Chapter 30 #2
“Why not? We’ve been cooped up in bed all day.”
“I wouldn’t exactly call what we’ve been doing being cooped up. Would you?”
He looks me up and down and my skin burns everywhere his gaze lingers. “No, I wouldn’t. But I’m sure we could afford to get some fresh air.”
“It’s the middle of the night.”
“We’re on a giant cruise ship with four swimming pools.”
A nervous laugh bubbles in the back of my throat. “They’re all closed.”
Liam’s fingers tangle loosely with mine, his thumb mindlessly drawing shapes on the inside of my wrist. “So?”
“So? We’ll get in trouble!”
“Only if we get caught.”
* * *
The pool deck is eerily empty, a far contrast from the hordes of swimmers and screaming children who occupy it during the day.
A breeze floats through our hair, and goose bumps rise across my skin. Though I’m not sure if that’s from the chill or nerves. Or the fact that Liam hasn’t dropped my hand since leaving the room.
Moonlight spills all around us, drenching the pool water in a ghostly glow. I look around, searching for some kind of security or patrol, someone to stop us from doing this, but we’re all alone.
“What if we have to walk the plank?” I whisper as Liam holds the gate open.
“Come on,” he says. “It’ll be fun. I promise.”
I promise. Two dangerous words I should never listen to. Especially from him. And yet, Hello, masochism, my old friend, because as soon as Liam lifts the hem of his T-shirt, revealing his tanned, toned stomach, every cautionary thought instantly vaporizes.
I, too, pull my T-shirt over my head and shimmy out of my jean shorts, leaving me in my white bikini, which somehow makes me feel more exposed than when we were in bed, actually naked.
“Ready?” he asks, holding out his hand to me.
I take it, lacing my fingers with his.
“One…two…” But we don’t make it to three because in a flash Liam lets go of my hand and flattens his palm against my back, sending me into the pool with a splash.
I come up, gasping and sputtering. “Ohmygod! Did you just—”
But he doesn’t let me finish before he dives in—show-off. A second later Liam’s head bobs beside me, his eyes glowing in the underwater lights.
I don’t give him a second to catch his breath before I hurl back a retaliatory splash.
Shock reverberates across his face, but the look only lasts a beat before he’s lunging toward me.
I try to swim away, but he’s too fast, and banded muscles fold around my waist, drawing me back to him. Even underwater my skin burns at his touch.
“Stoppppp!” I whine, my voice crackling with laughter.
He laughs, too, deep and throaty, his hips rocking against mine as he pushes me below the waterline. But this time I get my footing and push off the bottom, bouncing toward the surface. I have one second to suck in a breath before I’m throwing all my weight at his chest, pushing him underwater.
I think I’ve been triumphant, until he pops back up, his fingertips digging into my thighs as he hoists me over his shoulder cave-man-style.
“Put me down!” I laugh, pounding my fists against the solid wall of back muscle as he tosses me back-first into the pool, where I land with a loud smack. Water crowds my nostrils, and when I come back up, I’m gasping and coughing.
“You’re an ass!”
“Name-calling? Really, Ros?”
His grip tightens around my waist, pulling my body flush against his.
I struggle to break away from him, but my resolve loses out against the press of his body, until we’re chest to chest. Until I can feel the rhythmic tap, tap, tap of his heart pounding against mine, a sound that’s as familiar to me as my own pulse.
We’ve stopped moving now. We’re just floating, caught in the ebb and flow of the gentle lap of water, our chests rising and falling together.
In the still, my gaze travels over his wet, moonlight-soaked skin, all the way up to his eyes. Eyes that are already on me, bursting with heat and hunger and something soft.
He’s so beautiful like this. Shiny, I think.
“What?” he asks.
“Nothing,” I say, looking away.
“Nothing, huh?” he whispers, his thumb tracing my jawline. The touch is light, barely more than a brush of skin, but it sends a rush of awareness to the spot right behind my navel.
The barest hint of a smile curls across his mouth, and I don’t know what I hate more: The effect he still has on me. Or the fact that he knows it.
His thumb moves upward, arching across my cheek before finally landing on a stray piece of hair, which he gently tucks behind my ear.
“Do you remember when we house-sat for Grammy and Gramps?” he asks.
Heat floods my sternum. Liam had just started his new job at the hospital when Grammy and Gramps asked us to stay over while they were out of town. We made a blanket fort in the living room and shared a joint under the stars, before eventually ending up in the pool at 3 a.m., naked.
“Of course I remember,” I tell him. “How could I forget the neighbors almost catching us having sex in the pool.”
Liam laughs, his eyes flaring. “Maybe we should do a reenactment,” he murmurs. “For old times’ sake.”
The words flare across my chest, lighting up like a sign over a freeway overpass. Warning, it reads. Do not marinate in a cocktail of nostalgia and past memories with your ex. Not when you don’t have a future.
I pull back an inch. “I don’t know what people do in England,” I tell him. “But if you think breaking and entering isn’t a big deal, wait until I tell you about public indecency.”
“It’s only public indecency if we get caught.”
“Is that like the tree in the woods? The one that only makes a sound if someone is there to hear it?”
Liam pulls me closer, his hands sliding down to cup my ass. “Should we find out?”
Light reflects off the water, bouncing across his eyes in a way that makes him appear to be glowing from within.
We shouldn’t.
It’s a bad idea.
But I’m tipsy off the gleam in Liam’s eyes. The way he’s playing with the ties on my bikini.
So I drag my knuckles down the side of his face, tracing the outline of his beard, and whisper, “Kiss me,” against the hollow of his throat.
There’s no hesitation as his mouth catches mine, amplifying from want to need to something more intense, something nearly indecent.
Mingled gasps rise into the night air as his hot tongue circles mine, melting me one vertebra at a time.
His mouth is an ocean I want to drown in, waves I want to be swept away by.
And just when I think I might liquefy right then and there, Liam picks me up, hooking my legs around his hips, and props me against the wall of the pool.
His name slips out of me, a string of needy pleas as his hands travel between my legs, his mouth still hard and fast against mine.
I’m so lost in the hard press of him rocking against me, I barely hear the creak of the gate followed by a patter of footsteps. It’s not until I see the long beam of a flashlight across the deck that I realize someone is there.
“Hello?” calls out a deep voice.
We both freeze, our panicked eyes meeting through the darkness.
Shit.
“What do we do?” I whisper, but Liam holds one finger to his lips, and motions for me to follow his lead.
In one fluid motion he hoists himself out of the pool and holds his hand out to me. I have no idea what he’s up to, but it’s not like I have a lot of choices right now, so I take his hand and allow myself to be hauled out.
Together, we dart across the deck, our wet feet slapping on the concrete.
“Hey!” calls the voice just as Liam drags me behind the wall of the lifeguard hut, narrowly avoiding the flashlight’s glare.
“Liam, what—”
“Shhhh.” With one hand, Liam covers my mouth while his other pulls my body flush against his right as the flashlight’s beam hovers over the ground, mere feet away.
I know the primary concern should be getting caught, but suddenly I’m a lot more distracted by the taste of chlorine and salt on Liam’s fingers, and the steady push and pull of his breath on my cheek.
“I know you’re there,” the voice calls. “Come out.”
The flashlight darts back and forth feet from where we’re standing. Fortunately, our little splash fight soaked the concrete, obscuring any footprints, which should buy us a few more minutes.
I knew this was a bad idea.
“This is your last chance before I call the captain!”
I look to Liam, wondering if maybe we ought to just give ourselves up, but he shakes his head, and a handful of seconds later, the sounds of the person’s footsteps fade in the opposite direction.
We stay slotted together, flat against the wall for two, three more beats until Liam whispers, “I think they’re gone.”
“Are you sure?”
Liam’s grip on my waist tightens as he peers past me, his eyes narrowed through the darkness. “I don’t see the torch anymore. But maybe we should wait until we’re sure.”
When it’s obvious that whoever was there is now gone and we’re in the clear, we collect our clothes and run the whole way back to our cabin.
As soon as the door shuts behind us, we both burst into wild, full-on, can’t breathe, wheezing laughter.
“I can’t. Believe. That. Just. Happened,” I gasp.
“You should see your face right now.”
“If I look horrified, it’s because I am. I thought we were going to have to spend the night in the brig!”
I bend over, trying to regain control of my breathing, but then I look at Liam, and I burst into another round of deranged laughter, which makes Liam laugh even harder.
His eyes catch mine, mouth open mid-laugh, and my chest aches with a kind of homesickness. God, I missed this. Making him laugh. Having fun together. It feels like finding a favorite sweater I thought I’d lost and realizing it still fits perfectly.
Maybe it’s that, or a desire to hold on to this moment—to hold on to him—but I reach out, tracing the line of his jaw with my thumb.
Our eyes meet. “Thank you,” he whispers.
“For what?”
“For the distraction.”
We’re close. Close enough that I can count the water droplets still clinging to the hollow of his throat. He swallows. I inhale. My world narrows to the shrinking space between us.
“Did it work?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer; instead he catches my wrist, pulling me against his chest.
Time bends, everything slowing down. Everything except my racing heart.
Maybe it’s because I want to finish what we started in the pool, or because I sense he still needs to be distracted, but I step back, letting my gaze linger on his before I drop to my knees in front of him.
“Ros—” A sharp gasp escapes him. “You don’t have to.”
“I know,” I tell him, pushing his swim trunks down and taking him long and hard in my hand. “I want to.”
And I mean it. I want to hear all the sounds he makes. The sharp inhales. The guttural moans. I want to feel him shake as he comes in my mouth. Mostly, I want to make him forget all the things he can’t control, if even for a moment.
As my mouth curls around him, taking him inch by inch, he rocks into me, slowly at first, like he’s trying to be careful.
“Can you take more?” he asks, voice thin and frayed like he’s already on edge.
I nod and he thrusts deeper, rougher, his grip tightening in my hair until I’m no longer controlling the depth or speed—he is.
“That’s it, baby,” he whispers as he moves his hand to the back of my neck, holding me in place. “You always took me so well.”
This is supposed to be for him, but somehow it feels like it’s for me too. Like he knows that I need this just as much as he does.
He tilts my chin, his other hand twisting in my hair. His thighs clench, breath coming out in short, trembling bursts. I can feel how close he is. I can see it too.
Part of me wants to turn away, close my eyes, anything to avoid the friction of his gaze, the way he’s watching me as I take him—how reverent he looks—but another part of me wants to see it. The flush in his neck, the pink in his lips. How undone he looks right now.
He’s not shiny anymore, I think. He’s something else, something real. Something that makes my heart want to break free of the barricade I’ve built around it.
“Fuck,” he gasps, his eyes closing. “I’m going to come.” Then he does, and we both moan as he spills hot and fast on my tongue.
When the last echoes of his orgasm have faded, his eyes find mine, tender and wide, as he brings his thumb to my lips, gently wiping across them. “I like you like this,” he whispers.
“On my knees?” I tease.
He shakes his head. “No, messy.”
A shiver runs down my spine and I don’t know what I like more, the certainty with which he says it, or the way he’s looking at me, a perfect kaleidoscope of need and desire across his face. Like he doesn’t just like my mess, he wants it. Needs it.
The thought unravels me as he helps me to my feet, cups my jaw, and kisses me.
It’s not the frantic, rushed kind of kissing we’ve been doing. The kind that’s eager to turn into more. This kiss is slow, searching, like he’s taking his time with me. Exploring, lingering, memorizing. Like he’s desperate to stretch out the limited timeline as far as he can.
There’s a part of me that wants to cling to this moment, to the swells of more gathering between us, to tell him that sex isn’t enough for me, that I want more. I’ve always wanted more. But another part of me is terrified to want that, to ask for something I can’t have.
I think about what Liam said the other day. I want you. All of you. But that’s exactly the problem. He didn’t want all of me. Not when it mattered. He hadn’t wanted my grief or the sharpest edges of my pain. And I have no reason to believe that he does now.
So when he presses me into the mattress, his mouth claiming mine, I try to lose myself in the moment. In the familiar shapes of his body. In this liminal space where I don’t need to think about London or divorce papers or what happens next. Where I don’t have to think at all.