Chapter 9 Noah
Watching this sweet girl will do nothing but make my dick hard.
This girl who is running from something that I instinctively want to protect her from. This girl whose voice sounds like an angel. One I have only dreamed of hearing.
What is she running from? Does her mother know?
My hands curl into fists as I pace the length of my garage.
When I removed her socks, her feet were bruised from running.
No one runs through that pain unless they’re running from a nightmare.
Whatever she’s running from, I’ll get to the bottom of it.
No one hurts my woman and gets ways with it.
She is mine from the first day I laid eyes on her.
And I’ll do anything in my power to protect her from harm, even if I have to lock her up here in my own house.
That sweet girl is mine. Her curves, her lips, her heart they are all mine.
Just when I was thinking about her, the soft curves, her pretty pouty lips.
I couldn’t believe my eyes when she showed up on my front porch.
Even caked in sweat and dirt, nicked up from tree branches, I couldn’t help but marvel over a body so supple.
Her bones are so fragile, her curves so soft and feminine.
She’s younger than me, I can see that more now.
Her hair is such a dark color, so soft and velvety, her scent like roses and lavender, an earthy combination that reaches her waist.
She’s feminine. Sassy. Beautiful.
What the hell am I thinking keeping her here? What if the police are looking for her? I still don’t know if she is legal.
If I couldn’t let her go before in my head, what makes me think I’ll happily let her leave in two days?
Is there something wrong with me? Who lusts after a girl who is so clearly troubled? Scared? Running away from something? Barely legal? So young?
It’s not just sex I’m craving from her.
It’s something else, too. That quiet strength in her eyes grabbed me around the throat, roused my protective hackles.
Made me feel possessive. I don’t simply want her to be the first woman I’ve had in years.
I want to be the shield between her and whatever she’s scared of.
I know what it is to need a shield and not have one.
I was younger than her once, watching my father run a company built on favors he called in from men I later learned to be afraid of, learning early that safety was never free, that someone always paid for it, one way or another.
I swore I’d never let anyone I cared about learn that lesson the way I did.
Looks like I’m about to break that promise to myself just to keep it for her instead.
The rational part of me, the part that built a legitimate garage and a legitimate reputation over ten careful years, knows exactly how this looks from the outside.
A man with my history, my connections, my body count, has no business getting attached to anyone, let alone a girl barely out of high school who has no idea what she’d actually be signing up for.
The other part of me, the part I usually keep leashed, doesn’t care how it looks.
That part already decided days ago that she’s mine to protect, mine to keep, and every instinct my father ever drilled into me about loyalty and territory has quietly rearranged itself around her without my permission.
The sound of the shower running brings my head up. Is she already naked? Taking a shower in my bathroom? Using my soap?
Thinking of the suds coursing down over her nipples, my simple, white bar of soap lathering up her pussy, makes my dick pulse hot.
It thickens in my jeans, damn near making me dizzy.
She is starved and exhausted, so I need to rein it the hell in and besides I shouldn’t be thinking of her that way when I’m not sure she’s old enough.
I have to find out before I lose my mind.
Ordering myself to focus, I throw some steaks on the stove and roast some root vegetables.
I’m setting some plates in the middle of the table when she enters the kitchen, her long hair wet, a plain black T shirt of mine down to her knees.
The fact that she looks so goddamn young doesn’t abate my lust, but it sure as hell makes me feel like a bastard.
I pretend not to notice when she turns a surreptitious eye to the food on the table.
She’s trying so hard not to look desperate for it, shoulders squared like she’s bracing to be told she can’t have any, and something about that guarded little flicker in her eyes makes my chest tighten in a way that has nothing to do with lust at all.
Whoever taught her to expect scarcity instead of plenty has a lot to answer for.
I grew up the opposite way, ironically enough, a house always stocked with more than we needed, paid for with money that came from places nobody discussed at the dinner table.
My father used to say a man who can’t feed his family properly has no business being feared by anyone else’s.
I hated a lot of things about him by the time he died, but I’ve never once managed to argue with that particular piece of logic.
Whatever else I am, whatever ledger of sins I’m carrying, nobody who sits at my table is ever going to wonder if there’s enough.
“Sit.” My voice is nothing but a scrape of sound. “Get started if you want.”
“Thank you.”
I turn my back, so she doesn’t have to be embarrassed about inhaling the aroma of the food. Sure enough, when I turn around a minute later, her plate is almost empty.
Right then and there, it’s decided.
If a man is responsible for hurting this girl, I’m going to carve out his entrails.
No one hurts her again. Ever.
God, I wish I knew what was going on. I’d know everything about her by morning.
I’ve got the intelligence connections to make that happen easily.
I can’t let her know that I’m about to dig into her life.
You see I have the money for it. The money I inherited from my grandparents plus all I have ever made running my father’s company before he died.
I had to take a break when that happened.
She needs to be protected and loved, I’m compelled by something deep and resolute to give this girl what she requires. To feel safe. To stay. To love me.
I use the word intelligence connections in my head like it softens what I actually mean.
What I mean is men on payrolls that don’t exist on paper, informants inside three different police departments, a private investigator who used to do considerably darker work for considerably worse people before I gave him a legitimate cover story and a steady salary.
My father built an empire out of favors and fear in equal measure.
I’ve spent a decade trying to run mine on favors alone.
Tonight, watching a girl flinch at the sound of a plate hitting a table, I feel the fear half of that equation waking back up inside me, patient and familiar as an old friend.
When the lights hit her cheek and I realized the dirt was a bruise, I set the extra servings I had planned to give her down in front of her harder than intended. She flinches, but keeps her head down.
“How was your shower?”
She picks up her utensils, visibly trying to pace herself. Not dive in right away. “Amazing,” she says. “I didn’t want to get out.”
“Why did you?”
A corner of her mouth twitches. “I didn’t want to make your water bill high.”
My laugh is more of a grunt. “Who said that’s going to happen. That can’t happen even if you take a hundred more showers. I can pay for all that?”
“Oh, I didn’t mean, “ damn she’s so beautiful with her face red from embarrassment “Okay I’ll keep that in mind.”
I take one cold beer out of the fridge. Take my seat across from her at the table.
“So…” she says, looking at me through her lashes. “Do you save every damsel in distress?”
Shit, I didn’t expect that. But I find myself wanting her to know why I did it. Find myself wanting to tell her anything, just so she’ll look at me. How could I not save her. She’s my better half. The only woman for me and soon she will realize that. “No I don’t. Just you though”.
“What?”
I hesitate. “I don’t need a reason in order to save you if you’re ever in any harm. You might not understand right now but you will very soon.”
“Oh,” she says casually, the glass of juice poised at her lips. “Very soon? How soon?”
“Lily,” I say firmly. Loving the sound of her name coming from my lips. “How old are you?”
“Eighteen.” She smiles into a bite of bread. “Why do you ask?”
I make a mental note to find out what has got her running so I can finally have her under me. Especially now that I know she is legal it is game on.
“Um.” She shifts in her chair and I realize I’ve been staring at her beautiful mouth. “You asked for my age? Knowing that I’m still in high school.”
Now it’s my turn to shift uncomfortably.
“You just seem so young and you’re still in high school, so I assumed you aren’t legal.
” I pick up my fork, but it remains suspended over my plate.
I’m no longer seeing the food, but all I see is her.
On my bed, spread wide for my pleasure. “You’ve been coming to my garage, without saying anything to me and then leaving like you were never there. ”
She’s stopped chewing, her blue eyes so wide, searching.
“Senior year,” she offers, like it might soften the math for me somehow.
“I graduate in the spring. I skipped a grade back in elementary school, that’s why I’m younger than most of my class.
” She says it fast, almost defensively, like she’s had to explain it a hundred times before to people who did that same uncomfortable math I just did.
“I wasn’t doing that math,” I tell her, mostly honest. I was doing a different, more dangerous kind of math, the kind involving Sorrentino and territory and how much attention a girl her age is about to draw from men who’d use her against me the second they figured out what she means to me.
That math is worse. I keep it to myself.
“What happens after graduation?” I ask, genuinely curious, and something in her face shifts, surprise maybe, like nobody’s bothered to ask her that in a long time.
“Nursing school, if I get in.” She says it quiet, almost shy, like admitting to wanting something is its own kind of vulnerability. “I want to work in a NICU eventually. With the tiny babies. I don’t know why, I just always have.”
“You’d be good at that,” I tell her, and I mean it.
There’s a steadiness to her underneath all that softness, the same thing I noticed the first week she started showing up at my garage, watching me from a distance like she was working up the courage for something.
“Whatever you need for that, tuition, books, whatever it costs. I’ll cover it. ”
Her spine goes straight. “I don’t need you to pay for my life, Noah.”
“I know you don’t need it,” I say, holding her gaze. “I want to. There’s a difference.”
I won’t be able to stand her looking at me like that. Making me so wild “I always see you Lily and now that I know you’re legal, all bets are off. Isn’t that why you’re here. You knew I have been watching you, you must know that I want you”
“No,” she murmurs after a few seconds. “That’s…not why I’m here.”
“Yes. It is.” A heavy beat passes between us. She looks so young and vulnerable, swallowed up in my shirt, realizing that I have been watching her too. That I want her. “It’s why you’ve been coming to my garage every day, watching me. Wanting me right?”
Tell me to my face that you want me. I’ll make you feel so good. You’ll be mine forever.
Her fork clatters down onto the plate, slipping through pale fingers. “No…… that’s not true, it’s just that…….”
She looks like she’s seconds from bolting and I brace to give chase, if necessary. “Is it?”
“No, I…..”
“Fine I won’t push you seeing as you need to recover from your injuries and rest.” Her eyes implore me.
“Okay. Can I go now?”
My back teeth grind together. “And you will tell me what’s going on and then when I’m sure you’re safe, you’ll be under me in my bed”
Her breath catches, color stealing up her neck.
I watch her become aware of me. As a man. I watch her realize I’m attracted to her.
Dangerously attracted.
She’s innocent, though. That much is obvious.
She’s not so innocent enough to wonder if my cock is hard beneath the table, but goddamn, is it ever.
Stiff and burdensome. Ever since I laid eyes on her.
The way that she’s evading my gaze is getting my juices flowing even more.
Making me want to pin her down in my bed and fuck the secrets out of her.
“If you try to do anything I don’t want, I’ll leave.” Her chin is raised, but her voice is shaky. “Or if you try to force me to tell you what happened to me.”
“No. I won’t do that. I’m giving you two days to gather yourself and tell me or I’m finding out myself and staking my claim on you whether you like it or not,” I growl.
“Okay I guess we have come to an agreement,” she whispers. “I’m not some toy you can use and then throw away.”
I’m surprised when her threat finds its mark, scaring me. She’s only been here for a few hours and I’m already attached. Irreversibly so. If she runs, I could give chase but what if she doesn’t want to be with me, to keep her safe, my only option is to agree to her terms.
“Fine.” I tuck a piece of steak between my teeth and put all my frustration into chewing it.
“But know that you’ll be in my bed, moaning my name.
Soon.” She nearly chokes at my statement.
She quickly gulps down some water while I watch her in concern.
She doesn’t say anything to my comment but watches me from under her lashes and I smirk, knowing that this sweet thing will soon be mine.
Mine to fuck, mine to protect and mine to love.
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