Noah was placing the small brown box on a sideboard when I pushed him in the shoulder. “What the hell was that? Are you trying to get caught?”
He grabbed my wrists, preventing me from pushing him a second time. He backed me up into the wall, bringing his chest flush with mine. “Sorry for the interruption. Now, where were we?”
He pressed his face into my neck again, and I lost the ability to think. “Tell me what you want,” he whispered, one hand coming to rest on my hip.
“I … I want us to leave,” I croaked weakly and felt him smile against my neck.
“As you wish.”
Just like that, his heat left me, and I wasn’t sure if I was relieved or disappointed when he led me outside. He closed the door securely behind him, then locked up and pocketed the key. His bike was still parked where he left it, and it was only as I climbed on and we sped away from Principal Hawkins’ house that I felt like I could finally breathe.
My heart raced. The stolen lipstick painted on my skin made me feel like I’d just gotten away with a crime. Technically, I had. But the scariest part?
As much I’d panicked about being caught in that house with Noah, another part of me was totally and completely exhilarated by every single moment of it.
13.
Vee stayed locked in her bedroom all day. I was glad not to see her, though my heartache and anger over her destroying my room was overtaken by butterflies and secret thrills. Memories of Noah pressing his face into my neck at Principal Hawkins house abounded. I kept closing my eyes, feeling his tongue against my skin, his heavy breathing. The intent way he’d focused on my mouth as he painted my lips red and told me I looked powerful.
I wasn’t new to sexual feelings. I’d had that particular awakening at fourteen when Aoife and I had a sleepover at her flat, and we watched the Sean Bean version of Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Ever since then, I’d understood the sensation I got deep in my stomach and between my thighs when I was attracted to a man. It was the same sensation I’d gotten the very first time I met Noah, when he stood by his motorbike smoking a cigarette outside the house.
I knew our age gap and family connection made things weird. But like Aoife said, I’d be nineteen soon, and six years wasn’t that much. I felt like I was constantly thinking about it, trying to moralise the idea of being with Noah in my head. I was also confused, because the night of Vee’s party he told me we weren’t meant to be, while his behaviour today completely contradicted that. Had he changed his mind? Did he want me so much that whatever reservations he’d had simply weren’t enough to keep him away from me?
I remembered him singing David Bowie to me this morning, the genuine goofiness he displayed to try and lift my spirits, and how he’d picked me up and rescued me from Vee’s fury last night. He wouldn’t do those things if he didn’t care, right? If he didn’t have feelings similar to the ones I was experiencing …
Did he think about me constantly the same way I thought about him?
My second day of suspension from school was less exciting. Aoife came over to see me on her lunch break. I snuck down to the beach, and we sat on the sand while she filled me in on how everyone at school thought I was a tough bitch (her words not mine) for starting the fight with Sally. Too soon she had to go. We hugged, and I told her I’d see her in the morning.
After all the drama, I was determined to keep my head down at school. No matter what Sally said, I wouldn’t let her rile me again. The following morning, I was sitting at the kitchen table eating breakfast when Noah walked in. He wore a shirt and tie, fitted slacks and black leather shoes. He’d dressed smartly for Vee’s birthday party, too, but on a normal day he usually wore jeans and T-shirts.
“Morning,” he said as he went to make a cup of coffee.
“Good morning,” I replied, unsure how to act around him now that my feelings were substantially more … intense. A part of me wished we’d never touched at all. That way I wouldn’t know what I was missing. “Where are you off to?”
“First day at my new job,” he answered casually.
I gaped at him. “You got another job? Where?”
“Working for Mayor McBride. She was looking for a new head of security.”
Now I blinked. “The mayor of this town needs security?”
The edges of his lips curved ever so slightly. “Apparently so.”