CHAPTER 17 — THE BENNETT FILE #3
I held his waist and felt the tremor beneath my hands.
It wasn't fear. Not entirely. Noah was as consumed as I was, but there was a sadness in his trembling that kept me from turning this into simple hunger.
I touched his back under his shirt, slowly, feeling warm skin, his breath catching, his body yielding and resisting in the same movement.
He lowered his mouth to my jaw, then to my neck, and when his teeth grazed my skin, the pleasure came laced with a guilt so strong it almost hurt.
“Don't think about him now,” Noah said, sensing it before I could speak.
“I can't.”
“Then think about me louder.”
The words hit me like a blow. I pulled his face to mine and kissed Noah as my answer—not to silence him, but to obey.
I thought about him. About his body on mine, his hand guiding my breathing, his courage in stopping me from destroying evidence, the boy who'd stood in the hallway with a folder while I followed Julian.
I thought about the man who was still here, in the garage, kissing me without offering easy forgiveness.
My hand slid down his side, found his hip, pulled him closer.
Noah let out a low sound against my mouth, and that sound anchored me better than any advice.
Heat built fast inside the car. Cold glass, heavy breaths, hands searching for space.
Noah eased off my jacket, cursing under his breath when the fabric snagged on the shoulder brace, and his small flash of irritation almost made me laugh—until his mouth found mine again.
He touched me with firmness, with anger, with care, a combination designed to take me apart.
I didn't command. I didn't try to win. I let him set the rhythm and distance, because in that moment my body needed him, but my head needed to learn not to turn need into possession.
“If it hurts, tell me,” he said, his voice hoarse, his forehead pressed to mine.
“It's been hurting since the folder.”
His eyes softened, just a little. “The shoulder, idiot.”
“No.”
He almost smiled. Then he kissed me again, and that almost-smile dissolved into ragged breathing when my hands found his skin with more intent.
There was no room to undress completely, no need to make this a spectacle.
The intensity came from the closeness, the restraint, the way Noah moved against me in that cramped space, my body responding to his weight, his mouth swallowing sounds against mine so the garage wouldn't give us away.
He kept one hand on my good shoulder, the other cupping my nape, and I felt with devastating clarity that he was holding me emotionally as much as physically.
When pleasure reached us, it came without elegance.
It came with Noah trembling over me, his hand fisted in my shirt, my mouth pressed to his neck, my good arm wrapped around his waist as if I could hold him there against everything that was coming.
There were no pretty words. Just ragged breaths, tense bodies, heat cresting in short, intense waves, and then a heavy silence where neither of us tried to pretend this had been just physical.
The windows fogged over, hiding us from the rest of the garage behind a fragile layer of vapor.
Noah rested his forehead on my good shoulder, breathing hard.
My hand stayed on his back, moving slowly up and down without hurry.
I didn't know if I had the right to that gesture, but he didn't push me away.
We stayed like that until the world crept back in small sounds: a car door slamming in the distance, water dripping from some pipe, the hum of a light above the parking spot.
“I'm still angry,” Noah said.
“Me too.”
“Not at me?”
I looked at the box in the back seat. Then at him. “Not at you.”
The answer crossed his face like something that didn't yet know if it could believe itself.
Noah climbed off my lap carefully, returned to the driver's seat, and straightened his clothes in silence.
I pulled on my jacket with slow movements, more exhausted inside than in my body.
When he finally backed the car out of the spot, neither of us spoke for almost a minute.
At the parking garage exit, Noah stopped to wait for the gate to rise.
A figure approached from the side: Mason, coffee in hand, backpack on his shoulder, wearing the expression of someone who'd seen enough to age five years and gain blackmail material on both of us for the rest of the season.
He looked at Noah in the driver's seat, at me in the passenger seat, at the still-fogged windows, then at the box in the back seat.
“I'm not going to ask,” Mason said, crouching near Noah's window with an odd seriousness. “Not now. I just need you guys to know something.”
Noah lowered the window a few inches. “Mason, if it's a joke, choose carefully.”
“It's not a joke.” His face lost the rest of its humor.
“I saw someone on the second level with their phone aimed at this car.
Couldn't get there in time. Whatever happened in here, someone photographed you two getting out.
And judging by how fast they ran for the stairs, it wasn't a fan looking for an autograph.”