Page 47

He waved his hand impatiently. “It wasn’t an exchange. You don’t owe me sex. You don’t owe me anything. And that really fucks me up. Because I can’t even remove myself from the situation. I’m scared to leave you alone, but I can’t keep my hands off you if I stay. Which puts me between a rock and a hard place.”
I put my finger over his mouth. “Wow,” I murmured. “I would’ve never dreamed you could get worked into such a state, Mr. Liam-let’s-contemplate-the-beauty-of-the-flower Knightly.”
He snorted, and I shushed him again, enjoying the feel of his lips beneath my finger. “You’re not a jerk or a user,” I said gently. “You were magnificent. Valiant, selfless, amazing. Thank you. Again.”
He looked away. There was a brief, embarrassed pause. “That’s generous of you,” he said, trying to flex the wounded hand. “But I’m not fishing for compliments.”
“I never thought you were,” I told him.
I placed my own hand below his and rested them both gently on his thigh. My fingers dug into the thick muscle of his quadriceps, through the dirty, bloodstained denim of his jeans. Beneath the fabric, he was so hot. So strong and solid.
I moved my hand up, slowly but surely, stroking higher toward his groin. His breath caught and stopped as my fingers brushed the thick bulge of his penis beneath the denim.
Here went nothing. “I know what you mean, about the hard place,” I whispered, swirling my fingertips over it. Wow. That thick, broad stalk just went on and on. “Or was this what you meant by the rock?”
His face was a mask of tension, neck muscles clenched, tendons standing out. “You don’t have to do this.”
Aw. Still trying to be the gallant gentleman. What a turn-on. My fingers closed around him, squeezing. A shudder jarred his body. “I can’t seem to stop myself,” I said.
“Watch out, Nancy,” he said. “If you start something now, there’s no stopping it.”
I stroked him again, tighter, a slow, twisting caress that wrung a keening gasp from his throat. “That’s right,” I said, my voice low, throaty. “There will be no escape for you.”
He reached out, a little awkwardly and clasped his arms around my shoulders, staring into my eyes as if expecting me to bolt.
He pulled me close, enfolding me in his power, and suddenly we were kissing.
I had no idea who kissed who. The kiss was desperate, achingly sweet. Not a power struggle, not a matter of talent or skill, just a wild, yearning hunger to get as close to each other as humans could be. He held me like he was afraid I’d be torn away.
I tugged his shirt up, and he wrenched it off. I almost purred when I saw him half naked. Oh, yes, please. His skin was pale, and his lean, sinewy muscles were sharply defined in the dim light that dangled over the kitchen stove. He was hot as a furnace. He smelled like soap—and the sharp, salty tang of sweat. From fighting to defend me.
Then he pulled my T-shirt off, and I was just as exposed, blinking through my tousled hair. The chill that hit my skin gave me goosebumps, but I still felt scorched by his eyes, his roving hands. My tight nipples tingled where they brushed his chest.
Shyness gripped me, but it was nothing like that usual cold, sinking feeling I got in these situations, when those iron-plated doors slammed shut, shutting my lover out and trapping my own small, numb self inside. That was how things usually went.
This was so different. I wasn’t numb. I was on the verge of shaking into a million pieces. It was almost unbearably intense. I crossed my arms over my chest, eyes squeezed shut. “Can we turn off the light?”
He froze for a few seconds. “Don’t hide from me,” he said, in a low voice.
“I won’t,” I assured him. “I just think it would be easier for me.”
He started to speak, and I cut him off before he could ruin it. “I don’t want to stop, I swear,” I said swiftly. “Just the light.”
He hesitated, peering at me like he was trying to read me.
“It’s because I care about this,” I hurried on. “I’ll use every trick I can think of not to shut down with you.”
Smooth move, Nance. Big turnoff, laying out my sexual problems to a prospective lover before I even got a chance to make him come.
But Liam didn’t look put off. “All right,” he said. “First, let’s put down the bed, though. I don’t want to do that in the dark.”
Oh. I’d forgotten that detail. I was so turned on, a bed seemed irrelevant.
A few deft tugs and wrenches with Liam’s big muscles, and my rickety old futon bed was flat and ready for business. The mattress was already dressed with a sheet beneath the couch cover. Then he went to the stove and yanked the string, and the room was plunged into infinite tones of shadow. Even the blacks and grays took on subtle, delicate meanings—shaded nuances that I could never express in words. And Liam was a fulcrum of deeper gray—an enormous, brooding presence.
Every hair on my body prickled at his proximity. Every sense was heightened. My eyes strained in the dark, my lungs labored for deeper gulps of his scent, my ears were tuned to the pad of his bare feet. I was hungry to touch his skin, to taste his salt.
He unbuckled his belt, kicked off his shoes, and shucked his pants, briefs, and socks. Quick, businesslike movements loaded with pure eroticism.