26. Chapter 26
Chapter 26
Noah
T he museum botanical garden took over Stella's life as did the Savannah bridge project mine. We were the quintessential busy couple, working during our evenings. She offered me her office, but I worked with her at the dining table. There was something cozy about it and, truth be told, I didn't want to be away from her.
"I have a request," I told her in early October as we sat at the dining table in front of our laptops.
"Okay." She didn't look up from her screen.
"Stella, baby," I said softly, and then she sighed. We'd had this discussion a few times. She liked to not look at me when we talked, and I insisted.
"Better?" She rolled her eyes.
"Yes." I smiled. "Neveah is coming to Savannah."
She stiffened.
"She wants to meet you, of course."
My sister had finally forgiven me, and when I told her I didn't quite know how to win Stella back, she went back to her original plan of staying in Savannah while she worked on her doctoral thesis.
"Where will she stay?"
"She's going to rent an apartment at the building I was staying in."
I'd given that rental up in a heartbeat. It held horrible memories for Stella and me.
Stella wrinkled her nose. "We can convert the office into a room for her, if you want her to stay here. It's not like either of us is using it."
I'd hoped she'd say exactly that. "You won't mind?"
She shook her head. "I'm more worried that she has a problem with me, just like you did."
"Neveah is smarter than me."
"That's a low bar," she mocked.
She'd never admit it, but she was softening around me. Oh, we were millions of miles away from a reconciliation, but we ate dinner together every night, which we cooked together in the kitchen. I knew she preferred to stay home, and even though I used to be out most evenings, I loved spending time with her, even if she snarled at me occasionally.
Nina was right; this Stella was in many ways more potent than the old one. She was harder, yes, but also more layered and stronger. You couldn't walk all over her any longer. Her father still tried, but she basically told him to go screw himself.
She started her day working in her garden, and I began mine with a swim. If there was one addition I'd make to her house, it would be a gym. That's pretty much all it needed to be perfect for me. But I liked to swim, especially when she ogled me, thinking I didn't notice. It warmed my heart and hardened my cock to see that she was still attracted to me. I didn't deserve it, but the hell with that, I was going to take advantage of it.
She was skittish as hell about being touched, and it broke me to see that. I had made her afraid of intimacy—and I wondered how I could help her get past it.
On weekends, when we weren't working, we sat on the porch after dinner, and enjoyed her garden.
We were not becoming friends but rather damn good roommates. We talked easily as we always had; however, the chemistry was maybe a little tainted but still there between us, throbbing like a wound. Sometimes, it felt like it was almost like how it was when we first met, except this Stella cussed a whole lot more.
She was irritated when I called her Sweet and told me she was no such fucking thing. I didn't know how to tell her that she could drop the F-bomb fifty times in three sentences, and she'd still be sweet. Like now when she was inviting my sister to live with us—especially since Stella fucking still hated my guts.
"How are you and your sister doing?" she asked, closing her laptop, and leaning back on the dining chair.
"It's one step forward and fifteen back. She's hurt and disappointed," I admitted.
Stella nodded.
"All the women in my life seem to be royally pissed with me," I added softly.
She smirked. "Are you sayin' I'm one of the women in your life?"
"Yes, Sweet Stella, you are the most important woman in my life."
She sighed. "Noah, you've got to stop this. I'm going to leave right after Christmas."
She had secured a position in San Francisco at an old classmate's company. Some landscape architecture jobs would require her to maintain corporate gardens. She'd fucking hate it. She was an artist and she needed to feed her soul by creating as she did for the botanical garden for the museum, not develop plans to trim hedges and trees in soulless corporate parks.
"Stella, regardless of where you live, you'll always be the most important woman in my life."
"I'm not in your life, buddy, get that through your thick skull."
Ladies and gentlemen, Sweet Stella has now left the building.
"I'm tryin' here, Sweet."
"Argh." She flung her hands up and rose. "You drive me crazy, Noah."
"Baby, I got you here for a few more weeks, you think I'm not going to do everything I can to keep you?"
She stared at me and shook her head. "Why do you want to keep me?"
"You know why. I want you."
"Why the hell do you want me? I'm broken. I don't think I could even fuck a man. Is that what you want? Some woman who's going to be so in her head all the time that…. Goddamn it, I can't believe my life has become this shitshow."
I followed her as she stomped to her bedroom. Before she got to the door, I caught her arm and turned her.
"You're not broken," I rage whispered.
"Yes, Noah, I am. You broke me."
I pulled her into me, staring into her eyes. "I did everything I could to break you, but you're tougher than that."
"Really? Then why is it that I'm a blubbering fool every time I see my therapist?" she challenged. "Why is it that I can't even imagine getting intimate with a man? That sound all hale and healthy and hearty to you?"
There was something about Stella in a snit that was sexy as fuck. We'd been living together for weeks now, and I'd had a raging semi- or hard-on the entire time. It was frustrating as hell, not helped by Stella dressing comfortably in shorts, and t-shirts without a bra.
I brought her close, and she slammed her hands against my chest. "What do you think you're doing?"
"Showing you that you're not broken." I couldn't help it. She was my addiction, and I was not able to resist her a second longer. I dropped my lips to hers and felt that instant detonation of desire I always did when we were skin to skin.
I touched my lips to hers gently, coaxingly. “Let me in, Sweet. Let me taste you.”
She whimpered, and I found my way inside her mouth. My tongue dueled with hers, tasted, savored. My hands cupped her ass, and I held her softness against my erect cock. A shudder ran through me.
I didn't release her mouth. I'd been aching for her for months, and now that I could kiss her, I was never going to stop. Never !
I nipped at her lips, trailed my lips across her cheeks, and then found my way back to her lips, hungry for more.
Her hands on my chest moved to my shoulders. She was holding me as tightly as I was holding her.
I nibbled at her lips. The pouty lips that always tasted like the best wine in the world.
"Sweet, you're so fucking sweet," I murmured, trailing my lips all over her face. "And you smell like flowers and earth."
I was going to come in my sweatpants, and I didn't care as I ground her to me. I missed her, missed this. After that one night together, she'd owned me body and soul. How could some archaic version of revenge be more important than this?
"Baby." I was shaking.
"Noah." Her mouth was seeking mine, and I couldn't fucking resist her, even though I knew I should. Getting her hot and bothered wasn't consent. It was getting her so aroused that I could have her…and then what? When the high of sex dissipated, she would not only hate me more, but she would also fall back into self-loathing. I could handle her thinking the worst of me, but not of herself.
I softly, gently slowed the kiss, and pulled away, even as I fought to keep tasting her, keep feeling her.
I rested my forehead against hers. "I want to come inside you, Sweet. So, fucking badly."
I didn't need to hear her sob to know she was crying. I hugged her to me. "No. No. Don't cry."
She tried to push me away, but I didn't let her. I picked her up and took her into her bedroom. I sat down on her plush, antique armchair with her in my lap, not letting her get away, even though she was only half-heartedly trying.
"You're not weak," I crooned. "This is not you being weak. This is us loving each other despite the shithead I am. That's what this is."
The sexual tension between us had always been charged, but living together, talking, and spending time in each other's company had made it a raging inferno. We both knew we'd end up this way at some point. I wanted…no needed her to come to me, wanting me with a clear head, forgiving even if not forgetting.
She banged her forehead against my chest. "I hate you."
"I know you don't, baby. I know you don't. But you want to."
"I do." She clutched at me.
One kiss tore at her this way; if we actually had sex because I aroused her into it, the emotional assault on her would be worse than what I had already put her through. Which was why I told my raging dick to calm the fuck down, even if her pert ass was snuggled up against it. My penis didn't give a shit about her turmoil or mine, it just wanted release inside her. We were both heartily tired of coming in my hands.
"Why is this happening?" she mused, tired, her cheek resting on my shoulder.
I nuzzled her hair. "Because you fell in love with a complete asshole."
She gave me a watery laugh and sniffled. "How will I ever trust a man again, Noah?"
"Once you forgive me, baby, it will come. You will trust again because that's who you are. You have the biggest heart I know. You're the most loving and caring person I've had the pleasure of spending time with. You'll find your way to that."
And I'll do whatever I can to get you there.
"I'm afraid of having sex. How can I be sure it's not being recorded?"
"Is that what you're really worried about?" I coaxed.
"It's a reasonable fear, Noah. You did that to me. You coldly calculated the best places to hide cameras, turned them on, and went through hours of tape to find the juiciest one to show my father." With each other word, I knew I was losing her physically. She was finding her strength and would now push me away, which I deserved.
"I threw up when I played the tapes," I confessed, and she stilled. "I couldn't stand watching how beautiful you were, how sexy and sensual and private what we did was—remembering it was one thing, but watching it like it was some cheap porn video was devastating."
"Then why did you do it, Noah? Why ?" Her voice was reed thin. Her broken heart, which had mended in only a few places, I knew was crumbling again. I kept hurting this woman.
"Because I was an asshole."
"Was?"
I nodded. "Now, I'm trying to be a better man, one who can dare to deserve someone like you."
"I have nightmares," she told me sleepily. "You're laughing, or my father is. Eden shows up from time to time. I miss my mother."
She wasn't exactly incoherent, but she was speaking in Stella code, which I understood just fine.
"I didn't even know my mother, but I miss her. Does that even make sense?"
I kissed her head. "Yes, it does. Sweet, you don't need any of us shits to validate you."
"Stay with me tonight."
It was a gift, and I felt humbled. "I will."
"Am I pathetic that, in the whole wide world, you're the one I need tonight?"
"No, baby. I'm the one who needs you a whole lot more than you do me."