Chapter 13

Chapter 13

Present

The weirdest part is how quickly everything changes.

One minute, I’m in the middle of cleaning up the kitchen, wondering whether the smoothie blender is dishwasher safe, thinking about my ongoing pining and my upcoming move, about how much I’ll miss this—coming home after work, finding twelve forks and a colander in the sink, wondering how many of them are Liam’s.

The next, he is standing behind me. Liam Harding is standing right behind me, on purpose, and pressing me into the counter. As though he wants to be here, close, touching me, as much as I want him to be. I am too stupefied to do anything about the water running in the kitchen, but he leans forward to turn it off, and all of sudden the room is silent.

His hand closes around my hip, and I cannot think. I cannot comprehend what is happening. I’m breathing. He’s breathing. We’re breathing together—same rhythm, same air—and for a moment I just feel it. This. It’s nice. It’s good. It’s what I’ve been wanting.

Then he shifts my hair behind my shoulder; uncovers the base of my throat. I feel something—teeth, maybe?—grazing at my skin.

“Liam?” I half moan.

“It’s me.” He is kissing me. There. “Is this okay?”

I’m nodding—Yes—to what, I don’t know. Yes, you’re Liam. Yes, this is okay. Yes, I’m about to melt to the floor.

“You smell so good, Mara.”

Thank God for the kitchen sink to hold on to, because my knees are about to give out. Thank God for Liam’s hands, too. Except that one is sliding under my shirt. I’ve never thought of myself as dainty, but it somehow manages to cover my entire torso, and his thumb?.?.?.

It’s brushing against the underside of my breast, and—

Oh.

He licks the pulse in the dip of my throat, and I’m mortified to hear myself whimper.

“You are so soft.” His breath is hot in my ear, and I shiver. Exactly once. “I think I imagined you wouldn’t be. You’re always running, working out. You always look so strong, but?.?.?.”

He lets go of me for a fraction of a second, and every single cell in my body revolts at once.

No.

Wait.

Stay.

But he’s only adjusting me. His hand presses on my lower back, angling me just so: slightly bent forward, like?.?.?. God, like he’s about to—

He’s back on me immediately. Begins to undo the zipper of my jeans, the catch of it like a drum in the silence. Air rushes out of my lungs in a sharp exhale.

“Okay?” he asks again, soft, deafening, and it is okay. Even if my jeans are sliding down my thighs, and I have never, ever felt less in control. I think we’re about to have sex, but sex is not like this. Sex is awkwardly pulling off clothes, and negotiating positions, and hours of foreplay peppered with Are you sure you shouldn’t be on top? and Wait, that’s my elbow. Sex is not going from zero to a million this way. Not for me. It’s not gripping the edge of the sink to stop myself from moaning, or needing to grind against something—anything—or feeling my knees weaken to jelly.

“Is this what you wanted, Mara?” He slides a finger under my panties and parts my folds. One single finger. “What you— Oh.”

For a moment, I panic. I cannot possibly be wet, not yet. But then I realize that I am, and I can feel it and hear it, the slick slide of skin against skin, my own body already beginning to flutter.

And Liam makes it clear that he likes it. “You,” he grunts into my ear. “You wouldn’t believe it, the things I’ve thought about doing.”

“The?.?.?.??”

“Is this how you wanted it?”

“Wanted?.?.?. what?”

“You said you wanted to be fucked. Hard and fast.” Did I say that? I can’t recall. I can’t remember my own name, and then things get even worse: behind me, he goes on his knees. What is he—? “Off.” Liam tugs at my jeans and panties until they’re pooling around my ankles, then tosses them on the other side of the room once I’ve stepped out of them. “Good girl.”

I gasp. Did he just say that? To me? But I can’t ask him to repeat himself, since he clearly got a little distracted on his way up. His hand travels along my inner thigh, long fingers grip the soft skin of my backside. It occurs to me in that moment that I am now bare. Completely naked except for a flimsy T-shirt and an even flimsier bra. And that this person softly biting into the flesh of my ass as though I am a piece of ripe fruit, this person is Liam Harding.

Liam. Harding. Who touches me as though he already knows my body. Who spreads me apart like I’m a law school book and buries his face into me. Who groans into my flesh and mutters, “Sorry.” He manages to sound genuinely apologetic as he pulls back to lick and suck the skin of my right buttock. “I know you want it hard and fast. Just, I think about this a lot. About you.” A heartbeat, and he’s on his feet again, chest pressed against my back. One hand tightens sweetly around my hip, and he pushes a knee between my legs, until most of my weight is resting on his thigh. I hear vaguely obscene sounds: something clinking, something fumbling, something being shoved aside. Then it’s hot flesh pushing against mine and a murmured, “Okay?” that I must have nodded to, because—

Friction.

My vision blurs around the edges. Liam is inside me. Barely. Just the tip. He’s also enormous—no room, no room—relentless, lovely, magnificent. Deep.

“Fuck, Mara. This is unreal.”

There’s a lot of harsh breathing, and “Just a bit more,” and tight muscles clenching and releasing, but he bottoms out, and it’s just this side of too much. It would be too much, but it helps that Liam holds on to me like letting go would kill him, or that his fingers are unsteady as he pushes my hair away from my shoulder. But my body seems to be into this, unused, hidden spaces stuffed full, fluttering around?.?.?. God.

Around Liam’s cock.

“I can’t think when you’re around.” His voice is rough. He holds still inside me, as though he’s in no hurry to start, but I can feel him vibrate with tension. The heel of his palm slides down to rest against my clit. “I can’t think when you’re not around. It’s been a problem. I feel like I haven’t formulated a coherent thought in months. I feel like you won’t stop being in my head, and—”

Just like that, it’s all over. Liam hasn’t even moved yet, but my mind goes blank. The world recedes and I start coming without warning, arching against him, biting into my lip to silence a scream. Pleasure sinks into me, and I’m helpless to stop it.

I don’t know how long passes before I’m back to myself, his breath sharp in my ear. “Did you just—?” Liam sounds in pain. “Did you really come, just from me?.?.?.”

I’m dazed. My nerve endings are still tingling. I shut my eyes tight and nod my embarrassment just as his teeth close around the fleshy part of my shoulder. He grunts like an animal, like he’s desperate to keep whatever control he can.

“Fuck, Mara, you?.?.?. can I take you to bed?”

His tone is unlike anything I’ve ever heard from him, pleading and a little raw. He’s still twitching inside me; every few seconds or so he seems to lose whatever grip he has on himself and rolls his hips. It doesn’t help my focus. Or his focus. Our focus.

Which we maybe should keep. This should stop right now, maybe. As good as it’s been—and it has just redefined sex for me—I’m not quite sure why Liam wants this, and if it’s just some impromptu fucking that means nothing to him but has lots of heartbreak in store for me?.?.?. Maybe we should stop here?

“I’ll try to keep it fast.” He’s licking away the sting of his earlier bite. “But let me take you to bed.”

The thing is, I don’t want to stop. I’ve come once, already, just from him sliding into me and stretching me too tight, from the feel of his hand clutching my hip bone—a small miracle in and of itself, because it usually takes me forever. But if I let him take me to bed, he’s going to wreck me. He is going to ruin me for anyone else. He is going to destroy me in each and every possible way.

“Please,” he murmurs.

I don’t really have a choice: I want to say yes, so I nod. Whatever you want, you can have, Liam.

It’s not pretty, when he pulls out. He gasps a breath of pure frustration and it’s clear that he hates it. I hate it, too, and I’m the one who just had a life-altering orgasm. Liam’s the one who gave it to me and took very little for himself—which doesn’t even come as a surprise.

I wouldn’t have fallen for an unkind man.

He takes my top and bra off, and I’m too stupid with aftershocks of pleasure to do anything but stand there and let him, watch him stare his fill with dark, unreadable eyes, even though I’m completely naked and my belly button is still an outie and the lacrosse scar is there, gleaming white in the dim lights of the room.

“Come here. Mara, you?.?.?. Fuck. Come here.” His jaw is tense as he picks me up and carries me to his room. My first time here, but I know this place—because I know Liam. Dark colors. Framed pictures of semihostile nature from the trips he told me about. Sparse furniture. A stack of books on his bedside table. Reading glasses, the ones I tease him about, unfolded in the middle of his desk. I want to explore every corner, but there’s no time. The mattress bounces underneath my back, and then he’s taking up my entire field of view.

“Can I kiss you?” His mouth is hovering a few inches above mine, so I press my hands down his nape and arch into him, kissing him myself.

It’s slow, and warm, and achingly careful. He was fucking me less than a minute ago. He was so deep inside me that I felt deliciously split in two. But now there’s this gentle sliding of lips and tongues, Liam nibbling on me, holding first my chin, then the back of my head, and my heart sings for him.

I am catastrophically, ruinously in love with you.

“I love kissing you,” I sigh in his mouth.

“Mara.” His lips. His voice. “I want to kiss you everywhere.” He moves back, as if something occurs to him just then. “Can I go down on you?”

I feel my cheeks heat. Does he really want to?

“Just for a minute,” he adds, and then?.?.?. Incredible, how he’s waiting for my answer. He just bent me over the kitchen sink and slid into me and made me come on his cock, but he’s asking for permission to eat me out like I’d be doing him a favor.

“Are you sure?”

“Thirty seconds. Please.”

“Yes. I mean, if?.?.?. if you’re sure that you— Oh.”

He’s very good at it. Not?.?.?. Maybe not deftly skilled, but he is completely lost to it, so thorough, so noisy in his utter, amazed enjoyment of the act, of me. My hips arch and he has to hold me down, carry me through the pleasure. It lasts more than thirty seconds. It lasts more than three minutes, maybe more than ten—but my thighs are trembling and my pussy spasms and I start to come like an ocean wave, and when I think the pleasure is finally subsiding he slides two fingers inside me and my hips buck up, because it’s not over. My entire world is spinning. I’ve officially had more orgasms in the past twenty minutes than in the last year.

Fingers still inside me, he looks up, eyes soft and earnest and swallowed by his pupils. “Thank you.”

Oh.“I think?.?.?.” I clear my throat. My voice remains scratchy. “Maybe I should be the one thanking you.”

He shakes his head and lifts himself over me, balanced on one arm, and my eyes widen. He strokes himself with the other hand while staring down at my breasts with an awestruck expression. “This is so good, Mara. You are so good. Why do you want it to be fast?” He leans forward to kiss me again, licking the inside of my mouth, nibbling down my throat. “I just want to make it last,” he rasps against my skin.

I have no idea what he’s referring to. I don’t want this to be fast. I’ve never said I did, but he keeps telling me that?.?.?.

Except that I did say it. Shit, I did say it. Just not to him. “You heard me.”

Liam is preoccupied. Licking one of my nipples. Biting gently. Licking again. Doing a fantastic job.

“You heard me,” I repeat. I twine my finger in his hair to slow him down. “On the phone.”

He stops, but doesn’t lift his head. His breath, warm against my breast, has me shivering. “Remember when I found you in my bathroom? I haven’t stopped thinking about your tits ever since—”

“Liam, you heard me tell my friends about?.?.?.” He’s currently busy sucking on the underside of my breast, but for some reason I cannot bring myself to repeat the words. “About what I wanted you to do. You heard me.”

He looks up. He’s flushed, turned on, and more beautiful than ever. “I can do it, Mara. I can do it for you. What you want.”

“I don’t—” This is mortifying. I push him away, but he barely budges. “If this is some kind of charity, I don’t need a pity fuck. I am perfectly capable of—”

He takes my palm and drags it down his chest, past his abdomen, until his cock is hot in my hand. He is massive, and almost automatically my fingers close around him. Liam grimaces, biting his lower lip, and I have the sudden realization that he’s been touching me in all sorts of manners, but I haven’t touched him yet, not at all. It seems sad, and unfair, and unbearably stupid. Something to remedy.

“Does this feel like I’m giving you a pity fuck?”

No. No, it definitely does not. But. “I don’t know.”

Of its own free will, my hand starts moving up and down his length, simple strokes that have him gasping and shutting his eyes. His lips part as I circle around the damp head with my thumb. The arm he’s leaning on shakes. Visibly.

“Come on, Mara.” His hips are thrusting, now. In and out of my fist. He’s getting closer. Closer to something. “You must know.”

“Know what?”

“How hard it’s been, to—fuck—to keep my hands off you. How much I’ve wanted this, almost since the very beginning.”

Oh.

Oh God.

His eyes are glazed, muscles taut. He is on the verge of coming, that much is obvious. So obvious that I’m shocked when his fingers wrap around my wrist to stop me.

“Please, let me fuck you. Let me give you what you need. Let me try, at least.” He kisses a spot under my jaw. “Hard and fast.”

I’m not about to tell him no. I’m not about to tell myself no. Instead I smile and pull him on top of me, arms twined around his neck as I silently mouth against the flesh of his shoulder how much I like him, how much I love this, and Liam adjusts us and angles himself until he’s almost inside again, hot and wet and?.?.?. the most annoying thought occurs to me. Shit.

“Condom! We need—do you—?”

Liam groans. “Fuck.” His biceps are shaking, fingers white as they fist in the sheets. Then he takes a deep breath and shifts, rearranging until he can slide one finger—two—deep inside me, curling them upward so that he is thrumming exactly where I need him.

“What are you—?” God, this feels insanely good.

“I don’t have any condoms.” His words are a bit slurred. “I’m just going to make you come like this and then get myself off.” He sounds like he’s doing the single hardest thing in his life, and yet it’s clear that he’s absolutely fine with it. Which?.?.?. No. No, no, no, no.

“Liam, are you—Ah—are you clean?” His thumb brushes my clit. I moan. “Because I’m on the pill, and?.?.?.”

“I have no idea.”

How does he not know? I reach down to hold his forearm still. Problem is, he can still curve his fingers. His long, beautiful fingers.

“Have you been tested, since the last time you?.?.?.??”

I brace for all sorts of horrifying answers, ranging from Why, of course not, my last one-night stand was yesterday, to Everyone has HPV, anyway. But what comes is, “I’ve had a bunch of yearly physicals for work. I— Mara, it doesn’t matter.” He kisses me on the cheek, and a clever twist of his wrist makes my brain go blank. “I think I can make you come with my fingers. That’s safe. And you don’t have to be around later, when I?.?.?.”

Yearly physicals? Plural? “When was the last time you had sex? Can you—ah, please, please stop that.”

“I have no idea.” Liam pulls out his fingers. For a second, the friction is distracting. Then my pussy clenches in protest. “I don’t have sex, Mara.”

“You?.?.?. You what?”

He looks away. We are both breathing too hard. “I don’t like sex.”

I look down. He is so hard. His cock is so heavy on my thigh. There is pre-come on my skin. “You seem to?.?.?. um, you seem to like it fine.”

“Yeah. But I really don’t. It’s just?.?.?.” He holds my eyes. His are a dark, beautiful brown. “I like you very much, Mara. I like talking to you. I like watching you do yoga. I like the way you always smell like sunscreen. I like how you manage to say pretty much whatever you want while still being unbelievably kind. I like being in this house with you, and everything we do in here.” His throat bobs. “I don’t think it’s a surprise that I really, really like the idea of fucking you.”

Oh my God. Oh my God oh my God oh my God—

“But I don’t need to?.?.?. I’m enjoying this”—he grimaces, as if appalled by the understatement—“maybe too much, since I almost lost it?.?.?. a number of times, just by being near you, so I’ll be more than fine if you just let me take care of you and—”

No.

I push at his shoulder, his chest, and then keep pushing through his first resigned, then confused, then shocked expression. Once his back is on the mattress, he lets me straddle his hips and groans. “What are you doing?”

I lean over and whisper in his ear, “Hard and fast, Liam.”

There is a long moment in which he just stares up at me, disoriented. Then he must realize: we are perfectly lined up. I’m working to take him inside, struggling a little, because he’s so big this way. But I’m moving now, balancing my palms on his chest, up and down and up again, and a few minutes later, on the downstroke, he’s completely wedged inside me.

The angle is so deep, my vision spots. Liam’s grip digs almost painfully around my waist.

“Mara.” He is panting. “I’m not going to be able to pull out.”

“It’s fine.” It’s perfect. “Just do what feels good.”

Everything does, anyway. The slide of flesh, the wet friction—even within the clumsy mess of our movements, as he slips out and has to nudge himself back in, this feels like perfection. The way he stares at my face, my breasts, the rise and fall of my hips, looking stunned; the wet, filthy sounds of us moving together; the things he says about how beautiful I am, how precious, about all the times he has imagined doing this—and there are so many.

I feel my pulse spike, and I smile at him as I lean forward. I love you, I think. And I suspect that you love me, too. And I cannot wait for us to admit it to each other. I cannot wait to see what happens next.

“I think,” he grunts against my throat. “Mara, I think I’m going to come now.”

I nod, too close to speak, and let him roll us over.

“Yup.” Delicious. It was delicious.

“I can do better,” he says. I’m pretty sure he has no clue that this was better. Best. Ever. “I think. Maybe with practice.”

I’m not even sure it’s over yet. My nerve endings are still twitching. My entire body is flooded with an electric sort of pleasure, wrenched out of me and then poured back in again. “It wasn’t that fast,” I say.

Liam buries his face in my neck and curls around me, dwarfing me. Yeah. It was fast.

“I mean,” I mumble against his chest, “that it wasn’t too fast. It was?.?.?.” Extraordinary. Spectacular. Transcendent. “Good. Very good.” He presses a kiss to my throat, and I add, “But it wasn’t that hard, either.”

He tenses. “I’m sorry. Do you—”

“That is to say, we should do it again.” He pulls back to meet my eyes. He looks very, very serious. I’m feeling considerably less so. “And again. And again. Until we get it right. Perfectly hard, and perfectly fast. You know?”

His smile unfurls slowly. “Yeah?” Hopeful and happy, he looks younger than ever. I grin and pull him in for a kiss.

“Yeah, Liam.”