Part 54

Note of the writer: hope the kiss expectations some of you had, have been met?😉

Caroline ignored the blinking light. She placed her phone face down on the marble countertop with a sharp click. She needed to reclaim her space, get her control back that she seemed to lose by the minute.

Driven by a feverish, nervous energy, she attacked her apartment. She shoved load after load of laundry into the machine, the scent of lavender detergent meant to drown out the lingering memory of leather and tobacco. She scrubbed the kitchen counters until they shone, rearranged her books by spine color, and vacuumed the entire apartment as if she were sucking up the very traces of her own restlessness.

As the washing machine hummed a rhythmic, grounding beat, the exhaustion finally hit her like a physical blow. The M4 adrenaline had burned out, and the many sleepless nights lately leaving a hollow, bone-deep tiredness. Without thinking, she collapsed onto her bed, still in her jeans. In the kitchen, her phone flickered one last time, the battery icon a bleeding red sliver, before the screen went black. Just as Noel had warned.

She fell into a sleep so deep it felt like a blackout, a dark, dreamless void where there was no room for lawyers, tour vans, or soon-to-be-ex-wives.

DING-DING.

The sound sliced through her sleep like a serrated blade. Caroline bolted upright, disoriented by the harsh early morning light cutting through the gaps in her curtains. Her heart rate spiked instantly. Was it nine o'clock? Had she overslept the meeting? Wait..what day was it?

DING-DING. DING-DING.

Then came the pounding, heavy, frantic thuds against the wood of her front door. Caroline scrambled out of bed, her hair messy, her clothes wrinkled and twisted. She ran to the hallway and squinted through the peephole. Her breath hitched.

It was Noel. He was still wearing the same leather jacket, but he looked like he'd spent the night in a war zone. His hair was wild, his sunglasses were nowhere to be seen, and the panic in his blue eyes was raw and completely unshielded.

The moment she threw the door open, he practically stormed inside. He grabbed her by the shoulders, his hands trembling with a force she'd never felt from him.

'Dammit, Caroline!' he choked out, his voice cracking. 'I've called you a hundred times. Your phone was dead. I thought...I thought something happened. That Sara had come here, or that you'd...or Rob..I'

He broke off, his jaw violently twitching as he pulled her roughly against him, burying his face in the crook of her neck. He was breathing hard, his entire body vibrating with a terrifying level of adrenaline. The "noble hero" was dead and buried; this was a man who had clearly spent a part of the night pacing his own house, or her street, consumed by the thought that something had happened to her again.

'Don't you ever tell me you don't need that cable again,' he rasped against her skin, his grip almost painfully possessive. 'I've been going out of my mind for half the night.'

Caroline stood frozen, her heart hammering against his chest.

Noel wasn't just holding her; he was anchoring himself to her, his fingers digging into the fabric of her shirt as if to verify she was actually solid, actually there. The tremor in his hands was a revelation, the calm, arrogant negotiator from the van had been replaced by a man coming apart at the seams.

'Noel, I'm fine,' she breathed, her own hands hovering uncertainly before finally resting against the small of his back. The heat of him was a shock after the cold sheets of her bed. 'My phone must have died. I was so tired, I fell asleep. I'm okay.'

Noel didn't pull away. Instead, he tightened his grip, his fingers digging into the small of her back as he hauled her closer against him, as if trying to merge their heartbeats into one. The sheer force of his relief was a physical thing, vibrating through his chest and into hers.

He pulled back just enough to frame her face, his thumbs bruisingly soft against her cheekbones. His blue eyes were dark, turbulent, and stripped of every layer of his usual arrogance. 'Don't,' he rasped, his voice barely a whisper. 'Don't ever do that to me again, Caro.'

Before she could even breathe a response, he closed the distance.

Their second kiss ever was a collision, desperate, starved, and fueled by the hours of agonizing restraint in the van. It tasted of the fresh London summer morning and the lingering heat of his panic. When his lips met hers, it felt like a circuit finally closing, a violent spark that made Caroline's knees buckle.

She reached up, her fingers tangling in the wild mess of his hair, pulling him closer as she let out a soft, broken sound into his mouth. Noel groaned, a low, guttural vibration that she felt in her very bones. He backed her up against the hallway wall, the cool plaster a sharp contrast to the furnace of his body pressing into hers.

His hands drifted from her face, sliding down to grip her waist, his touch heavy and possessive. He kissed her as if he were trying to reclaim every inch of the space she'd put between them earlier. It was deep, demanding, and utterly soul-destroying. Every time she thought she could catch her breath, he tilted her head and found a new way to make her head spin.

Caroline was the first to break the kiss, gasping for air, her lips swollen and damp from the raw force of him. She pressed her palms flat against his chest, 'So possessive again,' she swallowed hard, a small, shaky smile breaking through her shock.

'If you ever turn that phone off again, I'm kicking the door down. I don't care who's watching' he rasped, his forehead dropping to rest against hers but not for long as she saw him bite his lip and his hands began to slide lower. His touch heavy and persuasive as he nudged her an inch closer to the hallway that led to her bedroom.

He didn't say a word, but the way he trailed his lips from her jaw to the sensitive cord of her neck spoke volumes. He was a man used to getting his needs met.

Caroline felt her resolve melting like wax under his heat, but the cold reality of his troubles at home and the looming image of a furious Sara flashed in her mind.

'Noel,' she whispered, her voice trembling as his teeth lightly grazed her skin. She placed her hands against his chest again to create a few inches of desperate space. 'Stop. It's too fast..There's..there's too much at stake, your wife..the tour, there's gonna be absolute carnage if we don't do this right.'

She took a shaky breath and, with a Herculean effort, slipped out of his possessive embrace. She retreated two steps into the safety of her kitchen, putting the marble island between them like a tactical barricade.

She leaned against the counter, her hair a mess and her heart still performing a drum solo, but she managed to fix him with a playful, narrow-eyed look.

'So,' she said, her voice regaining a hint of its usual professional steel, though it was still breathy. 'Since you're clearly having a mid-morning crisis... do you want coffee? Or maybe some tea to calm your nerves? Because you look like you need both.'

Noel stayed exactly where she'd left him in the hallway, his hands still slightly raised as if they were mourning the loss of her. He looked at the kitchen island, then back at her, a slow, predatory smirk finally replacing the panic in his blue eyes.

'Tea,' he rasped, his voice still a low vibration that made her skin prickle. He started to walk toward the counter, 'Caro... you're vastly underestimating my patience, but fine. we'll play it your way. For now..'

'I'm not playing games, Noel, in case you were wondering..' she repeated, her voice dropping to a whisper as she finally looked him in the eye. 'That's not who I am. And I...' she swallowed hard, her heart hammering against her ribs, 'I really hope you know that..I'm not leading you on just to pull back the moment things get reaI..I'm not some strategist trying to up my value by making you wait. I'm just trying to keep my head above water..it's been..well..a lot, since..you know..Rob and what he did..'

Noel's hands, which had been reaching for the edge of the marble, went absolutely still. The mention of Rob acted like a physical brake on his momentum. The predatory smirk he'd been wearing vanished, replaced by a dark, protective shadow that crossed his features.

'I know..I know about Rob..and what he did..' He looked up, his blue eyes piercingly direct. 'The last thing I want is for you to think I'm just another man who doesn't know when to stop.'

He shifted his weight, 'all this stupid attitude and banter I seem to be giving you, isn't because you're making me wait. It's because I'm terrified that if I push too hard, you'll think I'm just like him. That I'm just taking what I want without looking at what it's costing you.'

Caroline felt the last of her defensive posture crumble. It was one thing to keep the cocky and arrogant rockstar trying to seduce her in a van, at bay; it was something else entirely to stand face-to-face with this raw, almost painful honesty.

She stared at her hands, still gripping the edge of the counter. Knowing that he didn't just see her as a conquest, but as someone with scars he refused to reopen, changed everything.

'That's just it, Noel,' she whispered, finally forcing her gaze back to his. her eyes were glassy with unshed tears. 'Rob took whatever he wanted and left me with the wreckage. And now..now you're here. And you're overwhelming. Sometimes I feel like if I take one step too far, I'll lose myself entirely in your world. And that world...hasn't exactly been safe for me.'

She thought of Sara, the vitriolic side-eyes, and the way Noel's life was always under a magnifying glass.

Noel closed the distance between them, his voice now nothing more than a deep, steady rumble. 'I can't make my world any smaller, Caro. But I can promise to build the walls higher around you. If you need space to breathe, I'll give it to you. Even if it kills me to stay on the other side of the wall.'

Noel's confession, that his arrogance was just a shield for his fear of breaking her, was the final blow to Caroline's defenses.

She looked at him, seeing the exhaustion in his blue eyes and the raw honesty that made him more vulnerable than any tabloid headline ever could. Without a word, she let go of the kitchen counter. She didn't stay on her side of the barricade. She moved around the marble island in one fluid motion, closing the distance before he could even draw his next breath.

She reached up, her fingers tangling in the wild, salt and pepper hair at the nape of his neck, and pulled him down to her.

The kiss was an answer to every unspoken question they'd left hanging on the M4. It wasn't the tentative, exploratory touch of before; it was a collision of relief and suppressed hunger. Noel let out a low, wrecked sound against her mouth, half-groan, half-surrender.

His arms wrapped around her instantly, his hands splaying across her back, pulling her so close to him that she could feel the heavy, erratic thrum of his heart matching hers.

Caroline kissed him with a ferocity that surprised even herself, her hands sliding from his hair to his shoulders, anchoring herself to him. Noel responded by backing her slowly toward the wall, his touch heavy and possessive, his lips moving from her mouth to her jawline, trailing fire wherever they landed.

The scent of summer rain and Noel filled her senses. Every time they broke for air, it was only for a second before one of them pulled the other back in for more, their tongues met in a feverish heat, a dance that was as hungry and impatient. It was a raw, wet reclamation of each other's space.

Every flick and slide of their tongues sent a jolt down Caroline's spine, a tingling vibration that reached all the way to her fingertips. Noel kissed her with a demanding intensity, his tongue tracing the contours of hers as if trying to erase every last inch of the personal distance she had kept from him for the last weeks.

It was a soft but powerful parry and thrust, the damp heat of their mouths creating a language of its own. Every time Caroline thought she could catch her breath, Noel pulled her back, his tongue grazing her lower lip before fully overtaking her mouth again. The only sound in the kitchen was the heavy, rhythmic friction of their breathing and the soft, wet contact of their lips.

When they finally broke apart just enough to inhale, their lips were swollen and slick, shimmering in the morning light. Noel let his tongue trail one last, slow, possessive stroke across her upper lip, a silent brand, before dropping his forehead against hers, both of them panting and completely unraveled by the intensity of it.

Noel kept his hands locked on her waist, his grip so firm that the heat from his palms seemed to seep through her jeans and straight into her skin. 'That,' he rasped, his voice a low, dangerous vibration that made her knees feel like water again, 'is the most unprofessional thing you've ever done, kissing your boss like that.'

Caroline let out a soft, shaky laugh, her hands once again resting on his chest, her favorite spot 'That's a bold claim, Mr Gallagher,' she whispered, her fingers tracing the soft cotton of his shirt. 'Especially since the boss was the one who almost broke my door down and staged a dramatic rescue mission over a phone charger.'

Noel let out a low, vibrating chuckle that she felt in her own chest. He didn't let go of her waist; instead, he pulled her just a fraction closer, his blue eyes finally losing the last of their frantic edge. The predatory rockstar was back, but there was a new, softer layer of possession there.

'I believe the legal term is "duty of care",' he murmured, his nose brushing against hers as he stole one more lingering, shallow kiss that tasted of victory. 'I was simply ensuring my most valuable asset was still functional. And based on that kiss..I'd say you're over-performing.'