Chapter 38

Chapter Thirty-Eight

I t was the early hours of the morning before everyone finally staggered off to bed. Noah was last to retire for the night—he wanted to do one final security sweep of the warehouse before joining Annabelle in the storage room. Eddie might be locked up tight, but the gang leader still had influence, and a few Demons still wandered the city.

Satisfied that the place was secure and the alarms all set, he walked through the quiet open-plan office to their makeshift bedroom. There’d never been any question as to where Noah would sleep. From now on, he planned to stick to Annabelle like glue.

The guys had helped him move the bed from the guest room upstairs into the storage room, and Annabelle was already in it when he arrived. The small, windowless room looked cozy, with a tiny lamp glowing and most of the space taken up by the bed.

“About time,” Annabelle said with a smile. “I thought I’d have to sleep alone.”

“Not tonight, Bella.” Or any other night, either, if he had his way.

He started to undress, her eyes darkening as she watched.

“Don’t bother with pj’s,” she said suggestively. “I didn’t.”

“Bella,” he groaned, kicking off his jeans. “I don’t think?—”

She held up a hand. “Good. Don’t think. Just get your cute backside into bed.”

There was no dealing with her. All Noah could do was comply. Her gaze turned appreciative once he’d stepped out of his underwear, and there was no denying his ego liked that look on her face.

“You’ve been through a lot today,” he said, trying a different tack. “You’re bruised and sore. And the doctor said you need sleep.”

“Don’t worry.” She smiled. “I’ll sleep after.”

Noah didn’t have the fight in him to protest any further. Like he’d said, it’d been a tough day, and he wanted to reassure himself that Annabelle was alive and well and was going to be okay.

Carefully, so as not to jostle her injuries, he pulled back the covers and slipped in beside her. “I need to hold you,” he confessed.

She willingly went into his embrace, pressing herself against his side as he slid an arm around her shoulders. There was something deeply reassuring about skin against skin. She hooked a leg over his as her hand splayed across his stomach. Noah held her tight, clasping her head as her cheek pressed against his chest.

Her fingertips traced the planes and indentations of his abdomen while he softly teased his fingers through her hair. They lay like that, entwined together in the faint lamplight, breathing each other in and remembering they were still alive. Although the thought of what might have been still haunted him. He could have lost her. It’d all come far too close for comfort.

A shudder passed through him at the thought.

“Don’t,” Annabelle whispered before pressing a kiss to his chest. “We’re here, we’re alive, we won.”

He stared up at the ceiling without really seeing it. “I feel like I’m back in that SUV, knowing you’re still at the warehouse and I’m not there to help you.”

“Dr. Mallory says that the best way to deal with feelings like that is to remind yourself you’re in the present by being consciously aware of where you are now.” She ran a hand over his stomach. “We’re here together. Feel my touch. It’s real. It’s now. It’s all that matters.”

Noah shivered as she caressed him. “You are so much stronger than I am,” he told her, meaning every word. He was in awe of her.

“True,” she teased, and he felt her smile against his skin. “I’m also a delayed reactor. You can help calm me down when I freak out later this week.”

“It’s a deal,” he promised.

Her hand slid lower, and he sucked in a breath as she wrapped her fist around his hard, ready length. Unlike his brain, other parts of his body had no problem with staying in the present.

“Bella,” he whispered as his own hand found its way to the heavy weight of her breast.

She stroked him slowly. “Today, when everything was happening, I told myself all I had to do was wait for you.” She angled her face to look up at him. “I never once doubted that you’d come for me.”

Noah reluctantly moved his hand from her breast to clasp her wrist. “If you keep stroking me like that, I’ll come for you right now too.” Carefully, gently, he removed her hold and rolled her onto her back.

He leaned up over her, tracing the bruise around her eye. Hating that it was there.

Annabelle reached up to cup his cheek. “Stay in the present, remember?”

“It’ll take some practice,” he murmured, drinking her in with his eyes before closing the gap between them to sip at her lips. “Lots and lots of practice.”

Their kiss was slow, each taste an act of adoration, of caring. She was precious to him. Inside and out. And Noah was in no hurry to end the sweet tangle of lips and tongue. Eventually, he pulled away. When he gazed down at her, he saw flushed cheeks and kiss-swollen lips. He felt her hands clasping his back, keeping him close. As if he’d ever want to be anywhere else.

“I love you,” she whispered.

“Damn, I was going to say that first.” In true Merchant fashion, he’d told everyone on his team that he loved her but hadn’t gotten around to telling Annabelle. He definitely had a gift for romance.

“I know,” she said with a wide, slow smile. “Nothing stopping you from saying it now, is there?”

Noah kissed the tip of her nose, then those laughing eyes, then the corner of her smiling lips before whispering the words against her mouth. “I love you.” He kissed her chin. “I love you.” He returned to her mouth. “I love you.” The words tasted like ambrosia.

Her arms wrapped around his neck, pulling him closer as their kiss deepened into a tangle of tongues and gasps for air. Hands took on a life of their own, roaming, exploring, caressing. They were on a slow road to their destination, neither in any hurry to reach the end.

Mindful of her bruises, Noah supported most of his weight as he kissed his way down her throat to those luscious breasts. He twirled his tongue around one pert nipple, making her gasp and arch up into him. Her fingers twisted into his hair, holding his head against her. Needing him there. Needing his kiss. His touch. Noah recognized the need because he felt it too, burning inside him like a void, desperate to be filled. His hand slid down to her warm, wet heat, testing her readiness for him.

“Please,” she said, “I don’t want to go over without you.”

He understood and grasped her hip to gently move her beneath him as he made space for himself between her legs. With his arms bearing his weight, he rose above her. She looked decadent—her dark, wild hair strewn across the pillow as she stared up at him with nothing but trust in her eyes.

They were beyond communicating with words now, in that place where only lovers could expound with touch and adoration. She drew her knees up alongside his thighs as she held on to his waist, and they gazed into each other’s eyes as he slowly entered her.

This wasn’t about sex. About climax. Or release. This was a joining. A promise. A shared need to love and know one another. He felt it in her touch, her look, her smile.

Slowly, reverently, he moved inside her.

His Bella.

Her Noah.

Together.

Annabelle sank back onto the bed, gasping as Noah collapsed beside her. A faint sheen of sweat covered both of them, glistening in the dim lamplight. The dull ache of her bruises mingled with the much more delicious ache of a body well loved. And that’s what she felt—loved.

Her aunt often quoted an old Chinese proverb that said if you sat in one place long enough, the whole world would pass by. Or something like that. Well, Annabelle had sat in her warehouse for ten long years, and eventually, it had paid off because her world had come to her in the form of Noah. Her lips curved into a smile as she realized how soppy her thoughts were, yet they still felt true.

“What are you grinning about?” Noah asked breathlessly.

“I’ve just realized that I connived to have your business in the building so I can keep seeing you. It’ll be kinda awkward if we ever go our separate ways.”

He propped himself up on one elbow, looking intensely serious. “Is that what you think will happen?”

“No.” She ran her fingertips down his brutish face. “But we’re still so new. Only crazy people make plans to spend forever together after just a few weeks. Right?”

“I’m okay with being crazy,” Noah said. “The building, the office, has nothing to do with us.”

“But, Noah, I’m not normal. If you weren’t around here all the time, I’d never see you. It’s not like we can go on dates.” She scoffed at herself. “Unless you want to hang out on the roof, near the door. I can just about manage that.”

“Bella”—his expression softened—”I thought we were way past dating.”

“Then what? I can’t move in with you.”

He ran a fingertip from the hollow in her throat, right down the center of her body to circle her belly button, and she shivered with an overwhelming awareness of all that was him.

“We could move in with you,” he said evenly.

A surge of hope crashed through her like a tsunami. “But the boys hardly know me.”

“Then we let them get to know you.” He moved closer. “Before or after we move in is totally up to you.”

She reached for him. “Are we insane? I mean, normal people don’t move this fast, do they?”

“Bella.” His smile was filled with humor. “You can’t leave this building, and I spent years talking to my dead wife. There’s nothing normal about either of us. And if we can’t follow the normal pattern of things, then I say we make up our own.” He leaned over and pressed his lips to the spot above her heart. “We do things our way. To hell with how the rest of the world does it.”

“You say the most romantic things,” she said, pulling him close.

“I’m much more of a doer than a talker,” Noah said.

And then, he proved his point.