Relief, and a regret so big and strong and overwhelming it nearly choked her. She stared at his back, her vision blurred by the tears she refused to shed. “I can’t believe you’re still going to help me.”
He shoved his fingers through his hair, holding it off his face, making quite the picture as he did, arms raised, body hard and practically shimmering with tension. “Yeah, I’m going to help you. And I know exactly how big of an idiot that makes me, so you’d better hurry the hell up before I change my mind.”
She wanted him to look at her all soft and sweet again. She wanted him to hold her, stroke away her fears.
Touch her. Kiss her…
But to get those things again, she had to trust him, really trust him, and tell him everything.
She knew this. Do it, she told herself. Try him. “Noah—”
“Don’t.” He shook his head. “Don’t look at me like that, with your heart in your eyes. Too late. Just get ready so I can help you, and then get you the hell out of my life.”
And with that, he walked out of the room.
Chapter 14
Noah entered the spare bathroom and cranked on the shower. Dawn had sneaked up on him, and with it came a whole host of things he’d rather not think about with his heart still beating like a drum and sweat cooling his body, which even now was half ready to go again.
In fact, with just one encouraging word from Bailey, he’d—
Hell. He’d have done whatever she wanted, and more.
Sap. Sucker.
Idiot.
But she hadn’t given him any encouraging words at all. She’d sat up, and he’d known without even looking at her that she was thinking so hard her head hurt, because the tension radiating off her had filled the room.
He’d never met a woman who could think so damn hard.
He stepped into the shower and scalded himself, and when he was done, he went downstairs to the kitchen and straight for the chocolate glazed donuts.
On his first bite, his cell phone began vibrating. He heard the master bedroom shower go on, and he thought of Bailey, naked beneath the streaming water, and his entire body tensed because apparently, his dick hadn’t gotten the memo that Bailey was bad for him.
Extremely bad.
He opened his cell. “What?”
“Why aren’t you sleeping?”
Shayne.
Noah rubbed his temples. “How do you know I’m not?”
“Because you wouldn’t have answered. You having wild monkey sex with a snow bunny yet?”
He glanced upward at the ceiling and once again pictured Bailey. Wild monkey sex? How about the best sex of his life? “Uh…”
“You did not catch a bunny that fast.”
Noah had to let out a short laugh. “You would have.”
“Yes, but I haven’t gone six months without so much as looking at a woman either.”
Noah didn’t know what to say to that.
“Listen, Noah.” Shayne paused. “I know.”
“Yeah? You know what?”
“That you have Bailey Sinclair with you.”
“Jesus, Brody is such a woman. Tell him that for me, would you?”
Shayne didn’t bite. “You still have her, right?”
The shower turned off. She was probably reaching for a towel to rub all over her body, a body that he could be rubbing all over himself right this minute if he hadn’t been such an idiot.
“She’s trouble, Noah. As in she’s in it up to her eyeballs. And if she’s hanging with the same crowd her husband was, she’s no good for you.”
“Yeah, listen, I’ve got to go.”
“She stowed away on you for crissakes.”
“She had…reasons.” What the hell was he doing, defending her? But he couldn’t seem to get around the fact that she hadn’t been in cahoots with those men; she’d been on the run from them. He believed in her. He just didn’t know why.
“I don’t know what kind of sob story she gave you,” Shayne said. “But we should be calling the authorities. We should—”
“I can handle this.”
Shayne was quiet a moment. “I fueled up the Moody. I’m coming up there.”
“I can handle this.”
Bailey walked into the kitchen then, looking like a million bucks, though how she’d done it in so short of a time was a marvel. She’d obviously gone through her duffle bag and created another heart-stopping look for today: a pair of black jeans and a soft, white fuzzy sweater, this one with a zipper running down her torso, everything hugging her curves well enough to make his mouth go a little dry. Her hair was relatively tamed, which meant it flew around her face in alluring waves. She’d put some glossy stuff on her lips that made them difficult to tear his eyes from, but he managed, and then found his gaze snagged on hers, which was filled with all the little mysteries that made up Bailey Sinclair.
And suddenly he didn’t care about any of that. He wanted her. He’d just had her, and he wanted her again.
“Gotta go,” he said to Shayne.
“Noah—Goddamnit.”
Noah shut the phone, watching Bailey as she managed to not meet his eyes. “Your next move.”
“Excuse me?”
“What is it?”
She looked away, and that was the topper on the Not Trusting Cake, so he bent down into her face and showed her his. “Look, Alan was an asshole. Your father? Asshole. I wish they were both still alive so I could pay each a visit and tell them personally. But—” But she wasn’t listening, so he put his hands on her arms. Not a good idea because then he automatically pulled her in, tucking her up against him. “But not all men are assholes.”
Wide-eyed, on her tiptoes because he was holding her there, she blinked once, slow as an owl. “I know that.”
“Do you? Do you really? Because it sure as hell feels like you’ve lumped me into that whole men-are-all-untrustworthy-dickwads, and while I’ve definitely got my faults, I’m not going to play with your head, leave you stranded, or put your life on the line for my own stupid mistakes.”
Given that he was saying he wasn’t an asshole with his mouth and yet manhandling her all the same with his body, she did the last thing he expected. She put her hands on his shoulders. Slid them up to cup his face. “I know,” she said softly.
Undone, he let her feet hit the floor but didn’t take his hands off her. Setting his forehead to hers, he found himself taking in a gulp of air, of her. “Then let me help you.”
She stared at him for a long, long moment, during which time he held his breath.
“I’m going to charter another flight,” she said.
“On your own.”
Surprising him again, she didn’t break eye contact. “It’s for the best.”
Hell no, it wasn’t. On her own, she’d run into those guys again, and he doubted a warning would be all she suffered this time. “You can’t walk back to the airport.”
“I’ll call a cab,” she said quietly, looking unsure of her welcome.
His fault. “Sure, you could do that. And risk being found through that trail.”
She looked dejected, and scared again, and damn if his heart didn’t squeeze. “Just tell me where you’re headed, damn it.”
Her eyes went stubborn. “I can take it from the airport.”
“Like you took it the other night at your place when they came to warn you?”
She paled, and he felt like the biggest jerk on the planet. “Fine,” he said. “Let’s do this one step at a time. You need a ride to the airport. Let me take you that far at least.”
They got into the car in the garage, with Bailey picking at the bagel Noah had insisted she eat. He knew when he pulled into Sky High, she’d probably run out of the Jeep before they could even say good-bye, and it was making him very uptight. Hating that, he leaned in and looked into her eyes. “When we get there,” he said. “I’ll”
“No.”
“No?”
“I am going to make this easy,”
she said, shaking her head. “You need to let me.”
Her hair was in his face, again, and he tried not to notice that he loved the way it felt clinging to his day-old beard. “Easy went out the window yesterday. Tell me where you’re running off to, Bailey.”
She looked out the Jeep window, even though her view consisted of bare garage walls.
Turning her to him, he gave her a little shake. “After all we went through yesterday, and then last night, you still can’t tell me? Are you kidding me?”
She squeezed her eyes shut, and her voice wobbled when she spoke. “I’m trying to protect you, Noah.”
No one had ever said such a ridiculous or touching thing to him before, and right then and there he fell a little bit in love.
But just a little bit.
Certainly it was reversible, or at least survivable.
Or so he told himself.
“That’s stupid,” he said. Granted, it was an unfortunate word choice, but he couldn’t help it; he was getting mad.
Her eyes flashed, too, and she shoved free of him. “If something happens to you, I couldn’t bear it, okay?” she cried. “And if that’s stupid, then I’m sorry, but—”
“It won’t. Nothing will happen to me.”
“You can’t make that promise.”
He realized she’d been through too much for her to trust that far. She simply couldn’t do it, he hadn’t earned it yet. “You’ll see,” he said very quietly.
“Noah…” She looked baffled. “Why would you do this for me?”
Why? Because he couldn’t not. Because she was something to him. Everything. To show her, he pulled her over the console and into his lap. She opened her mouth, probably to come up with more reasons not to trust him, so he put his mouth over hers.
She went still with shock, but he didn’t care. He just wrapped her in his arms and nibbled at her, first one corner of her mouth, then the other, until with a soft whimper, she let him in. With another soft sound, her hands glided up his chest and snaked around his neck.
Pulled him close.
“Bailey,” he murmured, groaning when she bought into the kiss, lining up their lips, hers parted, warm and welcoming. He’d have staggered if he hadn’t been sitting down. “This,” he told her roughly, kissing her jaw, her neck. “Because of this.”
She sank her fingers in his hair—he loved it when she did that—and pulled back a fraction, to see his face. “Because of…sex? With me?”
It’d been more than sex, far more, and he looked at her until she closed her eyes. “Okay, yes,” she whispered. “Because of this.”
“And more, damn it.”
To prove it, he kissed her again, slid his tongue against hers and tasted her, filled himself up with her, which he, realized, was all he wanted. Needed.
It shouldn’t bother him that after all this time, all his life really, he’d kept his heart intact, and that she’d not only cracked it open, but had also taken it in the palm of her hand.
But it did bother him, big-time.
“Noah,” she whispered in a voice designed to make him instantly hard, except that he already was.
He had his tongue in her mouth, a hand tangled in her hair, his other gliding down her back, then lower, until he cupped the sweetest ass he’d ever had the pleasure of squeezing. “Tell me where you’re going.”
Panting a little, she wriggled around to fully straddle him, which good Christ, had the hottest part of her gliding over the neediest part of him.
“Catalina,” she whispered, and pressed her face into his neck. “There’s another nearly finished resort on the island, and I…”
“Need to find ‘something.’” Yeah. He knew that part. “I’m flying you.”
“You don’t have to—”
He shut her up with his mouth, until they had to break apart for air.
“Promise me you won’t do anything stupid,” she said.
Do something stupid? The only stupid thing he was in danger of doing was drowning in her eyes.
Oh, and falling for her.
Details.
“See,” she whispered, cupping his face. “If something happens to you, I won’t be able to live with it.”
Because things happened to the people in her life.
He knew that now and understood her fear. “Nothing stupid,” he promised, mentally crossing his fingers. Because he’d already done something stupid. And was in the middle of something else even more colossally stupid. That being sliding his hands beneath her sweater and up her back, then down, and into the back of her jeans as far as he could get, which admittedly wasn’t far enough.
She wriggled a little bit more, giving him better access so that his fingers encountered something silky, something that, oh God, felt like an itty, bitty, tiny thong.
God bless the thong.
“Nothing’s going to happen to me,” he whispered roughly. “To either of us. Except…”
“Except?” She sounded as if she’d been running uphill for miles.
“Except this—” And he slipped a finger over the silk barely covering her.
“Ohmigod.” Her hands fisted in his hair, her arms tightened around his head, placing his mouth at, ah yes, right at her breast. With his nose, he nudged the neckline of her sweater aside and gently closed his teeth over her silk-clad nipple at the same time.
Because of the grip she had on his head, he couldn’t see anything but her beautiful nipple, and he flicked at it with his tongue as he fumbled with his left hand for the seat lever. When he hit it, his seatback flew backward, and so did he, flat to his back.
She fell over him.
Perfect.
Nudging her up his body, he unzipped her sweater, opening it so that he was able to glide his mouth past her breasts, her ribs, to her belly, and then he pulled on her jeans, working them down to her thighs so he could kiss even lower…kiss every inch of skin that passed him…and then lower, oh yeah, lower. Scraping her panties aside, he stroked her with his tongue.
“Noah—”
Reluctantly he lifted his head, but he could still taste her, which worked for him. His gaze ran up her glorious body to her face. Her eyes were still the bluest on the entire planet, glazed with desire.
For him.
That shot a surge of pure lust straight through him. Her hair was adorably rioted as usual, all around her face, and she licked her lips in a nervous gesture. “Are you okay?”
“Yes. But I don’t think…”
“Perfect,” he said, holding her above him with his hands on her hips. “Go with that.” When he used his tongue again, she gasped. When he sucked, she cried out and arched right into his mouth.
Nice. He was going to make her forget, for just a few minutes if nothing else, the horror she’d been through, what she was still going to have to go through.