CHAPTER NINTEEN
Cat was at the bottom of her third Cosmo and feeling no pain. She’d given up not staring and watched Noah watch her. The Workshop was busy, crowded and noisy with neighbors finally able to blow off a little steam now that the figurative cavalry had arrived with hope for the future. Her mother and Paige were exchanging stories about Gabby’s day, but Cat had trouble dragging her blurry focus away from those green eyes across the bar.
When Cat finally returned her attention to her empty glass and its “Nothing Says Christmas Like Merry” cocktail napkin, Noah rose from his stool and shrugged into his wool coat. He shook hands with Henry and then Drake and headed for the door. He stopped at nearly every table between the bar and the door, exchanging greetings, shaking hands. And when he got to the door, his eyes found hers.
Was she imagining the subtle nod? The pointed look?
Noah Yates was inviting her outside. Perhaps she would have the opportunity to kick his ass in an alley tonight. She’d save the hit and run for when she was sober.
“Excuse me, ladies,” Cat said, sliding off her stool. She didn’t bother taking her coat. She didn’t need witnesses. She headed in the direction of the restrooms and then doubled back toward the front door when she was sure Paige and Angela were distracted.
The night sky was a navy-blue carpet of stars in the crisp cold. Cat crossed her arms over her chest and stared up. The noise and company of the bar behind her, nothing but the silence of a winter night in front of her.
“Hey.” Noah leaned against the brick façade, hands shoved in his coat pockets. The word came out in a cloud of breath.
“Hey yourself.”
“Got a minute?” he asked.
She couldn’t read him. Cat didn’t sense any indications of the righteous anger he’d hurled at her earlier in the day. But he wasn’t exactly friendly either.
“Depends.”
The door to the bar opened behind Cat, and a couple, laughing and handsy, stumbled out onto the sidewalk. Noah nodded his head toward the skinny stretch of alley next to the bar and Cat followed him.
“Why were you having drinks with my friends?” she demanded once the darkness of the alley closed around them.
“They were attempting to educate me.”
“Oh? On what?”
“You.” He listed a bit to one side.
Noah Yates had a buzz going.
“What ezatly about me?” Okay, maybe Noah wasn’t the only one a few sheets to the wind.
“They think I’m wrong about you.”
“You are wrong about me. Su-u-uper wrong.” To emphasize her point, she stabbed a finger in the direction of his chest. It caught him at the base of the throat.
Noah made a grab for her stabbing hand. “I’m starting to wonder,” he admitted.
He hadn’t put his gloves on, and his hand was warm over hers.
She leaned in to bring his face into focus. His glasses were a little cockeyed on the bridge of his nose. “You make me want to maim you.”
“Yeah? Well, right back atcha,” Noah said, his green eyes narrowing in the dim light of the alley.
“I don’t like your attitude. Like not at all,” Cat insisted.
“You know what else I want to do besides maim you?” Noah asked. He leaned in like he was about to tell her a secret.
Cat, through her Cosmo fog, could smell his soap. The sliver of air between them was charged. She could imagine the sound of the slap, the feel of his stubbled jaw under her open palm as it cracked across his face.
“What?”
“I think I wanna kiss you.”
“Well that’s a stupid—”
The rest of her words were lost as if they’d been wiped clean from her brain. His lips, firm and warm, pressed against hers, shocking the breath and thoughts right out of her. Noah was warm and hard everywhere. And Cat realized she was noticing this because she’d splayed her hands across his chest under his jacket.
He spun her so her back was to the alley wall. Cold brick bit into her back, but the rest of her was overheating. Tilting his head, he changed the angle of the kiss, and when Cat opened her mouth to tell him this was the worst idea in the history of stupidity, he took possession.
His tongue swept into her mouth rendering her completely stupid. He stroked her tongue with a rough lap of his own, and she moaned deep in her throat. Noah leaned into her, his hips pinning her to the wall. She couldn’t get enough air to breathe or she would have gasped when he grinded the rigid length against her. Noah Yates was either packing heat or he had an entirely different kind of weapon holstered in his pants.
Impatient and ready to take this bad choice to the next level, Cat yanked Noah’s shirt out of his waist band and slid her hands underneath. His skin was hot to the touch. She felt muscle and heat and just the right dusting of hair.
“Ah, fuck,” Noah breathed. He dove back into the kiss and, holding her in place with his hips, shoved his hands under her sweater.
Cat murmured a string of yeses as those big hands skimmed up the sides of her waist and around the front to cup her breasts through her bra.
“Need more,” he murmured. He pulled one hand out from under her shirt and fisted it in her hair. He forced her head back, bruising her lips with his as he slid under the graphite satin cup of her bra.
When his palm met skin, when it dragged ever so lightly across the pebbled point of her nipple, Cat gave an honest to god whimper.
The rumble in his chest was so primal, so alpha, so beyond the cool, controlled Noah that she knew.
Without thinking, Cat hooked one leg over his slim hips angling for more friction right where she needed it most.
He obliged, grinding and thrusting against her. He tightened his grip on her hair and the shock of it blazed through her roots. He stopped kissing her but didn’t move away. So close their lips were still brushing, she breathed him in as his hard-on begged to be freed. She couldn’t look away from those eyes as his fingers closed over her nipple, tugging and pulling until she worried her knees would buckle.
Intimacy, raw and spontaneous, stripped her bare under that heated gaze. Oh, yes, there were sparks here.
“This is the stupidest thing…” she whispered, lips brushing over his with the words. Regardless of the idiocy, Cat shoved her hand between their bodies and gripped his cock through his pants. Oh God. She wanted to be on a first name basis with this particular part of Noah’s anatomy.
Noah gritted his teeth at her touch. “The stupidest,” he agreed, even as he pumped his cock against her hand.
“I don’t even like you,” Cat admitted, biting his lower lip hard.
He winced, tweaking the tip of her breast hard enough to make her yelp.
His expression turned predatory. “It’s not that I don’t like you. It’s that I don’t trust you.”
“Which means fucking in an alley on a cold winter night would be astronomically stupid.”
“You’re drunk,” he reminded her.
“You’re no pillar of sobriety either,” she pointed out.
“I hate your smart mouth,” he hissed, kissing her again until her knee buckled. She wanted the layers of denim and cotton gone, wanted him dragging the swollen head of his dick through her slick folds before slamming into her and ridding her of the ache at her core that threatened to drive her mad.
“I hate you,” she shot back.
He bit her on the neck and then sucked away the sting of his teeth.
“I don’t know what this is,” she said, clawing at his belt.
“Hurry up before we come to our senses.”
Cat’s fingers fumbled with the buckle. “Why are you wearing so many damn clothes?” It wasn’t cold anymore. The heat they were throwing off was enough to chase the winter from the alley.
“Cat?” Her name called from the front of the building reached them both.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Cat chanted. “It’s Paige.”
Noah jumped back and tried to shove his shirt back into his waist band. “Just close your coat, genius,” Cat hissed as she tried to put her boob back in her bra.
“Cat? Oh, uh…” Paige trailed off as she peered into the alley. “Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine,” Cat said, clearing her throat and crossing her arms over her chest. “We’re just telling each other how much we hate each other.”
“Lovely.” Even drunk, Paige had better judgment than Cat. “Why don’t you two call it a night? And we’ll clear the air tomorrow?”
Noah was still staring at Cat as if she were dessert.
“Yeah. Sure. Fine with me.” He rubbed the back of his neck with the hand that had moments ago been clutching her breast.
Cat wet her lips and watched Noah’s eyes narrow in on her mouth.
“Whatever,” she shrugged. When she pushed past Noah, she made sure to drag her knuckles over his still ragingly hard dick.
She heard Paige saying something to Noah, but the blood pumping in her ears muffled the words. She’d just made out with her nemesis. She’d been ready to drop to her knees in an alley to take her mortal enemy’s cock out of his pants and—
“You okay, Cat?” Paige asked, jogging to catch up with her. “That looked like a pretty intense argument back there.”
“Intense,” Cat agreed.
“We’re really going to have to find a way for you two to keep the peace if we want this show to happen,” Paige reminded her. The only hint at her lack of sobriety was the way she closed one eye to better focus on Cat’s face.
“You’re such a weird drunk,” Cat commented.
Paige gave an unladylike snort. “Me? You’re usually the one who ends up riding some guy like a bronco bull on the dance floor.”
“Yeah. That’s what normal drunk people do.” Normal drunk people, however, did not kiss the ever-living shit out of a man whose sole purpose in life appeared to be driving her crazy. What had she been thinking? What was in those Cosmos? Inhibition relaxers?