Never Mine by Clare Connelly
Chapter 7
“WHERE’S GRAY?”
“I told him I wanted an early night. He’s gone.”
Noah flexed back in the chair, watching her with a sense of caution. “Do you want an early night?”
Her eyes landed hard on his, thud, thud, thud, and she shook her head slowly. “I want to have dinner with you. And seeing as you were obviously trying to avoid having dinner with Gray, I got rid of him.”
He dipped his head forward, hiding a smile – his first reaction – even as a danger signal blared.
“We’re safe in my home, right?”
He studied her.
“There’s no risk to me here? So much as you can tell?”
He nodded. “You’re safe here.”
“So you can be distracted. Just for a little while.”
“Max.” He stood up, his voice a growl, but it was Max who interrupted, her voice ringing with strength. “I am terrified, Noah. My life is spinning so far out of my control, I feel powerless and like I’m second guessing myself all the time. But when I’m with you, it’s like everything has gravity again. I feel safe and alive and happy. Can’t we just pretend, tonight, that we met under different circumstances? That you’re not here to protect me, that you’re not my brother’s friend, that there’s not some psychopath smearing blood over my car park?”
Resist this. Say no.
But she moved closer, brushing her body to his, looking up at his face. “Please?”
Damn it. He could resist a lot, he could say ‘no’ to a lot but Max begging him to give her something was a compulsion he couldn’t fight.
“Haven’t we talked about playing with fire?”
Her lip lifted in an impish smile. “Maybe I want to get burned by you.”
Possessive heat fired through his body. “You don’t know what you’re asking of me.”
She pressed a finger to his lips. “Right now, I’m asking you to have dinner with me. That’s all.”
He lifted a brow. “Really?”
Another impish smile, then no response. She pulled her phone out, loaded up an app and swiped through it. “Thai? Pizza? Burgers?”
He felt his own control slipping away, the gravity of his world shifting, shrinking, jerking, dropping him into hers. He expelled a rough sigh, his eyes locked to hers, heavy surrender tightening in his gut.
“You choose.”
She lay on her side,on the sofa, full and strangely relaxed. Noah Storm sat in the armchair opposite, watching her, and just the way his eyes caressed her body made her pulse feel half-electric. “So why private security?” Her fingers fluffed an imaginary piece of lint on the cushion in front of her. “Is it what you always wanted to do? Or was it being in the army that pushed you in this direction?”
“A bit of both,” he responded cryptically.
“Come on, Noah. I’ve given you the keys to my life, can’t you answer some simple questions about yours?”
His lips flickered in brief, sardonic acknowledgement. “I thought I did answer?”
“Without telling me anything. Why are you so secretive?”
“I don’t make a habit of sharing details of my personal life with clients.”
“We’ve already discussed this. I’m not a client.”
“So what does that make you?”
Her heart slammed into her rib cage. Dinner had been a tense affair – at least, it had been for Max. She had been aware of his every movement, his every breath. On some level, she was grateful for the monumental attraction to Noah – it lessened the obsessive fear she might have been feeling if Noah wasn’t with her. A shiver ran down her spine as she imagined what it would be like to be alone in her home now, after the events of today.
“You’re still someone I need to protect.”
She dragged her attention back to their conversation. “Does answering my questions make you less able to do that?”
A muscle jerked low in his jaw. “There should be limits to how well we know each other.”
Frustration was a whip at her spine. She stayed very still, careful not to reveal it on her face. “You know everything there is to know about me.”
He dipped his head in silent concession.
“Is it so unreasonable –,”
“Yes. We’ve discussed this, the day you accepted to hire me. Your life being an open book was a condition of me taking this job.”
She didn’t want to be a ‘job’ to him! She didn’t want him to see her as a client. Anger zipped through her veins.
“How does it make you less able to protect me if I know a bit more about you?”
His eyes clashed with hers. There was a hardness in their grey depths, but also a plea. Stop this.
“I mean it, Noah. All night – ever since I’ve known you, actually – you’ve stone-walled my questions, telling me almost nothing about you. Does that really help you protect me?”
“It’s part of the job.” His hand tightened on the coffee cup he held. “I’m not here to get to know you. I’m here for one reason only –,”
“Because Gray asked you to be.”
“To keep you safe,” he corrected, but dipped his head once, in silent, terse agreement with her question. “I need to keep my mind clear, to be focused on the job. And when the work is done, and this guy is caught, I will pack my bag and leave, back to America, to my life, my business, to whatever – and whoever – needs my attention next. I don’t get attached to clients. I don’t do follow up calls. In a week’s time, you won’t even know me anymore.”
A sense of isolation hollowed her out, turning her organs into tumbleweeds. She stared at him, hating the picture he was painting. “You think it will be that quick?”
His expression showed caution. “I think there are a few leads your security team overlooked. Things that only someone with my experience would have noticed,” he clarified, the professional courtesy of attempting to make an excuse for her team’s failings not lost on her, even when she knew it was a lie. Noah would never miss anything, not a single detail. “I’m chasing those leads down as we speak, and should have some answers in the next twenty four hours.”
A shiver ran through her. “And then you’ll leave.”
“I don’t stick around for the epilogue,” he agreed with a nod. “My part ends with the bad guy being arrested.”
“What happened with Marina?” Max asked, pushing up into a sitting position, her legs crossed on the sofa. And for all Noah was insisting on keeping a degree of distance between them, his eyes moved over her body like liquid silk, appraising her, studying her, drugged by her, as though he couldn’t resist. Heat spread like wildfire.
“What do you mean?”
“There was no single ‘bad guy’ in her case. She was just generally hated, turned into a victim by everyone she came across. How did you know it was safe to leave her?”
He drank his coffee, his eyes holding hers over the rim, then placed the cup on the occasional table to his left. “It’s why I stayed so long,” he said after several beats.
“But why leave?”
“I spent eighteen months rebuilding her security infrastructure from the ground up. I hired her team myself. I left because I knew I could. I was no longer needed.”
“And you only stay so long as you’re needed,” she surmised, wondering again at the sense of emptiness in the pit of her stomach.
“That’s the job.”
“Is the job why you don’t drink?”
The question was obviously unexpected. He reached for his coffee again, taking another sip. A stalling technique. She sat very still. Waiting, watchful, barely breathing. “In part.”
She frowned. “What does that even mean?”
He sighed heavily, then laughed, once. “Goddamnit. You don’t give up, do you?”
“Nope.”
He placed the cup down gently, eyes resting on the coffee table. “My dad was a drunk.” His lips curled in a whip of derision. “I saw what alcohol did to a man. I came to hate it. The effects, the smell. I tasted it once and almost puked. Then, in my line of work, it’s an advantage to not drink. I prefer to keep my wits sharp at all times.”
She nodded, but she was still caught on what he’d revealed about his home life, growing up. “You said your dad was a drunk. Is he still…?”
Noah flinched; the smallest gesture, one only someone as attuned to him as Max might have noticed. “My father died eleven years ago. I was stationed overseas.”
“Oh, Noah.” Her eyes swept shut for a moment as she processed that grief. “That’s so terrible. How did he –,”
His eyes narrowed and she wondered if he was going to avoid answering her? She probably shouldn’t have asked the question; it was pure curiosity, none of her business. And yet she wanted to know. In fact, it seemed intolerable to Max that something so monumental could have happened in Noah’s life and she didn’t know about it.
“It was a fire. His fault. He was cooking, then he passed out. There were no smoke alarms in his new place – he moved around a lot. Occupational hazard of being a drunk and not able to hold down a job.” Noah’s gaze was steely. “He didn’t stand a chance.”
Sadness coated Max’s insides. She shook her head, at a loss for words, and for once Noah didn’t seem to be pushing her away. He was torn, dragged into the past, and he spoke without restraint. “It was his own fault. He drunk himself into oblivion, every day. I tried to get him help, but it’s not enough to be walked to the rehab clinic. You have to go through the doors; he never would. He couldn’t even admit he had a problem. I hated him, Max. I really did. My whole childhood I kept seeing glimpses of what he was like off the stuff. Only rarely, never for long, but by God, I would live for those moments. By the time I was a teenager, he was a pathetic excuse of a man. He drank round the clock. If the fire hadn’t killed him, his pickled organs would have.”
Max’s heart thundered.
“I made my peace with his death pretty quickly – I’d known for years it was coming. What I hadn’t expected was that he’d take her with him.”
“Your mother?” She whispered, the words hollowed out.
He looked at Max as if from a long way away, as though her question was completely unexpected. “My sister.” His hands stayed perfectly still, his eyes haunted. “She died in the fire too.”
Max groaned, standing on autopilot. His sister had died and he hadn’t been able to save her. Now he dedicated his life to saving other people, to prove to himself that he could, to atone for a guilt he had no business carrying. But he did carry that guilt, every day. It drove him, it pushed him to succeed, to be the very best. She could see now the burden of his responsibility and she ached to take it away.
“She was seventeen, on the cusp of her life. She was kind and funny and smart, clumsy as all hell – she’d trip over a puddle of water. She had such a bright future. And he took it from her.” He shook his head, as if to clear the somber direction of his thoughts. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this.”
“Because I asked,” she said gently. “And because I’m listening.”
His lips twisted in a tight smile. He was shutting down, pushing her away again. She couldn’t bear it. Without thinking, instinct alone firing her, Max moved to the chair and her eyes probed his for the briefest moment before she sat on his lap, straddling him, her arms around his neck. She was close enough that she felt his harsh expulsion of air, felt his warm breath on her neck.
“Max –,” there was both a warning and a plea in her name.
She pressed a finger to his lips; he was silent. A moment later, she dropped her finger, only so she could kiss him. A gentle brush of her lips, a kiss of sympathy and shared pain, of understanding, and gratitude for divulging so much.
But there was something between them, a chemical reaction, that meant no kiss could simply be a light brushing of lips; it wasn’t possible. Fierce heat exploded between them – boom – demanding exploration and indulgence, demanding their all. She moaned softly, deepening the kiss, as his hands found and caught her bottom, holding her where she was at first and then moving her closer to him, holding her over the thickness of his arousal, so white light flashed in her eyes. Desperate, hungry need erupted, as unstoppable as a volcanic explosion, and Max succumbed to it completely, wondering, in the back of her mind, what it was about Noah that could drive her to this fever pitch so effortlessly? His nearness alone was enough to make her body tremble with an awareness she’d never experienced before.
“Damn it,” he cursed into her mouth as one hand moved higher, finding the waistband of her jeans and pushing inside, so his fingertips brushed bare skin.
She ignored the invective, focused only on this kiss, his touch, the pleasure of contact, focusing on the perfection of this.
She wanted to obliterate his pain just as she wanted him to obliterate her own, but that was only a piece of this. At the end of the day, this was more about biology than intention, it was a force greater than them, a force she now realized had been drawing them together from that first morning in her office.
She reached for his buttons, undoing them with fumbling hands at first and then more firmly as determination stole through her. She pushed the shirt off, dropping her head and kissing his shoulders, his tattoo, maneuvering herself backwards a little so she could reach him better. But Noah’s hands were no longer content to remain still; they joined in the same desperate tarantella Max’s evoked, twisting and stroking, pushing and lifting, so Max’s shirt was gone, then her bra and finally he rewarded her with the touch she’d been needing since they were in Paris and he’d pushed her away, his mouth once more on her breasts, his tongue lashing her nipple until she was breathless with pleasure, her head tilted back on a wave of euphoria.
She unfastened his jeans, hunger making her movements jerky and urgent as though he were a lifeline she desperately needed. She drew his arousal from his pants and he laughed, a thick, hoarse sound, lacking humour, hot with his own need.
“Jesus, Max. If you touch me like that, this isn’t going to last long.”
Excitement buzzed through her. She shifted to standing between his legs, purely so she could strip her own jeans, but Noah was too fast, his body moving even as she undressed, so he lifted her over his shoulder and carried her upstairs, one hand resting on her bare bottom, so she couldn’t speak, couldn’t laugh – Max could barely breathe.
In her bedroom, he lay her in the centre of the bed, his eyes on hers, their depths swirling dark.
“This is something we will both regret.”
“I won’t.”
His eyes narrowed. “How do you know that?”
“Because I want this.”
“Why?”
Max felt as though everything hung in the balance of her answer. She stilled, frowning as she scanned his face. “Because you’re really hot?”
He laughed, the sound sending lightning bolts of desire through her central nervous system. She rolled to the side a little, flicking open her bedside table drawer and removing a condom.
The laughter died on his lips; he was serious again.
“I’m sure,” she said, before he could repeat his earlier question. “Please.”
He groaned, but she knew what the sound signified. It was a ‘yes’. It was an admission that he needed this too, even if his position as her bodyguard would mean that he might regret it later. In this moment, he was hers. She said nothing – she wasn’t capable of speech anyway – simply watched as he tore open the foil square and rolled the condom over his impressive length, the stroke of his fingers mesmerizing, then, he was bringing his body over hers, the weight of him everything she needed, or thought she needed, until his arousal nudged between her legs, his tip against her sex so she bucked instinctively, pleasure spiralling through her.
His hands moved over her arms, lightly, lifting goosebumps as he went, and she shivered, not from cold but from the sheer heat of her desire. He caught her hands, lifted them over her head, pinned them there as he kissed her hard, pressing her head into the mattress and out of nowhere, she felt his need for control, and heat and longing spun in her cells, the power one she was happy to concede here, in bed, where he was, without doubt, her body’s master.
Her nipples strained against the cool night air, and as if he sensed their need, his head dropped lower, his stubble running over the silken skin of her décolletage then lower, his tongue chasing one nipple and then the next, as his arousal continued to taunt her.
“Please,” she groaned, lifting her hips, writhing, one of his hands easily able to keep her wrists held just above her bed. She’d never allowed a man to restrain her before, but with Noah, she welcomed his sexual dominance. She trusted him completely. His other hand came between her legs, brushing her most sensitive cluster of nerves before moving to her thighs, nudging them apart. Max lifted her legs, digging her heels into the bed, his name on her lips an invitation that she issued over and over, until finally he thrust into her, hard and fast, with no warning, no preamble, so she cried out, the harsh, guttural sound of completion filling the room – and her own ears. His possession was instantaneous; they were melded together, one being, in synch, in lockstep, her body moving to answer his, her pleasure in perfect harmony with his. She pulled on her wrists instinctively, wanting to touch him, to feel him, but he held them where they were, lifting his head to stare into her eyes, and she saw in the depths of his own gaze a desperation – a need to hold onto his control, control that was slipping as totally as her own. It flooded her with a rush of power, a rush of euphoric triumph, because it was evidence that this was bigger than both of them, but a moment later, he was moving, pulling out of her, releasing his grip on her arms and pulling her off the bed, to her feet, his movements jerky and urgent.
“What is it?” She rushed the words out so they tripped over one another.
“I want you to see how beautiful you are,” he grunted, bringing her to her dressing table and bracing her hands on the edge of the timber, bending her at the waist, so the sight of them, like this, was so impossibly erotic, she almost couldn’t breathe. Her eyes lowered, blotting the image, but then his hands squeezed her hips. “Watch,” he commanded, and his power was absolute, his control impossible to ignore, so she did watch, every moment, as he entered her from behind, his arousal so deep at this angle, her muscles squeezing his length so they both expressed a low groan of satisfaction as he returned to her and stayed there, taking stock, buried deep inside of her for several moments before he thrust again, in and out, his possession rhythmic at first, his eyes locked to hers, as he drove into her again and again, each powerful movement jolting her body forward, rocking her backwards, so she had to press hard with her hands to brace herself. When he brought a hand around to her nipples, so sensitive and aroused, and began to tweak, hard, she had to bite down on her lip to stop from squealing. But Noah shook his head. “Say it. I want to hear you, too.”
She stopped censoring herself, stopping trying to hide any part of what she was feeling. He moved his hand to the other breast and rolled that nipple between his forefinger and thumb, his thrusts powerful and dominating, his control absolute, her pleasure more than anything she’d ever known. She couldn’t help it; as her orgasm exploded, she bit down on her lip, holding back the animalistic cries that were spreading through her. Only Noah ran his fingers through her hair, catching it in his fist, holding her head high for him to see, his watchful face missing nothing, not one iota, of her total abandonment to this bliss.
He slowed, watching her, waiting for the waves of delirium to pass, then he was moving again, more slowly now, teasing her, bringing her back to the peak of pleasure, to the edge of a cliff, holding her there, tormenting her, torturing her, until he was ready to tumble off the edge alongside her, and then he moved quickly, sweeping her into his bliss, bringing them to simultaneous climax, their voices as entwined as their bodies, pleasure absolute. Tears sparkled behind Max’s eyes, but she held them back with effort – he could already see so much, she didn’t want him to see those emotions too.
He had promisedhe would feel regret, but he didn’t. Not at first. He felt need – a tsunami of it, as though being together was the earthquake that shook the foundations of everything he thought he knew, and the resultant tidal wave was only just starting to gather, building pace and strength as it threatened to wash over him and drag him away completely.
Somewhere before dawn, he stood, moving to the nightlight on her bedside table, ready to flick it off, but pausing before he did so. Max was fast asleep, so peaceful, so goddamned beautiful he would do anything not to disturb her. He withdrew his hand, turned away and left, but not without a backwards glance. He wasn’t strong enough for that.
