Page 79 of Love to Loathe Him

Everything suddenly feels overheated—from the tips of my embarrassingly flushed ears all the way down to my . . . other highly sensitive areas currently throbbing in time with my racing pulse.

“I guess in your . . . line of work, you don’t get to, uh . . . see too many women?” I ask, my voice emerging in a rasp that has me mentally facepalming. Real smooth,Ginger.

“That’s right. I spend most of my time out on the open water. I’m only in town for one night, then I’ll be shipping back out to sea tomorrow.”

He’s slipping so seamlessly into character, into this rugged, lonely fisherman persona. I half expect him to start speaking in a thick, incomprehensible accent and regaling me with tales of his adventures on the high seas.

I press my thighs together beneath the bar. An image soars through my mind—the two of us in the dingy pub bathroom, my dress hiked up, his pants around his ankles as he takes me hard and fast against the wall . . .

Bad Gemma. Bad, bad Gemma.

“Don’t you have a nice girlfriend waiting for you back on shore or anything?” I ask with false innocence.

Liam shakes his head, jaw tightening ever so slightly. “I work too hard at this job to commit to a proper relationship.”

“It must get pretty lonely out there though, all by yourself on that boat for weeks at a time.”

“It does,” he agrees, his voice dropping to a low, suggestive rumble. “And as it happens, I’m alone on my boat tonight. I’ve been working damn hard these last few weeks, pushing myself to the limit on every charter. Could really use some company to help me unwind properly before heading back out tomorrow.”

The unmistakable innuendo laced through his gravelly tone sends a delicious shiver skittering down my spine, making my toes curl in my shoes.

Oh, he’s good at this game—too good.

“You’ve been working hard, huh?” I hum and take his big, manly hand in mine, tracing my fingers over his palm. He has beautiful hands, a few prominent veins snaking across the backs of them.

“I can tell,” I murmur, my voice coming out all breathy and bedroom-y without my permission. “These hands have seen more than their fair share of . . . vigorous action. All that rope handling and knot work and such, I’d wager.”

I’m half on the verge of giggling, half on the verge of moaning, caught up in the bizarre eroticism of our little scene.

I manage to hold Liam’s heated stare for all of three seconds before nervously snort-laughing.

Liam’s mouth twitches but he doesn’t laugh.

When I finally drop his hand, it casually falls onto my leg, his warm, heavy palm resting on my bare skin. Butterflies explode in my belly at the contact.

He looks at me for a second, his gaze questioning, as if checking to make sure I’m okay with this. When I don’t protest, he lets hishand linger, his thumb softly stroking my thigh in a way that has me doing an involuntary Kegel clench.

Fuck. I want him to move his hand higher, to slip it under the hem of my dress and . . .

“Do you want to come back to my boat, Ginger?”

“I . . .” Oh god. HR manager Gemma is screaming at me right now, waving the company handbook around.

Even Winnie’s judgmental face pops into my head, her indignant meow calling me a total slag.

But Ginger, the naughty minx that she is, has Lizzie on her side, egging her on to throw caution to the wind and just go for it. And caution has blown halfway to France at this stage.

“No pressure,” Liam says, his thumb still tracing maddening circles on my skin.

“You have calloused hands,” I say, looking down at them. “It must be from all the rope work.”

“These hands know how to handle delicate things too,” he murmurs, his eyes never leaving mine. “I can be gentle. Or not, depending on what you prefer.”

I almost flop off the chair.

“You seem like a nice, down-to-earth fisherman,” I manage to say, even though the words could be considered farcical since he’s a ruthless finance mogul. “But I don’t make a habit of going back to strange men’s boats.”

“Fair enough. But just so you know, what happens on the island stays on the island.”