19. Liam
CHAPTER 19
LIAM
“ I ’m tired,” says Emma when we’ve finished our meal. “Let’s go up to the balcony.”
“We don’t have an ocean view, though,” I say. “Why would we sit on the balcony?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she says, looking up at me with those beautiful brown eyes. “You can see the forest, and the stars. It’s beautiful up there.”
“All right, then,” I say. “Let’s go.”
We head up, and I offer her my hand as we step out of the elevator. She doesn’t take it.
In fairness, she has only had one cocktail. It’s hardly enough to put us out of our right minds. And yet it’s still making me think more than ever about how gorgeous she is, about her full lips and her curved body and her lovely eyes.
We both go into our individual rooms before emerging out onto the balcony. Then we pull our chairs together and sit and look out towards the forest.
“It’s just hills,” I say after a beat. “I’d much rather look at the ocean.”
“Yeah.” She smiles. “But look up there.” She points up into the sky, and I follow her gaze with my eyes.
There are a million points of light twinkling in the distance, and I have to give it to her. It is kind of pretty.
“So you see that bright one there? That’s Cassiopeia, do you see? It’s kind of a W shape?”
I squint, and sure enough, the image of a W does start to stand out against the dark. “Oh! Yeah, I do,” I say.
“If you follow down, that point of the W,” she continues as she points with her finger, “and go down just a little bit with a telescope, you can see one of our nearest neighbor galaxies, Andromeda.”
“How do you know all this stuff?” I ask, leaning in a little so I can better figure out what she’s pointing at.
Emma shrugs. “I think it’s interesting. I spent a semester doing astronomy in college.”
“Do you take many people stargazing?” I ask, the pitch of my voice lowering without me meaning to.
If she notices, she doesn’t react. “Not really. It’s mostly a private hobby.” She stares up at the sky. “Let me see… We’re way farther south than I’m used to. So that means…” She cranes her neck and looks all around the sky until she finds a bright point of light. “There, you see how that one’s bright and huge.”
“Yeah,” I say, barely glancing. “It’s just a star.”
“No, it’s not. That’s Jupiter.”
I crane my neck to one side and stare up at it. “Huh,” is all I have to say.
“You can tell because it doesn’t flicker like stars do. That’s because of the way it’s not strictly a point of light. I don’t remember any of the physics anymore, but I’m pretty sure that’s true.”
“I believe you,” I say quietly, my voice husky, catching in my throat.
Every time I speak to her, it’s like I learn about a new passion. She has a new interest, a new thirst for life, and something about that passion is making me hungry too.
Hungry for her.
As she’s been pointing at stars, I’ve been leaning in closer and closer, so close that our shoulders bump together. And she doesn’t move away. I can feel the rise and fall of her chest. I can almost hear her heart beating.
Here, in the stillness, the quiet, under the stars, I could get drunk on the feeling of her beside me. On the wanting.
Almost without thinking, I turn my head and lean down, and our lips touch. And for a glorious second, it’s perfect.
Then she jerks away, and reality catches up with me. I flinch away from her too, giving her space. Even if I don’t want to.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I shouldn’t have done that. I guess I must have got my signals confused, and I understand if?—”
“Liam, shut up,” she says, cutting me off. “Shut up and do that again.”
It takes me a nanosecond to consider it, and then I lean in to kiss her again.
This time, it’s real. Her soft lips sink into mine, the taste of her apple lip gloss melting onto my tongue. Her hands come to mine and our fingers twine together and my heart rate triples. I don’t want to do a single thing to stop it.
A warm rush floods through my body, filling me with a primal want, one I haven’t felt in years. One that burns only for Emma.
I let my hands slide to her waist, feeling her body beneath that sweater. Suddenly, I’m desperate to feel more, to rip that sweater off her and kiss the skin of her shoulders. She must be feeling the heat too because her hands bunch in my shirt, almost pulling it out of my pants.
“Emma,” I whisper breathlessly into her ear, “I want you.”
“Take me inside, then,” she breathes, and I kiss her with more fire than ever. This time we sink deeper, our teeth clattering together, our tongues exploring like we’re in a whole new world. I don’t remember the last time I wanted someone this badly and it’s making me want to explode.
Finally, it gets too much to resist, and I take her hands again, guiding her up and inside. I slide the door shut behind us, draw the curtain, and then she pushes me back against the wall, her hands as greedy as I feel.
“How long,” she mumbles between kisses. “How long have you wanted this?”
“Days,” I whisper back.
“Really?”
“Of course,” I scoff, gasping as her lips brush over my throat. I find myself wishing I had shaved. “You’re beautiful, Emma.”
“Now you’re just being nice,” she says as she unbuttons the top few buttons of my shirt, her lips drifting down to my collarbones, my chest, each one blazing like a burn.
I reach out to touch her face, my breath ragged. “I wouldn’t lie. Not about this.”
With that, she rips the rest of my buttons open, brushing her fingers over my abs. She must be able to see the way I’m aching for her by now, by the relentless path traced out by her mouth. But she doesn’t stop. Instead, she sinks lower and lower, over my belly and further. My heart almost stops as her knees touch the floor.
“Let me see you,” she says, a breath away from where I want her to be.
“Please,” I groan.
That’s all it takes for her to wrestle with the button on my pants and release me.
I can’t help but moan as her lips reach their target, her mouth warm and gentle on me. I want her more than ever right now. I can hardly believe this is real.
Emma is here, making me see the stars.
I need to touch her. That is suddenly the only thought in my mind, the need to feel her skin under my hands. Carefully, I push her away and crouch down to kiss her, tasting my own salt on her lips. “I need to taste you,” I growl. “I need to take you.”
“I’m all yours.”
With that, I pull at her sweater and together we rip it off and throw it to the floor. I waste no time unclasping her bra, freeing her breasts. All I can do is stare for a moment, cataloging the beauty of her body, and then she launches herself forward at me, tangling up in my arms.
Laughing, we wrestle each other to the bed, tumbling over each other until we’re lying twined in each other’s arms, our clothes hanging off, our legs twisted around so we can barely tell where either of us begins or ends. As if possessed, my hips start to move and Emma moans, clutching me tightly.
“I need you,” she whispers.
“Let me get a condom,” I whisper, but she clings to me.
“I’m on birth control. You’re clean, yes?”
“Yes.”
“So fuck me then. Please. Now.”
How can I refuse a request like that?
Carefully, I line myself up and lose myself to the ecstasy of Emma’s body against mine. She moves like she was designed to fit against me, and when we roll around so she can be on top, I lose all sense of time and place.
Every part of her body is perfect. Each inch is an inch I have to kiss, to touch. Every breath she takes, every sound she makes — I want to catch them all and store them for eternity.
We spend what feels like forever in each other’s arms, tender and passionate, kissing and making sweet love. The kind of love I’ve been waiting years to make.
The kind of love I never want to lose.