Page 27

27

Alana

S heltering from the rain in Macy’s almost made me wish that we had just accepted that we were going to get drenched and headed back to our car anyway. Macy’s was busy at the best of times. But two days before Christmas, while rain battered the sidewalk and threatened to cause shallow flooding in the roads, added a new layer of hell to an already hellish landscape.

Liam seemed unbothered by it as he led me around the packed store with one hand, and the other carried the bag from the sex toy store. I wasn’t too sure whether he had a destination in mind or if he was just trying to find a place in this whole store that wasn’t crammed. It seemed unlikely that he would find one.

In the end, he stopped in the men’s section, specifically the sweater section. As concentration of people went, it was on the quieter side, but there were still too many to be comfortable.

“Why have we stopped here?” I asked.

“Well, you seem to be in the market for a new sweater,” he teased. I laughed. If he thought he was keeping that sweater, he was sorely mistaken. I didn’t have time to reply to him as a man, whose panicked expression morphed into awe when he noticed Liam, cleared his throat.

“Sorry to interrupt, are you Liam Mulligan?” he asked.

I slipped my hand out of Liam’s and squeezed his arm. I could still feel the solid muscle of his bicep underneath his several layers. “You go be Gunner. Come find me when you’re done,” I said as I took the bag from his hand and walked off.

I wasn’t sure how long it was until Liam found me again, but I had migrated away from the men’s section and was now looking at party dresses that I didn’t need. But like a magpie, I was drawn to shiny pieces of fabric.

I sensed his arrival in my atmosphere before I saw him.

“Look what I found,” he said by way of introduction. I followed the line of his arm and was met with his hand waving some mistletoe around.

It seemed impossible, given that I knew the feeling of his tongue in my most sensitive places, but as I looked up at the mistletoe currently hovering between our heads, I realised we hadn’t actually kissed.

I pressed a chaste kiss on his cheek and went to walk away. His hand caught my wrist and pulled me back.

“What the hell was that?”

“It was a kiss on the cheek.”

“Which is not what you’re supposed to do under mistletoe.” He shook it over my head again .

“Muller, I am not kissing you for the first time in the middle of a fucking Macy’s.”

“It wouldn’t…” he trailed off. I could see the moment it dawned on him that I was right. “How is that even possible?”

“A good question. I mean this morning kind of took an unexpected turn, and I guess we haven’t got around to it.” I shrugged. Liam’s eyebrows knitted together and then he reached for something to my left.

“I think you need to try this dress on,” he said, not giving me a chance to respond before he hooked an arm over my shoulder and led me to the dressing rooms.

Surprisingly, they were mostly empty. The woman who handed me a tag indicating how many items I had was not paying attention to us, which was probably for the best because Liam was practically vibrating next to me as he led us to the stall in the furthest corner.

Liam hung the dress over the hook in the room and then stood opposite me.

“Why are you staring at me?” I asked. I could feel the heat of his gaze, but he had drawn an invisible line between us.

“I’m thinking,” was all he said in response.

“Well don’t think too hard, Muller.” I tried to lighten the mood.

“I do think you should try this dress on.” He nodded to where it was hanging up. I couldn’t think of anything worse than peeling off all the layers that I had on, but I had been looking at the dress for ages before Liam found me. It wouldn’t surprise me if Liam had been watching me stare at it before he had walked over. I took my coat off and threw it at him .

He caught it with ease.

“Fine, but close your eyes.”

I expected him to protest but instead, he turned his cap around and closed his eyes. I went about changing as quickly as possible.

As I zipped it up and let it settle on the contours of my body, I knew why I had been so drawn to it. I looked really fucking good, and suddenly, I was excited for Liam to open his eyes.

“Okay you’re good,” I said, and he spun the cap back around and opened his eyes. First, they adjusted to the bright light of the dressing room, then the green darkened, and I felt my skin heat up underneath his stare.

“Fuck, Alana,” he said my name as both a whine and a prayer as he closed the distance between us. He wrapped one hand around the back of my neck, his fingers tangling in my curls, and his eyes flicked down to my lips before he stepped in closer.

I’d never really thought about the fact that my favourite colour was a shade of green before it turned into blue. I kind of assumed it was because I loved the ocean. But no, it was the exact shade of Liam’s eyes.

I don’t know who moved first, all I knew was that I held his stare for a fraction of a second and then his lips were against mine. The first press was gentle. The thought that this felt more intimate than the fact that those same lips had been in between my thighs just this morning made me laugh, breaking the kiss.

Liam pulled back a little and raised his scarred eyebrow.

“That was not me judging your kissing skills. I’m just thinking about how funny it is that you ate me out before we even kissed. ”

“Some might say that was a better first kiss to have,” he whispered against my lips.

I didn’t bother responding with anything other than pressing my lips against his again. There was nothing gentle about our second kiss. It felt almost desperate. Decades worth of want and longing were finally finding a way to be let out. He nipped at my bottom lip, a gentle scrape of teeth before he soothed it with a swipe of his tongue.

I removed his cap with one hand and threaded my fingers through his hair as he pushed me backwards until I was pressed against a wall. When he slid one of his legs in between mine, I tilted my head back as the pressure of his thigh against me made pure want rush through my veins. As Liam started kissing my exposed neck, his cap fell from my grip.

The hand threaded through my hair ran down my body until he grabbed my upper thigh, and I moaned. Low and guttural. For his ears only, but still very aware that I was in a dressing room in Macy’s. I felt Liam’s smile against the crook of my neck and his fingers moved closer to the apex of my thighs. Slowly. The kind of slow that almost made me want to beg him to get a move on and touch me.

Just as I was about to cave, two fingers pressed against my clit, and I sighed with relief.

“I can feel how wet you are,” he near growled into my ear.

“I’ve been wet all day. You’re not good for me.” My voice sounded so breathless.

“Nah, I think I’m great for you, babe. Do you think you can be quiet?”

“I don’t own this dress,” I responded .

“But you will, so back to my original question.” His voice dripped like honey against my neck.

I nodded. “Yeah, I can be quiet.”

Liam didn’t say anything else. He simply slid his fingers into my underwear and started rubbing circles around my clit.

I laughed softly.

“You know I’m gonna get a complex if you keep laughing when I touch you.”

“I promise, it’s not you. It’s just that I don’t remember the last time I had an orgasm without outside, vibrating, assistance and you get your slightly calloused, very capable fingers on my clit, and I’m just about ready to burst.”

He started rubbing faster and I grabbed at his shoulders to keep myself upright.

“I don’t remember you ever being this good for my ego.”

“Don’t get used—” I didn’t get to finish my sentence, because out of nowhere, the slow build of my orgasm crashed over me, and I had to bury my mouth into the fabric of Liam’s sweater. He kept rubbing my clit until I tried to shift my hips away from him, and only then did he remove his hand. Then, because he was very good at finding new ways to destroy me, he stuck the fingers that had just made me come into his mouth.

“Sorry, didn’t catch the end of that,” he said when he finished sucking his fingers clean, smugness practically oozing out of his every pore.

“You’re the fucking worst, you know that?”

He smiled as his fingers trailed down my side until they found the zip of the dress and slowly dragged it down. I could feel his erection on my hip, but he made no move to do anything about it, and I was frozen under his gentle touch.

“I’m going to go pay for this dress while you get changed,” he said quietly as he peeled it off me. His eyes took in my body as he revealed it, bit by bit. I felt my nipples harden at the heat of his stare.

“You are not buying this dress for me,” I managed to get out.

“Except I am. You want the dress. I saw you looking at it for ages, but you decided it wasn’t worth paying over a grand for. Which is fair, but I was always going to buy it for you because you deserve the things you want, even if they might be a bit excessive. And now, having seen you in it, and getting to watch you come all over my hand while wearing it, I am definitely buying it for you. Consider it your Christmas present.”

He let the dress fall to the floor and then ran his hands back up my body in featherlight touches that made me shiver.

“What were the sex toys for then?” Not that I wanted to unwrap one in front of our families.

“Our sex life,” he murmured, a thrill went through me at the word ‘our’, “which is something completely different from this. They were basically a necessity. Make sure you act surprised when you unwrap this on Christmas Day.”

“I’ll be sure to give the best fake surprised face I can muster up.”

He kissed me once more on the lips, lingering for only a moment before he scooped the dress and his hat.

“Just as long as that’s the only faking you do around me,” he said as he took the dress and sex toys out of the dressing room and left me to get dressed.