“I heard that,” he murmurs against my skin as he presses another kiss down onto my crevice. “Give me more.”
I hate it. I hate that he loves it so much … and I hate that I probably love it just as much, if not more.
“You know you want to,” he groans, licking and kissing me until it drives me insane.
My fingers scrunch up the blanket underneath me as I writhe from pleasure. “Fuck.”
“That’s it, Natalie. Come for me,” he murmurs, and he sticks a finger inside my pussy too.
The combination of his tongue and finger is too much to handle, and I explode right then and there in sweet agony, moaning out his name. “Noah!”
“Yes,” he groans, licking up all my juice. “Give it all to me.”
I can’t catch my breath, the waves keep coming and coming, and he laps me up like there’s no tomorrow.
By the time the orgasm subsides, I’m panting, and I feel completely out of it, as if I’m no longer in my body. I just lie there in the wet bed with closed eyes, wondering how this all happened.
It’s like we were angry and yelling at each other one second, and then the next, we were fucking like bunnies.
He crawls back up the bed to lie down beside me, and I curl up on my side so I don’t have to look at him. He wraps his arm around my waist, pulling my back close against his chest to place a small, gentle kiss on my neck that melts me into a puddle.
And at that moment, I close my eyes and let all the worries huddled in the back of my mind fade, so I can finally sleep in peace.
When I wake up, he’s still there. I don’t know why I’m so surprised by this, but I am. I would’ve expected him to either be long gone by now … or to have taken me back to the community in the middle of the night.
But we’re still in my bed, in my apartment, and the sun is shining brightly once again. We slept through the night together.
I turn and watch him blink a couple of times.
“You look beautiful when you sleep,” he says, wearing a genuine smile on his face as he cuddles me.
I blush, unsure what to do with such a compliment coming from a man like him. “Thanks.”
He rubs my belly over my scar, and my muscles instinctively tighten.
“Don’t feel ashamed,” he says. “It’s okay. You don’t have to keep your past a secret from me anymore.”
I don’t know if I can trust him, but it’s too late now. Can’t stuff the genie back into the bottle. Now that he’s seen the room, he knows I had a child before.
“I won’t use it against you, if that’s what you’re worried about,” he says. “I just want to know … what happened to you?”
I sigh. There’s no point in lying about it. “Steve left me after I decided to keep our baby … but the baby didn’t make it through the birth.”
He hugs me even tighter, and for some reason, that makes all the difference. “I’m so sorry you went through that.”
Why is he so kind, so sweet right now, and such a monster back there in the community?
My skin erupts into goose bumps from his touch, but I ignore them. How could I give in to these feelings stirring in my stomach when I can’t even face the fact that another baby is growing inside my belly?
Noah keeps gently rubbing me.
“You’re upset,” he says. It’s not a question; it’s a statement.
How does he know me so well?
Is that what it means to be lovers?
I close my eyes and sigh.
“I don’t know what to feel,” I say. It’s the only thing I know to be truthful right now. “Or how to feel about you.”
It’s silent for a few seconds. “You like being with me,” he says, placing another gentle kiss on the small of my neck, “but you hate what it means.”
I nod. It’s like he can read my mind. “It’s wrong.”
“It doesn’t have to be,” he says.
I turn around and look at him. “How? How would it ever be okay?”
“Well …” He grabs my hand and entwines our fingers. “We could just be husband and wife.”
“No. Not there.” I get up immediately. I don’t want to think about it, let alone stay lying down next to the man who changed my life forever. “It can’t ever be like that. I can’t live with that.”
“Then help me change it from the inside out,” he says, sitting up too. He places a hand on my shoulder. “Remember that little girl you were and the boy who helped you escape? I’m still the same boy, and that boy needs you.”
“Don’t do this,” I say, shaking him off while tears well up in my eyes. “I can’t do this. I can’t sacrifice my life.”