Yes, Mr. Van Der Wells (Not Another Billionaire Romance) (29 page)

Noah rubs his jaw, nodding, but the gesture reeks of sarcasm. “So, you created a scene on something you weren’t sure about.” More jaw rubbing. “You saw the show Lotty and Kiera put on at V, right? Did you pause to think it might not have been that dangerous, Muscles?”

Muscles’ eyes flick to me, then back to Noah. “Didn’t wanna take any chances.”

Noah stares on expressionlessly at Muscles. He’s pissed; just not showing it. Is he pissed about the thwarted kiss, or is he pissed that Noah might’ve possibly worsened my paranoia, seeing how it took such a long time for me to start leaving the apartment? I don’t know. Fact is, he’s
pissed
. “Didn’t I ask you to leave us?”

“Yeah,” Muscles replies, defiance anchoring the word. “But I didn’t feel comfortable with that idea. Not with Lotty’s ex—”

“Okayyyy,” I cut in, eyeballing Muscles. “No need to make this about me.”

What does he know? What does he know about Andrew? And how does he know what he knows? And why hasn’t he told me what he knows? I can’t ask him anything here because I don’t want Noah to know whatever he knows.

“At the end of it all, we’re all safe. No one died. I didn’t get abducted for human trafficking because of my girl-on-girl display, and Muscles didn’t get slashed by a knife-wielding stalker. We get to live another day. Now, can we go home?”

“Wait.” Noah holds up a hand. “What’s this about your ex?”

Theatrically, I widen my eyes, donning a bewildered expression. “What ex? I don’t have an ex. I’m a nineteen-year-old virgin. Tight.
Tight
. So tight it’s illegal. Untouched, undefiled, unviolated. Pure-as-an-angel virgin. Ukubit. Uku-Ukubit. Anyone who tells you differently will be screwed in the ass with Lucifer’s fork, because they hath sinned. Now, can we go?”

The men stare at me.

Blink. Blink. Blink.

Someone blares a horn.

But I don’t dawdle, dawdling won’t be good right now. I hip-swing my way to the nearest Jaguar, open the back door, and fold in.

When I glance out and see more hand gestures and scowling faces and no-one making a move to get-a-going, I brace forward between the two front seats and jam the heel of my palm to the horn.

It blares, stridently so, and I don’t let up until all the men disperse.

Noah slides in the back with me, Muscles gets behind the wheel and peels off.

“You’re exasperating, you know that?” Noah growls at me, streetlights intermittently slipping in through the windows, shadowing across his heart-imploding incinerating features.

“Oh, I know,” I return.

“What the hell was that out there?” he flares. “Now they’re all going to try to get with you!”

Men, they sure can exaggerate.

“And what in the ever-loving hell is
ukubit
?”

My shoulders shrug. “I’m not sure. I heard it in a Jamaican song. I think, maybe, a really,
really
tight vagina?”  

Noah stares at me, lips twitching, “You’re not normal, you know that?”

I nod. “I figured. My nipples get hard when I sneeze, and I can bend my legs around my neck, so I think that’s evidence enough that I’m—”

The remainder of my bullshit is swallowed by Noah when he moves in and covers my mouth with his.

I’m shocked at first, but when I realize I’m being given exactly what I’ve been craving all night, I surrender, parting my lips, letting his tongue thrust in, gripping his collar and meeting his fervency.

His strong hand finds my nape, cups it, and forces me closer. Malleable, I let him mold me to him, pressing my front to his, and he groans something deep in his throat, sending trembles through me.

All of a sudden, he breaks, stares at me, breath harsh and heavy. My hand comes up and touches the side of his face, abrading my soft palm with his stubble.

“Mr. Van Der Wells,” I breathe.

Hissing out a curse under his breath, he slams his mouth to mine again and drinks me ‘til I’m breathless.

His kiss finds freedom, his reservations are slashed at the throat, and his morals buried. I know now that he’s always wanted me. This kiss tells me so. In the way he lets it all unleash. In the way he holds me tight to him, as if he’s afraid I might slip through his fingers. In the way his heart pounds against my bosom. He’s been starved for me. All this time.

“Argghmmmm.” A harrumph comes from the driver’s seat, and we’re reminded then that we’re not alone.

My eyes flick up to the rearview mirror and connect with Muscles’. I shouldn’t be surprised by the hurt in them. But I am.

A thumb and an index finger takes my chin, twisting my face to meet lidded, lust-brimmed eyes. “It’s time, Lotty.”

One corner of my lip goes up in a seductive curve. “Damn right, it’s time. I don’t know why you’ve been torturing—”

“No,” he says, and the sudden seriousness of his tone has me sobering from my drunken lust. “I mean, it’s time for you to
talk
.”

F
IFTEEN

I
WALK OUT
of the shower
,
pat-drying my face, and find Noah sitting on my bed, dicking around with not his phone, but
my
phone—the iPhone Muscles gave me. He’s changed into pajama bottoms and a plain T-shirt.

I throw the damp face-towel at him, but it doesn’t make the distance, falling in fluttering defeat to the sheets. “What are you snooping for? Sexts between me and tight-ass Muscles?”

His gaze sweeps up from the phone-screen to me. “Stop talking about him like that. I don’t like it.”

“And
I
don’t like you waltzing into my bedroom and sitting on my bed. I’m your employee. It makes me uncomfortable. Like something is expected of me. Sexual favors? Is that what you want? Because I’ll sue you for every penny you have, Mister. This is not right. There should be boundaries.”

Setting the phone down on the nightstand, he leans back on the headboard and cross his hands behind his head, the short sleeves of his T-shirt bunching down and revealing his pale, untanned inner biceps. I want to bite those biceps, then lick them, and then rub my tiny bud against them until I come.

“You’re going to be an amazing lawyer,” he tells me. “But your verbal-diarrhea won’t work on me tonight. Stop trying to get out of talking to me.”

Lip protruding, I turn my back to him and stomp off to the closet, letting my towel fall and pool at my feet as I choose a pajama set, and stew.

After decreeing in the car that it’s time for me to “talk,” I clammed up, twisted out of his arms, and scooted to the opposite side of the seat. I told him there was nothing to tell. He insisted there was. That I’m hiding something, or rather someone and he needed to know.

Staring out the car window, I’d stopped talking altogether and chewed on the inside of my cheeks until I tasted blood.

Before the car could come to a proper stop outside the building, I was out and hot-footing it inside, just so I wouldn’t have to ride the elevator up with him, or wince at another hurtful look from Muscles.

Teetering in my stilettos, I made it straight to the shower, a
cold
shower, because, regardless of him ruining the moment by trying to get me to share something I would rather keep hidden, I was still horny as a goat.

Only to walk out of the bathroom and find him on my bed, annoyingly hot and sexy and…just plain old annoying.

After taking my own sweet and precious little time donning my pajamas, I suck in a breath and pad back into the room.

He’s in the same place and position I left him in, hasn’t moved a muscle—well, that’s a lie, his legs are now stretched out on my bed, crossed at the ankles, hands behind his head, hot stare on me.

You know what, if he’s going to look at me like that… Flouncing up to the bed, I prop one knee up on the mattress, cross my arms under my breasts. “If I’m gonna have to relive the shittiest years of my life, then I’m gonna need a reward at the end.”

Wariness tugs up one of his brows, a dubious drag to his words as he asks, “What kind of reward?”

“Not quite sure yet. I’ll have something figured out by the end.” I jut out my chin. “We have a deal?”

Side to side his jaw works, eyes suspicious, as this gets mulled over. Finally, he sighs out, “Fine. But this better be something money can buy.”

I don’t answer, because he can’t possibly be serious. Has he already forgotten what happened in the back of the Jaguar, how he nearly made me combust with lust?
Something money can buy
? We’ll see about that. No way I’m giving something for nothing. I’m not a giver. Never have been. And I won’t start now.

I lift my other knee to the bed, and on all fours, crawl to the center. Noah, with cautious green eyes, watches my every move.

He’s so afraid of me, as though he’s forever waiting on that moment I pounce him and ravish him down to his very bones. And his fear of me turns me on.

Sitting cross-legged in the middle of the bed, I ask him to throw me a pillow. He does. I grab it and hug it to myself.

My life with Andrew is embarrassing, and I really don’t want to admit to Noah what a powerless, craven little cat I was with that twisted man. But he’s right, it’s time I talk. Muscles knows something, which means Andrew is close,
or
he’s already found me and is biding his time, machinating.

I mean, it’s not as if I’m in another country or county, I’m still in
New York
. Was only a matter of time before he found me. I need all the protection I can get, and Noah needs to know what from.

So, taking a deep breath, I open my mouth, and I tell him. Not in a verbal overflow, but in stutters, long pauses, sighs, and shaky breaths.

And he listened.

Clutching the pillow to my chest and ignoring the blood rushing in my ears, I drop my head and focus on the zig-zag patterns on the sheets. “I was scared for my Dad when he got locked up. I was scared for our survival when we lost all our money. I was scared for my mother when she was diagnosed with cancer. I have been scared many times. But I never knew what true
fear
felt like until Andrew.”

I drag in a shivering breath. “That first time, after getting past the initial shock of it, I tried to break up with him.” A humorless chuckle escapes. “Big mistake. I didn’t know there was no ‘breaking up’ with men like that. I learned that through another beat down, which left me with a broken finger, bruised ribs, and a black-eye. My blood
ran.
And when he was done, he apologized, told me he was sorry and that he loved me too much to let me go.

“He ran a hot bath, put me in the tub, and cleaned me up with so much gentleness and care; no one would believe those were the same hands that pummeled me until my blood ran. For as long as it took my busts and bruises to heal, he spent that time trying to make it up to me, with gifts or my favorite foods, or…sex. Very attentive sex. He was really good at that. Sex. The only good memory of my time with him.” I raise my lids and peek at Noah under my lashes.

By the granite hardness of features and the dark storm behind his green windows, I take it my compliment to my ex doesn’t amuse him. He’s
pissed
. But why does this reaction from him surprise me? Did I think he’d just sit here and nod through it and then get up and brush his hands and say, “
Welp! That was an unfortunate relationship. Sorry to hear, dear. Now brew me some coffee.
”

Regardless of how he pretends, and how I mess with him, I know, underneath our little dance around each other, that he cares for me on a different level. As a friend. As a person. As a citizen. He just cares.

He’s kind to people. He’s always been kind. An all-time supporter of good education. A known philanthropist. Although he’s Noah today, Nate Van Der Wells was a known giver. He doesn’t have to be in love with me to want to murder a douchebag on my behalf.

His veins at his temples pulse visibly, a byproduct of his restrained anger. I see the fisting of his hands on the mattress, I see the tightness of his lips, and I decide it prudent to curtail my tale. He doesn’t need to know it all. I don’t think he can manage hearing it all. The regular black eyes and the busted lips, the broken finger, the fractured ribs, the punch in the throat, the time I was pounded unconscious for over fourteen hours. Nope, he definitely does
not
need to know it all.

“Once the evidence of his abuse is healed, I guess he sees it as kind of a blank canvas that needs to be painted on. So for the simplest of things, he would paint me black and blue. If he cheated and I argued about it, I got painted. If I tried to run, he wouldn’t stop until he found me, and then I got painted red.”

I’m so proud of myself for not crying or shaking or stammering, as I usually do whenever I so much as
think
about Andrew. Strangely enough, I feel safe around Noah. I feel safe in this penthouse. I feel safe under his stare, even though he looks as if he’s about to breathe fire like a dragon right now.

“That’s why you were so terrified in the park that morning,” he muses. “That’s why you wanted to live in.”

Eyes downcast, I nod. “I saw you and I remembered that you lived in a penthouse on the other side of the city. I figured if you hired me as your live-in maid, I’d have the security of the penthouse, and I’d be safe at least until I saved enough money to leave for Brazil.”

In a swift and sudden move, Noah jerks to his feet and begins pacing. Waves of ire emanating from him, blasting me. Back and forth, back and forth, he attempts to speak, to voice hatred, to swear, but he keeps tripping over his words, unable to articulate. Righteous anger can do that to one’s speech.

On about his tenth attempt to speak, he gets out, “What’s the son-of-a-bitch’s name?”

Uncrossing my legs, I get up on my knees in the bed, cautious, alarmed. “Why?”

He stares at me as if my brain just jumped out of my head and rolled away on the floor. “What do you mean
why
?” he barks. “After what you just told me? I’m going to find that bastard, and
kill
him. What’s. His. Name?”