Holiday Home (A Harem Fantasy #5)

Chapter Seven

Not Some Other Guy

W ith each step nearer to the hot spring, the smell of sulfur grew more pungent. Liam wasn’t the only one to wrinkle his nose, yet it didn’t slow anyone down. Now rid of the mud, their bodies yearned for a dip into the hot spring. Liam, at least, was ready to try and find a bit of relaxation in his day. If the beautiful women with him would allow him that chance.

He couldn’t help but glance around as four graceful forms slipped into the water. He was right there with them. Each of them experienced the immediate release of tension as they slid into the hot spring. Anna and Tess shared a blissful sigh as they descended into the soothing water up to their necks.

Liam agreed with their commentary, though he stayed inaudible. He went a little farther, disappearing beneath the clear, warm water, enveloped on all sides by its soothing gift. He remained there until his lungs began to protest, then rebroke the water’s surface tension and seized a satisfying gulp of air.

The spring was slightly smaller than the mud pool, but that still meant the five of them could float around without worrying about bumping into one another. That was what Avril ended up doing. Eyes shut and floating on her back, she soaked in the therapeutic experience. In one corner of the spring, Avril and Anna started discussing some meal ideas involving the items everyone had gotten at the market. That left a certain voluptuous, dark-haired professor unattended, and Liam found her in the opposite corner of the spring, distant from everyone. Momentarily, he wondered if she wanted alone time, but their eyes connected. He received the slightest “you can come over” head tilt that anyone had ever received.

Yet, it was plenty. Motivated and hopeful about spending some time chatting with Victoria, Liam cut through the water like a dull knife. Even though there was ample room, hot springs never felt like the kind of place to swim freestyle. Cool water, lake, pool, or ocean, go for it. Hot water, no! That’s too much like a bath, and you don’t swim in a bath.

After moving beside her, he leaned against the wall only a few inches—possibly a little closer than he should have put himself—to her left. Victoria didn’t comment on his choice of location, so he didn’t fret over it. For a few seconds, they relaxed in silence.

“How have you been enjoying your first day in Fiji?” Victoria asked.

“It’s been pretty amazing so far,” Liam said. “Feels like you’ll stumble upon some beautiful garden or shimmering lagoon no matter which direction you look. It’s a good thing we have a week to explore these islands.”

Victoria nodded, then asked, “What would you say your favorite part has so far been?”

The answer rose above the rest, the king of the hill; all other contenders were left bested and broken at the base of the hill in an instant. He glanced toward Victoria, finding her discerning gaze upon him.

He could lie, but…

“Probably what was going on about twenty minutes ago.”

“When we were coating ourselves in mud?” Victoria hoisted an eyebrow.

“I liked that a lot, yeah, but I was thinking about the minute or two immediately before that.”

Victoria shook her head at him, but he could see her levity—a rare but enjoyable sight.

“What about you? The Garden of the Sleeping Giant, right?”

“It’s in my nature,” Victoria said, then realized her unintentional pun. “I’ve been to enough tropical islands to generally know what I’ll find there, but there’s always something new to learn.”

That drew one of Liam’s eyebrows skyward. “Wait, are you saying you already knew the answers to most of what you were asking the tour guide?”

Victoria looked positively sexy with the sly smile that she let curve her luscious mouth. “I’m a professor. I have to see if the local tour guide, whose job is to answer tourists’ questions, has an appropriate amount of knowledge.”

“And did this one?”

“He did.”

“What happens when one doesn’t?” Liam asked.

“The death sentence.”

Liam grinned, and even Victoria appeared pleased by her joke. Riding the high, swaddled in warmth, sitting next to the most voluptuous woman he knew, for some unknowable reason, Liam decided to stick his foot directly into his mouth.

“I saw the tour guide asking you something at the end of the tour. You shook your head.”

Idiot! Idiot, idiot, idiot!

“You saw that?” Victoria asked. “Were you watching me?”

Holding in a wince, he settled for a shrug. “I noticed it out of the corner of my eye.”

“A perceptive eye.”

“Yeah…”

Victoria could have kept the clamps on, adding pressure. Instead, she changed tact. “He pretty brazenly asked if I’d like to return later for a more private tour of the Garden.”

Liam’s scowl must have been a sight to behold, for Victoria drew up her eyebrow.

“Would that be problematic, in your eyes?”

“I wouldn’t like it,” Liam admitted. After the response he’d just shown, it’d be pointless to deny it.

Again, Victoria could have heaped on the pressure. Again, she allowed it to dissipate. She and Avril really were ice and fire. “As you saw, I shook my head. I’m not interested in a man who clearly wants to fuck me—and nothing else.”

Liam blinked. Had… Victoria just swore? He rolled through his memories, seeking any time before that when she had. He couldn’t find one. It was like hearing a cat go moo, like an echo in the ear that wouldn’t stop ringing. His brain needed a few moments to process things before he could give her a response.

“I’m glad you said no,” Liam said, uncertain what else to say.

“Why is that?”

Liam held Victoria’s gaze, determined to recover from his initial blunder. This was the week he wanted to see the stars align. Not just see them align, however, but make them align. That was his hope, the paradise he was after.

“Because I wouldn’t want some other guy to put his hands on you.”

“Some other guy?” Victoria inquired. Her voice seemed to be falling, growing softer, sultrier. “Is there already some guy who is putting his hands on me?”

The moment of truth arrived. Liam didn’t back down.

“There’s one who’s hoping to,” he whispered. “I could tell you were paying plenty of attention to the massage I gave Tess.”

The water wasn’t so high that the two of them, the tallest members of the group, struggled to keep their feet planted. In fact, for them to submerge themselves to their shoulders while leaning against the wall, they needed to bend their knees a bit.

Staring into her eyes, remarkably avoiding a shiver as he stared into the tundra, Liam turned hope into reality. Sliding his right arm behind Victoria’s waist, he laid his hand on the beginning of the deep curve that led toward the narrowest part of her hourglass figure. She neither rebuked nor pulled out of his grasp.

She watched and waited, silent but intense. As if anticipating more.

So, he went a little further.

Pulling her toward him, tilting her diagonally, he set her long, delicious—he’d keep using that word to describe her until she was fed up with it—legs over his thighs. She half-floated, half-sat on his legs, her knees bobbing out of the water in her new position. Her much, much closer position, her left breast rubbing against his side.

No rebuke, no attempt at escape, no slap to the face—which might have been a very real possibility had he overestimated her interest in him.

It was as thrilling a moment as he could recollect. Utterly amazing. Awash with mixing strands of excitement and trepidation, he moved his hand from her waist to the lowest possible part of her back. In response, she moved her left arm, lifted it out of the water, and settled it behind his neck. Going the final step to stabilize her position on his lap, he set his other hand just above her knee. From any way anyone looked, they must have surely looked like a couple.

That was what he wanted. Not just to look like one but to be one.

He wanted Victoria Moreno. Just as badly as he wanted the other three women in the hot spring.

“Is this a satisfying amount of touch?” Victoria asked calmly, staring at him with an almost unnerving focus. Reading him, judging him.

“For right now,” Liam said, voice crackling with the desire hurtling through his veins. “Until you decide to ask me for a massage.”

“And I’m going to ask you for a massage?”

Liam began rubbing her lower back. “Yes. You’re going to be the first one, I bet.”

Victoria ever so barely nudged herself closer to him. If not for how alert every one of his senses were, it would have gone unnoticed. She had him pinned, now. Her breast compressed slightly, then a little more.

“What are we betting this time?” the professor asked. If only for a chance to meet her gaze, he couldn’t wait to be in her classroom. That stare stripped away every bit of lethargy and exhaustion whenever he connected with it. He wanted them to share a look in her classroom, a secret look between student and professor, then jointly remember this very moment.

And why not say something along those lines?

“I’m betting you’ll like my massage so much that you’ll keep me after class to give you another one almost every time.”

Victoria’s nostrils slightly flared as she exhaled. The right spot. He’d blindly landed a bullseye. But that was good enough for him. He was more than happy to admit how lucky he’d been time and time again. Avril had yet to notice how he and Victoria were sitting, floating not too far away, eyes still shut. And if Anna or Tess had seen them, they hadn’t done anything to break his and Victoria’s trance.

“Looking for extra credit so soon?” Victoria whispered, lips closer to his with each spoken word.

“I don’t want extra credit.”

“Then what do you want?” she asked.

She wanted to be fucked in her classroom. Liam knew that answer as surely as he knew his own name. Professor Moreno wanted a student to fuck her in her classroom. What a delicious idea.

“I want—”

Avril floated into them. Her head bounced into Victoria’s side, which caused all three of them to snap out of their trances at the exact same moment. Victoria proved to be the quickest one among them.

She was off his lap in seconds, standing more in front of him than at his side. She also managed to turn most of the way around before Avril, eyes opening but only sort of able to see them above her head. By the time she’d rolled onto her stomach and brought her feet to the spring’s floor, Victoria had added a good foot of distance between him and her. Liam had only straightened out of his lean—and done what he could not to look panicked. Or aroused. He was both.

“Hello, lovebirds,” Avril said, closer to the truth than she realized. “How are you both enjoying your cleansing soak?”

“It’s been worth every second,” Victoria replied smoothly. “After a long hike, it’s been especially relaxing.”

Staying quiet, worrying that his voice might still be hoarse with desire, Liam simply nodded in agreement.

“Glad to hear it. After this, how about lunch? It’s already pretty far past time for it, and I swear either Tess or Anna’s stomachs rumbled when I was floating near them.”

“Lunch sounds good.”

“Grand! There’s supposed to be this legendary Indian place not far from here. Then we can do a little shopping and take that plane ride to our lovely resort afterward.”

He and Victoria agreed, and Avril headed off to disseminate the good news to whichever woman it was with the rumbling belly. Liam couldn’t help but hope that Victoria didn’t believe in anything like fate or missed chances. That worry gnawed at him far more than any amount of hunger ever could.