A Million Guilty Pleasures: Million Dollar Duet (13 page)

“I love you,” I reminded him.

Noah looked at me adoringly. “And I’ll never get tired of hearing you say those words. Here,” he said, reaching into his back pocket and pulling out his wallet. He plucked a little black metal card out and handed it to me. “I want you to have this for clothes or anything else you might need or want.”

“A credit card, Noah? Don’t you think you’ve given me enough already?”

“Hey,” he said, taking my chin in his fingers. “I thought we already went over this. You’re my woman to take care of, and I intend to do so quite thoroughly. I don’t want to hear any complaints about it.”

He gave me a chaste kiss and then grabbed the strap of my bag and hooked it over his shoulder. Holding his hand out for mine, he said, “Ready?”

I took his offered hand because I always would. I had no idea what was ahead for us, but I knew that as long as he was holding my hand, I’d follow him through the darkest of nights, because somewhere at the end of our journey, there would be light.

Noah stopped dead in his tracks at the door and turned around. “What?” I asked when he gave no indication of what he was up to.

He walked to the bedside table, opened the drawer and then reached inside. With a disapproving scowl he held up the vibrator he’d given me, which we’d nicknamed the “Crawford bullet.” “Forgot something, didn’t you?”

“Well, I didn’t think I’d need it,” I answered, confused.

He smirked and stuffed it into my bag. “Oh, you’ll need it all right.”

He was happy, and I was reminded that I did that for him. The Cooch reminded me she had a little something to do with that also, which was probably true, but I mentally reminded her that it wasn’t just about sex between Noah and me anymore. Not that I was demanding she hang up her hooker heels or donate the Super Cooch outfit to Goodwill or anything. They’d come in handy someday soon. Of that I was positive.

Once my bag was loaded in the trunk of the car and Noah and I were settled in the backseat, we were off. I watched the house disappear from sight. Sensing my sadness, Noah wrapped his arms around me and pulled me into his side so that I could rest my head on his shoulder.

He kissed the top of my head. “It’ll be nothing but a vast waste of space until you return, and then it’ll feel like home again.”

I felt the same way. Home was wherever Noah was, whether it was in an enormous mansion surrounded by Edward Scissorhands sculptures or a cardboard box in an alley. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was whether or not he was with me.

I fell asleep sometime during the long drive to Hillsboro.
All I remembered was Noah petting my hair lovingly and then encouraging me to put my head in his lap. At first I thought it was his way of hinting for a blow job, and so did the Cooch, but it turned out he just wanted to get cuddly. Don’t get me wrong, it was nice, but I felt like he was holding back a part of him, the domineering, forceful side that made the Cooch go all fangirl for the bad boy. Maybe it was because he thought it was what he was supposed to do since we’d gotten all sticky sweet with our declarations and all. I would’ve protested against his insistence that I get some rest—or been a little more assertive with my offering of the blow job—but truth be known, he’d worn my ass out the night before and I really could have used a little more sleep. I guess my tired brain won the battle after the Cooch threw down the gauntlet, because before I knew it, I was out like a light.

Noah woke me up quite a while later. He complained that having my face in his lap had given him a major hard-on, and his balls just couldn’t take it anymore. Served him right. He adjusted himself in his jeans while I looked around to see where we were. We were on the outskirts of Hillsboro—I recognized the surroundings because I’d traveled that road with my folks so many times. When I was a kid, I used to stare out the window and make up all these different stories about the landscape. My favorite was pretending I was a poor maiden who had been locked up in a little cottage, forced to pass the days alone while waiting for my Prince Charming to ride up on his white stallion and sweep me off my feet.

I snorted at myself internally. What little girl didn’t have that fantasy?

That memory was so vivid in my mind that I still remembered
most of the details. In fact, just around the bend there would be a …

“Stop the car!” I yelled, and then started pounding on the glass divider that separated us from Samuel.

“Why? What’s wrong?” Noah asked in a panic.

“We have to stop! Please, Noah, we have to!” I said, a little louder than was necessary since he was sitting right beside me. Even though he winced at my shrieking, he got the urgency.

Noah pushed a button and the window rolled down. “Samuel, pull over.” He was all business, and normally that would kind of turn me on while simultaneously pissing me off, but now was not the time.

Once the car rolled to a stop on the shoulder of the road, I fumbled with the door handle until I finally pushed it open and jumped out.

“Lanie!” Noah called out from behind as he followed me out. “Why are you running away from me?”

I couldn’t stop to answer him. It was there, the little country cottage that I’d always pretended was mine. It had a stone chimney, flower boxes filled with hyacinths under the arched windows, and a door of knotty wood, and it was sitting in the middle of a meadow to boot. The grass was tall and green, littered with little purple, white, and yellow flowers, and the air smelled crisp and clean. It was perfect—and, as I’d just noticed, it was for sale.

I ran as fast as my legs could carry me. I had to touch it, to know that it was real and not merely a part of my imagination. The wind blew through my hair, and I suddenly felt like that little girl again, alight with childlike joy. Seriously, my cheeks hurt from smiling so hard.

I felt Noah’s fingertips when he reached out and barely skimmed the skin on my arm, but I kept running, giggling like a fool. I turned to look over my shoulder at him and with another giggle called out, “Come on, Noah. Catch me!”

Just as I reached the porch of the cottage, his arms hooked around my waist and he pulled me to him. I laughed—oh God, I laughed. Everything was perfect. I was standing in front of the little cottage, and I was wrapped in the arms of my very own knight in shining armor.

My knight smiled down at me. “Just where do you think you’re going, kitten?”

His head, with its fantastic sex hair, blocked out the sun in the sky behind him, creating a halo effect and casting a soft shadow across his face. He was beautiful. I reached up and softly ran my fingers through his hair, my heart swelling with everything that was good and right in the world. “Kiss me, Noah.”

His eyes widened and his body stiffened. “Whoa … déjà vu.” His voice was barely a whisper, and the expression on his face was weird.

“What?”

Noah shook his head slightly. “Nothing.” He leaned down and brushed his lips across mine.

Usually our kisses were full of fire and passion, hungry. But this one? This one was sweet and delicate, controlled. And it made me horny as hell.

“Mmm,” I sighed in perfect contentment, and then opened my eyes to see him staring down at me with this look I’d never seen before. I’d always heard the eyes were the doorway to the soul, and right then I believed it.

“What are you thinking?” I asked him.

Noah smiled and shook his head. “About mud and blooming flowers. Let’s just leave it at that.”

Well, that certainly was an odd thing to say, but Noah was quirky in his own little way, and I was bouncing like a little girl on the inside, so I didn’t question him any further.

“Come on,” I said, taking his hand and pulling him behind me to peer into the windows.

“What are we doing here? What is this place?”

“When I was a little girl, I used to pretend I lived here,” I told him as I looked through the window and found the room on the other side empty. I tugged on his hand to drag him around to the side of the house so I could do the same thing there. “It’s magical, don’t you think?”

“Magical?” he asked.

“Yeah, like straight out of a fairy tale.” I cupped my hands around my face to block the reflection of the sun on the window and gasped when I finally achieved a clear view. “Oh, the fireplace is breathtaking!”

Nothing on the inside looked modern. It had more of a quaint, rustic appeal, like it belonged in the pages of
Country Living
rather than
Modern Home:
arched doorways, wooden floors, wavy glass windows. I could just imagine Noah and me snuggled up on the couch, or making love on a soft rug in the glow of the fireplace. Of course I was getting way ahead of myself, lost in my own world of make-believe once again.
Such a dreamer you are, Lanie Talbot
.

Noah surveyed the place with his brow furrowed. “It’s a little run-down, don’t you think?”

“Noah Crawford!” I smacked his arm. “How dare you talk
like that about my dream home? Besides, it’s nothing a little love and elbow grease couldn’t fix.”

He was right, but it wasn’t that bad. Some of the shingles on the roof were missing, everything was caked in dust and grime, and judging by the way the wind whistled through the panes of the windows, they’d probably need to be replaced as well. But all in all, it was still picture perfect.

“Oh! I’ve always wanted to see the backyard,” I squealed and tugged him along yet again.

When we made it around to the back of the house, I stopped dead in my tracks. The view was breathtaking. There was a little pond about fifty yards or so from the house with a family of ducks paddling through the water. A small gazebo sat beside the pond with a white wooden swing swaying to and fro in its center. A circular flower garden surrounded it, and a stone walkway led to the house. And since it was facing the west, that meant it was the perfect place to view the setting sun.

Without warning, Noah pushed my back to the stone wall of the house. One hand landed on the stones to my right, while the other cupped my ass and pulled me to him. Our bodies pressed together, our foreheads touching, Noah looked into my eyes and said, “That look on your face … I want you so fucking bad right now.”

He kissed my neck while kneading my ass and grinding his hips into me. He wasn’t kidding. I could feel his hardened length against my abdomen, and I wondered how in the hell he was able to keep it from busting through the tight denim of his jeans.

His hand was suddenly at my waist, and he popped the button of my pants before slipping his hand inside. When his fingers
found the Cooch, we both moaned and my head fell back against the house.

“Noah, we can’t,” I said unconvincingly as I pulled at his arm in vain. “Samuel …”

“He’s at the car. He won’t come back here,” he mumbled against my neck as he continued to assault it with hot kisses.

“Neighbors,” I tried again, seeing the house through the trees on the east side of the house.

“Let them watch. I want you. Now.”

I heard the unmistakable sound of metal against metal as he lowered his zipper. “It’ll be quick. I promise,” he whispered against my ear. “Turn around, kitten.”

I took another look at the house across the way and, seeing no one out and about, I did as he asked. Admittedly, I was excited about the precarious position we’d found ourselves in, our need for instant gratification taking precedence over the possibility we could get caught.

The chilly air nipped at my bare skin when Noah lowered my pants down my thighs. His body covered mine and his hand drifted over the swell of my ass and between my legs.

“Goddamnit, Delaine. Always so wet for me,” he said, and then he sank to his knees.

My hands were pressed against the side of the house, my legs ensnared by my jeans, and there was nothing I could do to stop him. He pulled my hips out and away from the wall as his tongue sought out my pussy.

“Oh, God, Noah.” I moaned, closing my eyes and biting down on my bottom lip.

Just a taste was all he wanted. His tongue snaked its way through my soaked folds, finding that little pleasure bud and
teasing it only for a moment before he directed his attention elsewhere. He gave my pussy one long lick from front to back, but then he kept going until …

“Holy shit!” I felt his tongue swirl around my rear opening, lapping at it with an unbelievable pressure. Moaning like a shameless hussy, I arched my body and pushed back against his mouth, begging for more. Noah gave my new favorite body part a sensual open-mouth kiss before he stood back up.

His husky voice was at my ear. “Liked that, did you?” I felt him rub the head of his dick back and forth between my legs in search of my opening.

Was I supposed to like that? Oh, God, I really liked that. “Uh-huh,” was all I managed.

Noah entered me, his cock slowly sliding inside my core until he was fully sheathed. He rolled his hips, pulling back a bit before pushing forward again. He was merely getting the feel of the angle, but it drove me absolutely insane.

“Ready, kitten?”

“Uh-huh.” Obviously my vocabulary had decided to take a hike, and my voice sounded like the wind had been knocked out of me.

Noah chuckled at my reaction and kissed the spot just below my ear. Then he held my hips and started a steady rhythm of in and out thrusts. “Fucking A,” he moaned. “It’s like dipping my dick in the honey pot. So soft, so warm, so sweet. What did I ever do to deserve you?”

Of course I knew I should’ve been the one to ask that question, and he should’ve already known the answer to his own, but even if I said it a million times, I’d never make him believe it.

“You saved my mother’s life … and mine,” I answered him. Feeling a little wicked, I tacked on, “Plus I love how you lick my pussy.”

I heard that growl I loved so much rumble from his chest. A hand latched onto my shoulder to keep me steady and his thrusts increased in pace and roughness. “In that case, I guess I do deserve you.”

I turned toward the thicket of woods to the east in time to see a man step out of the sliding glass doors of the house next door. He carried a tray of something toward what looked like a barbecue and lifted the lid.