But she did know what they could do to her. What they would do if she didn’t somehow fix this. “Kenny is not the one trying to hurt me, Noah.”
“I didn’t say he was. But it’s possible, if they got a hold of him, that they’re using him to get to you. You have to know that much.”
Horror filled her. “He would never give me up.”
“Just keep the phone turned off.” He tugged her down to lie alongside him. She managed to keep the covers over her, but he slowly slid his hand up the blanket, closing his fist in the soft material.
“You told me they want something,” he said. “I’m assuming you were told to help or else, right?”
He held her gaze until she nodded, and then in reward, bent and gently, so gently it brought the sting of tears to her eyes, pressed his lips to her heart over the blanket, and then slowly pulled it free.
She could have stopped him, but she didn’t, not as the down scraped over her nude body, or when the air brushed her skin.
He kissed a bared rib now, then murmured, “Who are they?”
All she could see of him was his broad shoulders and back as he bent over her, his muscles flexed taut, and she stirred, from the inside out. “I…” Couldn’t think. “I really didn’t get a good look at them.” She hadn’t.
But she hadn’t needed to either, she knew exactly who was in charge.
Stephen.
Another soft kiss, lower now, on her belly, while his hand danced down her thigh. “You sure?”
She knew she had to give him something, had to let him in, even if only a little. “Y-yes,” she whispered, stuttering because his mouth skimmed over her hip on his way down, his wavy hair tingling her skin, making her belly jump and quiver.
She knew his eyes were open, that he could see her up close and personal. With a touch so light she couldn’t believe her body followed his direction, he nudged her thighs open. “Where did they come to you before?”
“Uh-” Hard to talk when he dipped farther down, his shoulders holding her legs open. Shocked that she’d allowed this, she stared down at the top of his head, watching him press his lips to her flesh. His mouth was soft, so achingly soft, as were his hands. Never in her life had she been so aware of her own body.
“Bailey?”
“The house.” She closed her eyes. “I’d fallen asleep on the couch, and when I woke up-” She’d been petrified to find herself facing three men, two of them huge and menacing and armed, one standing at either end of the couch. The third man had been Stephen. He’d sat on her coffee table at her shoulder as if he’d been invited in. And he had, many many times, by Alan. He was polished, elegant, and utterly, terrifyingly, smoothly dangerous. He’d said hello politely, while turning a very wicked looking knife in his fingers.
“They were just there,” she said now to Noah. “They wanted-” Money, of course. “They wanted to warn me. If I didn’t do what they said, they’d come back.”
“And kill you.”
If that was all it’d been, it wouldn’t be so difficult. But when she’d shaken her head, saying she didn’t have the money, didn’t know where to find it, he’d nodded, then stood and said that he hoped she’d said good-bye to Kenny.
And her second graders.
Because, he’d said, she wouldn’t be seeing them ever again, since his men would be killing them.
One by one.
Then he’d leaned over her and said that he’d be in touch, and she’d better hope he didn’t find out she was holding out on him. He’d nodded to the two other men, one of whom held her down while the other had crawled up on top of her, between her legs, wrapping his fingers around her throat, squeezing until she’d blacked out.
When she’d come to, she’d been alone.
She’d been on the run ever since. She’d gotten a hotel room, hadn’t gone back to the house or to work, and now she’d gotten Noah involved. “They’d kill anyone I cared about.”
“So you have to do what they want. You have to find something.” Turning his head, he kissed her other inner thigh.
With his mouth on her, she could hardly breathe, much less talk. “Hence the whole hijack-the-pilot thing.”
“Yeah.” He stroked his thumb lightly over her skin, his voice a sleepy, sexy whisper. “So why me?”
She wished he’d turned off the light, or that he’d stop talking and start kissing her again. “Your plane was there, ready to go.”
“So was Brody’s,” he reminded her.
“Yes, but…”
He kissed her again, lightly, softly, sweetly, and yet nothing in her reaction felt sweet. A new tension had gripped her body, one that had nothing to do with fear, and she found herself arching up into him, her fingers digging into the comforter at her sides.
Noah lifted his head, waiting for an answer.
“I wanted it to be you,” she admitted.
“Because I’m an easy mark?”
“No. God, no.” She closed her eyes. A hiding habit, she knew, an especially silly one since she was as exposed as she could get, but she needed a minute for this one. Because if she couldn’t give him the truth about what she had to do, she was going to give him the truth about this.
Needed to give him the truth about this.
But then he stroked her again, his touch still light and easy, and once again she lost her grasp on her thought process. “You are not an easy mark,” she managed.
She had no trouble reading his expression when he lifted his head, no trouble seeing that his features had softened, heated. His fingers were still on her thighs, his thumb gently stroking, and her body, with a mind of its own, twitched, letting her legs fall farther open.
Crazy, she thought. She was crazy wild to expose herself this way, letting him see…
Everything.
His gaze dipped, looking directly at what she’d revealed, and then an almost unbearably sexy sound left his throat as he slowly…dipped…his head…and touched his lips to the groove at the very top of her thigh.
“I-I wanted it to be you,” she managed. “Because I felt like I knew you, like we had a connection.”
He shifted his lips along her hip, her belly, to her other hip.
While she didn’t so much as breathe.
“We’ve never talked about anything other than the weather and the route you wanted me to fly,” he said directly against her skin. “Which begs the question…why me?”
“I…” His mouth was working for her, it really was. “I felt it.” God, had she felt it. She wanted to pull him up so that she could think, so that she could make some sense. Instead, she continued to fist her hands in the down comforter at her sides and let him drive her to the very edge. “I kn-knew you’d help me.”
“Yeah.” He let out a short breath and touched his forehead to her belly, his lips tantalizingly close to ground zero. “Do you know why?” he asked.
“Um-”
He slid his fingers beneath her bottom, cupping her, then lifted his head and leveled her with those melting eyes. “Do you know why?” he repeated.
“No.”
“Because I had a crush on you.”
“You-” He had a crush on me. “Noah-”
“A big, fat crush.”
Whenever she’d seen him at Sky High, he’d been courteous, professional, distant.
And sexy as hell.
“You never gave me the time of day,” she said.
“No, Princess, that was you. You were always dressed to the hilt, looking hot enough to melt butter right off your skin, and yet you never seemed to know it. You’d smile, but rarely speak to me.”
“I liked you.”
His laugh was soft, and self-deprecatory. “Yeah, well, I fantasized about it being more than like. I wanted to kiss you. I wanted…” He tugged, and his face was right there, between her legs.
