“So. Speaking of worth it…” She flashed Amira a smile. “The fighting is awful. How’s the making-up part?”
Amira shifted onto her side and wrapped one hand around her belly. “I’m three miles wide and look like I’m smuggling basketballs, and you’re asking me this question?”
“You look beautiful. You look
It made the other woman blush. “I haven’t figured out any grand, cosmic secrets, Noelle. I love Flash. This is where I want to be, that’s all.”
It might not sound profound to her, but to Noelle it was a simple, beautiful truth. All that mattered was where she wanted to be—in the sectors, with the O’Kanes.
With Jasper.
He wasn’t the only one who had to be willing to fight for it.
Chapter Twenty-Two
This time, she’d had an afternoon’s leisure to plan her seduction, and in the end she discarded seduction all together. Drowning their pain in sex might be the least awkward way to smooth the tensions between them, but this was too important. This would be the foundation, the way they learned to deal with inevitable fights. Words needed to come first. If they were the right ones, sex would happen on its own, whether she was dressed in lacy panties or a burlap sack.
Not that she went that far. But she felt just as sexy in a tight tank top and vintage, pre-Flare jeans as she ever had in the skimpy little dress she’d borrowed from Lex for that first party. It was the ink, she thought as she paused outside of Jasper’s door, her hand raised to knock. Staring at the O’Kane logo and the intricate framing was a reminder of what she could be. Sexual. Powerful.
Brave enough to forgive. Dragging in a breath, she knocked.
“Ow, shit.” Jasper’s voice drifted through the door. “Come in.”
Frowning, Noelle pushed open the door only to stop dead at the sight of Jasper with a kitten perched on his shoulder, its tiny claws latched into his beard. Judging by the scratches on his cheek, it wasn’t the first time.
He winced as he detached the mewling kitten from his face. “I called in a favor from the farm. It got here yesterday, and I think it hates me.”
“I don’t know, it seems to like you.” Belatedly, she entered the room and closed the door behind her. The kitten proved her point by trying to claw its way back up to the crook of Jasper’s neck. “Maybe it likes your beard.”
“Fuck.” He pulled its tiny claws free again and curled the kitten up in both hands. “That means it likes me? What the hell would it do if it didn’t?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe pee on you?” She crossed to where he stood and stroked her finger over the kitten’s head. “Is it a boy or a girl? Do you know?”
Jasper’s ears turned red. “I told them to send you a good mouser.”
That constant ache in her chest bloomed, expanding until she had to swallow around a lump in her throat. “It’s for me?”
“Yeah.” His glower softened. “I was going to give it to you with the painting, but there was a delay, and I couldn’t wait on the other thing.”
The kitten was an adorable bundle of orange fur with a squished little face and tiny teeth that closed on the tip of Noelle’s finger in a playful bite. Her heart lurched again, and she pretended it was because she’d fallen in love with a little fuzzy ball of fluff. “Can I hold it?”
“Let’s say it’s a he.” He gently shifted the kitten over to her hands. “I haven’t done the best job of this, have I?”
Delicate claws scraped her palms as the kitten meowed and twisted. Noelle lifted him higher, nuzzled the soft little head with a cooing noise. “You got me a kitten.”
“An apology,” he whispered, watching her. “I’m sorry I tried to make you go back to the city.”
Swallowing, she cuddled the kitten closer. “Explain it to me. Tell me why.”
“You got shot, sweetheart. I wasn’t thinking about anything else. I wanted to put you someplace where it wouldn’t happen again.” He rubbed his hands over his face and dropped to the sofa. “The whole damn thing made me a little nuts.”
The wrong thing for the right reasons, then, and in her gut she’d known it all along. Jasper wanted to protect her, he just didn’t know what scared her more than death.
So she told him. “I’d rather be shot. I’d rather be shot a dozen times. Maybe for someone else, someone with a less important family, Eden isn’t all bad. My body would be safe there, but my soul would die. And I’m still learning what it’s like to be alive.”
“I know.” He gestured helplessly to the cat. “I thought about all the things you’d told me about your life there, and I realized how idiotic I’d been.”
The kitten bumped his head against her chin, and Noelle gave in to the smile fighting to form. “I should have told you. I guess I…wanted you to know. I wanted you to know what I needed, but maybe you couldn’t understand that what I needed was you.”
Jasper held her gaze, his eyes blazing. Intense. “Do you need me?”
She wet her lips. “I can survive without you, but it’s only that. Surviving. I want to live.”
He released a breath, sudden and relieved, and held out one hand. “Get over here.”
“So demanding.” Noelle cradled the kitten to her chest as she slid into Jasper’s lap. “I think this little guy likes me. Or he’s worn out from doing battle with you.”
Jasper wrapped his arms around her. “You’re a better person than I am. Animals are supposed to be able to sense shit like that, right?”
“I think you’re pretty okay.” With a final nuzzle, she set the kitten down on the couch. He spent a brief, adorable moment being distracted by his own tail before burrowing half under a battered pillow. Laughing, Noelle pressed her lips to Jasper’s scratched cheek. “Talk to me next time. If things get intense, promise you’ll talk, and I promise I’ll listen.”
He stroked his thumb over her cheek, the corner of her mouth. “Is this you, saying yes?”
“If you promise.” She kissed his thumb. “I’ll trust you with everything, Jasper. But if I’m going to be that vulnerable, you have to promise you’ll always be there. No walking away and leaving me naked. Literally or metaphorically.”
His voice was raw. “I promise.”
“Okay.” The word floated from her lips, and she felt light. “Okay. Yes.”
She barely heard his low growl as he dragged her mouth to his. She
Jasper bit her back as the kitten wiggled between them. He broke the kiss and swept up the tiny animal. “Put him in the bathroom. I have something else for you.”
It took her a few tries to detach the kitten from her shirt, but his yowling protests cut off abruptly when she set him down in front of the small bowl of food in the bathroom.
She eased the door shut to avoid distracting him, and turned to find Jasper holding two strips of leather padded with velvet.
Her heart damn near kicked its way out of her chest. Anticipation tickled up her spine, and she took two steps toward him. “Those are for me?”
“Mmm.” He shook them, rattling the buckles. “Know what they are?”
“I think I can guess.” She stroked the soft velvet and smiled, imagining how it would feel against her wrists…or ankles. “Cuffs?”
Jasper trailed each section of leather between his finger and thumb as he explained. “This longer one buckles around your upper thighs. The shorter one around your wrists.”
