Chapter 27
August, Now
Soft sheets. Brain fog. The first deep inhale of morning. A slow warmth builds in my body, nestled on all sides by cool cotton or blazing bare skin.
I’m ripped from my dream and wake up to something better.
Liam’s mouth on the back of my neck.
His lips are damp as they kiss the top of my spine, his breath heated as it brushes the hairs at my nape. I curl my chin toward my chest to give him room to explore the back of me.
One of his hands slides heavily from my hip bone to my stomach, dragging a trail of fire across the front of my body. He flattens his palm, pulls me back against his core. A rush of air leaves my mouth, nearly inaudible.
Nearly.
His first word of the morning comes out a gravelly, breathless rasp. “Bases.” The vibration of it coasts along my skin.
My limbs are heavy, but I urge my nervous system to wake up and respond. To tuck my knees in, push my ass farther into the hard planes of his body behind me. My reward is a low moan that traps itself in his throat.
“We’re doing that?” I ask, my own voice reedy.
Liam’s kisses go longer, sucking between each one. I haven’t opened my eyes yet, but there are white spots behind my eyelids.
When he’s damn well ready, he mumbles, “It’s been a while since I’ve gotten clear on your consent. So yeah, we’re doing that.”
God, I forgot how hot he makes this.
The sexual bases started as a bad joke between Liam and me the third night we were together.
Up until that point, he’d been used to constantly asking for consent because he was rarely with the same woman more than twice.
I told him it wasn’t necessary with us anymore, but Liam suggested it could be, especially if we were trying something that one or both of us had never done before.
“We could shorten it into a code,” he’d joked.
I’d immediately said, “Like first base, second, third?”
He’d smirked, amused by that. “If you want.”
“A little on the nose, isn’t it?”
“That’s the point of consent, isn’t it?”
The first time we tried it, neither of us could stop laughing when he asked permission to go to first base, then second.
But just like everything else about him, Liam adapted quickly and found a way to make it one of the most erotic things about our sex.
We didn’t do it all the time, but when we did, it was a game of its own.
Liam would ask me, on occasion, if stealing was allowed.
Sometimes, I said yes—effectively handing over the reins of control to him.
Knowing he’d touch me however he wanted, in whichever order, nothing tentative or hesitant or careful about it.
Other times, I said no and made him beg for it, at length, out loud, before he could advance.
Finally, I peek my eyes open, my view catching on the tip of the St. Louis skyline beyond the window.
We got here late last night—Liam in the car with his boss, me on the tour bus with the others, having spent hours workshopping my Belmont tracks together.
I’d jumped in the shower right away and came out to find Liam asleep on top of our duvet.
I pulled off his shoes, roused him enough to climb beneath the covers, and ninety seconds later, we were both asleep.
Liam’s teeth bite softly into the curve of my shoulder as his fingers rub circles on my stomach. “Do I make it to first?” he asks low.
“Every time,” I sigh out.
“Then turn over, Paige.”
I do as he says, my body feeling like softened butter as I roll onto my back, then up against his chest. Liam’s swollen lips find mine, and he kisses me hungrily, his hand palming my hip.
Tongue, teeth, sound, feel. A push-pull with better symmetry than a perfect circle. His mouth says I remember, and mine finishes the thought with everything, I remember every vast little thing.
“How was your day yesterday?” he asks casually, before moving his mouth to the hollow of my throat.
“Not enough of you in it.”
“Sorry about that.”
“S’okay.”
His teeth are on my ear when he hikes his leg up over my waist, locking me halfway beneath him, curling over my body like a bomb shield. “Fuck, I missed you.”
I nod in agreement, the bobbing of my head rubbing his damp lips across my ear, and I know he doesn’t mean I missed you yesterday.
He means I missed your body underneath mine.
And already, after only this much, I understand why Liam had to abstain from it until now. When he touches me, everything about myself becomes blurrier, formable to his whim. I’ve never felt so willingly lost to my senses—to my personhood—as I do when he’s on me this way.
Liam pushes on my shoulder, and I go flat on my back, my hips arching skyward as he forces them back down with his own, settling over me. I feel him between my legs and want to cry, to jerk upward, but he’s heavy and focused elsewhere.
“You know I love you so much, right, Paige?” His hand fists into my hair, mouth open and panting against my lips.
I whimper at that because it’s new. Not a part of the sex we used to have. We said pretty much everything else to each other, but never that.
Liam is propped on an elbow and looking into my eyes now, taming his hunger to show me his sincerity.
“You love me,” I repeat.
“I do.”
“You want second base,” I say, lips curving.
His eyes drop to my breasts, which are heaving in sync with my heartbeat. “I—Yeah.” It comes out a growl.
My head does the tiniest dip, and Liam’s eyes hold mine, his expression scorching, as his hand moves up my rib cage.
His eyes drop, but I keep watching him. As he covers my breasts.
As his lips press against each other. He thumbs me, eyes dilating, and my spine arches even more.
There’s a main line from his pinching fingers to my center, and my eyes drop closed at the pressure of it.
“I’m so ready, Paige. Are you wet?”
The talking. He’s the only one I’ve ever been with who’s like this.
“You don’t get to know yet.”
With a flash of warning in his eyes, he pulls down the fabric and sucks on my nipple, and I make a noise of rapture, hands skimming into his soft hair. He goes back and forth, rubbing and licking and playing with me.
My breasts are highly sensitive. Liam knows this. He’ll stop if he wants me to hold it at bay.
He’ll keep going if he doesn’t.
“You deserve it,” he rumbles, reading my mind. “You’ve been so good, so patient, so understanding. You get this. Today is yours.”
He goes back to torturing me, and I come undone moments later, pulling his head back up to my mouth for a bruising, thankful kiss.
We linger like that for a while, but then his hand claws softly down my stomach, and this time, he doesn’t phrase it as a question. “Third.”
But Liam said today is mine, so I say, “How bad do you want it?”
His mouth grazes mine. “Bad.”
“Bad enough to beg?”
“You think I won’t?”
“I know you will.”
His eyes light with pleasure and his hands frame my head. “Please.”
That one little word makes up for every single morning I went without this.
Liam rests our foreheads against each other, and our eyes fall closed as we calm down.
But only a little.
“Please,” he whispers again, more gently this time. “I’m begging you.”
He’ll make me pay for this later, because it’s always like that between us—a balanced scale—but right now, I feel like I’m his object of worship. His reason for being. His heartbeat.
“Yes,” I whisper.
A featherlight kiss—a quiet, simple thank you—and then he’s rolling off me.
I finally get a good look at him as he rips the covers away. Liam goes on his knees, looking over my body as I gaze at him. His broad chest, his wide shoulders, the outline of the scar from his surgery. His boxers are tented, and he rubs gently while he stares at me.
“All of it, off,” he says.
I peel my shirt over my head, then my shorts and panties down my legs. Liam grabs the clothes and flings them, dipping his mouth to my calf. His hands and lips glide up my thighs, unhurried.
“You’re so soft,” he murmurs.
“You’re the athlete,” I retort.
“That’s not why I’m hard.”
My brain sifts for a snarky retort when his fingers dance near my core. His hand flattens to my inner thigh, slides easily. “Fuck, Paige.”
He pushes up under my knees to bend them toward the ceiling, then drops his head to kiss below my belly button.
“You’ll talk to me while I do this.”
I never felt any good at that, and after so long, I don’t know if I’m ready for it. “Use your fingers and talk instead,” I suggest, breath faint.
He hesitates, eyes flashing up to mine, the stubble of his chin rubbing my stomach. “Compromise?”
“How?”
“I use my mouth how I want, and you do the same.”
I nod, biting my lip. Liam’s mouth drops back to my skin and his hands grip my upper thighs. He closes over me with little fanfare, an immediate and instant friction, and a whine expels from me.
The truth is, I know it’s better for him when he can hear me, and I want him to have that.
“Feels—so good,” I mumble.
His answering hum sends a frisson up my spine.
“You’re the only man who’s ever done this to me.”
“The only man who ever will,” he sounds back, sucking harder.
My hips want to lift, but his grip on my thighs keeps me pinned. The longer he draws it out, the more my words shrink, until there’s only one.
Please.
The third time he hears it, he pulls off, kisses down my thigh.
“Liam,” I pant.
But he only sits up and flicks his dark eyes to me. His chest is heaving. We watch each other, at a standoff, each of us holding a piece of the other’s want.
His hands move up me, lifting my skin with goose bumps that flare out like rippling waves. Over my chest. Down my arms. He leans in, arches over me, hair in his face, his cheeks pink with bloodlust.
“Kiss you?” he asks.
I palm the back of his neck and pull him down to me.
His big frame resettles, positioned where we both know it needs to be. Liam kisses me, and my reaction is to reach beneath his waistline and feel for him, which makes him groan, and me sigh, and both of us jerk forward microscopically.
Against my lips, in a voice lower than I’ve maybe ever heard, he whispers, “Let me home.”
We’re quiet after that, speaking with our bodies. His quick discard of his boxers, my thighs up, pinning his hips between me. I rub at the sides of his face as he kisses me so tenderly, lining up our bodies for the rest of it.
“I love you,” I murmur.
“Promise me, Paige. Promise me this is the start of forever.”
“I promise.”
“Only me,” he whispers. “Always me.”
“You, Liam. For me, from the very first day. It was you.”
He sinks into me, and my body splinters, fracturing into thousands before I come back to myself newly made. Liam’s forehead goes to my shoulder. A noise of pain, or maybe ecstasy, is lost against my skin.
We get our bearings for a few seconds, our labored, low breaths the only telltale sign of what we’ve done.
Where we’ve gone.
“I never thought I’d feel you like this again,” he moans miserably. A slow, upward roll of his hips has my spine curving. “I never thought it could be this good ever again.”
“I knew it wouldn’t be, if it wasn’t you,” I reply.
Liam starts to move, rolling his body over mine in a sensual, tense rhythm. “I hated denying you, Paige. I want to give you everything.”
“You have. You will.”
“Yeah, I will.”
My hands coast over his back, moving with him as he closes in, retreats. Sweat is dampening his skin, making him gleam like a Greek god.
He turns up his force in half ticks, building the pace he wants as slow as he can without ever letting up. Liam moves in a manner that focuses on me, rubbing me on every pass just the way I need.
“You’re the love of my life,” he bites out, hips starting to snap. “You’re perfect, Paige. My perfect little soulmate.”
The bud of all my nerves is at its peak, ready to flood me again. He sweeps a hand into my hair, and lowers toward me, still moving.
“I’ve loved you this whole time,” I say, heart raw.
That fist in my hair tightens. “I know you have, baby, I know.”
He starts to really work me now, thrusting and holding and fucking and clutching, and he swallows down my audible relief when it hits my body, spreading to every corner.
Soon after, Liam grabs my leg and yanks it over his shoulder, then rocks into me the way he needs it. With power and abandon and constantly lapsing control.
“Love. Of. My. Fucking. Life,” he says again between each thrust, and buries his head in my neck when he’s through.
We migrate to our sides at some point. Liam holds my cheeks and pushes kisses into my forehead, whispering his praise and affirmation. I feel like a spring flower blooming in sunlight. At the height of its beauty, the beginning and end of its purpose.
“We can do this,” he whispers, more to himself than to me. “Because I’d make anything work to keep you with me.”
“And I’d give anything up to stay.”
Liam smiles, thumb dancing over my nose. “I love that you would,” he says. “And I swear you’ll never have to.”