Learning the Ropes (14 page)

“Well if you need it there’s a couch in the back office. The bartenders sometimes use it for breaks. Not all the noise is blocked but it’s an improvement over this party.” Grant turned and walked down the bar to some guys who were insisting that they needed beer immediately.

Rory grabbed her drink and spun around on her stool to watch Noah and Celeste. Celeste was talking to all of the guys and Noah was back to playing pool. He had just leaned down to take a stroke when he looked up and their gazes collided. Rory wanted to look away but something in his eyes held her captive. Her heart started to beat faster and her nipples tightened. It was possibly the worst time to want him, but she suddenly couldn’t wait to have him. And, for reasons she didn’t want to examine too closely, she needed to lure him away from Celeste.

Holding his eyes, Rory tipped her head to the side, indicating the hallway that led to the bathrooms. The slight tilting of his lips let her know that he understood what she wanted. She quickly drained her drink and placed the glass on the bar, along with enough to cash to cover it and a generous tip. When she stood up, the liquid courage went straight to her head, joining lust to create a fine buzzing in her ears.

Careful not to draw attention to herself, she made her way out of the main bar and into the hallway, past the bathrooms and to the only other door there. The office Grant had offered for her use. Not this use, of course, but what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. Besides, it was a bar office—there was no way it was a stranger to scandal. Rory checked the handle to make sure it was unlocked. Success!

The sound of footsteps had her whirling around and pressing her back to the door. Noah ambled into the hallway and straight towards her. His bad-boy grin was firmly in place but he took a quick moment to lift a hand to her cheek to check for fever. A move he had perfected while she had been sick. She wondered if he could tell the difference between the heat of an illness and the heat of her lust for him. Judging from the look in his eyes, he could.

He leaned closer and she let her eyes drift closed. But his kiss never came. When she opened her eyes, he was looking at her with amusement. “I’m pretty sure that fraternizing in public is expressly against your rules.”

“Fuck my rules.”

Noah’s eyebrows lifted high. “What?”

Rory felt around behind her back and turned the doorknob until it clicked open. She walked backwards into the small office, noticing the battered leather sofa out of the corner of her eye. Noah followed her slowly, a panther on the prowl. She grew more courageous at the heat in his eyes.

“Just fuck me,” she breathed.

Noah stalked closer and shut the door behind them, pulling her tightly against him and taking her mouth in a vicious kiss. Rory couldn’t stop the groan that bubbled in her throat. It had been so long since he had taken her like this. It felt like a lifetime since she had felt so much emotion from him.

She was suddenly overtaken with the need to make him feel as good as he made her feel. He was always so careful to make sure she had pleasure before he took any for himself. For once she wanted to be the one in charge, the one to make him forget the world. She drew away and cast him a sexy smile as she pushed gently on his chest until he sat down on the sofa behind him.

He spread his arms out along the back of the couch and quirked his lips at her. “What’s going on in that head of yours, Rory?”

“Hmm… just that turnabout is fair play.” Rory leaned down to pull off his tie and unbutton his shirt, gracing each inch of revealed skin with kisses and nibbles. When she had all of the buttons unfastened, she spread the fabric wide to reveal his strong, tanned chest. Her fingers rubbed circles around his nipples as she took his mouth in a heated kiss full of tongue.

She knelt on the ground in front of him, between his spread thighs, and he groaned at the visual. She ran the silk tie through her fingers. “Did you know that a man in a tie is my weakness? I love that change from a buttoned-up professional to a crazed sex machine.”

He relaxed into the cushions, happy to let her steer this encounter, and winked at her. “I did happen to notice that whenever I wore a tie around you, I wasn’t wearing clothes for too much longer.”

Rory chuckled. “Well, I think it’s about to become
your
weakness as well.” She reached up and grabbed both of his arms to bring them around to rest in front of him. Teasing him with glances from underneath her eyelashes, she loosely wrapped his tie around his wrists, holding them together. With a flourish, she tied a bow that would have looked at home on a gift. He didn’t offer up any resistance, just watched her through slumberous eyes.

Rory didn’t take any time to admire her handiwork. She had bigger fish to fry. Working carefully, she unbuckled his belt and undid the fly of his pants, carefully drawing the zipper down past an impressive erection. At her silent urging, he lifted his hips so that she could tug his pants and jockey shorts down to his knees.

For long moments she just stared. She had never thought a cock beautiful until she had seen his. Or maybe she was just so appreciative of what it could do for her that her perception was clouded. Either way, her mouth watered at the sight of his long penis freed and arching up towards his flat belly, dotting the skin there with moisture. Noah lifted his hands as she moved closer, creating a space for her to slip under to get at what she really wanted.

She lowered her mouth to the head of his cock and took a delicate lick. The taste of him exploded on her tongue and the sound of his groan rang in her ears. She smiled up at him. “You’re going to have to be quieter than that.”

Noah nodded and pressed his lips together in a thin line.

Rory lightly grasped the root of his cock with one hand and used the other to keep her hair out of her face so his view was unobstructed. Slowly she sucked the head into her mouth, using her tongue to wet his shaft as she sank down on him. Her hand spread the moisture down his cock while she pulled herself up from him. His bound hands landed on the back of her head, urging her to finish what she had started.

Feeling sexy and powerful, Rory took him back into her mouth, drawing him deeper, and lashing his hard rod with her tongue as she sucked. Noah squeezed his eyes shut as if the dual assault of both feeling and seeing her go down on him was too much to bear. He threaded his fingers through her hair and let out a low moan. “Rory.”

He began to rock his hips, slow and measured, then speeding up. Rory moved her hand faster up and down his length, followed closely by her hot mouth. At the speed she set, it wasn’t long until Noah was trying to pull her head up. “I’m close, Rory. About to come…”

Rory shook off his hands and kept on pleasuring him. Taking just a moment to dip below and give each of his balls a soft suck before taking her prize back in her mouth. His whole body was straining towards her when he suddenly went still and silent. In the next instant, her mouth was flooded, hard jets of his release spurting against the back of her mouth.

His hips jerked as he spilled completely into her. She could feel the shudders of his body and see where he had drawn blood biting his lip to keep silent. She leaned her head against his thigh and fought to catch her breath. After long minutes, his breathing leveled out and he lifted his bound hands to his mouth. With one tug he had undone the bow that held his hands together, before gathering her up in his arms and cuddling her in his lap.

Rory sighed and captured his lips with hers, using her tongue to soothe where he had broken the skin. The kiss was deeper, hotter, and gentler than any that had come before. In the face of so much emotion, she pulled away and rested her head on his shoulder. They sat in silence for a long while, both absorbed in their own thoughts.

Finally, Noah patted her back and sat straight up. “We should get cleaned up and then get out of here so that I can properly thank you for that.”

Rory stood up and dusted off the knees of her pants. “No thanks necessary. I liked it. I can’t wait to do it again.”

Noah had stood after her, but now he seemed paralyzed. He stared and then reached to snatch her close. Rory squealed and dodged his arms. “Maybe you better get yourself dressed before I forget where we are.”

Noah looked down with chagrin at his creased and wrinkled pants before pulling them and his underwear back up. He was presentable in no time.

“What got into you, girl?”

Rory pretended to be absorbed in fixing her hair while she thought of an answer. To tell him that she had been jealous of him and Celeste would make her more vulnerable than she had been on her knees. But he was right, it wasn’t normal behavior for her. Or at least it hadn’t been until he’d come into her life.

She shrugged. “I just figured that you’ve taught me so much, given me so much over these last few weeks. I wanted to be the one to give
you
pleasure.”

Noah’s face softened and he reached out to grab her hand and pull her close. His arms closed around her waist. “You always give me pleasure, babe. I love being with you.”

Silence filled the room after his words. Noah seemed unwilling to say more and Rory didn’t know what to say.
Was he telling her he loved her?

Afraid of what might come out of her own mouth if she left it unoccupied for much longer, she twined her arms around his neck and pulled his face down for a kiss. He responded fiercely. He nibbled her lips until she opened for him and then forced her to accept the strong thrusts of his tongue. Like he was trying to tell her without words what he felt. Like he was punishing her for not saying it back.

She had just melted into him and was questioning a quickie on the sofa when the door to the office opened behind them. Noah froze and the sound of voices stopped cold.

Rory pulled her mouth from his and took a deep breath of air into her starved lungs before trying to see who had walked in on them. She peeked around Noah’s chest to see that it was Grant and Celeste. Both looking shocked.

Grant was the first to recover. “I guess your head is feeling better.”

Rory nodded as both she and Noah turned to face Grant and Celeste. “Actually, I had something in my eye and Noah was just helping me—”

Her lame excuse was cut off by Celeste’s hoot of laughter. “You’ve got to be kidding me, girl. Even a blind person could see that you two were making out.” She took in the disheveled state of their hair and clothing and raised an eyebrow. “And maybe more.”

Rory’s mind scrambled as she tried to figure out what to say next. She glanced at Noah for help in desperation. His jaw was clenched and his features smoothed out, giving nothing away. He wouldn’t even look at her, and she was conscious of cooler air slipping in-between them as he pulled away from her.

Celeste was oblivious, laughing as she was, but Grant seemed to pick up on the fact that something was going horribly wrong. He pulled gently at Celeste’s arm. “We’ll just leave you two alone to discuss what did or didn’t happen in here.”

“Please don’t tell anyone—” The words came out of Rory’s mouth before she could think better of them. She cut herself off, but the damage was already done.

Grant glanced at Noah and whatever he saw there had him shaking his head. He gave a curt nod in Rory’s direction and then led Celeste out, shutting the door behind him.

Noah immediately paced away from her, turning his back on her as he took deep breaths.

She tried to talk to him. “Noah.”

He cut her off with a slashing hand movement. “I think you’ve said enough, Rory.” He took a few more breaths and then turned to face her. “I thought we were past this. When you called me in here tonight, I thought… well, I guess I thought wrong.”

“I—I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

Noah didn’t even bother to respond to that. “What do you want from me, Rory? What?”

When she remained silent, he stalked closer to her and shook her shoulders gently. “Friends? Lovers? Dating? What?”

Rory bit her lip as she tried to formulate an answer. She hadn’t been expecting to deal with this yet. Hadn’t thought that the end would come so quickly. “Noah, please. Can’t we just go home and talk about this?” she pleaded.

He stared into her eyes for a few seconds while the tension slowly seeped out of him. “I want to have a real talk, honey. You can’t keep putting me off on this.”

She nodded eagerly. “I know. I know. I’ll go out first and say goodbye to the girls and head to my apartment. You wait another fifteen minutes and then follow me, okay?”

Noah’s head drew back and his hands fell from her shoulders. He let out a short laugh and shoved his hands in his pockets. “I’ll tell you what Rory. I’m going to leave now and you can go whenever and wherever the hell you feel like. I’m done.”

“Done?”

“Done. With all of this. With whatever this was between us. I’m tired of it.” He stood still for another few seconds, clearly waiting for her response, but she was too busy trying to get her breath back, trying to figure out what had just happened. A minute ago he had been ready to talk with her about it and now he was declaring them over. The pain was like a knife in her stomach.

But it was nothing compared to the pain when he turned and walked out of the office without another word.

Chapter Ten

Something in her apartment smelled. Rory was pretty sure it was her. But there was really no reason to shower—no one was coming to see her. After Noah had left her standing in the back office of The Lucky Stripe, Rory had done her own version of the walk of shame through the crowded bar, in front of her friends, and out the front door. By the time she had made it to the parking lot, his car was already gone.

There hadn’t been any sign of him since. No responses to her emails, no phone calls in answer to her voice mails. Not even one letter back after her texts. It was clear that he was in no mood to talk to her. But, oh, how she wanted to talk to him.

She hadn’t realized how much of her everyday life had become wrapped up in his over the past weeks. Most every morning he had been there when she woke up, and certainly every evening they’d had dinner together or watched television, or at least talked on the phone about their days. Now there was only silence where he used to be.