Chapter 11 Juliet
JULIET
Nolan doesn’t get home until well after midnight.
I’m sprawled atop his bed in the near dark of his bedroom, staring up at the ceiling like it might have answers for me. Margo’s confession spins in circles around my head. As soon as we’d left The Dionysus Lounge, I’d told the guys everything she’d said.
Gio had been silent in the front seat as Lex had driven and asked me every question under the sun. Unfortunately, since the story wasn’t my own, the answers I gave to him were basic and vague and a lot of the time filled with “I don’t know”.
My eyes droop with exhaustion as I contemplate the four walls of Nolan’s bedroom.
When the beam of a single headlight cuts across the room, my pulse spikes.
I push up on my elbows and slip over to the window.
Rising onto my knees, I lean over and tug one of the blinds down just enough to see into the yard.
The headlight dies a split second after the sound of the engine cuts out. Through the gloom, all I catch is the shadowed outline of him swinging off his bike, the night air swallowing him whole.
I let the blinds snap shut and turn towards the door. Footsteps creak on the porch. The lock clicks, the hinges groan. The sound of him shutting and relocking the front door seems louder than my own breathing.
One foot hits the floor, then the other. My nails curl into the sheet’s edge, grounding myself as his boots thud softly down the hallway. Every sound—each breath he takes, each step of worn wood under his weight—presses under my skin.
Each passing second is like a needle piercing my flesh. Sharp. Painful. Building to something else.
The doorknob turns. The hinges squeak.
Light floods the room, and I barely resist the urge to wince as it burns into my eyes after hours spent in the dark. Nolan halts in the doorway.
“Who the f— Juliet?” His voice is rough, low, as his gaze sweeps over me.
Blinking back the black and white spots that have exploded in front of my vision, I look him over too.
His hair is windblown and though his cheeks are flushed a bright pink, I’m guessing it’s more from the drive home than excitement.
There are dark circles under his eyes and a droop to his shoulders that concern me.
Nolan’s eyes shift as I rake my hair away from my face.
His attention dips, moving over the loose tank that hangs off one shoulder, then down to the pair of his boxers I stole from his drawers earlier.
His gaze heats up for a moment before he seems to yank himself from the cusp of something violent.
His expression goes from fiery to flat. I narrow my eyes.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he demands. He must not have checked his phone because I know damn well that the guys texted him right after they dropped me off. There’s nothing I can do that they don’t inform their leader about.
“Waiting for you,” I state. “Why else would I be here?”
He releases a breath and steps inside the room, shutting the door behind him with a soft click.
“I’ve been working,” he mutters, tossing his backpack onto the floor near the end of the bed.
He looks… harder somehow. Tighter in the jaw.
“You should call Lex to come get you. I’m in a shit mood, and you don’t want to be around me right now. ”
I arch a brow. “Because of Darrio?”
His eyes flick to mine, sharp. “Yeah. Because of Darrio.”
“Too bad.” I cross my arms, letting the silence stretch. “I know about the funeral.”
That gets his attention. His mouth pulls into a scowl. “Yeah?” He turns away from me, moving to the open door of his closet, toeing off his shoes as he does and leaving them where they come off. “And?”
“Don’t you think you should have told me about it?” I bite out the words.
“Not particularly.” His casual reply rackets up my anger another few notches and I drop my arms to stand up and face him.
“Well, I do,” I snap. “And I’m going—the person who killed him might show up there and if they are, I want a chance to find out who it is.” If it’s Darrio Vargas, then I’ll definitely want to see if the man shows up.
“Yeah? Do you think you’re the only one that has thought of that?” His voice is a deep growl, clearly annoyed. “The police are probably going to be there for the same damn reason—to see who shows up. What do you think is going to happen if you’re there?”
“They already think I did it,” I reply. “It doesn’t matter what I do to convince them otherwise.
If I show up, they’ll think I did it. If I don’t show up—despite the fact that he was my father’s best friend—then they’ll take that, too, as an admission of guilt.
” I lift my arms in a useless shrug. “So, I’m just going to do whatever I want. Fuck them.”
Nolan doesn’t reply for a second, shifting around in the closet. When he returns, he’s got another shirt in his hand and he tosses it at me. I catch it absently, holding on to the fabric as we glare at one another.
“Put that on,” he orders. “If you’re going to dress in my clothes, it might as well be all or nothing, Princess.”
“Someone came to me today and told me they saw Morpheus meeting with Darrio in the city a few months ago.”
Nolan’s expression hardens, his jaw clenching as a muscle begins to pulse beneath the skin. “All the more reason for you not to go,” he says.
The urge to smack him tingles down my arm. “Why didn’t you tell me about it, Nolan?”
He stares back at me, unyielding. “Morpheus was a piece of shit,” he says slowly. “The whole town practically worshiped that asshole after your dad was arrested. You don’t need to go to the fucker’s funeral. Everyone is going to be there and they’re all going to blame you.”
That had been exactly what I expected. Exactly what Lex and Gio had said too. I shake my head. “I don’t give a fuck what anyone else thinks,” I tell him, and it’s the truth.
I stopped caring a long damn time ago—right around the time when I realized that no one was going to save me from the rest of the world, so I had to do it myself.
“Yeah?” he snaps, stepping closer, expression turning thunderous. “Well, I fucking do! They don’t know shit. Not about you. Not about him, and they have no damn right to talk. They’re nothing but vultures and—”
“It’s not your call to make,” I cut him off, and take a slow step forward. My chin tips up because this close there’s no way I can look him in the eye without craning my neck a little. The swirling masses of his crimson-brown eyes burn into mine.
“Maybe we’re sleeping together,” I say, my voice like steel, “but that doesn’t mean you get to dictate what I can and can’t do. We don’t keep secrets—not anymore.”
Something in his expression shifts—just slightly—but enough for me to know I’ve won this round. He exhales through his nose, shaking his head. “Fine. Do whatever the hell you want.”
He backs off and it’s too fast for me to catch him as he turns his back to me and shuts off the light again. I don’t shift as Nolan moves back around me. The sound of him unbuckling the belt of his jeans and stripping them down his legs is loud in the darkness.
I release the shirt gripped in my fingers and let it fall to the floor as I turn back. There’s some light coming in from the window, just enough for me to see the profile of Nolan’s face as he takes a seat on the bed and reaches back to pull his shirt over his head.
There doesn’t need to be any light, though, for me to see the set of his shoulders and the strain in his entire body. An air of exhaustion clings to him, a heaviness that makes something inside me soften.
Whatever happened tonight, whatever he had to do for Darrio Vargas, it’s still clinging to him.
With a sigh, I move towards him. He stops me with a raised hand. “You should call Lex to come get you,” he repeats his earlier words. “I meant it when I said I’m not in the best mood right now.”
Capturing his hand, I weave my fingers through his and nudge closer.
Nolan’s head comes up and his knees part to allow me access as I come right up against him.
His face is just in front of my breasts.
I steal my free hand into his hair, nails scraping lightly over his scalp, and he groans with relief.
His head sinks forward, forehead braced against my collarbone as I continue to stroke and scratch him.
“Fuck,” he mumbles, the sound of the word muffled by my breasts. “Don’t stop.”
He drops my hand to put both of his on my hips, keeping me anchored to him.
I follow up the action by spearing both of my hands into his hair.
I’m close enough to smell the faint trace of cigarette smoke and something else on his skin.
His whole body is tense, as if he’s still expecting a fight, but now that I’ve said my piece, I don’t want to give him one.
There’s a heat inside me that he’s responsible for. So much going on that it feels like we’re all just puzzle pieces being shoved where we don’t belong. And the only time any of it ever just stops—our brains turn off and we just relax—is when we force each other to.
Nolan needs this, and I need to give it to him.
Pushing back the sandy strands that are near ink-black in the lack of light, I force Nolan’s head up. His eyelids lift and in the shadows of his bedroom, I feel the intense focus of his attention.
He looks up at me, eyes narrowing in a question, but I’m already climbing into his lap, straddling him.
“Jules…” His voice is a warning, but it’s half broken, the kind of warning I know he wants me to ignore.
So, I do.
My fingers trail along his jaw, the scrape of his stubble rough against my skin. I lean in, my breath brushing his ear before my lips ghost down the side of his cheek and to his throat. His hands move to my hips, not pulling me away—just holding me there in case I slip backwards.
The pulse racing in his throat stutters against the skin of my lips. I smile. The evidence of his quickly growing arousal presses between my legs.
“Juliet.” Another warning, this one spoken through gritted teeth.
“You’re in a shit mood,” I whisper against his skin.
“Yeah, and leaving me high and dry isn’t bound to make it better,” he half snarls, hands almost spasming on my sides.
“So I hope you’re not planning to pay me back for not telling you about the funeral by edging me—if so, I should warn you.
Turnabout is fair fucking play and if you’re not going to call Lex to come get you then—ugh. ”
With a roll of my eyes, I cut him off by scraping my teeth against his jugular right before setting them to his skin and biting down. His sharp inhalation before I lift my lips to his face is hot as fuck. When my mouth finds his, it’s not gentle. I'm hungry.
Nolan kisses me with the violence of a gasoline-fueled fire.
His fingers dig into my hips harder. He’s no longer holding me still, but yanking me tighter against him.
His cock prods at my sex and I rock against it, a whimper building in the back of my throat.
I shove my tongue into his mouth and take his into mine before sucking on it.
The shift in him is immediate—his tension bleeding away. Before he can turn and thrust me back on the bed, I pull my mouth away from him.
“Not… yet…” I gasp out, sucking down lungfuls of air.
Nolan’s responding growl has me moving faster before he can stop me or ignore my request. I scramble backwards off his lap, standing on my own two feet and yanking my tank top off before I jerk his boxers and my panties down.
Then, with all of my clothes pooled on the floor, I kick them away and go to my knees before him.
Nolan freezes, hands clenching and unclenching against his own legs. Glancing up from my position, I reach for the front of his own boxers.
“You did this for me before,” I whisper. “Remember?” He doesn’t reply, but he doesn’t have to. Nolan isn’t the type to forget something like that. “Now, it’s my turn,” I tell him.