Chapter Twenty Three
Chelsea hands me another beer, smiling widely at me as I take it and lean into her side.
Dan lit the fire once the game was over, so she and I have been huddled in front of it ever since. The wood crackles under the flame, making her twitch in fright every so often.
I pull up the tab and take a long swig, praying she won't ask me about it again.
"I really should go," she sighs, tilting her head so it rests on my shoulder. She lifts her phone from her pocket and checks the time. "We have work in less than eleven hours."
"If you stay here we can go together in the morning."
She rolls her eyes up to me.
"I'd stay here and you'd still want Noah to drive you to work in the morning," she mocks. "You'd make me drive there on my own."
The alcohol is starting to make my head fuzzy. A giggle falls from my mouth, Chelsea's eyes lighting up at the noise.
I look over at him, sat with Dan and Matt around the large table.
He's got a stack of cards in his hand and a laidback look about him as if I wasn't wrapped around his cock only an hour ago.
He laughs at something Matt is saying to him, throwing down his cards and picking up a beer bottle, condensation running down the neck of it as he tips it back to his mouth.
His legs spread when he leans back into his chair.
"Close your mouth," Chelsea snorts, shoulder nudging my own. I nudge her back and take another swig of my drink. "Really Maddie, one day you're going to want to talk to someone about this," she gestures between Noah and myself, "and that person better be me."
"It will."
She doesn't push like I expected her to.
We chat for a little while until she once again repeats that she really has to go, and then she sets it in stone by saying bye to all three of the boys.
Sara and Skye disappeared after hide and seek, which, according to Dan, happens every time they come to the mansion.
It takes her another half an hour to leave. Another two drinks seem to vanish within me before she's in her car and driving away from the house.
Noah's arms slip around my shoulders as we walk back to the front door, both of our eyes firmly on Matt and Dan ahead of us.
"I'm thinking about you."
"Yeah?" I smile, looking over my shoulder at him. His eyes flicker to my lips, and then to the boys walking in front of us. With that familiar killer smile he pulls away from me, tapping my backside as we step through the front door once more.
He leans back to my ear, "I like having these in my pocket too."
I glance down at his hand, my ripped underwear wrapped around it at the opening of his pocket. My eyes widen with his smirk, and I'm of course instantly reminded that I'm currently going commando in trousers that are certainly not meant to be worn against someone's bare vagina.
I try not to sit in his lap as we take our seats around the table.
Matt hands me a pile of cards and another drink.
Then another. Then another.
The drunker I get the harder it is to keep my hands to myself. Rose coloured glasses tint my vision and my sanity, because suddenly I don't think Matt would even care if I sat on Noah's lap. Surely he'd be thrilled to see his best friend and his sister getting along so well.
He definitely wouldn't mind if we held hands under the table. I scoot my chair closer to Noah's until our legs touch, throwing a card onto the pile when my turn comes around.
"You can't play a jack on a seven," Matt huffs. "Show me your cards."
"No," I whine, holding them to my chest. I pick up my jack and look at my blurry cards, squinting at the black and red shapes. Noah leans over my shoulder; my smile should not grow as wide as it does when I feel his breath on my ear.
His hand is splayed across my thigh, stroking up and down my leg. My eyes almost flicker.
He lips touch my ear, "play the five."
I pick out the card and put it down, sticking my tongue out at Matt as Noah pulls away. My incredibly annoying, also-very-drunk brother rolls his eyes as if I'm the annoying one.
More drinking. Too much drinking.
Card games I don't even understand but try to play anyway.
A bell chimes as we're playing a card based drinking game, echoing throughout the entire room. A grandfather clock tells us its midnight. Weirdly (or, maybe not so weirdly, since my leg touches Noah's), work is the last thing on my mind.
"Ugh," Matt suddenly groans, arms flopping out on the table. "I have to work tomorrow."
"Same," Dan and I echo in turn. Each of us continues drinking.
My chair scrapes silently against the carpet as I push it against Noah's. His hand stays on my thigh under the table, pulling my lower body towards his.
I'm intensely aware that I'm drunk because I still think it's a good idea to sit in his lap, but there's a little voice in my head speaking the only sense available in my body, telling me that Matt would likely cause a big scene about it.
We're still playing the drinking game when Sara and Skye enter the room again, falling over each other, giggling, seemingly equally as drunk as the rest of us.
Skye sits on Matt's lap, pulls cards out of his hands and holds them so close to her face she probably can't read them.
"What're we playing?" Sara asks, arms snaking around my shoulders. Her head appears between Noah and I, leant against my hair. She looks over to Skye, now kissing the back of Matt's hand, and grins. "I think you're about to get a show you didn't ask for."
"Gross."
She's right. Matt kisses her neck, presses his fingers into the dip of her waist. Red lipstick is smudged onto his mouth as they lock lips.
Sara snorts, head dropping down over my shoulder. It shoots back up quickly.
I watch her carefully and try to keep a grasp on the blurriness of my vision.
She looks down again, looks to me, looks down, to me.
I follow her line of sight to Noah's thumb on my trousers, stretched up to the crease of my hip and thus not hidden by the table.
I glance over at him, sat scrolling through twitter on his phone with his free hand and chatting casually with Dan about something he just read.
"Maddie?"
"Hm?"
Sara shakes her head with wide eyes.
"Oh," I realise with a small laugh. "We're good pals."
She snorts. Noah and Dan both turn to us, seemingly take no notice of Sara's ridiculous noises, and then return to their conversation. Noah squeezes my thigh as he does, pulling my leg closer to him once more.
To my left, Skye is straddling Matt.
"Please don't have sex in my grandparents living room," Dan requests.
Skye pulls away from his neck, laughing.
"Bedtime," she announces. She stands, wobbling, pulling Matt up from his seat. I try not to look at the lipstick he's covered in - I try not to look at him at all. "Night!"
They disappear together. Dan makes the point that we should all be in bed, sleeping off the copious amounts of alcohol we've managed to get through.
Sara, Noah and I help him clear up the table to the best of our drunken ability, and then he tells us to find an empty guest room and make ourselves comfortable.
"I'll help him put out the fire," Sara tells Noah and I as we're throwing empty bottles into a bin bag. "You guys go to bed. Help Maddie find a room?"
Noah nods, ruffling his hair. His eyes are glassy and crinkled, cloudy with everything he's drank tonight. There's a permanent cocky curve in his lip that hasn't left since we put our clothes back on earlier.
I follow him like a puppy out of the room, ignoring Sara and Dan saying goodnight.
As soon as the door closes he reaches for my hand and interlinks our fingers. Our arms wave back and fore as we walk down the hallway.
"I sleep in a different room every time I'm here," Noah suddenly explains, voice hoarse. There's a slur in each of his words, subtle but evident. "They're all huge."
"Like you."
A burst of laughter follows my terrible joke.
He laughs at me, opening the door to a room I hadn't noticed we were stood outside. I walk past his open arm and into the room, falling on the four poster bed. Noah locks the door behind the two of us after flicking on the light.
"Should I get naked?"
Another laugh at my expense. I throw a pillow towards him and try to untuck the corners of the layered blankets, kicking my way underneath them.
"If that's how you sleep, Madelaine, sure."
It's a relief to take off the work clothes.
Noah watches me as I do, leaning against the door with flickering eyes.
His hair is as messy as it usually is in the mornings, like he's just woken up.
Instead of the hard edges he usually has, he looks unusually soft and smiley - like he's not some big bad tattooed man but a boy who's been coloured in.
I undo my bra and throw it onto the pile of clothes next to the bed, shuffling fully under the covers. My head rests on three pillows and my eyes already feel heavy.
"Sleepy?"
"Uh huh," I answer. "And very drunk."
I smile at him.
"We had sex earlier," I blurt. His laugh in return is infectious. "Are you going to get in to bed with me or what?"
He checks the door is locked before striding over to the other side of the bed. Everything comes off but his boxers. I frown at them but he pays me no attention as he scoots under the tucked in covers next to me, turning so his head faces mine. He pushes a piece of hair away from my face.
We get rid of some of the pillows and get comfy, ignoring the light that's been left on in the room.
I'm certainly not going to get out of bed to turn it off - I'd rather cope.
And this way I can also stare at Noah sleep and see the way the light hits his jaw and his cheekbones and shines on his hair. Creepy? I'll blame the alcohol.
"Was waiting for Matt to go to bed so I could sleep next to you," he admits in a rough voice, arms wrapping around me. I press myself into his chest and push a leg between his, using his bicep as a head rest. "Skye always manages to take him off somewhere eventually."
"That isn't very healthy."
"Your brother's an idiot. It happens every time, and he wonders how he's giving her the wrong idea."
"Skye told me to stay out of their business."
"What?" Noah sounds personally offended. There's an edge to his voice I haven't heard before. My thoughts flash to the garage, him telling me about his past with Damien Mierro and falling into bad habits. It's easy to see how intimidating Noah could be if you got on his bad side.
I hum. "She was nice about it," I mumble. "Just said it was weird talking to me about Matt."
He scrunches some of my hair in his hand, gently massaging my scalp. My eyes close of their own accord, head tilting into the motion.
"She's fucking weird about Matt," Noah admits quietly. "Has been for ages."
"You're not very close with Skye and Sara?"
The question comes out as more of an observance. I've never seen him talk to either girl directly, only converse with them as a group passively. It's probably why the girls so attentive of Noah's attention towards me.
"No," he huffs a laugh. "I'm more of a boys boy."
"You seem just fine around me."
"I fancy you," he scrunches my hair in a fist and releases it. "Sara and Skye are more Matt's friends anyway, and Skye's obsession with Matt creeps me out."
I shouldn't laugh. It's sad really; her need to please my brother.
It must stem from something - or is that offensive too?
It's disheartening watching her dress up and throw herself at him, but there's only so much you can try and warn a girl off a guy before they start disregarding your advice all together.
Apparently taking advice from other women has long passed Skye.
"Although maybe my obsession with you will creep him out."
I laugh at that too.
"It's not an obsession."
"You don't know that," he mumbles. "I could have a picture of your cleavage as my phone background or something."
"Do you?" I ask, amused.
"I should."
I snuggle further into his side, pressing out bodies together. His lips appear on my forehead, lingering in a kiss, before his chest fills with a breath of air. I hug myself around him and breathe in the scent of musky aftershave mixed with beer.
His chest is solid under my head, stomach bloated when I run my fingers over it. He shivers with the touch, inhaling the scent of my hair.
An feeling flashes through my body. Noah's naked chest against mine, wet with sweat, slapping against me as my head bumps against the wardrobe, filling me up entirely, whispering sweet nothings in my ear. A shaky breath leaves my lips.
I wait until his heartbeat is steady underneath me.
"Will you take me to get the morning after pill in the morning?"
"Course I will," he whispers.
It's too simple.
We're acting like a couple. Like we're already married off and we've not a care in the world, but Noah is Noah and I am Matt's sister, and only a few days ago Matt sat me down and asked me specifically not to go there. Now I'm naked and in bed with him.
There are a million things going through my mind suddenly.
Wondering if everyone else in this house knows how I feel, wondering if Matt would really care or if he'd learn to get over it, wondering if Noah is overthinking it as much as I am.
"Are you worried about Matt?" I ask quietly, my eyes still closed.
His arms tighten around me.
He makes a humming noise like he's admitting that he is without saying the words, "I think he has no idea, which works just fine for now."
I try not to overthink that either.
A few minutes pass by us, my head spinning with every beer I've consumed over the course of the evening.
"We can pretend it won't happen again if that makes you feel any better," he whispers, head craning to speak next to my ear. He places a kiss on my temple, then another behind my ear. "But it will. Told you already, I'm not just fucking you once."
"Twice?"
"Three times if you're lucky."
His hands run down my naked arms and back up.
"I just feel guilty. He's really been laying it on about keeping things clean with you."
"Yeah, he sat me down too."
My eyes snap open, catching him staring down at me. He grins, nods as if to reassure that he's telling the truth.
"Seriously?"
He nods, glancing to where the cover has shifted down and exposed one of my breasts before meeting my eyes again.
It's not something I expected. Everyone has made it very clear that I'm the one with the staring problem, Noah has never been brought into the equation. Even Chelsea talks about my crush, but never suggested it could be reciprocated until I told her that I thought it was.
Matt talking with Noah doesn't add up in my narrative.
"He said he thinks you have a little crush on me," he smirks, "and I said I had no idea, and that I literally couldn't have possibly given you the impression that anything would ever happen."
"He's an asshole," I blush. A little crush my ass, I can't believe my own brother would do me like that. And to somebody who looks as good as Noah does, no less. It's painful. My guilt feels dulled. "Was this before or after you fingered me in your car?"
"Before." He bites his lip. "But after you got off in the living room, so."
We snuggle into each other again. I push Matt to the back of my mind and leave him there to gather dust, enjoying the feel of Noah's body underneath mine once more. Relishing in it. Hoping that it isn't the only time.
It's as if we're playing house.
Everything is okay in the mansion. We can have sex and sleep in the same bed and nothing bad will ever happen, because we're in our own bubble.
Neither of us can hurt Matt if the bubble never bursts.