Chapter 63

Hannah

Noah towered over me, the hard muscles of his chest and abdomen pressing into my body so hard I could barely breathe. The cool marble of the sink behind me felt like ice against my lower back, my fingers curling instinctively around the edge.

But still, I stared up at Noah defiantly, refusing to be cowed by his intimidating presence looming over me. “I wasn’t with Drake,” I stated firmly, squaring my shoulders. “At least... not in the way you're implying.”

Noah’s deep green eyes narrowed to slits at my response. “Don’t lie to me,” he growled, leaning in even closer until I could feel the heat radiating off of his body. “I saw you two together just a few minutes ago. Hugging. Looking awfully cozy.”

Anger flared hotly inside of me at the baseless accusation, my cheeks flushing. “It was just a friendly embrace, Noah,” I shot back, lifting my chin. “Is that not allowed now, either? Am I just supposed to completely isolate myself from any human contact besides you?”

A muscle ticked in Noah’s chiseled jaw, his nostrils flaring slightly. For a moment, I thought he might lash out—either verbally or physically, not that he had ever laid a finger on me before. The air between us was thick with tension, crackling like a storm of electricity.

“Oh wait,” I pressed on, a tiny little part of me almost enjoying the way my words angered him. “I’m not allowed to have any contact with you, either. I almost forgot how I offended you just by touching your arm when you were talking to your precious Zoe.”

“That was different,” Noah insisted, pressing his body harder against mine as something hungry—feral, almost—seemed to take over his eyes.

I couldn’t help but let out a small laugh as I ran one manicured finger up his strained forearm. “You’re just jealous,” I murmured coolly.

For another few long moments, Noah glared at me with his jaw clenched—and this time, I thought he might either storm out or ravish me right there on the bathroom sink.

But then, at last, he seemed to deflate somewhat, shoulders slumping minutely as he tore his gaze away from mine. He took a step back, and finally I could breathe now that there was some space between us.

“Maybe I am jealous,” he admitted in a low grumble, almost too quiet for me to properly hear.

I blinked, my amusement faltering in the wake of the unexpected confession. “What?”

“Maybe I’m jealous,” Noah repeated, a bit louder this time as his eyes snapped back to mine, filled with a sudden intensity that made my breath catch in my throat like a shard of glass. “Because even if you do... sleep with Drake—” He spat the words like they were acid on his tongue— “He’ll never really know you. Not like I do.”

My mouth opened and closed slightly at that, a scathing retort dancing on the tip of my tongue.

“You don’t know the first thing about me anymore,” I murmured, my voice hardly more than a whisper. “Maybe you never have. Because you never make the time for me.”

“Is that what you think?” he asked.

I nodded. “I know it’s the truth. We’re strangers, Noah.”

Before I could utter another word, Noah was suddenly in motion—closing what little distance remained between us until every solid inch of his body was pressing against mine once again.

His hands came up to bracket me on either side, his fingers splaying against the cool marble of the sink behind me.

“Very well. But you have to admit, at the very least,” he purred, leaning over so that his lips brushed against the soft flesh of my earlobe, “I know every inch of this body better than anyone. Maybe even better than you do.”

To emphasize his point, one of Noah’s cool hands slid from the counter to trail as light as feathers across my collar bone, his fingertips trailing a scorching path over my clothes. My breath hitched sharply in the back of my throat, a jolt of electricity working its way through me at the deceptively gentle contact.

He knew.

He knew exactly where to touch, which seemingly innocuous spots made my knees go weak and a needy ache bloom between my thighs. As if to prove it, Noah’s hand drifted lower, his fingertips now grazing across the top of my breasts.

“I know all the spots that make you tick,” he murmured as his hand trailed lower, over my abdomen and toward the slight swell of my thighs. “All these years, when we had our monthly intimacy nights, you thought I wasn’t paying attention…”

He paused, letting his fingers rest just on my hip bone. When he spoke again, his voice was huskier than ever.

“...But I was taking notes,” he finished, and then dug his fingers into my hip and pulled me flush against his body once more.

I couldn’t help it—a tiny whimper slipped away from my lips as our groins pressed together, my eyelids fluttering helplessly as my head tipped back against the mirror. My body was reacting on pure muscle memory, unable to deny the instinctive response that Noah’s skilled touch invoked.

He was right. Even after all this time, after all the strain and hurt between us, Noah knew exactly which buttons to push to have me melting into a pile of wanting desire.

Slowly, I trailed my eyes up his hard body and toward his deep green eyes. I held his stare for a moment through my lashes, and that was when I felt it: something warm and hard pressing against my leg.

I couldn’t help it. Smirking, I bucked my hips just so against him. He tried to hide it, but I could see the way his jaw clenched beneath his skin and the way his eyes rolled back when he blinked feverishly.

For a moment, I allowed my eyes to slide over to the bathroom door. It was still locked, the bathroom empty except for us.

We could…

The realization was like a jolt of electricity through me. This right here—the physical intimacy we still craved from one another, the insatiable hunger that clearly had yet to be extinguished despite everything—was precisely what had gotten us into this mess in the first place.

We were hopeless, the both of us.

With a harsh inhale, I wrenched my eyes open fully once more and shoved hard against Noah’s chest, putting some much-needed space between our bodies.

“That’s enough,” I hissed, shooting him a scathing glare despite the way my skin still tingled from the ghost of his touch. I smoothed down my shirt and turned back toward the mirror. “I’m not interested.”

Noah blinked at me in the reflection of the mirror, his expression one of startled bewilderment at my abrupt rejection. Before he could find his words again, I pulled my lipstick out and uncapped it, dragging it across my lips as I spoke.

“If you’re really that desperate for some action, you’d be better off going to Zoe.” The words tasted like acid on my tongue—and I knew that they were going directly against the promise I had made to Drake—but I forced them out anyway, driven by an irrational desire to wound him the way he had wounded me with his accusations and heavy-handed seduction.

A flicker of hurt flashed across Noah’s features at the low blow, quickly replaced by an icy mask of indifference.

“You’re my wife,” he bit out, his voice hard. “Not her.”

I couldn’t help but scoff. “Not for long.”

Noah’s glare hardened, his jaw clenching. Without a word, he turned on his heel and stormed out of the bathroom, the door slamming shut behind him with enough force to rattle the mirror behind me.

I watched him go in the mirror, my shoulders slumping only once the door was fully shut. I let out a shaky breath, blinking rapidly and looking upwards in order to not cry and ruin my perfect makeup.

Dammit.