CHAPTER 9 — NO PRETENDING #2
“I want to keep going,” he said, and each word seemed to cost him something real.
“Not because it's right, not because it's simple, not because I trust you enough to think tomorrow won't hurt.
I want to because I spent the whole day remembering your mouth, and I'm tired of pretending the problem is just professional.”
My whole body responded at once, but I didn't move until he'd finished exhaling.
When I touched Noah, I did it with my right hand first, finding the side of his face, my thumb near his jaw.
His skin was warm. He closed his eyes for half a second, not in surrender, but like someone finally letting himself feel something he'd been holding too tight.
That hit me harder than rushing would have.
The kiss began without violence. Maybe that's why it was worse.
I pressed my mouth to his slowly, feeling the first contact like a question answered too late.
Noah parted his lips under mine with a low sound, and my hand went to the back of his neck, holding him there as patience dissolved into hunger.
He matched me with the same growing intensity, his hands finding my waist, then my back, careful with the injured shoulder even when the rest of his body seemed to want to forget the world.
That care disarmed me and irritated me, so I bit his lip lightly, drawing a reaction that vibrated against my mouth.
“Don't treat me like I'm going to break,” I said, without really pulling away.
“Then don't give me one,” he replied, his breath hot against my lips, and his hand slid up my side until it stopped near the bandage on my shoulder. “Shirt. Slowly.”
The order, delivered like that, almost made me laugh.
Not from humor, but from raw nerve. Noah Bennett could be about to kiss me again and still think about the right way to take off my shirt without making the injury worse.
I obeyed because disobeying would be stupid, and because part of me wanted to see what would happen if I stopped fighting every instruction he gave.
I pulled the hem carefully, and Noah helped, his fingers grazing my abdomen, my ribs, the bandage, the heated skin beneath the fabric.
When the shirt hit the floor, his gaze traveled down my body with a hunger so poorly hidden that my breath caught.
“You look at me like you're trying to find something wrong,” I said.
“I'm trying to remember I have reasons not to touch,” he replied, but his fingers were already on my chest, light, exploring without hurry, far from the injured shoulder and dangerously close to everything that had no clinical excuse. “And failing.”
The confession ended with my mouth on his again.
I pushed him backward with my body, not toward the wall, but toward his bed, letting Noah feel the movement and choose to follow.
He followed. When the backs of his knees hit the mattress, he sat and pulled me closer by the waistband of my sleep pants.
I stood between his legs for an instant, looking down at Noah with his head tilted back, his mouth wet, his eyes locked on mine like he was daring me to pull away.
The desire that tore through me was so strong I had to brace my right hand on the headboard to keep control and spare my left shoulder.
Noah touched my abdomen with both hands, moving up slowly—not as a physical therapist, not as someone assessing function, but as a man who'd finally allowed himself to learn the body he'd been avoiding for too long.
His fingers traced my ribs, the line beneath my chest, the spot where my breathing grew unsteady.
I let him continue for a few seconds, maybe longer than I meant to, because there was something almost unbearable about being touched by Noah without accusation, without an audience, and without excuse.
“You still hold your breath when you want to seem in control,” he said, voice low, and brushed his lips near my stomach before lifting his face to mine.
“And you still talk too much when you're trying not to admit you like it.”
Noah smiled against my skin, and it was so intimate that my hand found the back of his neck again.
He trailed his mouth up my abdomen, unhurried, but with a calculated provocation that made every muscle in my body go tense.
When his tongue touched my skin—brief and hot—I exhaled hard.
Noah noticed, because of course he noticed.
His gaze lifted to mine, dark and attentive, and for the first time that night, the word victory didn't seem to fit either side.
This wasn't winning. It was yielding ground and discovering that falling could also be a choice.
I pulled Noah up by the chin and kissed him with less patience. He came with me, knees spreading to make room, body adjusting to mine without jarring my shoulder. My hands found the hem of his shirt. I stopped there, fingers caught in the fabric, and pulled back enough to look into his eyes.
“Can I?”
The question changed Noah's face. Didn't soften it—deepened it.
For a second, I saw he'd expected haste, maybe arrogance, maybe the old version of me trying to take just to prove I could.
Hearing the question seemed to land somewhere in him I didn't know how to name.
He nodded, but I didn't let that be enough.
“Say it.”
His throat moved. “You can.”
I pulled his shirt off with no regard for my own patience, but enough care not to turn desire into chaos.
The fabric slipped over his head, and Noah was before me with his chest bare, skin warm under the dim light, his breathing visible in the rise and fall of his ribs.
I'd imagined that adult body more times than I'd admit under threat.
Still, imagining had prepared me for nothing.
Noah was firmer than he looked clothed, more defined, with a quiet strength in his shoulders and abdomen, and a tense vulnerability in the way he stayed motionless while I looked.
“If you say something cruel now, I stop,” he said, but his voice couldn't quite hide the fear.
The words cut me in a way I hadn't expected.
Not because they were unfair, but because they were understandable.
I'd given Noah reasons to expect cruelty in moments of exposure.
I ran my fingers along his side, moving up to his chest, feeling his skin react under my touch.
He held his breath, and I leaned in until my mouth found the base of his throat.
“I don't want to be cruel now,” I said against his skin. “I want to hear you stop pretending.”
Noah made a sound that almost undid me. I pressed my mouth to his neck, kissed, bit lightly, felt his fingers close in my hair.
His hand was careful with my shoulder even when pulling, and that mix of desire and attention made me want more than I was prepared to admit.
I laid him down slowly, following his body onto the mattress, bracing my weight on my right arm to spare the left.
Noah noticed the maneuver—because he would notice until the end of the world—and shifted to receive me without my needing to ask.
His bed smelled of hotel soap and the clean scent of his skin.
I kissed Noah again, deeper, while my hand slid down his side, finding waist, hip, the warm skin just above his pants.
He arched under the touch, and the reaction shot through me like a command.
I trailed my mouth down his chest, feeling his body open and tense in contradictory waves.
Noah wasn't passive, not for a second. His hands were on me the whole time—on my neck, my back, my side—pulling when he wanted more, easing off when my shoulder threatened to get in the way, guiding without apologizing for wanting.
“Damon,” he said, and my name came out full of warning and need.
“I'm here.”
“Then stay here. Don't use this tomorrow to hurt me.”
The words made me stop above him. Not because they cooled the desire, but because they showed the most exposed part of the scene: Noah wasn't afraid of sex.
He was afraid of me afterward. Of who I'd be when light entered the room, when anger went looking for shelter, when the past came back asking for blood.
I lowered my forehead until it touched his, feeling our breaths mingle, and for an instant the urge to say something too big almost opened my mouth.
“I'm not going to throw this at you tomorrow,” I said. “And if I try, you remind me I said this when I still wanted you more than I wanted to win any argument.”
Noah closed his eyes, and his face cracked with relief for a fraction of a second.
Then he kissed me, and from there the conversation became body.
The pants came off with pauses, low laughs neither of us expected, care with my shoulder and an urgency that grew every time skin met skin.
There wasn't the cold elegance I usually used with strangers.
With Noah, nothing was clean enough to look like performance.
There were knees hitting the sheet, hands searching for position, breaths stumbling over each other, each other's names coming out at shorter and shorter intervals.
When I touched Noah more intimately, he grabbed my forearm and looked at me as if he needed to be sure I was fully there.
He didn't look away. Didn't hide. That courage undid me more than any docile surrender could have.
I followed the rhythm his body asked for, learning responses, pauses, tension, pleasure—each new reaction blending with the man I remembered and the man he'd become away from me.
Noah touched me too, and I had to bury my mouth in his shoulder to contain a sound that would have betrayed more than desire.
He didn't let me. He turned my face back firmly, dark eyes and swollen mouth.
“Don't hide now,” he said. “You asked me to stop pretending.”