Chapter Fifteen
Devon relaxed her head back against Liam’s shoulder as his fingers smoothed shampoo lather through her hair.
She was already half asleep as she lay beneath the hot, tumbling water with her back to his chest, her bottom settled snugly between his thighs.
Despite the openness of their nudity and the sensuality latent in their contact, he’d made no sexual overtures to her, content to let her set the mood and pace.
She might have let this passivity worry her, except there was nothing passive about his biological reaction to the feel of her slick, nude body nestled up against him.
Liam enjoyed the way she relaxed under his hands, the way her breathing evened out, and the way she absently curled her hands around his knees to hold on to him.
He was aware of the exact moment she fell asleep, but he finished washing the soap from her hair just the same.
He slid soapy hands down her shoulders and arms, stroking her gently and slowly.
He continued to bathe her, his hands sliding over her throat, her chest, and underarms. He moved on to her breasts, his fingers slipping over her nipples, the aureoles puckering tightly as he swept past. She stirred when he traveled over her belly.
Devon turned her head so her face was pressed to his neck, her lips rubbing over him as she smiled sleepily.
“You’re better than a maid,” she murmured.
“Yeah. I can think of one way L’m much better,” he teased her.
“So can I,” she sighed, her hand slipping behind her to seek the erect flesh nestled in the curve of her back.
“There we go, thinking alike again,” he said, his breath catching mid-sentence when her slick fingers encircled him.
“You know, you can just relax and sleep if you want. I won’t hold you to earlier promises,” he told her tensely.
“I know you had a headache before all this started. It can’t have improved much. ”
“I never said I had a headache.”
“You didn’t have to say it. I could tell,” he whispered.
“Mmm, and that’s how you’re so successful at your occupation, where observation is everything.
” Devon made the remark absently. She was far more interested in discovering the extent of his arousal and just how hard he really was.
Her inquiring fingers alone improved matters, and she could feel him swelling and pulsating with a rush of excitement when she closed her fist around him and stroked him.
“Ahh, baby,” he groaned, his legs shifting restlessly around her. His hands anchored to the tub sides. “Your hands …” he breathed with rough pleasure as she rubbed fingers over and around him. “Do you have any idea how good that feels?”
“Mmm, I have some idea,” she told him, a smile drifting over her lips.
She turned around, sliding like a slippery eel until she straddled his hips and had her hand back around him.
Her breasts moved against his chest provocatively as she stroked him in several long, stunningly arousing pulls. “I could make you come, yes?”
“Easily,” he growled as his hips began to press up with her caresses.
Devon leaned forward to kiss the corner of his mouth, a butterfly flick of her tongue touching him there. She reached her second hand between his legs and cupping his stones she gently tugged on him and fondled him expertly.
“God, it’s as though we didn’t make love at all,” he said with amazement, “the way I react to you. It feels like the first time. That keen, beautiful feeling of first getting to be with a lover. There’s nothing about you that doesn’t fascinate me. Thrill me.”
“I know,” she sighed, excitement rising as she watched his face and reactions to her touch. “Even when we’re fighting,” she whispered against his ear seductively, “I keep thinking how sexy you look in that outfit you wear when you work. About how sexy you’d look out of it.”
“Hmm … if I’d known that, there wouldn’t have even been an argument.
” She laughed, highly doubtful of that. “Or I would have ended it sooner. Watching you at dinner with another man, watching him simply touch your hand … it made me a little crazy, you know. Didn’t help that I kept getting an occasional flash of garters through the material of your skirt. ”
“Liked those, did you?” she chuckled with sinful sensuality as she stroked him in quicker motions.
“Devon …” he moaned, his hands reaching to seize her shoulders. “Let me take care of you before you bring me too close,” he said, his voice like sandpaper.
“What’s too close?” she asked curiously as her nails ran over him, forcing nerves into harsher attention.
“A couple more seconds of that,” he said on harshly falling breath.
She laughed, the sound miles away from the pain she’d been forced to feel at the hands of another just a short while ago. She leaned forward to kiss his shoulder in her delight. “Just making sure I have your attention,” she murmured against his damp skin.
“That has to be a joke,” he laughed abruptly.
“Mmm, nope. Here, is this better?”
She removed her second hand, grasped the edge of the tub over his shoulder and before he could blink, she had guided him into her snug, hot little body.
Definitely better. But damn, he couldn’t get a single word past his throat to tell her so. Luckily, his body spoke for him. His hands clamped onto her hips and he surged up into her.
“One of these days, we’re going to have to try and do this slowly,” she mused impishly as she felt the desperation in his grip.
“Son of a bitch,” he managed at last. “How do you always do this to me?” he demanded.
A better question might be ‘why.’ She always seemed so unconcerned with her own pleasure.
With her eager, slippery body all over him, however, it was easy for him to be selfish as she commanded his focus.
Liam realized that was partially because she seemed to take a great deal of delight in manipulating him until he was out of control.
It turned her on, her body growing hotter with each passing moment, her hard nipples sweeping across his chest, her head falling back as she moved with the rhythm of his hands and hips.
“Mmm, Liam you feel so good,” she purred. “You always feel so good.”
Feeling good certainly wasn’t a problem. An excess of feeling good was becoming an issue, however. She had reached out to grip the tub on both sides, giving herself a wicked leverage with which to move. The water washed away the natural lubricants of her body, and friction grew by leaps and bounds.
“Devon, look at me,” he demanded in short, bursting breaths. She lifted her head and opened slumberous, passion-hazed eyes, assuring him that she was just as caught up as he was. “Good girl. Now let’s try something before you have your way with me.”
She laughed at that, the throaty sound vibrating completely through him.
Still, he made good on his proposition by insinuating a hand between their bodies.
Taking his thumb and forefinger, he caught up that sensitive bud of her flesh between them and rolled it into a tugging pinch in time to her next slide down his shaft.
She jerked hard enough to send water sloshing and her inner walls clamped down on him in her surprise.
Liam groaned, feeling his coming climax threatening to boil over.
Regardless, he dragged on her clit again until she gasped, then soothed her in quick and slow circles.
He kissed her open mouth until they were both moaning and sighing against each other’s tongues.
“Oh, yes,” Devon gasped, her hips jerking in a quicker rhythm over him.
Now all Liam could do was hang on for the ride and pray he held on long enough for her.
He gripped her so hard he probably left bruises, but he couldn’t help himself as he was lost in her luscious tongue and divine body.
Her cries increased, rasping into his mouth as everything about her began to tighten up.
It was too much, more than he could handle, and he burst over the edge in wild, gutting release.
He heard his grunted shouts echoing off the tiles, felt her riding him for all she was worth, her back snapping into a sudden arch as she followed him in detonation.
When Liam became aware of himself again it was to find his forehead buried against her breastbone and her arms wrapped around his head and shoulders.
Then the strangest thought crossed his mind and he laughed aloud before he could check the impulse.
She pulled away to look into his eyes with a satiated smile in her eyes.
“What?”
“It’s not important,” he said dismissively.
“It is to me,” she countered.
Liam smiled at that and reached up to cup her face in both hands.
“It’s just that, when my parents were alive, they’d have these terrible rows.
Or so it seemed. Loud and Irish, more bluster than anything.
I once got very upset and I remember my mother comforting me.
She said to me, “’Tis not the fighting that matters, darlin’, but what comes after!
’” He chuckled along with Devon. “I never understood what that truly meant until just now.”
“It was a good lesson,” she sighed in agreement, hugging him close again with a little shiver.
“Yup. And now it’s time to get out of here. You’re cold.”
“I don’t get cold,” she denied, shivering again as she lay heavily in his arms.
“Yeah, right,” he snickered. Liam anchored her slippery body as best he could and hauled them both out of the water.
He impressed himself with the feat, considering he could barely feel his legs after such a devastating orgasm.
She aided his efforts by wrapping wet legs around his hips and her arms around his neck.
He managed to step onto the bathmat without slipping and breaking both their necks.
He grabbed towels and halfheartedly covered her and himself with them as he walked her into the bedroom.