meet his gaze.

  “Why are you here, Tilly?” he asked.

  “To borrow a cup of sugar.” Flippant was her default setting when stomach butterflies were on the rampage.

  “You can come up with something better than that.”

  So much sexual innuendo twined through his tone that once again her leg muscles started to liquefy. She gripped his hips and pulled him closer. Ostensibly to prevent her from falling on her ass; truthfully because she wanted to grab his. Ass, that was. And she did—and on a scale of one to buns of steel, Noah’s ass scored a perfect eleven.

  His chest expanded as he sucked in a deep breath, so she gave his ass cheek another squeeze.

  “A strip search, then. Preferably to take place inside your bedroom.”

  “That can be arranged.” His eyes gleamed in the starlight. “If you have just cause to suspect I’m hiding something on my person.”

  “Oh, I’m very suspicious you’re concealing something of interest.” Tipping her pelvis forward so it connected with the hard ridge of him filling out the fly of his jeans, Tilly grinned. Then snaked both hands up his chest to twine around his neck.

  Noah boosted her into his arms and she hooked her legs around his hips.

  “Are you going to quibble about me not having a warrant?” she teased as he strode down the path to his house.

  “No, ma’am.” He carried her inside and kicked the door shut behind them.

  He spun her around, pinning her to the entranceway wall with his upper body. “This is strictly off the record,” he said, lowering his lips to hers.

  There was nothing teasing about his mouth demanding her full cooperation—or her giving it. She surrendered into the kiss, the firm pressure of his tongue sliding along hers igniting a trail of sparks from her nipples
downward. The assured, lazy thrusts of his tongue exploring her mouth reminded her of the rhythm of his fingers earlier in the day as he’d brought her to blissful oblivion. She tightened her thighs around his hips, grinding against him, letting him know in no uncertain terms what she wanted.

  His hand skimmed up from under her thigh to slip under her jacket. She would’ve giggled if his touch had been feathery light over her ticklish ribs, but his hand moved with a purpose, his thumb caressing the fullness of her breast. Unfortunately, most of that breast was squished against his chest and she moaned, trying but not succeeding in arching away to give him access. All that accomplished was wedging their lower bodies together, which was akin to holding a lighter flame to a bomb fuse—something was going to go bang soon.

  Noah had her trapped, both by hot, wet kisses that were turning her brain to mush, and by so much sexy muscle her hands were like kids in a candy store who couldn’t decide what to grab first. Tilly tugged on the only available item of clothing she could reach, his T-shirt. She’d dragged it halfway up over his head before Noah got on board with her let’s get naked now plan. His mouth left hers with a rough groan and he backed up a step, enough that her legs slid down to the floor. She slitted her eyes open in the bright hallway light as he pulled off his shirt and let it fall.

  God bless Thomas Edison was all she could think to say.

  He backed up another step, his hands dropping to the waistband of his jeans. The faded denim hung low on his hips, just beneath those delicious arrow-like muscles that directed a woman’s gaze lower.

  And God bless Levi Strauss was the only other thing she could say. Apart from: nail me like a nail gun, you sexy beast. Thank goodness for the wall still propping her up. Her leg muscles weren’t the only things growing shaky and hot.

  “Take off your jacket,” he said.

  She peeled it off and tossed it aside, resisting the urge to cross her arms over her breasts as she could feel her nipples poking stiffly against the thin layer of wool. Yeah, she’d gone braless, making it even more obvious that a booty call was on her mind.