Your Fault (Culpable Book 2)

The gala was a day away, and Noah and I still hadn’t spoken. I was worried. Worried about her, about us. I felt a pressure in my chest that kept me from working. That morning, my father had come by the office, had given me the invitations for the next day, and had reminded me of what he and his wife had asked of Noah and me a month or so before. I hated the thought of seeing her after all those days without touching or holding her, knowing we’d have to pretend there was nothing between us. It was like a terrible joke. My bad mood was palpable, evident to anyone who came close to me; I’d had so many arguments with the staff, I’d have definitely been fired if Leister hadn’t been my last name.

“I’ve reserved three cars for tomorrow. One will take Ella and me, another will be for Noah and her friend, and the last one will be for you and Sophie.”

I looked up immediately from the document I was skimming. “What did you say?”

My father glared at me in a way that revealed to me I wasn’t the only one who’d gotten up on the wrong side of the bed.

“Aiken asked me to, Nicholas, and I’m not in the mood to argue about it. He won’t be coming. Sophia will take his place, and he asked me to let her join our family.”

“Does she even know?” I asked, getting up and slamming the office door shut. “Sophia told me she wasn’t going to the gala. She said she was heading to Aspen tomorrow morning.”

Dad took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“That was then. Riston’s had something important come up in Washington. He’s got to go, so Sophia will have to substitute for him. Riston asked me to handle the details, and naturally I couldn’t say no.”

I shook my head. I could already imagine the problems this would bring. “I’ll ride in the same car with her. But I’m not going to be her date.”

My father observed me with indulgence. What I’d said was absurd. It didn’t matter what the invitations said: if we showed up in the same car, people would think we were together…and the same went for Noah and whoever she was with.

“You’re causing problems for me and my girlfriend,” I reproached my father between clenched teeth. He sighed on his way to the door.

“Your relationship with Noah is already causing you problems, Son… If she can’t put up with you taking a friend to a party, it sounds to me like you’ve got some thinking to do.”

I ignored his words and let him go. I couldn’t let Noah come to the gala and see me with Sophia without prior warning. I had to tell her first. The last thing I’d gotten from her was a text with the word thanks. I’d promised her space, but if I didn’t take care of this issue with Sophia, a lack of space would be the least of my worries. I got up, grabbed my keys, and went straight to her dorm.

Luckily, I got there just as she was pulling in. She parked next to me and looked over with surprise when she saw me get out. I waited to see how she’d react.

She came over cautiously, stopped, and looked me up and down, on edge. “I’m glad to see you’re still here and not in New York.”

She turned around and climbed the steps to the front door to her building. Was she still fucking mad? I cursed and followed behind her, ready to put this subject behind me once and for all.

I looked at her dress, and especially her curves in it, as she struggled to open the door. I’d never seen her wearing it: yellow, with little flowers all over.

Finally she got the door open… I’d have helped her, but I was too busy watching her from behind.

When she went inside, she turned with pouty lips. “Stop looking at my ass, Nicholas.”

I laughed and closed the door behind me, looking around her place to make sure there wasn’t anything there that might hint at Briar’s presence, but I didn’t see anything.

“Sorry. I just like your dress,” I said, looking at her intensely. Actually I hated it: I hated the way it clung to her breasts and danced over her knees, tempting me. Noah gave me a condescending look and dropped her bag on the kitchen counter.

I walked over, waiting for her to say something else. She looked nervous. I didn’t expect that. She walked to the refrigerator and took out two beers.

“You want one?” she asked. Her cheeks were flushed because she was uncomfortable or maybe because I was devouring her with my eyes.

“Definitely,” I said, reaching out and stroking her fingers as she passed me the bottle.

I knew when I touched her that way, it made her shiver, but I pretended not to notice. I was there to calm things down, to explain the New York situation, even if the only thing I could think about was slipping my hands under that dress and making her shake all over.

I put the lip of the bottle on the counter’s edge, struck it. The cap popped off, and I brought it up to my lips. Noah looked down at her own beer, seeming lost for a moment. I grinned, took another sip, and stepped closer to her.

“Here, Freckles,” I said, handing her my bottle and opening the one she was holding the same way.

She hesitated before bringing the bottle to her lips and letting the cold liquid drip down her throat. I watched the contractions in her neck as she swallowed. I took a deep breath, trying not to grab her. Something told me it wasn’t the moment, at least not if I wanted a pleasant response. I could control my body, but I couldn’t control my eyes.

She walked to the sofa, seeming unsure of what to do next, and started sorting through her magazines, just to keep her hands busy, while I leaned on the counter. Finally she turned, dropped what she was doing, and threw her hair back, frustrated.

“Stop looking at me!”

I smiled. “You’re not leaving me any choice, babe. I can’t touch you, I can’t look at you… being your boyfriend is becoming a torture.”

She crossed her arms with an irritated, uncertain expression. “Why are you here, Nicholas?”

I was just a few feet from her, but she felt miles away, and I hated that. I missed her… I knew I had promised her space; I just wanted to tell her about the thing with Sophia in person…and before that, I wanted to make sure we were okay. Or as okay as we could be.

“I know I told you I’d give you some space, but I wanted to see you, even if it was just for half an hour.”

I didn’t think I’d ever seen her at such a loss. She came over, but when I walked forward to meet her, she stepped back again.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she finally said in a bitter voice.

It wasn’t hard to imagine she’d ask that. I knew what had made her angriest about New York was hearing about it from someone else.

“Because I was never planning on going anywhere. At least not without you.”

She bit her lip. I wanted to reach out and caress her, but I didn’t know if it was a good idea…especially at that moment.

“Then you would do it… If I went with you, you’d do it.”

She wasn’t asking, and to be honest, I hadn’t thought about it.

“I’m fine where I am, Noah. I like where I work, and I like the way my future looks.” I wasn’t elated about inheriting my father’s business because before that, I’d have to work for him for who knew how many years, but that was an insignificant detail compared to what it meant to be on the Leister company’s team.

I looked into Noah’s eyes and tried to decipher what was happening in her head.

“You’re not even going to ask me?”

I frowned. “You want to go to New York with me?”

“No.”

“Then…?” I replied, sighing with frustration and looking at the ceiling.

“I don’t want to go, obviously, because I just started college here. It’s barely been a year since I left Canada… But…if it’s really that important to you, Nicholas, then…I guess I’d be willing to do it for you.”

I looked down at her again. “You’d do that for me?” I asked, trying to see whether something in her face indicated she wasn’t telling the truth. But I could tell she was being sincere.

“Nicholas…I love you,” she whispered. “It doesn’t matter that we’re not doing well right now. If you asked me, and it was important to you, I’d say yes. I’d go anywhere with you, you know that…”

A wave of infinite love crested in the center of my chest right where I had felt that gaping absence during the two weeks we’d been apart. Christ, that distance had ached!

Coming close to her, I wrapped a hand around her waist, almost pinching one of her ribs, and all I wanted her to know was how I would do everything, give everything, to be with her and make her happy.

She held her breath. I think I could even hear her heart beating faster.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

I brushed her hair aside, touching her neck. I wanted to smell her aroma, recall that essence unique to her and her alone.

I rubbed the tip of my nose on her chin and neck, inhaling and closing my eyes.

Her breathing sped up in time with mine. She grabbed my arm, and her whole body trembled.

“I miss you,” I said into her ear. “I’m so happy you want to go with me, but I can’t accept that job. Not yet. I want to stay here, and I know you do, too, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do, okay?”

I didn’t wait for her to respond before kissing her on the throat. She moaned. Softly, I ran the tip of my tongue from her clavicle to her earlobe and bit down gently. Our bodies reacted in time with each other. I pulled away to observe her. Her excitement, her longing, were so evident that I had to stop myself from taking her on the spot.

“Have you had enough time?” I asked.

“I…I don’t know.”

I didn’t like that answer. Maybe I needed to remind her of how much she’d missed me.

“I’m not going to do anything you don’t want to do, my love,” I whispered, grabbing her around the waist. “I’ll just take it slow, and you can tell me to stop anytime.”

She said nothing, and I lifted her on the counter, delicately opening her legs and nestling between them.

I smiled, hoping to ease her mind because my gut told me she was nervous. I knew a lot had happened between us and that I hadn’t dealt with it well, especially over the past month. That’s why I had wanted to take those two weeks to understand her, to try to figure out what I was doing wrong.

I touched her face, rubbed those freckles that drove me mad, traced the line of her jaw, her thick lips… Noah’s breathing was speeding up; I could see that under the fabric of her dress. Normally I would have stripped her bare, taken her to the bedroom, touched all the places her clothing kept concealed.

But I wasn’t going to keep making the same mistakes. I was going to take it slow and be sure she was comfortable the whole time.

“I want to kiss you.”

She looked back at me in silence, but her eyes seemed to tell me she wouldn’t refuse, that she wanted it as badly as I did.

“I’m going to kiss you.”

I brought our lips together, full of longing, and enjoyed the feeling of pressure, that unique connection that made everything negative in the past few days disappear. I bit her lower lip, licked it, bit it again. No man could resist the draw of her lips, and that included me. I grabbed the back of her neck and pulled her in tighter, then leaned her back, holding her up with my other arm. I pulled back, then came in for more, this time twisting my tongue around hers. She didn’t hold back. The taste of her made me lose what little self-control I had left.

Unable to keep my hands from roving her body, I felt Noah sit back up and pull me hungrily toward her in a passionate embrace that could only lead to one thing. I reached down, pulled her dress over her thighs, rolled it up around her hips, then bent down to kiss her legs. My hot kisses didn’t leave a mark—I’d learned that lesson by now. But Noah grabbed my head and brought me back up for another kiss. In her intensity, I could sense that she wanted me.

I carefully lifted her off the counter, holding her beneath her legs and walking with her to her room. I shut the door and went straight to her bed. Her hands were stroking my hair and neck. I got on top of her and pulled at her dress until it came off over her head.

“I hate that damn dress,” I said, throwing it to the other side of the bed.

“It’s new,” she said, pulling me close and planting her lips on my neck. She bit and sucked, and I grunted in response.

“It’s horrible.”

She laughed. “Liar.”

Finally, I could see her body, that body that seemed designed for me, that body that I alone had touched, caressed, kissed.

“I could spend hours just looking at you, Noah. You’re precious in every sense of the word.”

Instead of replying, she observed me as I took off my shirt and fell on her nude torso. She was wearing a lace bra, but it was so thin, it might as well have been nothing. My lips grazed the thin fabric, and I felt her growing stiff.

“Nick…”

She could barely say my name, and that made me want to keep going.

Carefully, slowly, I kissed her stomach. My fingers caressed her flanks; they descended to her hips and lifted her legs until she wrapped them around my back. My hips began rocking over hers.

A wave of pleasure washed over both of us. It had been too long.

Then Noah pushed me onto my back and straddled me. Her blond hair spilled over her shoulders, and she flicked it back to look me in the eyes. I could see two halves of her struggling with each other, and I stopped, resting my hands on her thighs and waiting until she finally spoke.

“I…I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to keep going. I feel like if we keep going…then everything we’ve tried to accomplish these past two weeks will go to waste.”

The person who was talking seemed not to be her but that damned psychologist who was treating her. He was the one who’d been encouraging her to stay away from me for weeks. When I saw how her body reacted to my caresses, saw in her eyes how she wanted to continue, I knew my assumption was correct.

I sat up with her over me and brought my face close to hers. “You want to stop?” I asked, hoping she would say no.

I could tell she was deliberating. Her hand rose to stroke my chin slowly, and she kissed me. “I don’t. But it’s better, at least for now.”

I took a deep breath, trying to calm down. We were both panting. I nodded, kissing her on the nose. “You want me to go?”

Something like fear crossed her face. “No, stay.”

I had the sense that wasn’t the only thing she wanted. But I smiled and helped her get out of bed.

“You hungry?”

We ordered sushi and had it sitting on the rug in the common room. There was a horrible movie on TV, and as soon as we’d turned it on, we stopped paying attention to it.

I was leaning against the sofa, with Noah in front of me with her legs crossed and a sarcastic smile on her face.

“I don’t believe you,” she said, shrugging.

My brows lifted, and I stood, stretching out a hand to her. “Come on. I’ll show you.”

She got up, and I waited for her to move the furniture around a bit to make some space. Then I walked over to her stereo and looked for the easy-listening station.

The first song to come on was “Young at Heart” by Frank Sinatra.

Perfect.

“Come here, you little doubter.”

She watched me, amused but uncertain, while I stepped close to her, wrapped one arm behind her back, and clasped her fingers with the other. I took a moment to prepare, then started moving. I took her along with me, just as I’d been taught, just as I had done ten or more years ago.

We went slowly at first, but once Noah let herself go, I was able to really move with her.

“I can’t believe I’m dancing with you in my living room to Frank Sinatra, of all people. What have you been smoking, Nick?”

I smiled, pushed her away, brought her back in, spinning her so her back pressed into my torso. I cradled her in my arms and slowed down… Her head rested on my shoulder as I squeezed her, kissed her on the head, then spun her around again to face me.

I felt the way I had in the early days of our relationship. I didn’t know how to explain it, but Noah was smiling, relaxed, and I reflected her mood. My irritation was gone, and all I wanted was to remember that moment forever: her in my arms, swaying with me as if all our problems had vanished after those days of absence…

“I love you,” I said, feeling every letter of those three words coming from my heart.

Instead of responding, she squeezed my hand tighter, kissed my chest, and we continued until the song was done. We went on that way for a long time, not so much dancing as simply holding each other to the rhythm of the music. As she started to slacken in my arms, I realized she was falling asleep. Leaning down to wrap one arm around her knees, I picked her up.

“What are you doing…?” she asked, her eyes barely open. “Let’s keep dancing… I’m good at it.”

I smiled as I opened her bedroom door, then backed into it to shut it. “You’re great at it. Especially when I’m holding you up.”

I laid her in bed, and she struggled to open her eyes again as I took off my T-shirt and jeans.

“You’re staying,” she said, and a sweet smile crossed her lips.

“I’m staying,” I responded, sliding between her sheets. She came close to me and rested her head on my chest. “Now sleep, my love.”