The Caretaker (Infidelity #3), page 18
My breathing turned unsteady with my mounting distress for him, so he removed his finger, immediately sending two back in, trading one heart pounding emotion for another.
“It was just the two of us that night, so I took care of her. I rolled her onto her back and placed my ear to her heart to make sure she was alive. Then I cleaned her up. Mopped up all the vomit, disinfected the cut on her forehead and put a bandage on it. The bandage was too small. It was the best I could do.”
I tried to pull his hand away, to sink further into the pain in my heart rather than the pleasure overtaking the rest of my body. But Noon was an immovable slab of stone.
“Noon,” I called again, but his fingers kept going, kept pumping, passively winding me up. I didn’t want to be distracted. I wanted to live in this memory with him, wanted to suffer right alongside him. He wouldn’t let me. Even now he was intent on putting me first.
“Normally, I’d shut myself in my room whenever she got plastered. Not that night,” he continued, still stuck in the past. “She was too heavy for me to carry to bed, so I brought pillows and blankets in and slept next to her in the bathroom all night. She felt terrible about it the next day. Hated that I saw her like that, that I had to take care of her. She didn’t drink for days afterward. Her guilt wouldn’t let her. I never closed my bedroom door again.” Noon’s eyes went from distant to sorrowful as he dragged himself back from wherever the recollection had taken him. Probably to that cold, bathroom floor.
“Eventually the guilt wore off and she went back to drinking until she blacked out again. But now every time she woke up it was to a clean house, to breakfast on the table, to two pain tablets and a glass of water on her nightstand, to me sleeping next to her, holding her. Her guilt was the one thing I could use to keep her safe, if only for a little while. And then I met Leland. He’d help me with my mother whenever he spent the night. Sometimes his being there amplified her remorse.”
I didn’t know what I hated most or wanted more. Aiding in the cycle of him giving care to get love—if it meant that in this moment he’d be okay—or showing him that with the right kind of love, he could surrender to his needs, to his visceral pain. I chose the latter, because it was best for him and also true. He needed to know he could be selfish and trust that he would still be loved deeply.
“Please,” I begged, reaching back to grab hold of his wrist. “Let me be here with you, Noon.”
He kept going for a few seconds, then gave a deep sigh as he removed his fingers. The wet digits dampened my skin as he squeezed my hip, as I went from someone in need of his protection to his protector. His anchor.
“How old were you?” I asked, skirting my fingertips along his neck.
“Five,” he said around a swallow, “when the habit started.”
I knew he was referring to his habit and not his mother’s. This was what shaped him. This trauma, this pain, this thing that no child should have to endure was what molded the most incredible person I’d ever known.
“Where’s your mother now?”
“She died from alcohol-related liver disease.”
I didn’t have to ask to know that he’d taken care of her until the end. “Who takes care of the caretaker?” I needed to know that somewhere along the way someone had taken care of him. That he hadn’t always had to put others first.
“No one,” he said, bemused, as if he never expected anyone to. And that, most of all, made me sad.
“I promise to always take care of you when you need it, and even when you don’t,” I vowed. “And I’m hoping you’ll let me, because you don’t need to take care of me to be worthy of my love.” You have that already, I thought, too much of a coward to say it.
Noon pushed me onto my back before bullying his way between my legs, tossing one over the back of the couch and growling for me to hold the other one open. He jammed a pillow under my hips, tweaking my position until he had me situated how he wanted me, never once apologizing for how urgently he seemed to need me. He didn’t need to apologize. In this moment and all others, I would gladly be the vessel in which Noon needed to purge his pain.
He roughly lubed his obscene cock before launching three fingers into my hole with only a snarl as warning. I cried out, gripping the sheet-covered couch.
“Can you take me again?” he asked without inflection, as if it weren’t a question at all, as though the answer didn’t matter, like his barbarity was out of his control.
I peered down the length of his shaft to his heavy sack, already filled with cum after having released a load not too long ago.
“Yes,” I whimpered, remembering to breathe, stomach muscles aching from the tension they held.
Noon leaned over me, hunching to whisper a warning against my lips. “This won’t be gentle.” He rose above me like a behemoth god, his body casting a dark shadow over me as he directed his crown to my entrance. He pressed his hips forward, breaching me with just the tip, staring at me as if waiting for my final words.
“I don’t need gentle,” I panted, dragging my nails down his chest as I let go of my leg to wrap it around him. “All I need is you, Noon.” My heart exploded at the unguarded emotion in his eyes then, pieces of it rushing throughout my body before meeting back up again to form something new, something healthier and more whole. “I…” My mouth grew dry, my tongue absorbing my words.
“Say it,” Noon ordered, both arms caging me in, thumbs brushing the tips of my ears. “Say it.” The second time was a plea.
“I love you, Noon. God help me, I love you.”
“God help us both, then,” he whispered. “God help us both.” He sank into me slowly, bottoming out and then waiting. I couldn’t move. All I could do was suffocate on the air trapped in my lungs as his cock nailed me to the couch. Every ounce of his intimidating, muscular frame shook above me with the willpower it took for him to wait.
“I promise to always shower you with affection without making it feel like a reward, like something you need to earn,” he gritted between clenched teeth as he began to work me. “I promise that my touch will always feel like something I want and need just as much as you do, because loving you will never be work, it will never be a chore. Never.”
Not like the way it had felt with Patrick, he didn’t say. Didn’t have to.
For all the brutishness he’d displayed moments ago, and the warning of his savage intentions, his movements—although no less devastating—were now measured. The light breeze before the cyclone-wind. The calm before the storm.
Noon had something to say, so he held himself in check to prove that his love outweighed his arousal. That it outweighed his need to be let off his leash, to prove that needing to let loose on me didn’t come at the expense of the bigger moment we were sharing.
“I promise to always overwhelm you,” he declared, “to keep you breathless with love and anticipation. I’m going to love you the way you deserve to be loved, Solace.” His hips began to snap with every downward thrust now, with every grunted word of affection that slipped past his lips to be absorbed by my heart.
“I love you, Solace. So damn much.” His hair fell onto his forehead, and at this point, at this velocity of speed, it should’ve been impossible for him to speak. Regardless of what it looked like, or what it felt like as he ruled my body with bared teeth and not an ounce of compassion, he was making it clear that even in this, even as he used his cock against me, it was done with love.
Through the increasing rapture taking over me, and the mind-blowing and near-violent fucking, his love smothered me as he promised it would. Still, I managed to make a vow of my own. “I promise to always find you when you get lost. I…” I paused to let loose a moan. “I promise to fall for you hard and fast every day, and I promise to appreciate all the big things, because nothing you say or do will ever be small.”
Noon chiseled away at me, punctuating each promise with a hard drive of his hips. I wanted to come up with more, if only to see how much harder and faster he could go. To see if he could fuck me until we merged and became one.
We were at the end of a road paved in pain, the kind that came from not being loved properly, because with proper love and respect, all of life’s other pains could be faced down and survived.
“Now comes the hard part, beautiful,” he whispered before pulling out and forcing me onto my stomach. Noon sealed my legs together, the pillow beneath me keeping my ass propped in the air.
I scrambled to my elbows as he straddled me, straightening his legs until they bracketed mine, keeping them closed. His cock nudged at the tight crease of my ass. “Noon,” I gasped. This would be more than I could handle.
Fisting my hair, he pulled my head up and to the side so I could see him. “You can take me,” he said. “Relax your muscles and take me, beautiful.” Noon encouraged me as he went, inch by inch and sweet word by sweet word, he surged through my snug opening. My cock strained between my abs and the pillow. One wrong move and I’d blow.
Noon still held me by my hair, his face close to mine as he held himself up on a flattened palm. Strangled breaths were the only sounds to leave our parted mouths as his cock dove deeper and deeper into my channel…and then I had all of him.
Cursing, Noon kissed me as he began a bloodthirsty pace. The kiss was awkward, with one half of our mouths being neglected due to our position, and sometimes we missed the mark altogether because of his height. We were mostly reaching tongues, animalistic grunts, and clashing breaths. We didn’t care.
The couch scraped across the floor until it banged into the iron end table. The scattered pillows cushioned the porcelain lamp’s fall. Noon let go of my hair, sending me crashing chest-first onto the couch before he released all two-hundred-plus pounds of muscle on top of me.
With me now completely pinned, and his cock plundering and conquering my hole, all I could do was pray I didn’t splinter under the force of his brutal thrusts. The pleasure was almost too much for me to withstand, as it should’ve been.
He’d asked me to take him. To accept all of him. So I did, and I always would.
Noon
Now
SOLACE REACHED FOR me from his spot in the middle of the bed. He resembled a porcelain doll, and the pain etching cracks along the corners of his eyes made him appear as fragile as one too.
“No,” I mouthed, yanking my arm away as I stumbled from the bed. I’d sat immobile as he walked me through what he and I meant to each other; and while he’d explained what my wife had done to me. What she… What they had done to us. The two people who had promised to love us unconditionally, till death do us part. “Sh-she wouldn’t do that to me.”
“I know you want to believe that, Noon, but you don’t remember the facts,” he said in a gentle tone, but the truth of it still stung.
“And yet I’m supposed to believe you,” I shot back with disbelief in my voice, even while knowing I could. I withdrew further from him until my back met the wall. I’d prepared for this. I’d braced myself for it the whole ride back from Pauly’s. Yet having a strong suspicion that my child—that my wife’s unborn child—wasn’t mine, and receiving confirmation were two different things. I’d fooled myself into thinking I was ready for this level of pain.
And the rest of it? This wasn’t some one-night stand or a fling that led to an accidental pregnancy. Our spouses had been engaged in a prolonged affair with one another. Had been planning a life together and were prepared to step over our broken bodies without looking back.
The real strike to the chest came when Solace announced how little they’d thought about our feelings after the truth had come out. They’d dropped a bomb on our lives and then immediately rode off into the sunset together. Cowards.
Maybe Solace was the liar. Maybe he’d fed me nothing but lies all this time. Stacey wouldn’t have done that to me. She couldn’t have. Yet in my heart-of-hearts, I knew she had. I was angry and confused and hurt, and so clinging to denial seemed like the best solution. My grasp on it was slipping, though. It hadn’t been a solid hold to begin with. Not when faced with the beautiful man in front of me.
“Yes, you’re supposed to believe me,” he said, voice brittle, “because you know me. The mind may not remember, but the heart never forgets. Your heart knows me, Noon. I’m its only source of solace in this world. Listen to it.”
I couldn’t move if I wanted to, because the love emanating from his blue gaze nailed me to the wall, even as it tugged my heart forward. It was that same tug I’d been experiencing for months now. That feeling of knowing, even while my mind kept me in the dark. I’d mistakenly attributed it to Stacey. The pull hadn’t been toward her, though. I’d been drawn to Solace. That feeble tether to denial snapped, but there was still so much rage and pain in the way. Still so many unanswered questions. It was time to ask them.
“I’ve missed you,” he said, fisting his hands in the sheet swathing his hips. “So much.”
“Then why was I the one who had to find you?” I bit out. “Why have I been living my worst nightmare for months while you’ve been enjoying life on your own?” It wasn’t true, and it was far from fair. I’d felt his despair since the day I arrived in Haley Cove, but I needed an emotional punching bag and he was the only thing there. Solace nodded, as if he knew my reasoning and was willing to take whatever I tossed his way.
“I thought you’d taken her back,” he admitted, his eyes a chasm of regret.
“What? Why?”
“We were so happy here,” he said. “Too happy. We were making plans fast, and sometimes I asked myself if that was because we somehow knew we were on borrowed time.” He dipped his head, and it took everything not to lunge for him, not to plead with him to never take those gorgeous baby-blues off of me again. They were the only thing keeping me glued to reality because everything they conveyed felt real. Felt like the only real thing in all of this. I was willing to admit that to myself now.
“Please look at me,” I whispered.
“They’d reached out to us,” he went on, holding my stare. “They were coming back and wanted to meet. To…talk.”
The way he hesitated made me assume there was more to their request than that.
“We were both shaken up after hearing from them—for different reasons. We were happier than we’d ever been, and now we had to separate to face the people who’d hurt us.” He huffed a cynical laugh, then pressed on. “It was supposed to be quick and easy. I mean, why wouldn’t it be? They didn’t want us anyway. They’d made their choice, right? Only thing left to do was legally sever ties.” He shrugged. The casual gesture and his tone were at odds with each other, letting me know it hadn’t been easy at all. This time when he looked away, I let him.
“I never came back,” I said slowly, as realization dawned. “Solace,” I whispered when more than a frenzied heartbeat passed and he hadn’t responded. His gaze returned to mine, hauling me into the tidal wave cresting within it. I instantly understood that my not returning had been the single most devastating thing that had happened to him—next to losing Gavin.
“I thought you’d taken her back,” he said again, in a strained whisper. The words weighed down by a lifetime’s worth of pain. “I thought you took one look at her and realized that what we’d shared those three months was just a fantasy.”
“Why would you think that?” I asked, my knees scarcely holding me upright. “If you and I were so in love, why would you think—”
“Because Patrick wanted me back.”
An involuntary growl charged up from my core. I cut it off before any sound escaped my lips. Solace continued, oblivious to my lapse into possessiveness.
“Turns out the magic between them was only magical when they were sneaking around. He’d had an epiphany,” he said in a mocking tone before swiping roughly at his cheeks. His tears would be my downfall. “And when you didn’t show up or call, didn’t respond to any of my calls and texts…” He shook his head sadly. “I thought you’d had one too.”
“I’d never do that to you,” I swore, sure of it. Positive that I’d never want to see him break the way he was breaking in front of me right now. He deserved better. Even with my memories of that time missing, I knew he deserved better, and that I wasn’t the kind of man who could do something like that to him.
“I was frantic,” he said. “And desperate. And angry. I didn’t have contact information for anyone in your life. I’d camped outside your place for two whole days but neither of you ever came home. Your lights remained off. All sorts of scenarios ran through my head. I-I thought maybe you two had run away together. Maybe you had a second home somewhere that I didn’t know about. I was sick, Noon. Sick without you. I just wanted you back. I would have begged you to come back to me.” His words were a panicked rush of breath, and my own sort of wild panic began building momentum within me.
I wanted to reach for him, to grab him by his hair and tell him he didn’t have to beg for anything, that I would find a way to travel back in time and remove all traces of every moment that he ever felt like he had to. But I was still angry, and I didn’t know if some of that anger should be directed at him or not. Until I knew for sure, I’d remain sagging and barely breathing against the wall.
“How did you find out about the accident?”
“Patrick, of all people.” He spoke his ex-husband’s name as if it left a foul taste in his mouth. “He didn’t know about us. He called because he didn’t have anyone else to turn to after finding out about her. How ironic that after everything, he hoped that I would be there for him as he grieved for her. He had no idea what the news had done to me. Had no idea what you and I had come to mean to each other.”
“How did he find out?”
“Word of Stacey’s passing had made its way to her friends and colleagues at the hospital she and Patrick worked at together.”
“I don’t understand,” I said, pushing off the wall only to realize I still needed the support. “She was pregnant with his child.”
