Chapter 12 #2
His lips reclaim mine. And despite his warning, it’s slower this time. Deeper. His hand slides down my side and grips my hip, the same hip from this morning, and his thumb finds that strip of bare skin between my shirt and my shorts, tracing a circle that makes my toes curl.
Then his hand slides under my shirt.
His palm is warm and rough and it moves up my ribcage with a deliberateness that tells me he's memorizing every inch.
Like he's been starving and he's finally allowed to touch something that he's not going to waste a single second of.
His thumb grazes the underside of my breast and I inhale sharply as his mouth curves against mine.
"Tell me to stop," he murmurs against my lips, "and I stop."
"Don't you dare."
His hand closes over my breast and I make a sound that the ocean politely covers. He exhales hard through his nose, like the feeling of me is hitting him physically, like every touch is flooding a starving system.
I pull at his shirt. He leans back long enough to drag it over his head, and even though I've seen him shirtless before, this is different.
This is him being undressed for a very particular reason, hovering above me in blue-green bioluminescent light, silver hair loose and wild, looking down at me with eyes that are half reverence and half hunger.
He pulls my shirt over my head with delicate control. No bra because I left the house in a hurry this morning, to which I'm now extremely grateful for that decision. His eyes move over me with an intensity that should be uncomfortable but isn't. It's not objectifying. It's witnessing.
"You're so beautiful,” he says, and there's nothing smooth about it. It comes out cracked and honest.
He kisses down my collarbone, between my breasts, across my ribs.
His tongue traces a line that makes my hips lift involuntarily, and he pins them down with one hand, firm, controlled, like he knows exactly what he's doing even if the rest of him is falling apart.
His mouth finds my breast and I arch off the sand and my hand fists in his hair.
Liam groans against my skin in a way that vibrates through my whole body.
"Liam—" his grips tightens just enough to reveal his strength but not hurt me.
"Say it again."
"Liam."
His response is his teeth, grazing me lightly, followed by his tongue, and the combination short-circuits something fundamental in my nervous system.
His hand moves to the waistband of my shorts before flicking them up to mine to ask if it’s alright. I answer by lifting my hips.
Screw it. I want to know exactly where this is going.
He pulls them down slowly, like he's unwrapping something he's been thinking about and wants to take his time.
His fingers trail down my thighs as the fabric goes, and when I'm lying in nothing but underwear on the sand in a glowing cove under a man with no heartbeat.
The absurdity of my life hits me for exactly one second before his rough hand slides between my thighs and I forget everything.
His fingers move over the thin fabric. I gasp and his jaw tightens like he's holding himself together by a thread. “We can go back,” he says quietly. “I don’t want you to think I do this with everyone.”
The excited wave slows as I remember all the other women that the shell promised was his soulmate. “You don’t?”
“I haven’t touched any of them like this.” His hand moves to my thigh to squeeze it.
“Then why me?”
“You make my body come to life unlike any of the others…” that hand slides up a little further, gripping tightly again. “I know the shell is right this time, sweetheart.”
There’s a part of me that wonders why am I even hesitating? This is one of the most memorable ways to get laid! And yet, the romance writer in me desperately hopes that there’s more. “We’re both adults,” I stumble. “I want you, Liam.”
He pulls the last piece of fabric down without me saying anything more, his fingers sliding through my skin as my entire body goes taut, two of his fingers penetrating me.
He watches my face while he touches me, his beautiful eyes locked on mine, reading every reaction like I'm a language he's teaching himself.
When he finds the right rhythm, and he finds it fast, faster than anyone before him, I grab his wrist, not to stop him, just to hold on.
"There?"
"There."
He lowers his mouth to my neck and works me with his hand, his thumb finding my clit to send me over the edge, and murmurs things against my pulse that I can't fully hear because my mind is far away—my name, and something about how long it's been since he felt anything, and something that sounds like I want to remember this forever.
My free hand claws at his back, pulling him closer, and when I come apart it's with his name on my lips and his mouth on my throat and his hand steady and sure and relentless.
The orgasm rolls through me like a wave, and he holds me through it, his forehead pressed to my temple, his breathing as ragged as mine.
"Okay," I pant, staring at the stars beyond his hair. "You're good at that."
He huffs a laugh against my neck. “The more I know you, the better it will be.”