21. Liana
— ? —
Liana
Bianca’s breathing went deep and even through the wall.
The sound should have relaxed me. My daughter was safe, happy, dreaming about sandcastles and ocean waves and the birthday celebration that awaited her tomorrow. Everything was fine. Everything was exactly as it should be.
My body hadn’t gotten the message.
The bed was enormous, a California king. The mattress was perfect, not too soft, not too firm. The ocean crashed against the shore outside the open window, a rhythm that should have lulled me to sleep within minutes.
Instead I lay there staring at the ceiling, acutely aware of the empty space beside me. The vast expanse of mattress where Dominic would eventually sleep. Where his body would be warm and close enough to touch if I let my hand drift across the sheets.
I turned onto my side, punched the pillow into a different shape, turned onto my other side. The sheets tangled around my legs and I kicked them off, then immediately felt too exposed and pulled them back up.
The bathroom door opened.
Light spilled across the bedroom floor, and then he was there. Silhouetted in the doorway, steam curling around him from the shower.
He was wearing a towel.
Just a towel, slung low across his hips, barely clinging to the V of muscle that disappeared beneath the white fabric.
Water still clung to his chest, catching the light, and his hair was pushed back from his forehead, darker when it was wet.
He stepped into the room and closed the bathroom door behind him, plunging us back into darkness.
My eyes adjusted slowly, picking out shapes in the moonlight that filtered through the window.
The broad line of his shoulders. The ridges of his stomach.
The trail of dark hair that led down from his navel.
He crossed to the corner where he had left his bag, seemingly unaware that I was watching. Or pretending to be unaware, which was more likely, because Dominic was always aware of everything.
He bent to unzip the bag and the towel slipped lower on his hips.
Close your eyes. Turn toward the wall. Pretend to be asleep.
My body refused to obey.
His back muscles flexed as he dug through his clothes, and I watched the play of them under his skin, the way they shifted and bunched with every movement. The dimples at the base of his spine.
He straightened up with a pair of shorts in his hand, and his thumbs hooked into the towel.
Look away. Now. Before he…
The towel dropped.
My mouth went dry.
His back was still to me but the moonlight showed me everything. The curve of his ass. The thickness of his thighs. The narrow taper of his waist and the breadth of his shoulders and the sheer overwhelming maleness of him standing naked in the middle of the room.
He stepped into the shorts and pulled them up, and the elastic snapped against his waist, and he turned around.
Our eyes met across the dark room.
His mouth curved into that slight smile, the one that had always meant trouble, and I felt my face flood with heat. Caught.
Completely and utterly caught staring at my almost-ex-husband’s naked body like some desperate housewife in a bad romance novel.
“Enjoying the show?” His voice was low, amused.
“Don’t flatter yourself.” The words came out sharper than I intended. “You could have changed in the bathroom. Normal people change in the bathroom when they’re sharing a room with someone.”
“I didn’t want to wake you.” He took a step toward the bed. “You looked like you were sleeping.”
“I wasn’t sleeping.”
“I noticed.”
“Because you were standing there stripping like this is some kind of performance.” I sat up, pulling the sheet with me. “Go back in the bathroom. Change in there. Like a normal person with boundaries.”
He stopped walking. Held up both hands, palms out.
“You’re right.” His voice was mild, agreeable. “I apologize. Old habits.”
He turned and walked back toward the bathroom, his shoulders loose, his gait unhurried. The door closed behind him with a soft click.
I fell back against the pillows and pressed my palms to my burning face.
This was fine. Everything was fine. He was changing in the bathroom like a civilized human being and I was going to lie here and forget what I had just seen and fall asleep like a normal person who wasn’t desperately attracted to the man she was supposed to be divorcing.
Except I couldn’t forget.
The image was burned into my brain, etched there in moonlight and shadow. The water on his chest. The muscles in his back. The shape of him when the towel dropped.
I pressed my thighs together under the sheets and felt the slickness that had gathered there.
This was pathetic. Months of holding myself together, of building a new life, of convincing myself I didn’t need him or want him or think about him at all. One glimpse of his naked body and I was wet and aching, my core throbbing with a need I had been denying for far too long.
The bathroom door opened again.
He emerged fully dressed this time, shorts and a t-shirt, perfectly appropriate sleepwear for a man sharing a room with his estranged wife. He didn’t look at me as he crossed to the bed, didn’t make any comment about what had just happened. Just pulled back the covers on his side and climbed in.
“Goodnight, Liana.”
His voice was neutral. Pleasant. Like nothing had happened at all.
“Goodnight.”
I turned away from him, facing the wall, and willed my body to calm down. He was on his side of the bed. I was on mine. There were at least three feet of mattress between us. This was fine. This was manageable. This was…
The scent of him reached me. Soap and something underneath that was just him, warm and male and achingly familiar. My core clenched at the smell and I squeezed my eyes shut.
Don’t think about it. Don’t think about his chest or his back or the way his ass looked in the moonlight. Don’t think about the trail of hair leading down from his navel or the V of muscle at his hips or the way his thighs flexed when he stepped into those shorts.
I thought about all of it.
My mind replayed the scene on a loop, finding new details with each repetition. The glimpse of him in profile when he turned, the outline of him soft but still substantial, hanging heavy between his thighs.
My nipples hardened against the thin fabric of my sleep shirt.
This was ridiculous. I was a grown woman with self-control and dignity and a very good reason for keeping my distance from this man. I was not going to lie here working myself into a frenzy over a body I had seen thousands of times before.
Except it had been months since I had seen it. Months since I had touched it. Months since I had felt him pressed against me, inside me, moving over me in the dark.
I turned onto my back, then my other side, then my back again.
“Restless?” His voice cut through the darkness.
“I’m fine.”
“You’ve been tossing for the last ten minutes.”
“The pillow is wrong.”
“It’s the same pillow we use at home.”
“Used to use.” I punched the pillow into a different shape. “Past tense.”
He was quiet for a moment. The sheets rustled as he shifted, and I felt the mattress move under his weight.
“Do you want me to sleep on the floor?”
“No.”
“The couch downstairs?”
“No.”
“Then what do you want, Liana?”
The question hung in the dark between us. What did I want? I wanted to stop feeling this way.
I wanted to not want him anymore, and I had never been further from that goal than I was right now.
“I want to go to sleep.” My voice came out strained. “That’s all.”
“Then sleep.”
“I’m trying.”
“Try harder.”
I turned my head and found him watching me in the darkness, his eyes glittering in the moonlight, that slight smile still playing at the corner of his mouth.
“You think this is funny?” I pushed up onto my elbow. “You think it’s amusing to parade around naked and then act like nothing happened?”
“I wasn’t parading. I was changing.”
“In the middle of the room. With the lights on.”
“The lights were off.”
“The bathroom light was on.”
“For thirty seconds.” He propped himself up on his elbow, mirroring my position. “And I apologized. I went back into the bathroom like you asked. What more do you want from me?”
“I want you to stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you know exactly what’s going on in my head right now.”
His smile widened. “Do I know what’s going on in your head?”
“No.”
“Liar.”
“Fuck you, Dominic.”
“Is that an offer?”
I grabbed the pillow and swung it at his head. He caught it easily, pulling it out of my grip and tossing it off the bed, and somehow the motion brought us closer together, close enough that I could feel the heat radiating off his body.
“You’re thinking about it.” His voice dropped lower. “I can see it in your face. I can hear it in your voice. I can probably smell it if I got close enough.”
“You’re disgusting.”
He reached out and traced one finger down my arm, feather-light. “Your breathing is shallow. And unless I’m very much mistaken, your nipples are hard enough to cut glass right now.”
I looked down at my chest and cursed internally. He was right. The thin fabric of my sleep shirt did nothing to hide the stiff peaks, pointing directly at him like traitors.
“That doesn’t mean anything.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “It’s cold in here.”
“It’s seventy-five degrees.”
“Dominic, I swear to God-”
“Tell me you don’t want me.” He leaned closer, his face inches from mine. “Tell me you’re not lying there soaking wet, thinking about all the things I used to do to you. Tell me you haven’t been fantasizing about my cock since you saw me drop that towel.”
“I haven’t.”
“Then why can’t you meet my eyes?”
I forced myself to look at him. This was the Dominic I remembered from a thousand nights in our bed. The one who knew exactly what he wanted and exactly how to get it.