Noah smiles against my skin. “Think of it like strip twenty questions. But for every question you don’t answer I get to take something off you.”
His sharp gaze rolls down my body while his finger traces a line of beadwork on my dress. “Maybe I’ll start by taking this.”
When I came here tonight, I felt numb and dreadful. But now, I can’t imagine leaving. Not while I’m trying to chase this moment of feeling. “What do I get to take?”
One of his knees knocks my legs apart, backing me up until I’m plastered to the wall. “Whatever you want.”
Pants. I want to start with his pants.
No, his shirt. My hands wander to the buttons of his crisp white shirt, feeling the muscles that lay beneath.
Yes, definitely his shirt.
“Sayer,” he practically purrs, soft but seductive.
“Hmm?” My eyes flutter shut while my hands still move up and down his chest.
“What happened when your sister came to visit you?”
My eyes snap back open. Hands freeze.
A different Noah stares back at me.
Gone is the man from the dance floor, even the bar, and in his place is the one people know to fear. Cold and ruthless eyes stare down at me, his words singed with controlled anger.
Did I hear him right? Did he just ask me about…Harlow?
Five days ago, just as I was getting settled in my new apartment after a long day of moving boxes, my sister showed up.
To some having their sibling show up might have been a welcomed surprise but for me, seeing Harlow was worse than being trapped in a room full of poisonous snakes. She’s much more unpredictable.
“Nothing happened.” Unless you count all the ways she verbally bashed me, which I’m not telling him. “She just came over to catch up—whoa! Hey! What’re you doing?”
Noah moves like lightning as he makes a displeasured sound in the back of his throat, hands gliding down my body, over my hips and thighs.
“I warned you,” he growls, grabbing my ankle.
This isn’t like when we were dancing and his hands were on an exploration, now they feel like a restraint, holding me in place.
“Noah…” I warn as he undoes the strap of my heel, slips it off my foot, and tosses it over his shoulder.
It hits the wall with a hard thud.
As it lands, Noah looks up at me with wicked eyes. “Now. Let’s try that again.”
He grabs my other ankle, looking up at me beneath his thick, dark lashes that frame those hypnotizing blue eyes. “What did your sister want?”
His grip on my ankle is a shackle I want to be freed from.
I could kick him in the face. A spiked heel to the nose wouldn’t feel good.
“Don’t even think about it,” he warns, reading the intent on my face.
“You don’t know what I’m thinking.”
“Oh, I think I do.” His chuckle is far from humorous. “If you try to hurt me, you’ll find out what an unforgiving man I can be.”
“I think you’re all talk.” I know he’s not all talk. One time in prep school I saw him beat a kid to the point of hospitalization with only a lacrosse stick.
His lips curl. “That right?”
I want to yank my challenging words back, but another part wants to push even more. So I do.
“You act all big and bad, but what do you really do? I bet you sit behind your desk all day—”
While I ramble and have him distracted, I use the foot Noah is holding and dig the heel of my shoe into his shoulder.
He hisses in pain, but doesn’t loosen his grip. “Mistake.”
Yeah, my rampant heartbeat is agreeing with that.
Noah twists my foot and spins me around so my face is to the wall.
Quickly, he yanks off the shoe before towering over me. “You don’t want to push me, Baby Brooks. When I bite, I’m not gentle.”
His words cause a flurry of warring emotions to erupt inside me, my body running both hot and cold as the door to the closet opens.
“Boss.” The bartender from earlier looks between us with some sort of humor. “You have visitors.”
Noah stiffens at my backside, mumbling something I don’t catch. He pulls away but not before pointing two fingers at me. “Don’t think we’re done here, Baby Brooks. You’ll be seeing me again.”
My mouth feels too dry as I watch him retrieve my shoes before walking out of the room, leaving me alone. And barefoot.
I don’t know how long I stay in the closet.
All I know is by the time Brin and I get back to my apartment, I can still feel Noah’s body against mine.
What happened when your sister came to visit you?
Noah’s question follows me into the next day.
As I ate my sad breakfast of plain toast since I forgot to pick up butter when I did my first and only grocery run.
As I walked across campus to each of my classes.
As the professors went over their syllabus.
I should’ve been focusing on that, this is my last semester of my Master’s in Art Conservation before I start my internship in the fall, but my professors were the last thing on my mind.
I tried and tried to kick the blue-eyed devil out of my head, to forget the husky and enticing sound of his voice. Tried and failed every time.
His words are a phantom I can’t escape.
I wasn’t lying last night when I told him nothing happened. Nothing that would interest him, unless he took pleasure in all the ways Harlow tried to put me down…which knowing Noah he might. Other people’s pain is his pleasure.
He doesn’t need to know any of that.
Though, something doesn’t sit right about my sister’s visit the more I find myself thinking about it. Little details of that night surface each time Noah’s question runs through my head.
Harlow wasn’t quite…Harlow. She’s usually as recklessly carefree as they come and up until that night I don’t think I’d ever seen her rattled. Not even when she got into a fight in prep school, bleeding from a broken nose, but that night it was like she was possessed by violent nerves, on edge and vicious.
At the time, I didn’t question it. I stopped concerning myself with my sister’s problems around the same time she held a knife to my neck when I was seventeen.
But after my encounter with Noah yesterday, I can’t stop wondering what happened and why Noah cares.
With my mind preoccupied, the majority of my day has passed in a daze. My body might be present but my mind is not.
It’s not until I’m walking to my final class of the day, Technology and Conservation of Art, that I feel myself snap out of the foggy haze that’s consumed me. And it’s only because I spy a familiar figure leaning against a light pole with carefree arrogance.
My steps slow but it’s futile. I can’t avoid him. He’s strategically placed himself in the direct path to my next class. It’d be stupid to turn around and go the long way around to the back entrance.
I’m not fourteen anymore. I can handle Noah Kincaid. So I swallow the groan that’s built in my throat and raise my chin, conjuring confidence I don’t feel as I stroll up to him.
He smirks around the cigarette between his lips as I near.
I study him, taking in his black on black suit sitting beneath the steel gray pea coat. All articles of clothing tailored to perfection.
The arrogant smirk grows as the distance depletes between us. He stubs out his cigarette on the light pole, flicking it to the ground as he pushes off it and meets me halfway, bringing us almost toe-to-toe.
“What’re you doing here?” My arms cross over my chest, a barrier, a shield between us.
“Just passing through.” He slides his hands into his pockets, looking as innocent as the wolf who ate the lamb.
“Bullshit.”
A brow peaks up from behind the mirrored aviators he wears. “My, my, Baby Brooks what a filthy mouth you have.”
“All the better to sass you with.�
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Amusement twists his lips. “The last time I saw you, you still blushed when saying darn.”
“A lot has changed, Noah.” My crossed arms tighten. More than I want to admit.
He takes off his glasses, sliding them into his coat pocket as his eyes roam over my body. “Clearly,” he murmurs, taking in my curves, my attitude. I see the appreciation on his face, the mask he usually dons slips, revealing a glimmer into his thoughts. Baby Brooks is all grown up. A part of me hums under his sweeping gaze.
In a louder voice he adds, “But that sharp tongue you’ve grown isn’t going to save you today, Brooks.”
“You don’t know the things this tongue can do.”
Time freezes as my words hang between us, as my eyes widen and heat blooms across my neck and up my cheeks.
Noah’s face piques with interest and that perfectly manicured brow of his raises again. “There she is.” His words are innocent but spoken with heavy meaning, no doubt thinking of much dirtier uses for my tongue than I can imagine. “There’s the Sayer Brooks I know.”
There was a time when I would’ve never been so mouthy to Noah. Where forming a sentence past a couple syllables was a challenge. Back when he was the bad boy in a beat up leather jacket who was four years older than me. He simultaneously terrified yet sent thrills through me every time I saw him.
He still does.
“What’re you really doing here?” I ignore the way my body hums with him so near. There should be a switch to turn this reaction off.
“I told you last night we weren’t done.”
Unease courses through me, but I keep my face blank. “I already gave you my answer.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Well that’s too bad,” I shoot back. I glance down at my phone, I have less than five minutes to get to class. Time to end this conversation. “Have a good day now.”
I spin on my heels and am about to walk away when he calls out, “She’s missing, Sayer. She ran away.”
I stop, mid-step. Missing? Turning around I meet his eyes, they smolder in anger. “What do you mean?”
“She ran away. After she paid you a visit,” he speaks slowly, condescendingly.
“I got that. Thank you.” I bristle, eyes narrow. “And what? You think I helped her?”
“The day Harlow goes to you for help is the day hell freezes over. No, I don’t think you helped her. But that doesn’t mean you don’t know something. Think hard, Sayer. What happened when she stopped by your place?”
I’ve been thinking about it all day! I want to shout. I swallow them instead. “You can keep asking, Noah, it’s not going to change my answer.”
The frustration grows on his face, tension lining his eyes.
A small, satisfied smile tugs at the corner of my mouth.
“Sayer,” he growls in a deep timbre. “You’re not the only nuisance I have to see today.”
My fist clench. The way he says it…putting the blame on me. Like any of this is my fault. Yeah, I don’t think so. Despite the chilly January air, I feel warm all over. Heated with anger.
“Oh, I’m sorry, did I make you come here?” I snap, earning a few curious glances from students passing by. They quickly divert their gaze when they see Noah. We both ignore them. “Did I hunt you down to waste time going in circles when not liking the answer you’ve already been given? No! That was all” —I poke his chest— “you.”
Not amused with my smart mouth, Noah takes a step toward me with a deep frown, seizing my wrist. He’s quiet, the only sound between us is my deep, irritated breathing, but his jaw clenches.
“Have you had enough, yet?” I ask, quietly. “Enough of wasting both our times?”
He’s so close that his scent is invading my senses. The richest amber, the deepest mahogany with hints of tobacco.
A pressure presses down on my chest. I want to lean in, knowing I should push away.
“No,” he answers, matching my tone as he stretches out a hand to grab the end of my scarf. He tugs on it, pulling me close. “Not until I know where your sister went.” Said like a man on revenge.
A chill unrelated to the weather slides down my spine.
What did my sister do?
When she was at my apartment she kept glancing out the windows, shifting the bag from her lap to the floor back to her lap. Unable to stop fidgeting. Restless.
I didn’t think anything of it, chalking it up to Harlow being her normal self, but what if it wasn’t?
Looking at Noah, I’m afraid to ask. This close, I can feel how tight his body is wound. Whatever Harlow did it’s not anything I want to get mixed up in. Not anything I want to have a kernel of knowledge of.
Knowledge is power, my granddad always said, and with knowledge came burdens.
I have enough of my own burdens, I don’t need to bear any of my sister’s. Not anymore. “I wasn’t lying when I told you I don’t know where she is.”
“But you know something.”
It wasn’t a question.
I don’t have a chance to deny it, either. With my silence, Noah pounces, pulling me so there’s no space between us. My palms flat on his pecs. “Play this game all you want, Baby Brooks, but we’re going to find her, and if I find out you’re doing anything to help her I’m coming for you, too.”
My skin blazes with the feel of his lips brushing against my cheek, to my ear. “And when I do,” he whispers in a low, gruff voice. “I’m going to make you pay.”
I don’t move. I don’t blink. I don’t even breathe. I can’t, not when my lungs are seized in a tight, painful grip.
It’s not until he lets me go that I collapse into myself, palm pressed to my chest, over my thundering heart.
Noah walks away without another word and my eyes are glued to his back. He doesn’t look back, except once. Catching my eye, he smirks. An unspoken promise sits on those lips. This isn’t over.
“What did you get me into, Harlow?” I whisper when Noah disappears from my sight completely.
As I walk to class, several minutes late, I fear it won’t be long until I have my answer.
The rest of the week passes in mundane normalcy. Or as normal as it gets being a socialite’s daughter in Haven Harbor. With my parents in Europe, I keep getting invites to go to this gala, that charity auction, and whatever insert-business-here opening. I’ve turned them all down. Instead, I’ve holed up in my quaint apartment in a not-so safe building with my snow-white cat, Pan.
Thank God for takeout delivery.
Haven Harbor, and the world occupying it, has never felt like my home, but my prison. Moving back I made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t get locked away in their games.
So the best way to do that is avoid, avoid, avoid. A skill set I’ve since mastered.
The only bright spot this week has been not seeing Noah. He hasn’t made an appearance since that day on campus. As bright as that is, I know it won’t last long. The determination that filled his eyes that day, the silent promise he gave as he sauntered away were reminders that I’d be seeing him again.
It’s the when that’s tarnished my week. Set me on edge whenever I bump into someone in a nice suit. Has had me looking over my shoulder as I walked the streets.
I feel like bait on a line. Waiting and waiting for him to make good on his promise.
Part of me wishes he would just get it over with.
But that’s why he’s waiting, letting me get wound up for the perfect moment to strike. Noah lives for the surprise.
Shaking Noah from my thoughts, at least for the time being, I focus on the boxes still stacked along the hall wall.
Moving is stressful but unpacking is a bitch. I feel like it’s never ending. I empty one box and two more surface. So this is how I’m spending my Saturday night.
Except, I don’t want to finish. I don’t want to empty the last box and feel a sense of satisfaction. Because it won’t come.
Being done means my move is official, I’m truly ba
ck in Haven Harbor. The very place I swore to never return too when I was eighteen and kissed the skyline goodbye in my review mirror the second I had my diploma in hand.
I don’t hate my city, per se. I hate what it does to people.
Haven Harbor rivals New York for all things on the East Coast, food, fashion, art. Just a couple hours north, on an island much like Manhattan, you’ll find Haven Harbor.
It’s a city of opulent wealth. Where old money is celebrated and your last name is everything. It matters who your parents are, who your grandparents were, and how many zeroes are attached to your bank account.
Where you walk a minefield of hidden bombs never knowing if a single move will set off a cataclysmic disaster.
Gossip is traded like currency and scandals define your family.
My family has had a lot of scandals thanks to Harlow, who never fit the traditional mold of what the upper-crust society of Haven Harbor was looking for. Which is why my parents had me, their second chance at the perfect daughter.
And perfect I was, playing the part to a T. I got the grades, had the manners and poise. My schedule was filled with social obligations, cheerleading, and volunteering for various charities.
I was everything my parents wanted. So much so they didn’t care they stripped me of all things me.
I wasn’t a person, but a portrait, only showing the surface level.
Lost in my thoughts, I’m able to make it through one box on autopilot. I don’t even know what was in it. Glancing down at the cardboard in my hand, my handwriting spells out KITCHEN in black marker.
Hmm, okay then.
After breaking down the box, I move on to the next. Dropping to my knees, I peel off the tape. This one isn’t labeled so it’s kind of like Christmas, seeing what’s inside. Is it one of the many boxes full of shoes? Or maybe a box of my favorite historical romances?
I open it up and immediately suck in a tight breath. Jumping away with frantic steps, I put some distance between me and the box. I eye it wearily, like it’s holding poisonous spiders rather than what’s actually inside.
I close my eyes, counting to ten. I wasn’t prepared.
I’m okay I’m okay I’m okay.
Of course I’m okay. I want to shake myself to calm down. It’s not like I’ve seen a ghost.
Under the Lies Page 2
