Chapter 15
Liam tried to think straight as he stared down at Frankie. Her lips swollen from their kiss. He knew what he wanted to do, he knew what every cell in his body was screaming at him to do, but what he didn’t know was if it was the right thing to do.
Hearing her say that when he kissed her, he was taking what was his was not helping the situation, but she knew that. He would bet his life, that was why she’d said it. That, or she thought it would be funny.
So many things had come to light in the past hour. She wasn’t engaged. She thought he’d stayed away all those years from her because he regretted being with her, which was true, but not for the reasons she thought. He had taken advantage of her. She didn’t feel that way, but he still did.
She loved him. She’d loved him her whole life. Had he known that? On some level that he hadn’t admitted to himself? Maybe. He didn’t know. That was a question he couldn’t answer right now, not with all the blood that should be in his head down in his southern region.
He always cared about Frankie, loved her even, but until the night of his mom’s funeral, he never looked at her in any sexual way.
Which was why what happened that night scared him so much.
Because after that night, he felt like a pervert.
That night changed his feelings for her, and there was no way to change them back.
His love for her changed the second he kissed her. He fell in love with her, and he’d been in love with her every day since.
Did she still love him? Was that in the past?
Frankie sighed loudly as if she was bored and walked past him. If she’d gone down the hall, he would have stopped her, but she went into the bedroom.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“The bathroom.” She kept walking, not looking back. “I figure you have about five more minutes of overthinking before you come back with a verdict. I might as well pee while I wait.”
He heard the bathroom door shut as his lips spread into a wide smile.
Only she could make him smile and lighten the mood when he had throbbing blue balls, his head hurt from trying to figure out what the right thing to do was, and he felt like he was going to throw up out of fear that he was going to fuck this up, that was how much she meant to him.
With a sigh he walked into the bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed.
He ran his fingers through his hair, then leaned forward, resting his elbows on his thighs.
He continued to mull things over and over.
Finally, he came to the conclusion that the single most important thing was that he didn’t want to lose her.
As much as he wanted her, and he did, more than he wanted his next breath, he knew that they had to do this right this time.
They needed to talk. If they were going to have a chance at something real, before they slept together, they had to figure things out. It was too complicated. Too messy.
The door opened, and he lifted his head. “Before—”
He got out one word, and his brain blanked.
Frankie stood in the doorway wearing a matching white lace bra and panty set and nothing else.
Her petite hourglass figure in silhouette, backlit from the bathroom light.
He stared, taking her in, and she let him.
He loved how bold she was. Frankie wore confidence like some people wore perfume, announcing her presence before she arrived and lingering behind long after she’d gone.
“What?” she finally asked, her expression and tone pure innocence, as if she were still fully dressed. She flicked the bathroom light off and walked towards him. Every step she took caused his heart to beat even harder and his jeans to grow tighter. “I couldn’t hear you. What did you say?”
“This isn’t fair,” he rasped.
She ran her fingers through his hair as her perfect lips curled. “All’s fair in sex and overthinking.”
He smiled, and she reached behind and unclipped her bra and let the material slide off of her body with a thud on the ground, revealing her perfect, bare breasts.
Then she hooked her thumbs in the lace string on her hips and slid her panties down her legs, stepping out of them before straightening back up.
His eyes scanned her from head to toe, taking in the puckered raspberry tips of her nipples, the curve of her waist, the flare of her hip, the tiny triangle of red hair above her mound.
It was then that he noticed a discoloration on her hip.
“What’s this?” he asked, his thumb barely touching her skin.
She looked down. “That is a battle wound from Yaya’s kitchen counter—sharp corner one, fair skin, zero.”
Liam didn’t care that she was making light of her injury or that it was just a bruise, he hated seeing her hurt.
He leaned forward and replaced his thumb with his lips, pressing a soft kiss to her hip.
She exhaled out a mewling sigh and put her hands on his shoulders.
He pressed another kiss on her belly as he ran his hands up her outer thighs.
He was about to pick her up and put her on the bed when she pushed his shoulders away, causing him to sit back up.
“Strip,” she instructed.
Liam never relinquished control in the bedroom, and he never had complaints. But this was different with Frankie. She might have joked around saying she was his, but she owned him.
He reached behind his head to pull off his shirt, then unbuckled and unzipped his jeans, lifted his hips to push them down with his boxer briefs and socks, and finally rocked back into a seated position at the end of the bed.
Frankie stepped forward between his legs like she had the night of the funeral.
Except this time, he was buck-ass naked, and his cock was standing at attention between them.
She didn’t acknowledge that, instead, as her outer thighs rubbed his inner thighs, her fingers began to trace the lines of the tattoos, starting with his upper arms and shoulders, then moving to his chest.
He kept his hands on his legs. He knew if he touched her, he’d flip her on her back, and this would be over before it started. As it was, his cock was bobbing for attention, as it throbbed painfully.
When she got to the clouds representing heaven that spanned his chest just below his collarbones, with an angel whose outspread wings had hidden letters in them, she traced each one, then her eyes met his, emotion filling them.
“It says, ‘Celeste,’ for your mom.”
He nodded. No one he’d been with had ever seen the hidden letters. It shouldn’t surprise him that she had. Now his heart was throbbing, too.
The tip of her finger went lower and stopped right above his sternum in the dead center of his chest. Her eyes shot to his.
“Is this…?”
“Mighty Mouse.”
“When did you get this?” she breathed.
“The day I graduated from med school.”
Her eyes searched his. “Why?”
“Do you remember where I told you the heart is?”
“What?”
“When we were dancing at JT’s, I told you where the heart is.”
He could see her trying to remember what he’d said.
Her eyes lit up as the memory came back to her. “You said it’s in the middle of your chest.”
He nodded, and the tiniest flicker of understanding crossed her face as she put together the meaning.
Frankie traced the outline with her fingertip, then withdrew her hand.
She leaned forward, and he watched as her full lips covered the tattoo over his heart.
The press of her kiss was electric—his breath hitched, and he nearly lost it when the silky strands of her strawberry blonde hair fell over her shoulder and fluttered across the head of his cock, which was straining at full attention.
His hands flattened to his thighs as he white-knuckled his way through not touching her.
He was so hard it was borderline painful.
Liam forced himself to keep his hands to himself, to let her set the pace, and to not steal back control the way he always did.
If he lost it now, he was afraid it would all go too fast and the moment between them would disappear.
It was too precious and rare to risk ruining.
Frankie dragged her lips slowly, sensually, along the taut tatted skin of his sternum, as if she were memorizing the taste of him.
She kissed the tattoo lightly, pressing her tongue to the ink before lifting her eyes to meet his.
Warmth and mischief sparkled in those huge brown eyes, and her lips quirked at the sides, as if she knew a secret he wasn’t privy to.
Moving so naturally, in what might have been the most graceful thing Liam had ever seen, she lowered down to her knees.
He watched as she placed one hand on his thigh for balance, and with the other she curled her delicate fingers around his girth.
He inhaled a sharp intake of breath as his dick swelled and his stomach clenched in need.
She didn’t hesitate. Her grip tightened as she gazed up at him and her tongue flicked across his tip seductively.
Liam groaned, and he felt it reverberate in his chest.
Frankie grinned and did it again, slower this time, dragging the flat of her tongue along the underside of his shaft, then swirling around his crown.
Liam leaned back on the bed, his hands resting behind him as he tilted his head back, fighting the urge to throw her over his shoulder like a caveman.
Instead, he focused on the heat, the pressure, and the impossibility of what was happening.
He tried to keep it together, to think of anything else, but the only thing in his mind was her—Frankie, on her knees, doing what he’d imagined, fantasized about, and had wet dreams of her doing hundreds if not thousands of times over the past ten years.