Chapter 9 #2
Who ever knew that sitting cross-legged on Alyssa’s rug with Kennedy, Sophie, May, Izzy and Alyssa, passing around a bowl of chocolate almonds, talking about shoes and face masks and nothing that could blow up a city, was something she’d been missing from her life?
She wrapped the cardigan tighter around her body and started for her room. For the last hour, her mind kept drifting to Liam.
She didn’t even know what to call him. Her former lover? Her current lover? Or just a colleague for the time being?
She reached her room. As she touched the doorknob, she felt his presence looming close to her before she saw him.
“Liam.” His name left her on a breath.
He stood at the bend of the corridor, a ghost carved out of blue granite in the dim shadows. He wore jeans and a black shirt, the sleeves shoved up over his chiseled forearms.
The sight of him made the brief balance she found from being with the women tilt, as though the floor changed angle and forgot to warn her.
He didn’t say anything, just stood there studying her. She couldn’t make out his eyes clearly, but felt his gaze roaming over her face. Was it her imagination or was his stare locked on her mouth?
Her veins pulsed with molten heat that told her she was headed into dangerous territory if she didn’t go in her room and shut the door. Now.
Did she want to be alone anymore?
Recovering her wits, she slipped into her room, letting the door swing wider in something that wasn’t quite an invitation and wasn’t quite not.
She pivoted toward the door, the air thick and charged with things that hadn’t been spoken in two years and maybe never would be.
When the door closed, the soft click seemed louder than a gunshot.
He didn’t come any closer, just stayed there, back to the door, shoulders rising and falling as if struggling to breathe.
It wasn’t indecision that held him in place—it was control.
She could see it in the set of his jaw, in the way his hands flexed once at his sides before curling into fists again.
He looked like he was holding back the storm, and she was his trigger.
Her pulse tripped like a warning or maybe a dare. Whatever words were about to pass between them would either mend everything or burn it down.
She folded her arms to keep from fidgeting.
“I saw you earlier. With Sinner.”
She shouldn’t be surprised that a man like Liam saw everything that went on around him and was laser focused on anything that went on around her.
“The bag…” He let the words trail off.
She wrapped her sweater tighter around herself. “I can’t tell you anything about that.”
“Promises were made?”
“Yes.” The word felt heavy with the weight of someone else’s privacy. “Mine to keep.”
His gaze dropped to her mouth, a slow nod following. The intensity there wasn’t anger, but it still made her pulse stumble. What lived in his eyes scared her more than anger ever could.
He pushed off the door and took three deliberate, rolling steps that brought him close enough that she could see the tiny brown hairs making up the shadow on his jaw. Close enough that the steadiness she’d borrowed from her time with the women threatened to slip.
The tendon in the crease of his jaw twitched. “I keep failing.” His voice was a rough stroke across her nerves.
“What have you failed at?” Her voice had gone softer, and her body swayed toward him.
He worked his jaw, gaze trained on her like he was crossing a minefield one careful stride at a time. “Some days in this game, you win. Some you lose.”
She didn’t know how to respond to that, not when he was only a step away and her heart was hammering wildly in her chest.
“I tried, Elin.” His voice came out gritty, his throat working. “I tried to stay away from you. I can’t do it anymore.”
The room shifted. She felt it—like pressure dropping before a storm. She told herself to move, to put the bed between.
But he reached her first.
In two strides, he caught her face in his hands, framing it with a tenderness that undid her. His thumbs stroked the corners of her mouth, fingers sinking in her hair like she was something precious he’d been afraid to pick up.
“Christ, angel. I never stopped—” He broke off and slammed his mouth over hers.
Heat surged through his lips into hers, and her body followed, pushing closer to him. God, the way he called her angel tore away any resistance she ever had.
When he slipped his tongue across her bottom lip, she responded with tenderness and a new desperation.
She made a sound she didn’t recognize as her own. He swallowed it, tilting her head, angling, deepening. He was patient until she wasn’t. Then he wasn’t either.
He lifted her like she weighed nothing. Her breath caught as she locked her legs around his hips. She gripped his strong, solid shoulders, and he turned for the bed. The room blurred around her.
Her spine met the mattress, and he braced his body on his carved forearms. His heat transferred through the thin cotton of her tank.
Their eyes connected for three heartbeats, then four. Everything in his gaze made her body throb with hunger only he could satisfy.
It made her fearless and terrified in the same second.
“Don’t stop.” She reached for him.
His control cracked, and he kissed her again, deeper, drawing soft moans past her lips that he turned into growls of his own. He skated his palm under the hem of her tank, stroking the skin at her waist like a man touching fire.
Then he trapped her bottom lip between his teeth and she forgot her own name.
He delivered a soft bite, releasing it gently. She raked her fingers over his spine, and suddenly he was kissing her like he’d been starving for two years and had finally found food.
The heat built in a fast climb she couldn’t stop if she tried.
She didn’t try.
His hands were everywhere and nowhere—exploring, claiming, asking—until her skin felt too tight to hold her. She tugged his shirt, and he pulled away long enough to strip it overhead. The sight of him—broad chest, scars that were familiar and some that weren’t—hit her with a new brand of desire.
“I need you.” She wasn’t sure whether she meant now or always.
He pinned her in a scorching look, lowering his body until his weight pressed her into the mattress, scalding her with a warmth that dizzied her. As his mouth found the line of her throat, she issued a rough rasp.
He stripped off her cardigan first and flung it aside. Before he could go further, she bracketed his handsome face in her hands and kissed him for several mind-spinning moments. When he broke the kiss, he dragged his teeth lightly along the neckline of her tank top.
His gaze lingered on her with a glint that made her heart skip. “Take it off.”
Need spiked in her core at the order, making her hands shaky enough that she fumbled with the fabric and had to try twice. He cursed, quiet and rough, and helped her strip off the top, his knuckles brushing her ribs as the fabric cleared her head.
His gaze swept over her with a hunger that looked like he’d been holding it back his whole life and slowly, he ducked his head. His mouth closed over her bare breast.
The world jumped in her vision, and all she could focus on was the god of a man making her feel so alive.
Every breath she sucked in could never be enough, and every swish of his tongue was a rhythm that pulsated in her very blood.
She glided her hands over his rock-hard body, reading the newer scars like Braille. When she reached between them and cupped his bulging erection through the worn denim, he issued a noise like steel scraping stone.
Her nipples puckered, and he noticed, clamping one between his thumb and forefinger, rolling it until she thought she’d lose her mind.
Arching, she let her body do the begging—her mouth was too busy kissing her lover. She sucked at his tongue, and he growled.
She fell still, remembering the way he reacted when she took his cock in her mouth. How he lost his control to the soft, sucking pulls then fisted her hair as she swallowed him all the way into the back of her throat.
She pressed on his chest, and he eased away enough for her to take control. She pushed him onto his back and followed him down, straddling him.
“Fuck, angel. You’re so gorgeous. I missed you so damn much.”
Angel. He called her that because he always said she had angel eyes.
“I missed you too,” she breathed, skittering her hands over the ridges of his abdomen and following the touch with her lips and tongue.
He tangled his fingers in her hair, tugging lightly at the strands and making her pussy flood.
But she was too focused on what she was doing to him. She popped the button of his jeans and edged the zipper down. That was as far as her patience went—she drew his cock out of his briefs and swallowed it in the same move.
“Oh my…god!” His length strained into the back of her throat where they both wanted it.
She drew on the length of him, the clean musk of his scent driving her to the point of no return.
A bead of precum hit her tongue, and she moaned at the salty taste. Passion took over, and she lost herself to the feel of him in her mouth and the roughness of his voice when she pushed him to the brink.
He didn’t let her finish—he flipped her on her back and stared down into her eyes with a resolve she never saw in him before.
“Liam.” His name broke on a sound that wasn’t a word.
“I’m here. We’re just getting started.”
She didn’t know if he meant tonight or forever…and that uncertainty terrified her most.