A Million Dirty Secrets (35 page)

Slowly the muscles in her thighs relaxed, giving me permission to abandon my post. Not that I wanted to, but I had to stop eventually, or I feared I never would.

My eyes drifted over Delaine’s form, her body writhing beneath my stare. She looked up at me, her gorgeous blue eyes full of expression. “You’re so … beautiful,” she all but whispered.

“Not nearly as beautiful as you.” It was the truth. She didn’t need a fancy house, expensive cars, or a high-profile job. She had everything she needed in that heart of pure gold. She was just as beautiful on the inside as she was on the out, and that was what made the difference between her and me.

That was what made her perfect.

Unable to look without touching any longer, I crawled up her body, hovering as I positioned myself against her center. Careful to maintain my weight on my forearms, I settled upon her and pushed a stray lock of hair behind her ear.

“This should have been our first time,” I said, and then I slowly entered her.

She let out a soft mewl that I smothered when my mouth covered hers. Delaine’s legs crossed at the small of my back as I moved back and forth inside her, oh so slowly. Her fingernails dug into my shoulder blades with each push and pull of our bodies. She answered my rocking motions with a purposeful grind of her hips. I pulled back from the kiss and went to her neck, lavishing her skin with kisses, licks, and sucks.

My hand palmed the pert globe of her ass and moved down her thigh. When I reached the bend behind her knee, I tenderly nudged it back, keeping my hand there and opening her up further to allow me to go even deeper. The need for her to
feel me all the way into the depths of her soul took over and drove my every action. I angled myself a little to the side as both of her hands made their way down my back and she cupped my ass in turn. Delaine was definitely an ass chick. I made sure to flex the muscles there for her benefit, thrusting deeper inside her, rolling my hips to give her clit the friction I knew she craved.

Back and forth, our bodies rocked, like the ebb and flow of the ocean’s current sending waves crashing against the rocky shore only to recede and do it all over again. It was magic in the making, the kind of stuff you only read about in those sappy romance novels. But never had two bodies been made to fit more perfectly together, whether in real life or make-believe.

It was the kind of thing that made you believe you’d finally found your other half. Too bad I was the only one who felt that way, but as much as it ached to know the truth of it, I didn’t care. I was fated to love her, of this I was sure. Even if it was only meant to teach me a lesson, at least I knew what it was like to care more about someone else than I did about myself—for once.

I’d face the fallout of my decision later, but at that moment she was there, and she had to know how I really felt. I couldn’t let her leave that room without knowing, beyond a shadow of a doubt, where my mind, my heart, my soul was. They were with her, and forever would be. And if she left when it was all said and done, she would take it all with her.

I nuzzled the spot below her ear, my words thick with passion and laced in pain. “I love you, Delaine. With my whole fucking heart.”

“Oh, God, Noah.” Her voice was so full of emotion that I had to look at her. Her bottom lip trembled and her eyes glassed over. A timid hand cradled my face, and the pad of her thumb swept over my bottom lip. “Please, call me Lanie. Just … Lanie.”

I searched her face, and as one tear slipped down her cheek, I couldn’t find one ounce of proof that she was merely saying it out of pity for me. If I thought my heart had been thumping and flip-flopping before, that was nothing compared to the acrobatics it was doing in that moment. My heart swelled, a gust of warmth shooting through my chest and radiating outward before going straight to my brain. I grew light-headed, yet I couldn’t curve back the smile that spread across my face.

“Lanie,” I repeated in a whisper.

She shivered in my arms. “Jesus, that sounds so sexy. Say it again.” She pushed her fingers into my hair and lifted my head just enough so that she could see my face.

I brought my lips closer, barely ghosting them over hers as I repeated her name, “Lanie …”

Her teeth tugged on my bottom lip, once, twice, and then she sucked it between hers, mumbling, “Again.”

With more vigor than our last, I kissed her, saying her name over and over again because I goddamn could. Finally. My thrusts became more insistent, and I held on to the inside of her knee and rolled my hips against her. Harder, deeper, faster. I grasped the edge of the mattress above us in my hand and used it for momentum as I pulled myself back and forth, in and out. She clung to me, the sweat from our bodies intermingling as we slid against each other. The tendons in my arms and neck
were taut, the muscles in my back, abs, and ass getting a serious workout while I gave her everything I had.

Delaine dragged her nails across my back and I prayed to God she left wounds there, wounds that would never heal—scars to rival the ones that would be left on my heart when she left me.

I pulled back to look at her, memorizing her every feature, and I couldn’t help but notice the way the vein in her neck throbbed with her heavy heartbeat. Yet another vision that would haunt me for the rest of my life. So exquisite.

A drop of sweat dangled precariously on the tip of my nose until it fell onto her bottom lip, and I watched as she flicked her tongue out and tasted it. Her eyes closed and she hummed like she’d just popped the last gourmet chocolate into her mouth and was savoring the taste.

“Look at me, kitten,” I whispered. She did as I said, her eyes forming an instant connection with mine. It was a connection that went so much deeper than outward appearances. “I love you, Lanie.”

“Noah, I …” She moaned and then bit down on her bottom lip, tossing her head back. Her orgasm rippled through her body in waves and her body stretched tight beneath me.

That sight. Oh, God, that sight. The look on her face when I told her I loved her and she orgasmed … there simply were no words adequate enough to describe how it made me feel.

With one final thrust, I followed suit. I could feel her inner walls gripping and stroking, milking me as I throbbed and pulsed inside her until there was nothing left to give. I rolled onto my side and took her with me, using both arms to hold her against my chest, unwilling to let her go. And wasn’t that
the crux of the matter? I couldn’t let her go, but I had to. Because to keep her there would just be cruel.

We lay there in our postcoital bliss for what seemed like a lifetime, but it still wasn’t long enough. Neither of us said anything, neither of us relinquished our hold, both of us lost in our own thoughts. The sheets were drenched—soaked from our wet bodies, soaked by the sweat of our labor, soaked by the resulting release. And oh, what a sweet release it was.

And then she broke the silence.

“Noah.” Her voice was so soft I barely heard her say my name. “We need to talk.” That I heard loud and clear. And I didn’t want to, because this was the part where everything got ruined, where I got bitch-slapped by reality … where she told me she was going to leave.

“Shh, not yet.” I smoothed her hair back and kissed her forehead. “It can wait until the morning. For now, let’s just stay here like this.”

Delaine … Lanie nodded and nuzzled her face back into my chest without another word, giving me that one last night to hold her in my arms. It was the first and only night that everything was right in the goddamn world because she was there and she knew I loved her. No way was I going to sleep and waste one second of what precious little time I had left with her.

~$~

For the remainder of the night, I stayed right there. As she slept peacefully, I stroked her hair, rubbed her back, inhaled her scent. It wasn’t until the first tinge of orange tinted the
morning sky that I finally maneuvered my way out from under her. A soft kiss to her cheek and a whispered “I love you,” and I was off to take my shower.

As I passed by the bedroom door, an invisible hand seemed to reach in from out of nowhere to grab hold of me. Down the hall and into my office it dragged me, until I found myself standing in front of an open drawer on my desk. With a shaky hand, I reached inside and pulled out my copy of the contract, the contract that bound Delaine to me for the next two years.

I awoke the next morning and freaked for just a moment (okay, it was longer than a moment) when I couldn’t feel and then didn’t see Noah in the bed. But then I sat up and looked around, noticing that the bathroom door was closed, which meant he had to be there. I realized I was still naked, which wasn’t too shocking since Noah had always insisted I sleep like that—truthfully, I kind of liked it—and the gown that I had discarded was still lying on the floor where I had stepped out of it last night before the shower. It hadn’t all been another one of my delusional dreams. I floated back down to the bed and snuggled with Noah’s pillow.

He loved me. He really loved me.

And he hadn’t just said it. He’d shown me with every touch, every kiss, with every part of him until there could never be any doubt.

My thoughts flashed back to mere hours before, and I smiled
so hard that my cheeks hurt. I was soaring on the inside, my body vibrating on the out.

I knew the second he told me he loved me with his “whole fucking heart” that he meant it. But it just didn’t sound right for him to say something like that, without using the name I had insisted he had no right to use. He’d more than earned the right to call me Lanie. Nothing could have been more right. And when I heard him say it, heard the
L
roll off his talented tongue—gah, it gave me goose bumps, and I trembled from the inside out, yearning to hear it over and over again.

Until that moment, I had been sure things could never work between Noah and me. We came from two completely different worlds, and regardless of how we felt about each other, those worlds could be unforgiving. But when I saw, felt, and heard his conviction, I knew we deserved a fighting chance, and I wasn’t going to be the one who killed our shot of happiness. Not when I felt the same way he did. We could make it work. Maybe all those romantic comedies weren’t just fantasies. Maybe Noah and I could have a little bit of that magic, too.

I was going to tell him that I loved him, but then he told me to look at him, and I saw what I could only imagine was how he truly felt on the inside. It was as plain as the sexy nose on his face, and then he said those three little words again, using the familiar version of my name. I couldn’t hold back the orgasm that it evoked. Utter bliss.

I even tried to tell him again, once we each had a chance to cool our jets, so to speak. But he didn’t want to talk. He just wanted to bask in the aftermath of what we’d done, and that
was A-okay with me, too. Because we still had today, and tomorrow, and the next day, and every glorious day of our lives after that.

We were in love, and nothing or no one was going to be able to come between us.

I mean, what were the odds? Two strangers, both taking desperate measures to relieve the hardships we had to endure, and from all that mess, we found each other. We found love. We took nothing and made it into something. That would be the story we would one day tell our children and our children’s children—leaving out the part about their mother and grandmother being a whore and all, of course, ’cause I really couldn’t see that being an “awww” moment.

I was happy. I was giddy. It was a new day. The storm clouds had been pushed away. The sun was shining. Birds were chirping. I bet if I had gone over to the window, pushed it open, and leaned out, a little blue songbird would have even landed on my finger and sung me a song. Talk about a fairy-tale moment. Not that I had any intention of doing that, though. With my luck, I’d trip or something and fall two stories to go splat on the pristine concrete below with nothing to break my fall except that teeny-tiny songbird. It would look like a smushed blue M&M beneath me, and I couldn’t have that on my conscience.

Nope, wasn’t going to happen. Nothing was going to ruin the beauty of the day. So I mentally told that little blue bird to stay on his side of the window, and I would stay on mine. That way nobody had to get hurt.

Big sigh, huge stretch, and bingo! Brilliant-idea moment.

Breakfast. I was going to make him breakfast. I got a huge, cheese-eating grin on my face when I decided it would be bacon and eggs, and a devilish smirk when I thought about what could possibly come of that. Who’d have thought? Bacon, a cholesterol-filled aphrodisiac. Huh. Great for the Cooch—bad, bad, bad for the arteries.

The Cooch gave me two thumbs-up for my idea. But of course she would, little slut.

I shrugged her off and went to toss back the covers to get breakfast started—because the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach, after all—but then the bathroom door opened and Noah stepped out. He was completely dressed and looked like pure sex, even with the slight shadows under his eyes. Guess I must have kept him up too late last night. My inner whore giggled like an innocent schoolgirl. Total contradiction, I know.

“Good morning.” I smiled timidly, suddenly unsure if he would still feel the same way now as he had last night.

“Good morning,” he answered, except his tone was a tad bit more sullen than I had anticipated. He dropped his eyes and started fussing with his tie, even though it was perfect as usual. I got the feeling that he didn’t want to look at me.

Oh, crap. Okay, there was no need to panic. Maybe he was just thinking along the same line as I was and didn’t know what my reaction was going to be this morning. Easily fixed.

“So, um, are you going to work?” I asked, because I wasn’t really sure how to start.

“Yeah. I kind of left in a hurry last night and hadn’t made all my rounds to prospective clients and the board members.
So I need to do some damage control.” His unnecessary preening moved from his tie to the sleeves of his jacket.

“Oh. Sorry about that,” I said, feeling a pang of guilt over my behavior. “Do we have time to talk first?”