AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Once, surely, just wasn’t enough.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I SEE HER the moment she steps out onto the street, her hair pulled into a bun that I instantly imagine loosening with my fingers, pulling free and tangling around her shoulders. She’s wearing a cream trench coat belted at the waist and, from this distance, it looks like dark pants that hug her slim legs. Legs that have wrapped around me; legs that I haven’t yet tasted—remiss of me. I have been fantasising about running my tongue down her calves, finding all her sweetest spots and tormenting her with them.
Her head is bent; she doesn’t see me. I wonder where she’s going?
Has she been thinking of me?
She hasn’t called. She hasn’t emailed. Did I expect her to? Has she been waiting to hear from me? I don’t chase women. I don’t chase anyone. But damn it if I didn’t want to turn up at Holly’s office Monday evening and drag her back to my bed. Ditto Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and, finally, here I am. Telling myself that having waited a week I have proved to myself that she is as disposable as everyone else in my life.
A familiar sense of distance calms my pulse. It doesn’t matter what she’s been thinking or wanting; I don’t care.
This isn’t about anything except the present—and the present we can give each other. I have no expectations of her and she sure as hell doesn’t of me, or she would have tried to contact me.
That’s perfect. There’s no need for my chest to be feeling like this—Holly Scott-Leigh is different to my usual lovers, but she’s the same in many ways. I can manage her, this, us, whatever the hell I’m doing.
And I did sleep better after she’d left. For the first time since Julianne died, I was able to get several hours of sleep in a row. Perhaps Holly did that. Maybe fucking her worked magic on parts of me distinct from my cock.
She looks towards me as she crosses the street, but it is a cursory inspection, only to make sure she is safe to go, and she doesn’t look towards me long enough to recognise me. She drops her head down and surges forward. As she reaches the footpath, I step off my bike.
A thrill of anticipation is unmistakable, and when I step forward the thrill trebles in intensity.
She has been abused and she is wary—perhaps it’s a wariness she’ll always feel? The idea of that rubs me completely the wrong way, but I shelve my reaction to better observe hers. She looks at me, her expression confused and hurt and then angry and, finally, cold, colder than ice, as she lifts an elegant brow and crosses her arms.
‘Noah.’ My name is a dismissal, not a hello.
She’s pissed with me.
Fascinating.
‘Holly.’ I grin, enjoying the way my cavalier response needles her. I told you, I like needling her and the more I do it, the more I realise that.
She doesn’t know what to say. She’s looking at me as though she’s trying to find words and I offer none; I simply watch the play of emotions as they constrict her face.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asks finally. Unmistakably cold now.
‘What do you think?’ I reach behind me for a helmet and hold it out to her. She makes no effort to take it. Something like iron wraps around my chest.
‘A booty call?’ She is outraged at that, angling her face away from me, showing only her cold profile.
‘Are you okay?’ The question is surprising to me. I think it’s the fi
rst time I’ve evinced concern for anyone’s emotional state, besides Gabe’s perhaps. I’m not into dating; I don’t do it often. If I see a woman, it’s a light, casual affair. A few nights. A bit of fun.
I don’t ask them if they’re ‘okay’. I don’t hold my breath while waiting for the answer, as I am now, desperately needing to hear that she is.
‘Fine.’ The crisp answer shows she doesn’t care that it’s a first for me. She draws in a breath and turns back to face me; I feel as though I’ve been slammed in the chest with a stack of knives. She’s so beautiful and somehow I’d forgotten, even in the thirty seconds since she spun her face away from me. ‘Anyway—’ I hear the finality in the word ‘—I was just about to head home.’
I narrow my eyes and nod. ‘I’ll give you a lift.’
‘Noah...’
A car goes by, Christmas carols playing loudly, and she waits until it has passed.
‘I don’t know what you want from me.’ It’s simple and complicated. Terrifying and empowering.
The problem is, I don’t know what I want from her either. Besides the fact that she’s an addiction that’s spilled into my bloodstream, I know only that I need her now. Here. Not here, because she deserves better than that, but the first place we can get to with a modicum of privacy.
