Page 32 of Fearless
He honestly couldn’t tell if she was trying to make a joke or not, but it fell flat. She knew it too. Almost as soon as she’d made it, her face crumpled into a groaning cringe.
“What the hell is wrong with me?” she asked before covering her face with both hands.
Noah came to sit at the headboard beside her. When he put his arm around her shoulders, she curled against him. “Is there any chance at all that it isn’t his?”
“Does it matter?”
Not to him it didn’t. He was more worried about her, at this point.
“He never shared me that way,” Kitty finally said. “I did fluffing sometimes, but Pony was the one he liked to pass around to his friends. Usually only if they had something he wanted more than he wanted her.”
She was quiet. Noah was too. What could be said to comfort something that awful? Somehow ‘you’re well shut of him’ didn’t seem quite right, although it did feel true.
“I can’t stay here,” she said softly, almost under her breath.
Noah, however, heard it loud as summer thunder. He was off the bed before he realized he was going to move. “What do you mean?” he demanded. “Why not? If you’re afraid he’s going to come after you out here, I’d love to see the fucker try. I—”
She looked at him, and in that dead-eye stare Noah suddenly heard everything she wasn’t saying out loud.
“You’re thinking about going back to him,” he said flatly.
“You don’t think he has a right to know he’s going to be a father?” she countered. She hugged her knees again, a defensive reaction that made him instantly check himself. His body was squaring off against her. He tried to stop that, to find his center of calm. She was a grown woman, after all. She was entitled to her opinions, her feelings, and even to make her own mistakes, if that was what she—oh, hell no, mate, to fuck-all with that and who cared about calm? No way was he going to stand by while she got on a plane, flew halfway across the world where he couldn’t possibly protect her, and back into the cruel keeping of that son of a bitch!
Except he couldn’t say any of that and to make sure of it, Noah covered his mouth with his hand until the urge had passed. “When exactly do you reckon he’s earned that right? You name me one time, just once, when that man has done something that’s been good for you. One thing that hasn’t broken you down or left a scar, physical or not.”
She didn’t. He liked to think it was because she couldn’t, but that didn’t mean he was right. Or even appropriate. If she wanted to go, what right did he have to stop her? None, and for a hair-split second, in the very pit of his gut where he had never in his life ever felt such a chillingly-pierce sensation before, Noah knew exactly what it was going to feel like when she walked out of his house.
He pointed at her. “No,” he said. He struggled for calm, but both his voice and his finger, hell, all of him, was shaking. “No,” he said again. There were a thousand other words jumbling through his head, vying one another to come spilling out between them. He needed calm and rational, a reason that would help her think straight and change her bloody mind—I really like you, love, please don’t go—not one of them knocked free in time to follow ‘no.’
So, he left it at that and he walked away, fast, before he did something Ethen-ish. Something he would regret. His bedroom wasn’t far enough, so he left the house. The porch wasn’t far enough either, neither was the barn, although his workshop was where he ended up, facing the wood-plank wall where his half-made whip was dangling. Open hands braced against the weathered boards, the chaos of his thoughts churned themselves into a fevered maelstrom, all of it centered around She’s leaving you, mate, she’s going back to him. The guy who hurt her in ways Noah could hardly imagine, and frankly didn’t want to.
What did that say about him? What had he done to all of a sudden make Ethen the better option? As if, Noah scolded himself, he could even consider himself an option. He wasn’t. He was a friend of a friend who was doing a favor for—God damn it! He didn’t want to be that, he wanted to be an option! What more, he wanted to be the option Kitty chose!
But, honestly, why would she, that nagging voice in his head kept whispering. Why would she want to stay when they barely knew one another? At what point had he declared himself, or let her know he was interested? So he could what, that other voice in his head argued back, make her even more anxious about the dark intentions of the stranger she was staying with? No, he’d been right to be careful with her. He’d been right not to do anything that might be construed as him taking advantage of a battered woman. But now, look where that caution had left him?
At what point had they ever sat down and talked about themselves, their childhoods, their hobbies or thoughts or dreams for the future? Or, her baby’s future, for that matter? Try though he might, the only real conversation Noah could recall apart from his setting the rules, her breaking of them, the punishment he’d given and the relief that had followed—apart from all that, so far their only conversation had been about the weather. Looked at that way, was it any wonder if she was considering moving on?
And now there was the baby to consider. At least she’d accepted her pregnancy, putting it out in the open where they could deal with it. Except, none of these were his complications to deal with, were they? No, it was all on Kitty. She was an American, faced with having a baby in a country where she didn’t hold citizenship, couldn’t get employment, an apartment, or any kind of legal or financial aid. He’d bend over backwards to help her, she had to know that, but at the same time that didn’t make things automatically better? Australia was not an easy country to migrate into, although he supposed marrying her would solve a lot of problems…
…not to mention opening up a slew of different ones.
Noah wasn’t crazy. He knew he liked her, but he wasn’t sure he was ready for marriage. And he sure as hell wasn’t ready to marry someone he’d then spend the rest of his life struggling to convince he didn’t marry solely for citizenship or because she was knocked up.
What he did know was, whether they’d had a decent conversation yet or not, he wasn’t ready to let Kitty go. This was more than her being broken or him doing a favor for a friend. This felt different from anything he’d ever experienced with any woman he’d yet known. Every shred of gut-feeling he had was screaming that this went deeper than it had a right to go for a time period as short as theirs had been, and he knew—knew—to the depths of his marrow if he didn’t do something to change her mind, he would not only lose her, but he would regret it to the end of his days.
Noah hit the wall, the heel of his hard palm shuddered it. Frustrated, he hit it again, four times in rapid, banging succession, shaking the whole damn barn, the whip hanging from its hook, and himself. His palm stung, but the hurt was good. It was grounding. He closed his eyes, breathing deep and struggling for control. He didn’t often lose his calm like this and he certainly wasn’t proud of it, but he swallowed back the rising chaos of feelings he wasn’t prepared to deal with just yet, and focused.
When at last he opened his eyes again, he had the start of a plan firmly in mind. No way was he going to stand by while she groveled her way back into Ethen’s good graces. Considering what that sadistic bastard had already done, he didn’t want to know what Ethen was capable of doing to a baby. That right there was going to be Noah’s number one reason on his list why she should stay. He’d work out the other reasons on the walk back up to the house, because if Kitty was still awake, then they needed to have a serious talk. He had to make her see reason. Failing that, he had to make her tell him why she had to go, at least then he’d know exactly what the problem was.
Firm as he was in his decision, Noah only got as far as shoving off the wall and turning around. That was when he saw Kitty. She hadn’t gone to bed; she’d followed him out to the barn. Standing in the open doorway, her face was a mask he didn’t know how to read. Probably because he’d hit the wall and scared her, who knew how close to Ethen he must have looked when he’d done it. But try though he did to find hints of it, it wasn’t fear that he kept glimpsing as she crept a few steps closer. Hands wringing, the mounds of her small breasts rising and falling a little too fast as she breathed, she came to stand bare inches before him. So close that the tips of her breasts nearly grazed his chest on every shaky inhale and her hands, clasped so tight in front of her, almost brushed his stomach. Just a gnat’s wing of empty air remained between him and her non-existent touches. His body didn’t care; he burned already in both places, his blood beginning to pulse and roar as he breathed in her shallow exhales and bathed in the body heat he imagined was building in the ribbon’s space of distance she’d left between them.
It would have been such an easy thing to reach for her, catch the back of her head and pull her mouth straight up to his. Forget calm, lists and rational reasons, he’d let his kiss do his arguing for him. Except he already knew he’d never be able to stop at one. Or a dozen, for that matter. Or the crushing grip he’d fold her in when his restraint finally snapped and he couldn’t help but grab her by the ass, before pinning her with the wall at her back and nothing but his hard body flush up against her front.
Trembling, she reached for his hand. The size difference between them was startling: his fingers were huge, calloused and squarish compared to hers. His palm as she turned it upward was red from where he’d punched the wooden planks. Her hands were so much smaller, soft and pale, with fingers as soft as butterfly wings when she caressed the tender redness.
She did not look at him, but bent and kissed the mark of impact, then turned her face to press her cheek into his palm.
Her face was already in his hand, so it was a tiny matter to turn her mouth to meet his. Her breath caught, moist lips parting on a sigh as his claimed them. Compared to the storm inside him, it was a gentle kiss. Little more than a taste, really. Kitty deserved better than to be fucked in a barn.
