Page 49 of Noah
I gave him a crooked grin. “Rules? What rules?”
He didn’t answer. He hitched me up a bit higher, then turned and walked toward the bed. “In that case, come to my bed. I’m not done with you yet, little Bug.”
I shivered in delight at the use of my nickname. And when he laid me down and began to trail his mouth over my skin, I archedmy back and enjoyed every second of it. Because this didn’t feel like a one-night stand. It didn’t feel fake or short term.
It felt like the real thing.
Noah, this passion between us, and the way our bodies moved together... It felt like something big. And I was going to enjoy it as long as I could.
28
MOLLY
Iwoke up several hours later to my phone dinging like crazy.
And then I remembered where I was. Noah’s room. In his bed. I was curled up with my back to him, his arms around me and his chest against my back. He was breathing slowly, which told me he was still asleep.
Whiskey was asleep on our feet.
I closed my eyes and smiled, reveling in the feel of our own little family. Noah, me, the puppy... We were on the road and far from home, but this had to be what home felt like. The right person and the dog you’d adopted together. The warm bubble of safety surrounding us.
God, I wanted to stay here for the rest of my life.
Then my phone dinged again.
Shit, I was going to have to answer that or it would wake Noah. I reached out for the phone, wondering if I could reach it from here, but then remembered that I’d left it on the table by the door. Dammit. I got up as careful as I could, praying I could disentangle myself without waking Noah or the puppy, and finally managed to get out of bed. By the time I got to my phoneit had dinged twice more, and I was starting to panic. What the fuck was so important that someone was texting me so often?
When I picked it up, I saw that there was more than one person texting me. Matt. Anna. Sadie.
Janette.
Oh God, oh God. What had happened?
I read Sadie’s text first, because I needed to know what was going on before I tackled Janette’s.
Sadie:Girl, you’re in trouble. Someone took pictures of you and Noah kissing in the bar and they’re everywhere. All the press has them. They’re on all the sites.
My stomach fell out of my body and ran along the floor. God, he’d barely kissed me in the bar and I’d made a joke of it because it was the middle of the night and I’d been sure no one was there. We hadn’t even done anything. Sure, I wasn’t supposed to mess around with him, but that had been me going down to the bar to get him out of there because he was drunk and needed to go to sleep. Nothing had happened.
At least, not in the bar.
Still, that wasn’t going to matter, and I knew it. If the press was running with those pictures...
I took a deep breath, girded my loins, and opened the text from Janette.
It wasn’t nearly as nice.
Janette:Molly, I told you the rules for working at this magazine. No messing around with the stars. I’m looking at pictures that say you’re absolutely messing around with one of the stars. I hope to God you’ve got a good reason for this because I don’t want to have to fire you. Call me as soon as you get this.
I was going to lose my job. And it wasn’t even because of what I did today–multiple times. It was because I’d gone down to get Noah from the bar when he was too drunk to know what he wasdoing, and he’d fucking kissed me. Why hadn’t I checked the bar when I went in there? Why was someone in there with a camera in the middle of the fucking night? Had they been waiting for me? Trying to undermine me with the magazine?
Oh God, oh God, this was bad. And it wasn’t even bad only for me. Noah was supposed to be playing the good boy and cleaning up his act to make nice with the labels. He was not supposed to be making out with a roadie who also happened to be one of his best friends. This was the opposite of laying low.
No wonder the labels weren’t showing up for him. They must have known he was going to do something like this.
Holy fuck we’d thrown everything away. It was all going to disappear on us, and for what? Sure, the sex was amazing. And yeah I’d been thinking I was in love with the guy. But I worked my ass off to get this job and now I was just throwing it away on some guy. That wasn’t the plan.
None of this was the plan.
