Chapter 20 Torin
Torin
Hunter: Meet me in the reading room. I can pull up what you asked about.
When I get the text, it’s like a small shock to my nervous system.
I’m naked in bed with Noah.
Again.
His head is resting in my lap as I stroke his hair, over and over, and he’s been dozing for a few minutes.
He came in my mouth, and then I came in his, and he just sort of kept his head down there resting on my thigh, and I didn’t have a single urge to move him aside.
But I need to meet with Hunter.
About something that I have zero intention of telling Noah about.
I asked if Hunter could access the security camera footage from the other night, when the SUV pulled up and someone snapped photos of me on the balcony.
I play it cool after I get the text, keeping my free hand on Noah’s head, brushing over his perfect, soft hair.
It’s still a little fucked up from when I was guiding his head on my cock ten minutes ago, and it should be illegal for him to still look that sexy when we’ve already come about a hundred times this week.
“I’ve been thinking about it,” he murmurs, his voice sounding heavy with sleepiness. “The bookstore and cafe.”
“You have?”
“The one you sent me last night looks so close to what I want. And there were so many people in the comments going feral for it. I swear there’s a market. Even if it’s not… y’know, a multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical conglomerate, like Dad would want me to run.”
“Fuck that.”
“Seriously.”
I pet his hair again and he smiles up at me, blinking. “I might try for it. After college, obviously, and I need to go hard on my business classes this year if I’m going to manage having enough credits for the major.”
“You can do it. Easy.”
He pulls in a slow breath and I watch his torso rise and fall.
How does it not terrify me, thinking of the future when I’m with you?
When I think of every other person I’ve hooked up with before, all I can remember is feeling a need to escape the sense of demand.
A demand for more.
A burden.
But every time Noah demands something from me, or God forbid acts needy, it actually just makes me want to give in to him even more.
I used to think of Noah Vancliff getting everything he wants and it would make me murderous, but now…
I crave seeing him get what he wants.
I like to give it to him, too. Spoil him.
How am I ever going to give you up, when some lovely woman finally realizes you’re the best prize in this school?
Noah’s breathing gets a little softer as he falls asleep in my lap.
I grab my phone and respond to Hunter.
Okay. Coming downstairs soon.
Noah lets out a little hum as I shift on the bed, and when I move to put his head onto the pillow, he clutches at my arm.
“Kiss me or I’ll fucking die,” he murmurs.
I lean over and oblige him, catching his lips in a slow, warm kiss before I get up and throw on some pants.
By the time I’m finished he’s out cold again.
He looks beautiful.
Like a painting, all milky-smooth pale skin, ruddy lips, and dark hair.
And every time I gaze at him now it feels like he’s single-handedly calling my independence into question.
My life is forever entwined with Noah now, whether I like it or not.
No matter what, I’ll be seeing him.
On every holiday. Every vacation. Every time we’re with family.
And I’m going to fucking want you, all of those times, Noah.
Even if you show up with a girl.
Even if you have a wife, someday.
My cock, my body, my mind…
I will need you.
It starts to bubble up inside me like a pressure cooker waiting to blow, and I step out of the room, my body heating from the inside.
“Fuck,” I whisper under my breath.
I gently close the door to his room.
I have to stop seeing him.
But I keep showing up in his bed, every single night, because it turns out that nothing in my mind points in the right direction when I’m around Noah.
Or maybe everything just points toward him.
Magnet in a fucking compass, leading me in one direction.
I head downstairs. When I arrive in the reading room on the first floor, Hunter is there with his laptop in the dark, only illuminated by its glow.
“You have something against lamps?” I ask him.
Hunter looks up. “You told me this was secret.”
I reach over and turn on a small lamp on one of the side tables. “It is. But don’t you think we’d look even more suspicious sitting in a dark room hunched over your laptop?”
“Sure. Fine.”
I nod at him, pulling one of the armchairs a little closer. “Okay. What do you have?”
“Not much, unfortunately. The security camera has night vision, but it’s sort of shitty. I found the SUV you were talking about, though.”
He pulls up the video.
It’s the standard greenish-white on black of a night vision camera. It’s eerie to see the SUV pulling down the street so slowly.
It pulls up, and the back window goes down.
“You saw this from upstairs?” Hunter asks.
“Yeah. I mean, I was on the balcony, so—”
I stop short when I realize my mistake.
Fuck.
I’ve been so caught up in protecting Noah that I didn’t even stop to think of the glaringly obvious thing that Roman pointed out the other day.
My window doesn’t face toward the front at all.
Hunter seems to catch my pause.
He holds up his hands in the air. “Hey. I’m not going to ask. Your business is yours. If you’re snooping around your stepbrother’s room, I’m not getting in the middle of it.”
I frown. “I wasn’t snooping. It’s not like that between me and Noah. If I was looking through his stuff, I’d admit it to him and to you.”
“Like I said. Not my circus, not my monkeys.”
For some reason I find myself desperate to deny the accusation, and tell Hunter I was actually there because Noah needs my cock.
Almost like I wish every guy in this damn house knew that Noah was marked as mine.
“I have to protect Noah, because he’s completely unable to look out for his own safety,” I explain. “That involves being in his room, considering these fuckers have the ability to point a goddamn camera at his exact balcony.”
“He’s lucky to have you as a watchdog,” Hunter jokes.
“If something happened to him, it would ruin my life.”
I’m struck by how true the statement is.
How real it feels.
“Look at this,” Hunter says, zooming in on the back window right as it opens. The image is grainy, but it’s possible to make out the fact that the guy in the back seat is wearing a hat.
“He’s wearing a beanie in the middle of summer.”
“Is that a logo?” Hunter asks.
He zooms out just a little again, and freezes it right on a frame where more of the hat is visible.
“It’s a scorpion.”
“How the fuck can you tell?”
“I know it. Fucking hate scorpions. You can tell it has the little stinger sticking out at the top. I know this hat.”
“From…?”
Hunter sits back, blinking as he frowns at the laptop.
“I saw one of Roman’s cousins wearing it. I noticed it at the time because I thought it was weird that the guy kept the hat on for the whole party. It was sweltering at that party, like a sauna, and he kept it on the entire time.”
“Jesus.”
“It has to be him,” Hunter says.
“I’m going to kill him,” I hear myself saying. “I’m going to fucking kill him. Roman lied to me.”
“What are you talking about? I thought you said this was just a freak who wanted pictures of Noah.”
“Yeah. I lied.”
I grab the laptop and stride out of the room before Hunter can stop me.
I take it right out into the backyard where I know Roman’s sitting by the fire pit, and I shove it in front of his face the moment I’m nearby.
It’s dark outside other than the fire.
Hunter follows after me, and right now, we’re the only three people out in the yard.
“Who the fuck is this?” I demand. “You know who it is, don’t you? And were you sitting in the back of this SUV right next to him?”
Roman looks at the image on the laptop.
Calmly, like he always does.
But then his expression shifts as he leans over, studying the frame and seeing the hat.
“Roman, care to clue me into what the hell is going on?” Hunter asks. “Are we in danger again? I told you to tell me the moment anything went wrong—”
“It’s my cousin,” Roman says, and then his eyes land on mine, glaring with an intense heat.
“Maks?”
“No. I told you where I was with Maks that night, and I had no clue that Kuzma was… fuck. Fuck, they got to Kuzma. I should have known. He is working with them.”
Roman starts rattling off words that I can tell are Russian curses.
“Explain everything,” I tell Roman, and Hunter takes the laptop from me, clamping it shut.
“I don’t fucking tell you shit, Torin,” Roman roars at me, his calm breaking like a sudden storm over water. “I told you too much earlier, and now you know far too much. Don’t you understand that you are putting yourself at risk, knowing this? Putting your nose where it shouldn’t be?”
“Because I need Noah to be okay,” I say. “Period. There’s nothing more important than that.”
“Because you like that you’ve gotten him to wait on you like a goddamn servant,” Roman says. “Tripping over his words around you because you’ve intimidated him. Asking if you’re okay every three seconds—”
“He wants to,” I tell him. “Trust me.”
“Noah has been through the kind of hell you don’t understand,” Roman says. “I hated him, too, once, you know. He’d piss me off every fucking day, talk back at me, pester me. But he was hurting, Torin. He is hurting. And the moment he got sober it became so painfully clear.”
“You don’t have a single clue how I feel about Noah.”
Roman’s eyes gleam in the reflection of the fire. “Then inform me.”
“I care about him even though I didn’t even fucking want to,” I shout. “I can’t leave him alone. I’m worried about him, and I do know he’s hurting, and I think he’s stronger, and smarter, than he’s ever known.”
Roman’s expression goes stony.
“Sounds like you’re saying you love him.”
“Shut your mouth.”
“Just putting it how I see it,” Roman says.
I shake my head, feeling like I’m going to explode if he says another word to me.
“Who is your fucking cousin with the hat?”
Roman finally drops my gaze and paces back and forth near the fire.
“He may as well not be my cousin. Kuzma is younger than me, and the son of an uncle who only recently moved here from Russia. I haven’t really known Kuzma until the past few months. I invited him to one party, and the vibes were… bad.”
“To say the least,” Hunter chimes back in. “That guy freaked me the fuck out.”
“But he was family, so I included him,” Roman says. “Mistake. Fucking mistake. Kuzma was supposed to come over tomorrow, along with Maks.”
My heart drops.
“He was going to come here? To Onyx House?”
Roman narrows his eyes at me. “Yes. And it’s not going to happen now. I’m calling it off. I’m meeting with Maks alone.”
“Don’t fucking push this off again, Roman.”
“I’m meeting with Maks alone right now,” he tells me, already pulling out his phone and making a call.
I don’t trust anything anymore, but at least Roman is taking action.
I head back inside with Hunter once Roman leaves to go meet Maks, and Hunter stops me in the living room before I go upstairs.
“You should have told me something was happening,” Hunter implores me. “I can’t stand the idea of anything happening to someone in this house. After what almost happened with Rayne and Weston last fall…”
I clench my jaw.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him. “I’m used to doing everything alone.”
He pulls in a breath. “Me too, to be honest.”
I nod. “I just didn’t know who I could trust. Not yet.”
“Noah means a lot to me,” Hunter says. “When I was new here, he was consistently kind to me. He was drunk a lot back then, but he was a kind drunk.”
I puff out a bitter laugh. “Yeah. He was always kind, even when he was wasted.”
Hunter searches my face. “You weren’t just snooping in his room, were you?” he asks. “Torin… you should know that I’m the least judgmental person you could ever meet. Do you and Noah…”
“Noah is mine,” I blurt out.
Saying the words out loud feels like throwing cage doors open wide and finally letting a wild bird fly free.
Noah is mine.
Noah.
Is.
Mine.
Hunter’s eyes go a little wide in recognition.
But afterward, he just nods.
“I see.”
I swallow hard, then speak again. “Noah pisses me off like no one else can, and does things to me I’d never let anyone do, and he’s an impossible person. But he’s mine.”
“Then take good care of him,” Hunter says softly. “Because if that’s how you’re describing it, then Noah is probably head over fucking heels for you.”
My heart goes scattershot in my chest.
I have no idea if it’s true.
There are questions I still have, and I know Noah’s dead set on marrying the perfect woman.
But I see how he looks at me, too.
Like he’s been knocking on the door of my heart, over and over again, wondering if anything is inside.
There wasn’t, I realize.
Not until you bothered me enough to realize it was there all along.