RUSH (City Lights, #3)(62)

Noah made a noise deep in his chest, and I couldn’t help but moan softly at the feel of him. He grabbed my wrist and I thought it was too much, but he was showing me what he liked: squeeze, stroke, release, over and over.

I braced myself over him and touched him the way he wanted to be touched. He slipped his right arm around me, his hand making a fist in my hair and sending delicious shivers down my spine. Noah’s eyes were open, cloudy with lust, while my hand caressed him with slowly increasing speed and pressure.

“Is this okay?” I whispered in his ear.

He nodded, teeth clenched. “I thought you’d be shy. You’re not shy.” He turned to me. “I want to touch you. I have to touch you now.”

“Yes…oh yes, please…”

He brought his left hand across his body, under my stroking arm, and found my waist. My rhythm nearly faltered as his fingers slid between my thighs and pressed against the dampness between my legs. I pressed back against him, against his stroking touch. His fingers slipped under my panties and I moaned to feel his skin on mine.

Noah’s breath was coming in short gasps now. “Do you want me to?”

I couldn’t speak, I only nodded, then inhaled sharply and nearly lost control of my hand that touched him for the bolt of ecstasy that shot through me.

“Does it feel good, baby?”

Before I could form a coherent reply, Noah made a beckoning motion with his fingers inside me while circling his thumb over the sensitive bud of flesh. I bit back a cry, my back arching, my thoughts reduced to the basest desire for more.

A stream of nonsensical words poured out of me. “Noah, yes. Yes, yes…Please, oh god, Noah…”

“You feel so good,” he breathed against my neck. “My god, Charlotte, you feel incredible…”

Somehow, I managed to keep touching him, and he touched me, our mouths kissing when we could, or simply brushing against one another as the pleasure grew between us like a rising sun. Our limbs tangled, our breaths mingled, and we stroked and kissed until he gave a half grunt, half moan through gritted teeth. His body tensed against mine, and then let go in release that seemed ages in the making.

A fleeting thrill of pride that I had created that pleasure in him flashed across my mind, then was lost in the delirium of my own climax. Noah’s fingers thrust gently but deeply a final time, his thumb pressing down on that ball of nerves, and then pleasure unlike anything I’d ever experienced exploded across every inch of my body, and it seemed to go on and on, until Noah withdrew his hand and we both collapsed, breathing heavily in the dimness of his room.

I lay quiet for a moment, wallowing in an afterglow that was—come to find out—a real thing. I basked. I reveled. My first non-self-created orgasm. I glanced at Noah beside me, eyes closed, the tension gone from his body so that he looked as if he were sinking into the bed.

I felt a laugh want to break free, I felt so good—both for having brought him to that intense ecstasy and for feeling the same from him. But as the pleasure faded I could practically see all the doubt and worry creep back into his thoughts, and try to steal the peaceful contentment from his face. I couldn’t let it.

“So,” I said, grinning. “Was it good for you?”

Noah froze for a second as my silly question sank in. Then I watched his lips twitch slightly. I held my breath as his mouth turned upward, and then he smiled. Noah Lake actually smiled. My heart leapt—I’d never seen anything more beautiful. But the smile kept going as a strange sound rumbled in his chest, and then burst out of him. Laughter.

Noah laughed, and I couldn’t help but laugh with him, until he turned to me and I nearly fainted to see his handsome, smiling, laughing face this close to me. Holy god, he was gorgeous while sulky and brooding, but a smile transformed him into the man I knew he was when I first saw his photo. The real Noah Lake had been right there, just beneath the surface all along.

“Will you stay the night with me?” he asked. “I don’t mean sleep with me. I just mean, go and put on whatever it is you sleep in while I change, and come back, and maybe kiss a little more and then go to sleep.”

“Yes! Yes, I will. I’d love to. Definitely, and other assorted ways of saying yes.”

He kissed me quiet, and stroked my cheek. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For being here. With me.”

I nodded, at a loss for words for once in my life, and slipped downstairs to put on a t-shirt, fresh underwear and soft sleep pants. My body was still humming from Noah’s touch when I raced back upstairs.

The floorboards creaked at his door, and his head came up. He’d changed his pants and put on a black shirt that made his eyes look too astonishing for words. He smiled softly and that put him over the edge. I didn’t know if or when I’d get used to how beautiful he was when he smiled. I hoped it was never.

I climbed into bed with him and he put his arm around me at once. Exhaustion reared its head—I’d been wrung out by the shifting spectrum of emotions I’d experienced that night: from dread to lust to pure, heart-pounding joy. I felt my eyes getting heavy at once.

Outside the windows, thunder rumbled outside and rain smattered the glass.

“Maybe it’s good we didn’t sleep together tonight,” Noah said. “God knows I wanted to. Maybe it’s better to take it slow.” He held me more tightly to him. “I still have work to do, Charlotte. Demons to battle, I guess.”