beneath mine.” He breathes. “I want to fuck you so hard you forget your name. I want to fuck you so long you forget time. And I want to fuck you so good that both don’t matter.”
I take a large gulp of air as Noah’s grip loosens, his large fingers trailing to my jaw. He strokes the skin there, no doubt feeling me swallow. I wet my bottom lip with the tip of my tongue.
“And what do you want me to say to that?”
“Say that I’m not a liar. That I’m not crazy to want you as much as I do. Say that I can believe you. That I can trust you.”
I shake my head, the motion making Noah’s fingers lower to my neck. They play along the sensitive nerves there and I suck in a breath.
“I can’t do that, Noah.”
His eyes turn to midnight-deep diamonds. “Why not?”
“Because I barely trust myself, Noah. I never have before. Until you showed me how to.” I exhale. “I need to believe. Believe in something. Believe in myself. God help me, Noah…” Teardrops start to decorate my lashes, and I close them. “I need you to help me believe in fairytales again.”
And then he kisses me.
Chapter 21
NOAH
Bedding Sophia Somerset goes against every better judgment my ass has ever had.
But I don’t know how to stop.
Her skin is still damp, still slightly cool to the touch when I grip the back of her neck, bringing her mouth onto mine.
My frustration with my company, with her, with the world melts the second our lips connect, and I realize in that moment that maintaining my cool will be a helluva lot harder than I expected.
But that’s just the thing…
I never expected her.
The expectation of perfection has followed me my entire life, the responsibility for upholding my flailing, father-less family sitting on my shoulders since I was four years old.
My brothers’ father died when Lachlan was a baby; my own secret father was never around.
In my world, a world of real estate and acquisitions, of pomp and pretending, my grandfather—and owner of the Quinn empire—made sure there was no room for the unexpected.
So when my heavily medicated bipolar mother had an affair with his lawyer, when she cheated on the man who should have been her ‘forever,’ my grandfather made the secrets, the truth and everything surrounding it go away.
The lawyer, Fitzergald Sparrow, retreated to the makings of his own empire. And his son lived on in ignorance.
That is, until Grandfather Quinn thought it fit to confess to a twenty-year old me on his deathbed, revealing the God-awful truth to a young man who’d already felt different form his brothers.
And now it seems that everywhere I turn, surprises are turning up around the corner.
And for the first time in a long time, I welcome it with open arms.
Crafting a carefully polished veneer had been part of my life since I cared to remember. Crafting the image of the perfect company. The perfect son. The perfect sibling under my grandfather’s beloved Quinn surname.
“Snob,” my brothers called it. “Nothing was ever good enough,” they joked.
Perfection.
I’d scoff if I could.
The concept of it was the purest of bullshit.
And that bullshit was my savior. My safety raft in a world where I was quietly drowning.
The scared little daddy-less boy I’d been was still there. Beneath the suit. Hiding inside the penthouse apartment.
Terrified.
Perfection was a better disguise than most. Because once you had it, people rarely tried to peek beneath the surface.
Which was just how I liked it. For so damned long.
But what was perfection compared to having a father who was actually present? What was the illusion of immaculate living next to the belief that your mother—who’d long succumbed to the throes of illness and self-pity—actually gave a shit?
I want to tell Sophia exactly that, but I can’t stop kissing her long enough, and I let my touch, my mouth, my hands say everything that my words can’t.
I know what’s happening between her and I won’t mean anything; it can’t.
But that doesn’t stop me from cupping the edge of Sophia’s soft and delectable ass, lifting her from her feet and separating myself for just a second so I can say the only word that matters right now.
I mutter out “Bedroom.” And she points me down the hall.
My little thief squeezed between my hands, her eyes clenched tight, I carry her just inside of the soft pink walls of her bedroom. Laying her down on the white sheets, I disconnect myself, letting