Chapter Twenty-Five
I’m not sure I’ve ever loved a laugh as much as I love his. Even when I’m being particularly hilarious, West’s laugh is usually quiet and reluctant—a huffed exhale, a single amused cough—but there is nothing better than when a surprised burst rips from his throat. I’d say a laugh like that comes from the belly because the sound is so round and joyful, but in West’s case I think it comes from his chest, from that secret room in his heart that he keeps so carefully locked. When I manage to blow that door wide open, I feel like a goddess.
When he drags his eyes from my bare breast, he looks down at the silicone adhesive bra cup and tries to peel it off his tux jacket.
“Wow,” I say, grinning at my little soldier. “She’s really on there.”
“How did you take this off without removing skin?” he asks, flummoxed.
“I guess now is when I tell you the truth,” I say with quiet solemnity. “You may have noticed that I sparkle in the sunlight. That my skin is like marble.” I pause. “This is the skin of a killer.”
He laughs—sadly, we’re back to just a little gust of air—before giving up and taking off the jacket. This is preferable anyway, because the shirt for this Old Hollywood tux is a smidge too tight on his shoulders and biceps. Yum. I send my hands up his arms, around his back, pulling him into my arms.
“Come here.”
West hums in my favorite way, the sound like a hungry purr, kissing my neck, moving to my other shoulder to pull that strap down, too. I shrug my arm out of it, and the satin falls heavily to my waist. He stops, staring at the other silicone cup, still holding my boob in place. I watch the battle unfold behind his eyes.
“You do it,” he says, lifting his chin. “I’m suddenly afraid of them.”
With a laugh, I carefully peel it away, and the playful trepidation in his eyes turns to fascination. My skin heats from his focus and West reaches forward, tracing a line from my throat and down, and then slides his hand to my hip and higher, cupping a breast in his palm as he bends to kiss my lips, soft and hungry, the pad of his thumb circling my nipple with perfect, tormenting focus.
Digging my hands between us, I work on his shirt from the bottom up. He angles his torso helpfully away when I reach his neck, laughing into a kiss at my struggle because too late I realize I should have started with his tie. Together, we work to loosen the knot, to get that tiny button at his neck free. Tie finally undone and with his shirt open, his chest bare and perfect, he comes against me, pulling me tight to him, his kisses different after skin hits skin, urgent and impatient. His hands bunch my dress up my thighs and he jerks my hips closer, right to the edge of the counter.
“Tell me what you want,” he says, grazing his teeth on my jaw.
“Yes,” I say mindlessly, and we laugh, but I guide his hand between my legs, my fingers shadowing his exploring touch, and wow, I’m wet. My body is obsessed with him.
He’s wild, one hand in my hair, the other between my legs, fingers all over me, easing inside me and then moving, rough in a way that makes me feel like frantic is okay but messy is better. I undo his belt and it clangs against the metal counter, echoing around the kitchen. His zipper is the loudest thing in the room when I draw it down, and then I’m sliding my hand beneath the elastic band, finally getting my hand on him, squeezing him as he groans helplessly, feeling the weight, that generous length I’ve been thinking about for days. Impatient, I shove his pants down his hips and guide him forward, replacing his fingers, stroking myself with him.
West presses his forehead to mine, rocking his hips, teasing, barely easing the head into me and back out. “Just like this, okay?” he whispers. “That’s all until we get back to the bungalow. I just need to feel you.”
“What if I want all of it now?”
His quiet laugh is a warm puff of air against my lips. “You’re trouble.”
I nod against him, watching between us as he reaches down, angling himself up against the most sensitive part of me, sliding over my clit as he rocks. Pleasure sends waves licking along my skin, makes me want to claw at his back, jerk him closer, gobble this moment down in one all-consuming bite.
His hands grip my ass, pulling me slightly off the edge of the counter, and he chokes off a groan at the way he’s just given me a nice slice of my wish and pushed partway into me. I can hear my own rhythmic panting as I breathe through accommodating the size of him.
He grits out the words: “We should stop.”
“No.”
“I’m not—I don’t have—”
“You don’t have condoms hidden somewhere in this kitchen?” I joke, my voice tight and broken at the feel of him jerking inside me.
His answering laugh is distracted and soundless, a gasp in reverse as he pulls all the way out. “No.”
“I’m not feeling responsible,” I admit.
“Me, either, but we can—”
I pull his mouth to mine, kissing him messily, hungrily, whispering the truth against his lips, that I’m on birth control and also? I wouldn’t fuck a single person in LA without a condom, now or ever. “I want you.” I suck his lip into my mouth, roughly dragging my teeth over it. “I want this.”
He closes his eyes, kissing me before speaking the next words against my mouth. “If you tell me to stop—”
“I know.”
He sends a big hand down my leg, cupping my calf, gripping an ankle, and with his free hand holds himself to ease in again and back, an inch at a time, his jaw tight, eyes trained on the progress. West holds his breath, transfixed as he works himself slowly into me, but I’m gasping; I’ve never felt anything like this, never been so excessively full. I reach back, flattening my palms on the counter so I can lift my hips and help him get there, working my body around him. With a bursting exhale, he groans, pulling me back to his chest, and he’s all the way in, finally. I wrap my arms around his neck, silently asking for a minute to figure out how to fit these deep, gasping breaths and him inside me at the same time. But then the tension leaves my body and all I know is the blinding need to feel him moving.
“You okay?” he asks, his lips to my jaw.
“I just need—”
He covers my mouth with his when my voice breaks off, pulling out in a slow drag, pushing carefully back in, and out, and in, and out, again and again, deeper on each pass until he’s thrusting in earnest and I’m positive I’ve never felt anything so consuming in my life. My skin is fire, brain haywire as he bends, licking a long streak of heat up my neck, stopping at my ear. “Wrap those long fucking legs around me.”
Delirious with need, I do what he says, sliding my thighs around his hips, locking my ankles behind his back. Instinct tells me to squeeze hard and I’m right; he is overcome, thrusting rougher with the constraining grip of my thighs.
I reach down, feeling where he’s moving, feeling the heat and slide, and he encourages me with a quiet “Yeah,” moving faster, watching my hand as I touch myself. I’m torn between chasing this sensation and giving him everything I can: those sharp tugs on his hair that seem to unravel him, the scrape of my nails down his back. But when I move my hand, he catches my wrist, protesting. “No. Don’t stop.”
I meet his eyes, but they fall closed when he leans in to kiss me, messy and wet. “I liked the way your nails felt.” He laughs quietly, somehow both wicked and shy. “The way they—”
“Tell me.”
“The gentle scratch. On me.”
I’ve been right there, right at the edge of falling, and the spiraling heat of his words sends me closer, my fingers moving even faster, not only chasing my own pleasure but trying to reach him now, to tap against him as he moves, to give him the tiny, delicious licks of pain. He nods, wordless, lips soft and parted as he fucks me and I have the thought that he’s the most amazing combination in one man: gentle and rough, intuitive and steely, grounded and broken, but before I can look at this more carefully—before I can put the pieces together about why I’m thinking more about the man than about the pleasure he’s giving me—my orgasm blindsides me, a wrecking ball flung violently sideways. I cry out in sharp surprise, clinging to West with my free hand, cupping his neck and holding his head to mine as it tears through me.
He works me through it, fast and hard, and only when I fall forward, clinging to him, does he slow to take my face in his hands, kissing me with velvet seduction, sucking on my lips, licking at me, inhaling my jagged, panting breaths. He whispers into my mouth, “You good?”
I laugh in response, euphoric.
“Sore?” he asks.
I shake my head in his cupped hands, and he releases me, gently pressing a palm to my breastbone, coaxing me to lean back onto my elbows. With leisurely shifts of his hips, West fucks me slow while his big hands roam all over me, caressing my breasts and throat, lips and cheeks, stomach and hips and thighs. But eventually, I feel the urgency rise in him, the growing tension of his torso. Setting one hand gently at the base of my throat and using the other to grip my dress around my waist, he begins in earnest again, eyes fixed on the most perfect coordinate in the world, the place where he disappears inside me.
It’s the kind of raw, honest sex I’ve never had before and will want desperately again, but I’m too distracted to commit to the mental focus I’d need to come a second time. Instead I watch, rapt, as his pleasure plays across his features, watching the way concentration pinches his brow, watching the sheer power of his lovemaking. I am a starving dragon, deprived and obsessed, inhaling every one of his tells: his grip growing tighter, forming a fist around the fabric of my dress; his jerking, rough breaths; those rare seconds he squeezes his eyes closed, wincing in pleasure. And when he makes a sound—a new one this time, deep and warning—a desperate, aching awareness rises in me. I gasp out a pleading yes and West’s eyes turn up to my face, his focus on my lip trapped tightly between my teeth, his pace turning furious for a blurred, euphoric handful of seconds. With a groan he drops his gaze again, sending his hand between us as he jerks out of me and sends his pleasure pulsing across my skin.
Wild victory tears through me as he stares down at my stomach, gasping, and then bends over me, resting his sweaty forehead to my chest. “Holy shit.”
I dig one hand in his hair, dizzy with relief and lust and infatuation, scratching lightly at his scalp while he heaves in sharp, jagged breaths. Finally, he tilts his face up, stretching to kiss me, slow and adoring.
“You okay?” he asks.
I can only tell him the truth. “That was the best sex I’ve ever had.”
He smiles, kissing me again. “Yeah?”
I nod, and for a few perfect seconds, we share the same breath, kissing like we’ve done it for centuries.
Pulling back, I reach up, pushing his sweaty hair off his forehead. “Definitely worth burning the shit out of the pizza.”
I’M STILL A LITTLEshaky and jelly-limbed, so even though he just did the bulk of the work, West handles the task of tossing the first pizza and getting a second one started. I tiptoe into the banquet room and feel around the dark walls for an entrance to a ladies’ room where I can clean up a little.
The entire thing feels like a sexy Scooby-Doo episode, and I continually expect to be busted by the mysterious owner of the island walking in with a group of goons brought to arrest us for the crime of Countertop Fornication. But in reality, it’s all fine. I find a bathroom. I use it. I make my way back to the kitchen where West is still in there, alone, and his smile is more relaxed than I’ve ever seen it.
I laugh down at our now-clean sex counter. “You’re the best guest. I swear that didn’t occur to me.” Apparently while I was gone, he graciously went digging for cleaning supplies and found a clean rag and a bottle of Lysol.
“Stealing a couple pizzas is one thing,” he says, turning with an oven mitt and pulling the pizza out. “Leaving your gorgeous ass print on the counter is another.”
We slip out to the covered patio, where we find a rolled-up rattan mat, set ourselves down, and eat pizza off paper plates, staring out into the darkness at the wild surf crashing on black sand in the distance.
I have no idea what time it is; West’s phone is dead and mine is back at the bungalow, but we guess it’s a little after one in the morning. It’s warm and humid, the perfect temperature for a walk across a quiet island, but I’m tired enough that the trek all the way back to our bed feels impossible.
“It’s maybe twenty minutes,” West says, pushing our plates away and lying on his side facing me, propped on an elbow. He reaches with his free hand, walking two fingers up my back as I hug my knees.
“I want to stay here a little longer.”
“Think of how comfortable the bed will be.”
“Think of all the snakes in the grass between here and there.”
“I’ll protect you.”
“But who will protect you?” I ask, looking at him over my shoulder. “That’s what I worry about.”
“I can see that,” West says softly, with a meaning that’s not so hidden anymore. He reaches up, brushing my hair off my shoulder. “Come here,” he says, coaxing me down beside him, pulling me into his arms. With a shift of our bodies, he rolls me to my back.
He hovers over me, sending a hand over my hip and up to my breast, kissing me with the kind of command and tenderness that had me digging into his pants the first time. But when I reach for him, he shifts his hips away.
“Don’t tempt me again, Green. I barely pulled out in time back there.”
I laugh, cupping the back of his head. “You know that doesn’t work anyway.”
“It felt like an important compromise.” He pulls me into his chest, letting me have one firm arm for a pillow, the other as a blanket.
“Liam?”
He goes still. “Yeah?”
“I had the best night of my life tonight.”
He’s silent in response for a few seconds, and then I feel the lingering press of his lips to the crown of my head. “Me, too.”
The chorus of nighttime rises around us: waves and insects, wind rustling through trees.
“Anna?”
Goose bumps spread down my arm at the quiet intimacy in his voice. “Yeah?”
“You called me Liam.”
“I did.”
“I liked it.”
“Good.” I tilt my face to his, silently asking for one more kiss. He delivers it and then some, before tucking my head beneath his chin.
And outside, in the warm circle of Liam Weston’s arms, I fall asleep.