“I’m not playing.”
My nostrils flared. Noah was provoking me. On purpose, to see what I’d do. I wanted at once to smack him, and to rake my fingers through his hair and pull.
“I won’t let you do this,” I said.
“You won’t stop me.” His voice was low, now. Indescribably sexy.
My eyes fluttered closed. “Like hell I won’t,” I whispered. “I could kill you.”
“Then I’d die happy.”
“Not funny.”
“Not joking.”
I opened my eyes and focused on his. “I’d be happier without you,” I lied as convincingly as I could.
“Too bad.” Noah’s mouth curved into the half-smile I loved and hated so much, just inches from my navel.
My head was foggy. “You’re supposed to say, ‘All I want is your happiness. I’ll do whatever it takes, even if it means being without you.’ “
“Sorry,” Noah said. “I’m just not that big of a person.” His hands traveled up the side of my jeans, up to my waist. The pads of his fingertips grazed the skin just underneath the fabric of my shirt. I tried to steady my pulse and failed.
“You want me,” Noah said simply, definitively. “Don’t lie to me. I can hear it.”
“Irrelevant,” I breathed.
“No, it isn’t irrelevant. You want me as much as I want you. And all I want is you.”
My tongue warred with my mind. “Today,” I whispered.
Noah stood slowly, his body skimming mine as he rose. “Today. Tonight. Tomorrow. Forever.” Noah’s eyes held mine. His stare was infinite. “I was made for you, Mara.”
And at that moment, even though I didn’t know how it was possible or what it meant, I believed him.
“And you know it. So tell the truth. Do you want me?” His voice was strong, confident as he voiced the question that sounded more like a statement.
But his face. In the slightest crease and furrow of his brow, barely perceptible, it was there. Doubt.
Did he really not know? As I tried to comprehend the impossibility of that idea, Noah’s confidence began to fray at the edge of his expression.
Right would have been allowing his question to go unanswered. Letting Noah believe, impossible though it was, that I didn’t want him. That I didn’t love him. Then this would all be over. Noah would be the best thing that almost happened to me, but he would be safe.
I chose wrong.
56
I WRAPPED MY ARMS AROUND NOAH’S NECK AND buried myself in him.
“Yes,” I whispered into his hair as he held me.
“What’s that?” I could hear the smile in his voice. “I want you,” I said, smiling back.
“Then who cares about anything else?”
Noah’s hands on my waist, on my face, felt so familiar, like they belonged there. Like they were home. I pulled back to look at him and see if he felt it, but when I did, I shattered into a million pieces.
Noah believed in me. I didn’t understand until then, right then, how much I needed to see it.
I shivered at the lovely scrape of his jaw on my skin. His lips skimmed my collarbone and when he shifted his hips into mine, I became senseless. I knotted my fingers in his warm hair and crashed my mouth into his. When I tasted his tongue, the world fell away.
But then the bitter air of the asylum stung my nostrils. Jude’s face flickered behind my eyelids and I pulled away, gasping.
“Mara, what’s wrong?”
I didn’t answer him. I didn’t know how. We’d come so close to kissing a thousand times before, but something almost always stopped us—myself, Noah, the universe. Before now, the only time we’d succeeded, I was sure, positive that he almost died. My heart rebelled at the idea, even though I knew I was right. What was happening to me? To him, when we kissed?
“What is it?” he asked.
I needed to say something, but that’s not the kind of thing you can just bust out with.
“I’m—I don’t want you to die,” I stammered.
Noah looked appropriately confused. “All right,” he said, and pushed back my hair. “I won’t die.”
I looked at the floor, but Noah ducked his head and caught my eyes. “Listen, Mara. There’s no pressure.” His hands brushed down my face. “This,” he said, as they trailed down my neck. “You.” My arms. “Are enough.” He laced his fingers into mine and held my stare. I knew he meant it.
“Just knowing you’re mine.” He released my hand and lifted his to my face, glancing his fingers over my lips. “Knowing that no one else gets to touch you like this,” he said. “Seeing the way you look at me when I do.
“And hearing the way you sound when I do, “A slight, uneven smile played on his lips. Just looking at them was not enough.
Seized by boldness and frustration, I grasped Noah’s hand and pulled him to his bed. I pushed him until he was sitting and climbed into his lap, ignoring his raised eyebrows as I straddled him. My hands furiously worked the buttons on his plaid shirt but fumbled. My dexterity had vanished along with my decorum.