And suddenly he didn’t care about any of that. He wanted her. He’d just had her, and he wanted her again.

“Gotta go,” he said to Shayne.

“Noah-Goddamnit.”

Noah shut the phone, watching Bailey as she managed to not meet his eyes. “Your next move.”

“Excuse me?”

“What is it?”

She looked away, and that was the topper on the Not Trusting Cake, so he bent down into her face and showed her his. “Look, Alan was an asshole. Your father? Asshole. I wish they were both still alive so I could pay each a visit and tell them personally. But-” But she wasn’t listening, so he put his hands on her arms. Not a good idea because then he automatically pulled her in, tucking her up against him. “But not all men are assholes.”

Wide-eyed, on her tiptoes because he was holding her there, she blinked once, slow as an owl. “I know that.”

“Do you? Do you really? Because it sure as hell feels like you’ve lumped me into that whole men-are-all-untrustworthy-dickwads, and while I’ve definitely got my faults, I’m not going to play with your head, leave you stranded, or put your life on the line for my own stupid mistakes.”

Given that he was saying he wasn’t an asshole with his mouth and yet manhandling her all the same with his body, she did the last thing he expected. She put her hands on his shoulders. Slid them up to cup his face. “I know,” she said softly.

Undone, he let her feet hit the floor but didn’t take his hands off her. Setting his forehead to hers, he found himself taking in a gulp of air, of her. “Then let me help you.”

She stared at him for a long, long moment, during which time he held his breath.

“I’m going to charter another flight,” she said.

“On your own.”

Surprising him again, she didn’t break eye contact. “It’s for the best.”

Hell no, it wasn’t. On her own, she’d run into those guys again, and he doubted a warning would be all she suffered this time. “You can’t walk back to the airport.”

“I’ll call a cab,” she said quietly, looking unsure of her welcome.

His fault. “Sure, you could do that. And risk being found through that trail.”

She looked dejected, and scared again, and damn if his heart didn’t squeeze. “Just tell me where you’re headed, damn it.”

Her eyes went stubborn. “I can take it from the airport.”

“Like you took it the other night at your place when they came to warn you?”

She paled, and he felt like the biggest jerk on the planet. “Fine,” he said. “Let’s do this one step at a time. You need a ride to the airport. Let me take you that far at least.”

They got into the car in the garage, with Bailey picking at the bagel Noah had insisted she eat. He knew when he pulled into Sky High, she’d probably run out of the Jeep before they could even say good-bye, and it was making him very uptight. Hating that, he leaned in and looked into her eyes. “When we get there,” he said. “I’ll-”

“No.”

“No?”

“I am going to make this easy,” she said, shaking her head. “You need to let me.”

Her hair was in his face, again, and he tried not to notice that he loved the way it felt clinging to his day-old beard. “Easy went out the window yesterday. Tell me where you’re running off to, Bailey.”

She looked out the Jeep window, even though her view consisted of bare garage walls.

Turning her to him, he gave her a little shake. “After all we went through yesterday, and then last night, you still can’t tell me? Are you kidding me?”

She squeezed her eyes shut, and her voice wobbled when she spoke. “I’m trying to protect you, Noah.”

No one had ever said such a ridiculous or touching thing to him before, and right then and there he fell a little bit in love.

But just a little bit.

Certainly it was reversible, or at least survivable.

Or so he told himself.

“That’s stupid,” he said. Granted, it was an unfortunate word choice, but he couldn’t help it; he was getting mad.

Her eyes flashed, too, and she shoved free of him. “If something happens to you, I couldn’t bear it, okay?” she cried. “And if that’s stupid, then I’m sorry, but-”

“It won’t. Nothing will happen to me.”

“You can’t make that promise.”

He realized she’d been through too much for her to trust that far. She simply couldn’t do it, he hadn’t earned it yet. “You’ll see,” he said very quietly.

“Noah…” She looked baffled. “Why would you do this for me?”

Why? Because he couldn’t not. Because she was something to him. Everything. To show her, he pulled her over the console and into his lap. She opened her mouth, probably to come up with more reasons not to trust him, so he put his mouth over hers.

She went still with shock, but he didn’t care. He just wrapped her in his arms and nibbled at her, first one corner of her mouth, then the other, until with a soft whimper, she let him in. With another soft sound, her hands glided up his chest and snaked around his neck.

Pulled him close.

“Bailey,” he murmured, groaning when she bought into the kiss, lining up their lips, hers parted, warm and welcoming. He’d have staggered if he hadn’t been sitting down. “This,” he told her roughly, kissing her jaw, her neck. “Because of this.”

She sank her fingers in his hair-he loved it when she did that-and pulled back a fraction, to see his face. “Because of…sex? With me?”

It’d been more than sex, far more, and he looked at her until she closed her eyes. “Okay, yes,” she whispered. “Because of this.”

“And more, damn it.”

To prove it, he kissed her again, slid his tongue against hers and tasted her, filled himself up with her, which he, realized, was all he wanted. Needed.

It shouldn’t bother him that after all this time, all his life really, he’d kept his heart intact, and that she’d not only cracked it open, but had also taken it in the palm of her hand.

But it did bother him, big-time.

“Noah,” she whispered in a voice designed to make him instantly hard, except that he already was.

He had his tongue in her mouth, a hand tangled in her hair, his other gliding down her back, then lower, until he cupped the sweetest ass he’d ever had the pleasure of squeezing. “Tell me where you’re going.”

Panting a little, she wriggled around to fully straddle him, which good Christ, had the hottest part of her gliding over the neediest part of him.

“Catalina,” she whispered, and pressed her face into his neck. “There’s another nearly finished resort on the island, and I…”

“Need to find ‘something.’” Yeah. He knew that part. “I’m flying you.”

“You don’t have to-”

He shut her up with his mouth, until they had to break apart for air.

“Promise me you won’t do anything stupid,” she said.

Do something stupid? The only stupid thing he was in danger of doing was drowning in her eyes.

Oh, and falling for her.

Details.

“See,” she whispered, cupping his face. “If something happens to you, I won’t be able to live with it.”

Because things happened to the people in her life.

He knew that now and understood her fear. “Nothing stupid,” he promised, mentally crossing his fingers. Because he’d already done something stupid. And was in the middle of something else even more colossally stupid. That being sliding his hands beneath her sweater and up her back, then down, and into the back of her jeans as far as he could get, which admittedly wasn’t far enough.

She wriggled a little bit more, giving him better access so that his fingers encountered something silky, something that, oh God, felt like an itty, bitty, tiny thong.

God bless the thong.

“Nothing’s going to happen to me,” he whispered roughly. “To either of us. Except…”

“Except?” She sounded as if she’d been running uphill for miles.

“Except this-” And he slipped a finger over the silk barely covering her.

“Ohmigod.” Her hands fisted in his hair, her arms tightened around his head, placing his mouth at, ah yes, right at her breast. With his nose, he nudged the neckline of her sweater aside and gently closed his teeth over her silk-clad nipple at the same time.

Because of the grip she had on his head, he couldn’t see anything but her beautiful nipple, and he flicked at it with his tongue as he fumbled with his left hand for the seat lever. When he hit it, his seatback flew backward, and so did he, flat to his back.

She fell over him.

Perfect.

Nudging her up his body, he unzipped her sweater, opening it so that he was able to glide his mouth past her breasts, her ribs, to her belly, and then he pulled on her jeans, working them down to her thighs so he could kiss even lower…kiss every inch of skin that passed him…and then lower, oh yeah, lower. Scraping her panties aside, he stroked her with his tongue.

“Noah-”

Reluctantly he lifted his head, but he could still taste her, which worked for him. His gaze ran up her glorious body to her face. Her eyes were still the bluest on the entire planet, glazed with desire.

For him.

That shot a surge of pure lust straight through him. Her hair was adorably rioted as usual, all around her face, and she licked her lips in a nervous gesture. “Are you okay?”

“Yes. But I don’t think…”

“Perfect,” he said, holding her above him with his hands on her hips. “Go with that.” When he used his tongue again, she gasped. When he sucked, she cried out and arched right into his mouth.

Nice. He was going to make her forget, for just a few minutes if nothing else, the horror she’d been through, what she was still going to have to go through.

“We’ve got to go,” she managed, her hips rocking restlessly.

“Not go. Come.” He unbuttoned his Levi’s, and with her help managed to liberate the essentials. She bashed her knee on the console, and he hit his elbow on the window, but finally, oh, God, finally, he pushed up into her and proceeded to make them both forget everything but this.