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“I spent eighteen months rebuilding her security infrastructure from the ground up. I hired her team myself. I left because I knew I could. I was no longer needed.”
“And you only stay so long as you’re needed,” she surmised, wondering again at the sense of emptiness in the pit of her stomach.
“That’s the job.”
“Is the job why you don’t drink?”
The question was obviously unexpected. He reached for his coffee again, taking another sip. A stalling technique. She sat very still. Waiting, watchful, barely breathing. “In part.”
She frowned. “What does that even mean?”
He sighed heavily, then laughed, once. “Goddamnit. You don’t give up, do you?”
“Nope.”
He placed the cup down gently, eyes resting on the coffee table. “My dad was a drunk.” His lips curled in a whip of derision. “I saw what alcohol did to a man. I came to hate it. The effects, the smell. I tasted it once and almost puked. Then, in my line of work, it’s an advantage to not drink. I prefer to keep my wits sharp at all times.”
She nodded, but she was still caught on what he’d revealed about his home life, growing up. “You said your dad was a drunk. Is he still…?”
Noah flinched; the smallest gesture, one only someone as attuned to him as Max might have noticed. “My father died eleven years ago. I was stationed overseas.”
“Oh, Noah.” Her eyes swept shut for a moment as she processed that grief. “That’s so terrible. How did he –,”
His eyes narrowed and she wondered if he was going to avoid answering her? She probably shouldn’t have asked the question; it was pure curiosity, none of her business. And yet she wanted to know. In fact, it seemed intolerable to Max that something so monumental could have happened in Noah’s life and she didn’t know about it.
“It was a fire. His fault. He was cooking, then he passed out. There were no smoke alarms in his new place – he moved around a lot. Occupational hazard of being a drunk and not able to hold down a job.” Noah’s gaze was steely. “He didn’t stand a chance.”
Sadness coated Max’s insides. She shook her head, at a loss for words, and for once Noah didn’t seem to be pushing her away. He was torn, dragged into the past, and he spoke without restraint. “It was his own fault. He drunk himself into oblivion, every day. I tried to get him help, but it’s not enough to be walked to the rehab clinic. You have to go through the doors; he never would. He couldn’t even admit he had a problem. I hated him, Max. I really did. My whole childhood I kept seeing glimpses of what he was like off the stuff. Only rarely, never for long, but by God, I would live for those moments. By the time I was a teenager, he was a pathetic excuse of a man. He drank round the clock. If the fire hadn’t killed him, his pickled organs would have.”
Max’s heart thundered.
“I made my peace with his death pretty quickly – I’d known for years it was coming. What I hadn’t expected was that he’d take her with him.”
“Your mother?” She whispered, the words hollowed out.
He looked at Max as if from a long way away, as though her question was completely unexpected. “My sister.” His hands stayed perfectly still, his eyes haunted. “She died in the fire too.”
Max groaned, standing on autopilot. His sister had died and he hadn’t been able to save her. Now he dedicated his life to saving other people, to prove to himself that he could, to atone for a guilt he had no business carrying. But he did carry that guilt, every day. It drove him, it pushed him to succeed, to be the very best. She could see now the burden of his responsibility and she ached to take it away.
“She was seventeen, on the cusp of her life. She was kind and funny and smart, clumsy as all hell – she’d trip over a puddle of water. She had such a bright future. And he took it from her.” He shook his head, as if to clear the somber direction of his thoughts. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this.”
“Because I asked,” she said gently. “And because I’m listening.”
His lips twisted in a tight smile. He was shutting down, pushing her away again. She couldn’t bear it. Without thinking, instinct alone firing her, Max moved to the chair and her eyes probed his for the briefest moment before she sat on his lap, straddling him, her arms around his neck. She was close enough that she felt his harsh expulsion of air, felt his warm breath on her neck.
“Max –,” there was both a warning and a plea in her name.
She pressed a finger to his lips; he was silent. A moment later, she dropped her finger, only so she could kiss him. A gentle brush of her lips, a kiss of sympathy and shared pain, of understanding, and gratitude for divulging so much.
But there was something between them, a chemical reaction, that meant no kiss could simply be a light brushing of lips; it wasn’t possible. Fierce heat exploded between them – boom – demanding exploration and indulgence, demanding their all. She moaned softly, deepening the kiss, as his hands found and caught her bottom, holding her where she was at first and then moving her closer to him, holding her over the thickness of his arousal, so white light flashed in her eyes. Desperate, hungry need erupted, as unstoppable as a volcanic explosion, and Max succumbed to it completely, wondering, in the back of her mind, what it was about Noah that could drive her to this fever pitch so effortlessly? His nearness alone was enough to make her body tremble with an awareness she’d never experienced before.
“Damn it,” he cursed into her mouth as one hand moved higher, finding the waistband of her jeans and pushing inside, so his fingertips brushed bare skin.
She ignored the invective, focused only on this kiss, his touch, the pleasure of contact, focusing on the perfection of this.
She wanted to obliterate his pain just as she wanted him to obliterate her own, but that was only a piece of this. At the end of the day, this was more about biology than intention, it was a force greater than them, a force she now realized had been drawing them together from that first morning in her office.
She reached for his buttons, undoing them with fumbling hands at first and then more firmly as determination stole through her. She pushed the shirt off, dropping her head and kissing his shoulders, his tattoo, maneuvering herself backwards a little so she could reach him better. But Noah’s hands were no longer content to remain still; they joined in the same desperate tarantella Max’s evoked, twisting and stroking, pushing and lifting, so Max’s shirt was gone, then her bra and finally he rewarded her with the touch she’d been needing since they were in Paris and he’d pushed her away, his mouth once more on her breasts, his tongue lashing her nipple until she was breathless with pleasure, her head tilted back on a wave of euphoria.
