CHAPTER 15 — WHAT WE DIDNT SAY #4
The words hit me dead center. I held his face, making him look at me. “I regret being cruel.”
He stared at me like he wanted to argue, but his body gave in first. I kissed Noah with a devotion that scared me, trailing my mouth down his face, along his jaw, down his neck, stopping when his breathing changed, returning when he pulled me back.
The night built in layers. Clothes left on the floor, the sheet caught between our bodies, hands that used to fight now learning to ask.
When desire grew more urgent, Noah stopped and looked at me, waiting for an answer I understood without him having to say it.
“Yes,” I said. “I'm here. I want this. I want you.”
He closed his eyes for a second, then continued.
There was no hollow rush. There was intensity, yes, an almost desperate force in every movement, but there was also care—careful with my shoulder, with his breathing, with the limits we'd built in the middle of chaos.
When our bodies found their rhythm, the sensation cut through me deeper than pleasure.
Noah was with me in a way that allowed no escape.
Eyes on mine whenever I tried to hide my face in his neck, hands holding my face when I lost control, mouth saying my name like each repetition was collecting on a debt I'd owed for years.
I told him I missed him again, right in the middle of everything—not as something planned, but as something ripped from my chest when pleasure and emotion blurred together too much to separate.
Noah trembled above me. I saw the words hit his body before his mind, saw anger and longing war in his eyes, saw the moment he decided not to run from that truth even though it hurt.
He moved with me, against me, more intense, forehead pressed to mine, breathing broken.
“I hated you for missing you,” he said, his voice barely there.
“I know.”
“I'm still afraid you won't believe me.”
“I know.”
“Then don't let me go after.”
Those words destroyed me in silence. I held Noah with my good hand on his waist, the other resting careful on his shoulder—close, present, without some grandiose promise I didn't yet know how to keep.
I just kept his body against mine while pleasure surged, while his breathing shattered, while my head lost all answers and was left with only the brutal certainty that I didn't want to let him go.
When Noah hit the edge, he cried before he came, or maybe both happened at once—a trapped sound, wet, broken, that pulled me with him into a climax so strong my whole body tensed and then gave way beneath his hand.
We stayed tangled in each other afterward, sweaty, panting, exhausted in a way that felt more emotional than physical.
Noah didn't pull away. Neither did I. His hand rested on my chest, right where my breathing was still trying to steady, and his face stayed hidden against my neck long enough for me to feel the dampness of tears on my skin.
I didn't say anything. For the first time in a long time, I understood that the wrong words could be worse than the right silence.
When he finally moved, it wasn't to leave. It was to lie beside me, facing me, eyes red, mouth swollen, expression embarrassed and furious at having let so much slip out. I ran my thumb beneath his eye, catching a tear he'd probably hate to acknowledge.
“Don't,” he said, catching my wrist but not pushing my hand away completely. “Don't be tender with me like everything's resolved.”
“It's not.”
“I can still regret wanting you.”
“Me too.”
That made him laugh, but the laugh came out wounded.
Then he moved closer, not to kiss me again, just to rest his forehead on my chest. My good arm went around his back, and Noah let it.
The gesture wasn't forgiveness. It wasn't a solution.
It was a temporary truce in the middle of a war we still didn't know how to win.
He fell asleep like that, half on top of me, body warm, hand open near my ribs, breathing finally heavy with sleep.
I stayed awake for a long time, staring at the dark ceiling, feeling his weight on my chest and the pain in my shoulder pulsing in the background.
Julian's authorization sat on the nightstand, folded next to my phone.
The truth had entered my room along with Noah and now filled every corner, impossible to send away.
When my phone vibrated around two in the morning, I moved my arm carefully so I wouldn't wake him. The screen lit up Noah's sleeping face for a second before I tilted it away. Julian's message appeared without greeting, without context, perfect in its polite cruelty.
“Stay away from him before I tell the team who Noah really is.”
I looked at Noah sleeping on my chest, at the tired face still carrying traces of tears, at the mouth that had said don't let me go after like he didn't know if he deserved to ask. The anger I felt wasn't the same as before. It wasn't aimed at Noah. It didn't want to hurt the person in my bed.
This time, the anger had the right last name.