Chapter 5: Touch me Then Leave
POV: Noah Hart
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Noah couldn’t sleep.
He’d been staring at his ceiling for two hours, sheets tangled around his legs, body tense and hot like someone had lit a fire under his skin and walked away.
Elias Voss had touched him once. Spoken to him like he knew things Noah had never said out loud. Like he’d seen something underneath.
Something Noah didn’t even know was there.
He kicked the sheets off and sat up, dragging both hands down his face. His body was buzzing. Restless. Agitated.
You’re not reacting to men. You’re reacting to me.
Elias’s voice had been smooth. Cold. Unbothered.
But Noah had seen it—the look in his eyes. The kind of look you give someone right before you break them open.
Noah didn’t want that look. Didn’t want to crave it.
But his body betrayed him every time he remembered it.
Every time he remembered the closeness. The weight of Elias’s gaze. The way he’d spoken that word: belong.
He hated how it made him feel.
Worse, he hated how it turned him on.
---
The next morning, Noah walked into the office early—hair still damp, coffee half-finished, pulse unsteady.
Elias wasn’t in yet. Thank God.
Noah needed space to breathe.
But the minute he sat down, his phone buzzed.
New text: UNKNOWN NUMBER
“You’re early. Good.”
He didn’t have to ask who it was.
---
Elias arrived ten minutes later. Tailored black suit. Grey tie. Not a hair out of place.
Noah didn’t say good morning.
Elias didn’t look at him.
They moved through meetings like machines—efficient, precise, controlled.
But underneath?
It was a current. Tense and taut and threatening to snap.
---
It snapped at 8:47 p.m., when Elias called him into the private lounge upstairs.
“Help me with this,” Elias said, tugging at his cufflinks, removing his jacket. “We’re done for the day.”
Noah moved toward him without thinking.
He shouldn’t have.
He knew that.
But his hands—traitorous, shaking—reached for Elias’s wrist. Unfastened the silver cuff. Then the next.
Up close, he could smell Elias again. Something expensive and clean, like smoke and salt.
“Why are you helping me?” Elias asked softly.
“You told me to.”
“You could’ve refused.”
“You would’ve hated that.”
Elias’s eyes met his. Sharp. Searching.
“I already hate that you’re afraid to admit it,” he said.
“Admit what?”
“That you want this.”
Noah dropped his gaze. “I don’t know what I want.”
“You know exactly what you want,” Elias said. “You just don’t think you’re allowed to have it.”
Then, silence.
For a heartbeat too long, Elias didn’t move.
And neither did Noah.
Their hands brushed.
Noah’s breath caught.
He looked up.
And Elias—just once—reached out and touched his face. The back of his fingers grazed Noah’s jaw like a question.
“You’re trembling,” Elias said.
Noah’s voice was a whisper. “Because you confuse the hell out of me.”
Elias stepped back. Instantly. Clean break.
“Go home, Mr. Hart.”
And just like that, the moment vanished.
Noah turned, heart racing, body shaking.
But the worst part wasn’t the confusion or the attraction or even the fear.
It was the fact that—
he hadn’t wanted Elias to stop.
