Part 53 (1/2)
”So do you,” I whispered back. ”I want you to c.u.m hard all over my d.i.c.k, Laurel. I want to see your face.”
”Oh, G.o.d.” She s.h.i.+vered at my words, and I felt the pressure of her bouncing get harder and faster.
One hand ran up and under her s.h.i.+rts until I had a handful of breast. I rolled her nipple between my fingers and she groaned. ”Are you going to c.u.m for me?”
”Yes,” she gasped. ”Yes, Noah.”
”Come hard for me, Laurel,” I said.
Her p.u.s.s.y started clenching around me and I knew she was close. I bucked my hips up to meet hers, driving my c.o.c.k deep and hard inside of her, and Laurel screamed at the added pressure. She gripped my s.h.i.+rt like she was falling off a cliff as her o.r.g.a.s.m rocked her body and didn't stop f.u.c.king me until she had pulled me over the edge with her. When she did, the waves of her o.r.g.a.s.m milked my c.o.c.k, as if they were desperately trying to draw every ounce of fluid I had left in my body.
Laurel didn't seem aware of herself for the first few moments after she came. She rocked slowly on my hips and c.o.c.k, her beautiful face looking calm and still through the dim half-light of the fogged-up truck windows. I pulled her lips to mine and kissed her, enjoying the soft moans still escaping from her throat.
”Noah,” she said wistfully. Her eyes were closed.
”Yeah?” I whispered back.
Laurel paused. She rubbed her face against mine longingly. I had a sense the words that finally came out of her mouth weren't the first that she thought of-but I liked hearing them, anyway.
”I'm glad I found you.”
~ Thirteen ~
Laurel
I'd been staring at my laptop for forty-five minutes, just circling around the same mindless websites and think pieces I had already checked. There was a lot of important work to do, but my brain was flooded with thoughts of Noah. Yesterday had been unbelievable, dreamlike. I wasn't sure exactly what was happening to me, but it wasn't like anything I've been through before.
In my mind a quiet question was gaining strength, demanding attention, and it was taking more of my energy than ever to ignore it.
But I fought it. I had to keep fighting it. I had a job to do, and now that job was more important than ever. After hearing what Noah had to say about the festival-exactly the scoop we dreamed of-this hunch that I had been wrong about him only seemed more certain. Since the first time I met him, Noah Hardy had thrown me for a curve, yielding layers of complexity beneath the bulls.h.i.+t image the media had built for him. Wasn't it reasonable, then, that there was more to the story of the festival than we expected? It was true of everything else about Noah.
It had been hard to contain my excitement when he told me about what really happened at the festival. I found myself flooded with all sorts of relief; but more than that, I wanted to sprint away from that beach right then and there to find a solution to his problems.
That night had turned into something I didn't expect in a lot of ways. I was still reeling from the incredible s.e.x, from the intimacy, from the warmth I felt in Noah's arms that I had never felt anywhere else before. Warmth I didn't know was possible to receive from another person.
But I really did have work to do. I had to check out what Noah had told me. After hearing his story, I started doing some digging, and I was more certain than ever he was telling the truth. It was just that no one would listen to him.
Finally, Steve's knock at the door interrupted my mindless surfing. He brought coffee and donuts this time, still a little sour from me wasting the extravagant feast from the other day, and together we gathered up around the tiny circular table near the window.
”So, you finally remembered you're not here on vacation?” he said with a raised eyebrow as he pa.s.sed out the donuts.
”It's been like, two days, you big baby. You really need me around all the time for entertainment? This city is great.”
”I'll take the Atlantic chill, thank you.”
I shook my head and drank some of the black coffee he'd brought. ”Anyway, shut up, we have a lead on something and we need to drive at it hard.”
”Oh, yeah?”
I hiked my leg up onto the cozy, round chair. ”We're missing part of the story. We always have been. Noah killed that guy in self-defense.”
Steve coughed on a bit of the donut making its way down his throat. ”Are you f.u.c.k-drunk? How many times did you watch that video, Laurel? That dude didn't even see Noah coming, let alone go after him.”
”The guy was going after Quinn with a blade. Noah stopped him.”
Steve just watched my face like he was waiting for me to break. I gave him a withering look back and asked him to respond.
”Man, are you in love with this guy or something?” said Steve.
I rolled my eyes, but didn't admit to Steve-or myself-how much my chest tightened up at the question. ”That's not the reason, Steve. I'm serious about this.”
”It's not the reason, but it's a reason?” Now Steve was smiling like a f.u.c.king idiot.
”Steve, G.o.ddammit.”
”Big bad Laurel quivering for Noah Hardy? Battista is never going to believe this,” said Steve as he dug in his pocket for his phone.
”If you don't put that f.u.c.king phone down, I'm going to call Diane right now and tell her how many mimosas you made me sneak you on the plane ride over here, I swear to G.o.d. Test me.”
Steve froze. Silently he slid his phone back into his jacket pocket and looked at me with renewed interest, fingers crossed on the table top. ”All right, fine. I'll bite. Tell me more about this bat-s.h.i.+t theory of yours.”
”I'm not saying we run with it without proof,” I a.s.sured him, pulling up the pages I wanted on my laptop. ”I'm saying we find proof.”
”Find proof that the dude Hardy killed was on-stage to attack Quinn with a knife, you mean. Proof that, somehow, both the security company and the cops missed that during their investigation.”
”Your sarcasm is noted and rejected,” I said, sliding the laptop around to face him, and then dug into the eclair he had put next to my coffee. ”To answer your immediate concerns, I don't think the cops and security missed the proof. I think they're hiding it.”
”G.o.dd.a.m.n, it is too early for this.”
”Just shut up and listen. Our best bet as far as looking at proof is the video evidence, but that also presents our biggest problem. We have a lot of cell phone footage from the crowd from different angles, but none of it helps us. Did you notice why?”
Steve stared at the laptop, his finger sliding over the mousepad. After a few seconds he said, ”They're all too far away.” He looked up at me with a curious face, chewing slowly.
I raised an eyebrow at him and nodded. ”Exactly. They're all too far away. Somehow, not a single person that was in the first ten rows near the stage was using their phone when the attack happened. Does that sound right to you?”
”Sounds like straight-up bulls.h.i.+t. Half the crowd at every show is on their phone, and the ones up-close have more reason than anyone,” said Steve.
”That's what I thought too,” I said. ”I can't find a single video that close. So last night after I got back to the hotel, I started sniffing around some of the fan message boards and Tumblr and the like, hoping someone from the crowd posted what they saw happened.” I waved a finger at the laptop. ”Pull up the tabs of the ones I've saved, and you'll see what I saw-a pattern of a couple different people claiming they had their phones confiscated by the security team after the attack.”