Chapter 5
Noah didn’t know what the hell he was doing. But his mouth was on hers, and she tasted even better than he’d imagined—
Not that he’d imagined it.
But if he had—and okay, he fucking had—it had all been bright and wild and chaotic, when the reality was that she tasted sweet. She made his chest hurt, and his heart felt too big, and the sweetness swept through him in a rush.
Then she tilted her head to one side and everything went white-hot.
His hands were on her face, his tongue was finding hers and tangling, and everything around them seemed far away and unimportant.
Like the only thing that could possibly matter was the way her mouth fit his so perfectly.
A car passed by then. Noah heard something like laughter, and that was the only thing that got him to pull back.
His heart was catapulting against his ribs. He could feel his blood hot in his veins and everywhere else, like he’d lit himself on fire.
He had been in situations overseas that had left his pulse less agitated than his was now, with Raemy staring up at him, those blue eyes bright on him.
And all he could think was that he’d made a terrible mistake.
But then, as he watched, that smile of hers bloomed.
So bright. So unbelievably beautiful. And aimed directly at him—no mistake to be made about that.
“Noah,” she said, with all of that sunshine and laughter in her voice. “If you’re about to tell me that kiss was a mistake, I’m going to be very upset.”
“Of course it was a mistake,” he gritted out.
“Nothing that good could possibly be a mistake,” she retorted.
Then she launched herself up on her tiptoes, wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him some more.
And Noah had never been a spontaneous kind of guy.
He liked strategies. Tactical decisions based on all the available research.
He wasn’t reactive. He planned. He had never gone with the flow in his life.
Even if there was a need to go with a flow—an unlikely turn of events, he was certain—he wouldn’t be the one starting it.
Or so he would have said before tonight.
But everything about Raemy threw him out of whack. Everything about her seemed to make him into someone he couldn’t recognize.
Because he knew himself, and the man he knew didn’t do things that could ever be misconstrued. He never drank too much. He never gave women false hope about his intentions. He never stood around on the main street of the town where he lived, kissing like he might actually die if they stopped.
That wasn’t who he was. It had never been who he was.
But when Raemy Miller took him by the hand, laced her fingers in his, and led him back to her cute little room in an inn overlooking the beach, he went with her.
He pushed her back against the door when they got inside. And he couldn’t seem to help himself. He kissed her again and again, until they were both breathless, and maybe even he was laughing the way she was.
Like this was a cause for wonder, this sparkling bit of fire that was lighting them both up like this.
He thought he might take his time undressing her, but she was impatient and demanding and refused to let him. And somehow that was also part of the brightness, and there was laughter mixed in with all the heat and impatience, making it all burn a little hotter, somehow.
She kissed her way down his chest, smiling as she traced the outline of the tattoo he wore on his pec, a typical USMC bit of art featuring an eagle, an anchor, a globe, and semper fi woven through it.
He expected her to have tattoos all over, and was surprised that she didn’t. Not a one.
“I teach elementary school,” she said, with mock-horror. “What would the parents think?” When he frowned, she shook her head. “The real truth is that I can never decide on what to put on myself. Permanently.”
There was no reason Noah should think he had an answer to that.
Eventually they were both naked on the bed together.
They rolled around and around, both of them seemingly wanting to memorize the other with their mouths, their hands.
He couldn’t get enough of the feel of her against him, so silky and smooth.
That gloriously wavy hair of hers was everywhere and he dug his hands in it, holding her head still when he wanted to plunder her mouth.
She crawled her way down his body, as if she was worshiping him. As if he was a man worth that kind of attention.
He knew he wasn’t, but the way she crawled all over him, her mouth and the brush of her hair, and her clever little fingers working magic everywhere she went, almost convinced him otherwise.
And when he finally rolled her beneath him, and found his way inside her, they both stared at each other. Because it was...
Noah didn’t have words for what it was.
Some kind of homecoming, maybe. Some kind of necessity he hadn’t understood he’d been doing without for the whole of his life.
Later, they stood in her shower and washed each other. Raemy got her hands in his hair, shampooing it, and washing it clean, her fingers kneading into his scalp until he thought he might actually start purring like some kind of cat.
And he knew he needed to leave. He needed to set boundaries, parameters. There were rules he followed and he was breaking every one of them with her.
But she was naked. And she was so pretty. Her skin was rosy from the hot water and she hadn’t bothered to put anything on after she dried off. She pulled a bar of chocolate out of one of her bags and opened up the foil with great precision, then offered him a square as if it was gold.
“Do you even eat chocolate?” she asked.
“Of course I eat chocolate.”
“Just, you know.” She waved her hand at him, taking in his torso, which was bare above the towel that he had wrapped around his hips. “That looks like a lot of work, what with all the early-morning beach running and all that masochism. I figured you were all about the macros and the gains.”
Noah did not dignify that with an answer. He liked to stay in shape. Yes, he had been known to consider a macro as part of a nutritionally sound eating system that he did not intend to defend to anyone. Especially not Raemy.
Raemy, the naked woman who was sitting there in the middle of the bed they’d torn apart, cross-legged. Her hair was wet and already waving all around her, and the sight of those wet curls over her breasts just about did him in.
Fuck my macros, he thought, with something like reverence.
He took the chocolate. He crawled onto the bed and sprawled out beside her. And when she leaned down to kiss him, after they’d eaten the whole bar, she tasted like sugar.
Like chocolate, and like his.
And somehow, he didn’t leave until morning.
He skipped his run. He skipped his weights. When he got back to the house, he felt like he’d been hit by a truck—a Raemy-shaped, head trip sort of truck, because actually he felt physically fantastic—and that was before he walked in to find Tank and Crusoe in the kitchen.
Drinking their coffee and clearly waiting there like disappointed parents facing a kid who’d missed curfew.
Or anyway, that was what Noah imagined this must be like, because he had never missed a curfew in his life.
“Creeping in at this hour of the morning,” Tank said, and actually tutted. Like a big, scarred mama bear.
It was one of the most disconcerting things Noah had ever seen in his life.
“We waited up all night,” Crusoe said, shaking his head. “What could you have been up to all this time?”
“You can both go fuck yourselves,” Noah retorted.
He grabbed a mug, filled it with coffee, and took it up to his room with him.
He drank it black, because that was the color that his soul should have been—though today he was pretty sure it was shot through with entirely too much sunshine and rainbows and those smiles Raemy gave him when he was deep inside of her.
Noah took another shower, but all he could think about was the one he’d taken with her and—
He couldn’t believe it, but there he was, taking care of himself in the shower at 6:15 a.m. Like the teenage boy two grizzled combat veterans had just accused him of being.
Noah should probably feel a little less like smiling for no reason, he thought as he handled the diner’s usual morning rush. It was going to put the regulars off their food and terrify all the men who didn’t think he knew how.
But it was okay, he told himself. She was going to leave.
Maybe she was already on her way out of town. Maybe this was all part and parcel of whatever exorcism she was performing here. Maybe this was just something she needed to do, no harm, no foul, and no big deal.
He kept telling himself that until he found himself in her room again that night. And the next night. And the night after that.
“Why do you look like you’re about to literally come apart at the seams?” Raemy asked one of those nights. She was sprawled out on top of him, her chin on her piled-up hands.
“I just don’t think—” He felt frenetic. Like there was some kind of poison under his skin. He wanted to throw her off him, maybe dive out the nearest window, maybe take off running until he crossed over into California some three hundred miles down the coast.
But he didn’t move.
“I’m going to need a little more than that.” She smiled at him, and the worst part was, he could tell now that she wasn’t using it as a weapon. That smile of hers was just that compelling.
She was just smiling. It wasn’t a front. She wasn’t pretending.
Raemy Miller apparently just went through the world, smiling willy-nilly like that. It was a wonder that more people weren’t walking into walls, threatening their own lives with spontaneous defenestration, or stumbling into traffic like he’d nearly done earlier this very night.
It would have been better if he’d been drunk. Not really, since Noah didn’t get drunk—but that would at least have excused it. Instead, he’d looked at her, she’d smiled at him, and he’d been this close to letting a tourist mow him down out in front of the tattoo shop.
“I think, psychologically, I get it,” he gritted out now. “I’m responsible for your brother’s death. Now we’re getting naked together. I feel like I’ve seen this movie. I’m just hoping it’s not a slasher flick. But honestly, even if it is—”
“A slasher flick?” Raemy laughed. “Meaning, I guess, that I’m the slasher in this scenario? Noah, do you mean to tell me that you, a man who outweighs me by God only knows how much actual muscle and who is, in fact, an ex-Marine—”
“No such thing as an ex-Marine. A Marine is always a Marine.”
“If you can’t handle my attempts to make you one of my kill count, I think you might be done for,” she said, gazing at him. Her smile in place. “But psychologically, I think we’re fine.”
“This is clearly not fine.” He rolled them then, so they were lying side-by-side. Not that this was helpful. It wasn’t like there was any particular position where this woman wasn’t a problem for him. “None of this is fine. Raemy, you have to see—”
“William is dead,” she said. Not harshly.
Just matter-of-factly. Almost gently, he thought, as if she had already come to terms with this but thought he hadn’t.
“Nothing will change that. If something could change it, don’t you think I would’ve tried that thing already?
I’m not the one whose grief is still sharp, Noah. ”
“That’s because you’re not the one who’s responsible.”
She smiled, but then she leaned in and kissed him. “I have an idea,” she murmured. “How about we don’t go another few rounds on this? How about we stop worrying about psychological problems that have yet to appear in any meaningful way? What would happen if we just... lived?”
Noah didn’t have an answer for that. Because he didn’t know that he’d ever...just lived.
Raemy leaned in and melted into him. She smoothed her fingers down the sides of his face and then she kissed him, and he thought that he might as well just live a little while longer.
With her, like this, because he couldn’t think of anything else to do when she seemed so determined to pretend they didn’t have the ghost of her brother there between them.
Besides, he knew she wouldn’t stay here forever. This was temporary. Wild Rose Point was nothing but a stop along the road for her, and he was glad about it.
Because if it was temporary—if she was simply passing through and this was an itch they were scratching that wouldn’t leave any lasting marks—then maybe, just maybe, he could let himself enjoy it.