Fault (Define Book 3) Page 12

  Noah’s groan as he put his arms around my lower back before pulling me closer triggered a surge of warmth in my core. That warmth turned to heat as we moved into each other, joined at the hips, separated only by the sheet and my pyjama shorts. His hands pitter-pattered up and down my spine, a juxtaposition to the strength of his tongue as it danced with mine.

  I gripped the curve of his biceps, delighting in the feel of uncharted skin but craving more. Breaking the kiss, I reached behind me and opened the clasp on my bra, emboldened when Noah leant back and looked at me, eyes filled with wonder. When my breasts escaped their confines, his gasp made me smile.

  “Jeez, anyone would think you hadn’t seen boobs before,” I joked as I dropped the bra onto the floor. The joke was on me as he pulled me into his chest and trailed his tongue lazily up my neck to my ear. I moaned at the sensory overload.

  He chuckled. “I know you think you have the upper hand here but trust me, there’s only so much control I’m willing to give up, and you’re getting very close to that point.” He nipped at my ear before kissing a path down to my collarbone. All I could do was angle my head to allow him easier access. “Let’s see how you handle second base, shall we?”

  Using the lightest of touches, he pushed me back slightly so he could take one of my breasts in his hand, rubbing his thumb across the peak and sending every nerve ending into overdrive. As he lowered his mouth to repeat the move with his tongue, I was vaguely aware of grinding myself into his hips, feeling the evidence of his own arousal between my legs. Noah blew across my nipple, the coolness of his breath generating heat in every fibre of my being. As he moved over to lavish attention on my other breast, I ran my hands across his back, trying to distract myself with the warmth of his skin, the way his body felt so different to mine.

  “God, you’re so beautiful, Grace,” he said as he took his mouth away, leaving cold heat behind. “I need to feel you against me.” Less gently this time, he pulled me tightly to him and the heat of his chest against mine made me cry out. His hips rocked into mine as his lips took my mouth. It appeared that we had crossed the control line as he was definitely the one in charge by then; logical thought had long since abandoned me and I was a mere slave to my senses. Mouth. Chest. Hips. All were force fields of energy, drawing me to an inexorable conclusion. Mouth. Chest. Hips. Mouth, chest, hips. Mouthchesthips.

  And then all movement stopped. I opened my eyes and looked into Noah’s. I could hear the almost painful rip of his own breathing. I could see the need in the darkness of his eyes. And I could certainly feel the hardness of his erection between us.

  “Not yet,” he muttered, giving me a light peck on the lips and straightening up in a token attempt at putting some space between us.

  “Not yet?” My tone made it clear I was less than happy with the turn of events. “What does that mean? Give me a few minutes, Grace? Not tonight? Not ever?” The heat of my arousal gave way to the heat of frustration.

  “Stop,” Noah commanded, taking his hands in mine. “Don’t make this into something other than a need to feel like I’m doing the right thing.”

  “Oh God, it’s not that whole ‘taking advantage’ argument again, is it?” Part of me despaired that we would never get over that.

  He grinned and kissed me, a little more sexily. “Is it wrong that I find you really hot when you get wound up?” His admission made me smile, as much as I didn’t want it to. “What I mean is that I want to do this, the whole relationship, right. We haven’t even been on a date!” He kissed me again but was determined to prevent further bodily contact. “Trust me, I want this as much as you do.”

  “Okay, I get it. So when can we get this date over and done with? When does ‘not yet’ become ‘now’?”

  He laughed at my impatience. “That’s not a very romantic response.”

  “Well, what I’m feeling right now isn’t very romantic,” I admitted with a grimace.

  “Why? What are you feeling?”

  I refused to be drawn into that game. “None of your business. Not yet anyway.” I moved off him and stood up, scooping up my top and bra. “Goodnight, Noah.” I turned and walked away, listening to the movements that suggested he was following me. I felt his hands on my waist before I reached the door. I couldn’t stop myself leaning back into him as one hand pulled my hair to the side so he could kiss my neck.

  “Not yet. But soon.” With one final nip at the skin of my shoulder, he let me go. “Goodnight, Grace.” Proud of the fact that I didn’t look back, I went to my room. And prayed for sleep to calm the inferno Noah had lit inside me.

  I WAS DETERMINED to make our first date perfect. And soon. Until the night Grace came to my room, I’d been impressed by my own self-control, even if I had ended up taking more showers than there was logical explanation for. But since then, Grace had become my tormentor, wilfully ignoring the boundaries we had established. As much as her words tried to convince me otherwise, she knew the effect every press of her body, every flick of her tongue, every so-called accidental stroke of my dick had on me. And I loved it, once the raging hard-on she left me with several times a day had subsided.

  I bought tickets to an outdoor theatre production of The Taming of the Shrew being held at an arboretum about an hour away. Bob had agreed to stay with Dad, and all the information I’d given Grace was that we would be spending the evening outside, thankful when it turned out to be a warm summer evening. Whilst she got ready, I made up a picnic and, when I was secretly putting it in my car, Bob pulled up.

  “You look like you’re up to no good,” he observed with a smile. When I told him of the plan, his face became more serious. “So you and Grace are becoming more than housemates, then?”

  I wasn’t sure why he was asking, unless it was a misguided attempt to check out if my intentions were honourable. I had the blue balls to prove exactly how honourable they were.

  “Yeah. It’s getting serious. I like her. A lot.”

  “Look, Noah, there’s something you should probably know before things turn serious.” They couldn’t get any more serious to me. “When I told you about Andrea being arrested, I didn’t tell you the whole story.”

  My stomach tensed as I recalled the details of that conversation, every mention of Grace having far more resonance than it did at the time. “What do you mean?”

  The concern on his face hinted at what he was going to tell me. “Andrea killed him because he was attacking Grace.”

  “You told me that. You said she did it to save her.” Which meant that however much I hated her for the way she was treating Grace at the moment, I also needed to get on my knees and thank her for what she did.

  “That’s right. But he wasn’t going to kill Grace. He was assaulting her.”

  My breath caught at the horrific image that burned into my mind.

  “What exactly do you mean, Bob? You know, there’s a whole fucking continuum that is covered by assault. What happened? He didn’t… didn’t….” I couldn’t finish the sentence, as though putting it into words made it more probable.

  Bob put a hand on my shoulder. “I don’t know. It was enough to make Andrea feel her only choice was to pick up that knife. But I don’t think Grace had to go to the hospital that day, which suggests it wasn’t the worst it could have been.”

  God, was it wrong to feel relief? Why hadn’t she told me? For the first time in my life, I felt the compulsion to hurt someone. I had never had so much as a scrap of a fight at school, but my blood boiled with the need to inflict pain, to tear that bastard limb from limb. It was a good job he was already dead.

  “Look, I know this is hard to take, but I couldn’t let you carry on without knowing. She’s a lovely girl, but she’s been through a lot. I know you wouldn’t hurt her, Noah, but things might not be as straightforward as you were expecting.”

  Looking at him, I could tell that this had been a difficult conversation for him too and I was grateful for him telling me, even if I hadn’t got a clue how to p
rocess what he had said. Somehow, I would need to get through the evening without letting Grace know that her secret had been shared.

  When she walked into the lounge, I was sucker-punched by how beautiful she looked. Her coppery waves had been tamed into a loose ponytail which hung over one shoulder, exposing the pale line of her neck, that line I loved to kiss my way along. The teal top she wore crossed and wrapped around her, hinting at her cleavage and emphasising her waist before ending just shy of the dark skinny jeans that clung to the lean length of her legs. I knew that inch of skin between blue and black would tempt me all night. I winked my appreciation at her, not wanting Bob or Dad to hear the gibbering wreck she had turned me into.

  She held my hand on her thigh all the way to the venue, moving with me when I needed to change gears. About a mile out, we passed a marketing banner for the production, and she looked over for confirmation. I smiled. She grinned and squeezed my fingers before bringing them to her mouth and dropping the lightest of kisses on my knuckles. My jeans tightened at the warmth of her breath, the soft abrasion of her lips as they moved across my skin, and I knew I would be spending the evening driven to distraction.

  When we pulled into the car park, I jumped out to open her door. As she stepped out, I caged her against the car and leant in to claim the kiss I needed to give, to receive. Her eyes drifted closed and her tongue peeped through her lips, but that was too obvious. Angling my head, I kissed a line along the side of her neck, up to her ear and back down to the hollow of her collarbone. I felt as well as heard her sharp intake of breath and the way her chest pressed closer to mine. My hand crept round to the small of her back before pulling her to me, bodies aligned from shoulder to leg. Taking her head in my other hand, I gave in and kissed her properly, deeply. Hard. We were both out of breath when I pulled back, the movement of her breasts with each deep breath making me want to lie her down on the backseat and declare our first date over.

  “Come on, or I won’t be stopping at just a kiss.” I grabbed our things from the car and pulled on her hand. She didn’t move.

  “What if I don’t want to stop at just a kiss?”

  God, I wanted to do nothing more than call her bluff and show her exactly how much I didn’t want to stop either. But we had tickets for a performance that started in a few minutes and Bob’s words were still playing on my mind.

  “Patience is a virtue, you know.”

  Yet again she resisted my tug of her hand.

  “Well, I’m not feeling very virtuous,” she whispered before standing on tiptoes and kissing me. I let her have her moment before crashing my mouth into hers.

  “Neither am I,” I admitted as I surfaced from the deep. “But this is our first date and virtuous is a prerequisite.” With a final peck on those lips I could drink from all night, I brought her hand to my chest so she could feel the fervent beating of my heart. “Feel that? That’s how much I want to go and find somewhere private and do so much more than kiss you. But I’m not going to. Not yet, anyway.” The curve of her smile at the word ‘yet’ told me I had won this round. “Let’s go.”

  Avoiding the concentration of people directly in front of the makeshift stage, I lay our blanket and cushions in a quieter space towards the back of the crowd. I wasn’t big on public displays of affection and knew I wouldn’t be able to keep my hands to myself for the next few hours.

  We ate our way through the first few scenes, neither of us talking as we followed what was happening on stage. Leaving just drinks and chocolates out, I positioned the basket behind me for some back support before creating a space between my open legs. Grace shuffled into the gap and edged backwards until her back was against my chest and our hips were butted against each other. Wrapping my arms around her waist, I was able to plant a smattering of butterfly kisses across her neck and shoulder, delighting in the way she shivered beneath me.

  As much as I loved Shakespeare, I barely glanced at the stage. I spent the next hour discovering all the ways I could make Grace lose control without alerting our neighbours. My favourite was easing my hand beneath her top, allowing me to caress the silken skin of her abdomen. Her intake of breath when my hand traced a line beneath her bra told me how hard it was for her not to give in to a more vocal response. A slight graze of my thumb across her nipple triggered a moan she quickly converted into a discreet cough, followed by a sharp elbow to my ribs.

  “What?” I asked, lacing my voice with indignant innocence.

  “Nothing, babe” was her equally fake reply.

  A few seconds later, Grace edged her hips backwards as though she were getting more comfortable. As the movements of her hips became more pronounced, I realised that it was nothing to do with making herself more comfortable and all to do with making me suffer. Her hips gently rolled backwards and forwards, pressing her delicious ass against my growing hard-on. When the moves became more like thrusts, and I was sporting the world’s biggest boner, I took her hips in my hands and held her still.

  “Virtuous, remember?” I kissed her neck, nipping at the point where it joined her shoulder.

  “It looked like you were the one who needed reminding,” she whispered back before twisting to kiss my cheek. “Now let me focus on the performance!”

  I played good for a while, allowing myself only above-clothes contact, as I thought about what to do when we got home. I knew Grace was expecting that we would be crossing one line or another, now that the first date had officially happened, yet Bob’s talk had me doubting whether that was right. It felt wrong to move our relationship forward without telling her that I knew what had happened. In some ways, I wished that I could un-know what Bob had told me. It didn’t make me think any less of Grace, but it did make me think of the enormity of taking the next physical step. What if it triggered some terrible response in her? Or reminded her of what had happened? Could I cope with what that would do to us?

  Sensing my distracted mind, Grace turned her head to look at me. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, just trying to remain virtuous.” I hated myself for lying to her, but knew I couldn’t admit what had been occupying my mind.

  “There are only a few scenes left,” she said, hugging my arms more tightly around herself and resting her head on my shoulder. I focused on the feel of Grace in my arms and the laughter on stage. The rest would have to wait until later.

  Although she had started the return journey with my hand clasped in hers again, it wasn’t long before Grace fell asleep and I eased my hand out from hers so she could get more comfortable. The disorientated blinking of her eyes as she woke up when we got home made me think that nothing more would be happening anyway and I was filled with more disappointment than relief.

  “I’m going straight up,” she said when we opened the front door. “’Night, Max!” I heard his grunt of a greeting in reply but felt a little disappointed not to have had my own goodnight from her.

  “Everything okay?” Bob asked.

  “Great, thanks. Perfect weather, perfect performance, perfect company. What more could a guy ask for?” We were both aware of the subtext I wasn’t willing to discuss.

  “Sounds good. Well, I’ll be off. See you next week, Max. Take care, Noah.”

  “Did you have a good evening, Dad?” I perched on the sofa arm and looked at him. He gave me his lopsided happy grin before pointing at me and raising his eyebrows.

  “It was amazing,” I confessed. “God, I can’t believe how much I feel for her. One moment I’m overwhelmed by happiness, while the next, I’m overcome by worry about what I’d do if I lost her. She’s just so beautiful and clever and funny and—”

  Dad took my hand in his good one and brought it up to his cheek. The affection in the gesture brought a lump to my throat. He smiled at me before returning my hand.

  “Thanks, Dad. I’m glad you like her too.” We sat and watched the news for a while before he took himself off to bed, that smile still plastered across his face. I quietly made my way upstairs, part of me thinking
how differently Grace had been expecting the evening to end.

  When I left the bathroom, I paused outside her door, wondering if she had locked it but not willing to risk knowing the answer. Pulling my shirt over my head, I walked into my room. And stopped dead.

  Grace was on my bed, dressed in just a cotton vest and some itsy-bitsy underwear that seemed too small yet revealed nothing. As I moved nearer, I could see her closed eyes and hear the faint sound of each exhalation. I tried not to look at the smoothness of her legs or the swell of her unrestrained breasts. Honestly I did.

  I removed my jeans and socks as silently as I could and pulled a spare sheet from the cupboard. Taking care not to disturb her, I eased onto the other side of the bed, covering us both with the sheet. I kissed her shoulder before turning over and hugging the edge of the mattress, determined not to give into the temptation to wrap her in my arms.

  “Goodnight, Grace. Sleep tight.” I soon fell asleep, surrounded by cherry-vanilla-Grace.

  THE WEIGHT OF him pressed into me, his heat pouring over me, suffocating me. I tried to move from under him, but my arms were pinned beneath me. I bucked my hips but stopped when I made contact with the hard evidence of how much he wanted me, in whatever way he could. My head thrashed to the side, expecting—hoping—to see Mum standing there, knife in hand. But, blinking, I saw just strange furniture and the hazy glow of dawn peeping around the curtains.

  Where am I? Panic gave me the strength to pull myself out from underneath him and jump out of the bed. Looking back from the safety of a few steps’ distance, I realised with horror what had happened. Noah lay tangled in a blue sheet, quietly snoring, oblivious to my nightmare. I sat on the floor, remembering the way I’d wanted to be waiting when he came to bed, determined that our evening would end with us even closer. But why had that terrible afternoon been triggered now? There hadn’t been so much as a whisper of it when Noah had touched me before. Nothing. But now this? I hugged my arms around my knees and considered my next step.