by Stacey Lynn
Yet I hadn’t been honest with him about why. If I were him, I’d be all scowling and growly too, just like he was.
But perhaps there was something I could do to ease his pain, at least the one I’d physically brought on.
I walked toward him, knees trembling and thighs shaking. My nipples were still hard and my fingertips tingled at what I was about to do.
I stopped behind him and slid my hand up the length of his back, to his shoulder and back down to his hip. He shivered and jolted at my unexpected touch and his head turned to look at me over his shoulder. “I told you to give me a minute, Claudia.”
Not sweetheart or princess, the two nicknames he’d donned me with the last couple of weeks.
“I was wondering if I could help you.” My voice shook and my fingertips buzzed like live wires were growing from my nail beds. A thick lump grew in my throat as his brows arched high on his head and then narrowed.
He shook his head. “No.”
“I want to,” I said, already running my hand at his hip toward his stomach.
His hand clasped over mine when I reached the string of his board shorts, tightening my fist beneath his until my knuckles ached. “What the fuck are you doing?”
For two weeks, he’d been nothing but honest. For two weeks, I’d lied to him. It felt shitty. The least I could have done was spurned his advances but I didn’t because I just liked them—and him—so darn much.
My forehead fell to his back, his shoulder too high to take the fall and I shrugged. Tears were already pooling in my eyes because everything was crashing down on me. Life. Him. Desire. Morals. Ethics. Lust for a man who knew how to touch me, multiple times every day, to bring me to this boiling point where I might not have been offering myself to him, but offering to help him instead.
“I’m helping you,” I whispered, straggled words torn from my throat. “I want to.”
I wiggled my hand beneath his. The scratch of his callused palms and fingertips scraped against the back of my hand. And never in my life would I think that would send shivers up my arm to my chest.
“Fucking hell. Why?”
I spilled the truth before I could stop myself. “Because I’m scared of you touching me, but I want to touch you.”
He tightened like I’d slammed him into a wall. Yanking my hand off his, he twisted and grasped me by the shoulders. “Scared?” Ice blue eyes were narrowed, shooting fire and disgust in that way and I realized what I said.
“Not of you. God, no, I’m not scared like that.”
He threw his hands to his sides, dragging my gaze to his erection, still jammed inside loose fitting shorts and God, it looked beautiful.
Is this what he felt like? The unstoppable desire to have his hands on all my hidden places. Every time I fell asleep I still envisioned seeing him in the shower, and dreams would pull me under until sometimes he was standing inches front of me, like he was now, wearing nothing but a thick leather cuff on his wrist and a hand over his dick as he stroked himself in front of me.
And other times the dreams morphed to the day he saw me staring at him and instead of finishing, watching me watch him, he yanked me into the shower with him uncaring and clueless about getting the cover-up I was wearing wet, and he dropped to his knees, threw my legs over his shoulders while pushing me against the glass walls and placed his mouth exactly where I was currently soaking wet.
“Crap on a cracker.” I pressed my palms to my cheeks. Was I that hot? Maybe I had a fever. Maybe I was becoming delirious. It would explain so much.
“I would give you a million dollars to know what just flashed through your mind while you were staring at my dick like you could already taste it.”
I huffed, shook my head and tried to move but he reached out and grabbed me.
“God, we’ve made a mess of today.”
“No mess made, yet.” His voice carried that teasing tilt, the one he used when he read something sexual in my innocent words. “But there’s still time.”
I laughed. He did that to me. Pulled me out of my head and into the present where it was just us and lust and attraction. But was it enough? In the solace of a private beach and a fancy home on a secluded island, maybe. But back home? In the real world?
“What are you scared of?” he asked. Liam tugged me to him slowly, giving me time to pull away but I went with him, stepping until my chest brushed against his and I was tilting my head back and looking at him.
So beautiful. Chiseled and strong and a few lines that showed not his age, but the stress he carried with him. I reached up and brushed my thumb across a visible line on his forehead.
“You,” I whispered. I wet my dry lips with my tongue and started over. “Every time you touch me, it scares me. It makes me want to…” Good grief. Prim and proper princess couldn’t even say it to him. Not with his lips lifting at the corners of his mouth. Eyes twinkling.
“Want to, what…fuck?”
He stepped forward. I was still pressed against his chest and then I was sandwiched between him and the island.
“No. Not fuck.” I squeezed my eyes closed, visions returning I didn’t want. Not then. But they couldn’t be stopped. “You know what I meant, Liam.”
“I know. But you’re sexy as hell when you blush.”
“You’re horrible.”
“I’m not.” And he sounded like he meant it. Like he was so certain of the man he was and it only left me more befuddled, because who in the hell was I without the Townsend name and privilege?
“I know you’re not. You’re a good guy.”
“Geez. Call me nice, next. That might make my dick finally go soft.”
“You’re…” I glanced down. Couldn’t be helped. And yep. He was still hard. I looked over his shoulder. “Wow.”
“That’s more like it. So tell me why you’re scared. I’ve got nothing to do today besides hold you right here until you start talking.”
He would do it, too. Last week, I refused to choose which movie to watch. He wanted action. I wanted romance. Typical. Instead, he sat on the couch, remote pointed at the massive television in his theater room, but his gaze didn’t leave me. It took ten minutes until I cracked and named something. Felt like a millennium. If anything, he was stubborn to his very sexy and built core.
Blowing out a breath, I tried to erase all my thoughts, all my fears. But I wanted him to see them. To see what a mess I was. Who knew, maybe he’d run so far me cashing in my V-Card wouldn’t be an option.
“Every time you touch me, I want you. But when I think of giving in, I think of you paying. And then I just feel….icky.”
His chest froze when I mentioned paying and didn’t relax when I was done.
Slowly, his head fell to mine. His lips at the top of my head, his nose brushed against my hair and his hand still holding my arm swept to my back.
He was hugging me. Cuddling me even though we were on our feet, and he stood there, saying nothing, just our heartbeats, mine pounding in my ear echoed his I felt against his chest. And at my stomach…his cock hardened.
I pushed my hand between us and his breath went ragged as I cupped him. Felt him for the first time, and even behind clothing, I could feel him twitch in my grasp. He turned his head, his cheek against the top of my head and he groaned. “Claudia.”
“I want to do this.” I ran my hand against him. He was thick. Long. It pulsed in my hand again and as Liam groaned again, power surged inside of me.
This man had a stable of women he could use to get off whenever he wanted. I was certain of it. Last year, he was listed on Forbes’s Top 10 Highest Paid Entertainers. He made more millions in a year than I’d see in a lifetime. He had groupies and fan sites and millions of followers on social media accounts. I knew that because I was one of them.
I was just me, messed up and broken, and hiding so many important things. Yet I was doing this to him.
“Please,” I whispered, my voice shaking out the plea.
His hand tangled in my
hair, gripping it fiercely, but he said nothing except trembled as I held him firmly in my hand, stroking.
I took his silence as acquiescence and slid my hand to the ties at his waist, tugging the string slowly and giving him time to pull away but he didn’t. Instead, his breath skated across my skin, his head tilting until his lips were at my ear.
“Fucking hell.”
I grinned against his chest, kissing his covered skin.
His shorts untied, he let go of me just enough to shove his shorts to the floor and I saw him. Wild horses couldn’t drag me away from the vision of his hard, thick— and holy hell—really long cock as it stood between us.
My hand wrapped around him, feeling the hot, pulsing weight in my hand and I shivered.
“You’re going to have to move that hand, sweetheart, or I’m going to come just from you staring at me.”
I wanted to see into his eyes, watch the tightness in his features of his face as I slowly began pleasuring him, but my gaze stayed fix on my hand as I moved it slowly toward the tip, sliding my fingers around the ridge of his head, the tip as pre-cum leaked from him and onto my fingers.
He was so beautiful. I wanted to yank off his T-shirt so I could watch his stomach tighten, explore the hair on his chest, and kiss his ink, embed the taste of him into my brain.
“You’re perfect,” I said, “And you feel so good.”
I stroked and pulled, teasing light touches and harder, intentional ones, keeping him off-balance with my rhythm while he groaned. He rocked into my hold and his hand in my hair gripped me fiercely.
“Claudia,” he groaned, sending vibrations from my ear to spine, and further south. I was wet. Hot. Flushed and a bit sweaty but I couldn’t stop myself from doing this. It felt too good. It felt too right. “Let me touch you.”
My movement on him faltered and I closed my eyes at the thought. The vision. In his kitchen. Exotic island. Touching each other before we’d cleaned up from breakfast.
I nodded my head faintly, too speechless to answer. His hand pressed between us, to my inner thigh, beneath the hem of my cut-off sweats that barely covered my ass and then he was there. Two thick, callused fingers pushed into my bikini from beneath, rubbing against me through my fabric.
“I can feel how wet you are.”
“You can take them off,” I gasped as he hit the right place.
“I get you naked and my dick won’t be in your hand anymore. It’ll be inside you.”
I was an idiot for my outburst earlier. I should have taken him. Should have let him do all the things he wanted to teach me. Patiently.
I didn’t want patient and kind and gentle. With him throbbing in my hand, pre-cum leaking and his balls pulling tight, he was already close.
I was closer. My hips jerked against him, and his hand on my hair moved to my ass, holding me tightly against him while I fought the overwhelming sensation.
“Shit, sweetheart,” he grunted as I slid my hand down his length to his tip. He swelled beneath my touch. Our breaths went erratic. Both of our chests were heaving and every time he brushed against my clit, tiny, needy sounds escaped my throat. I stared at the vision. Two arms, tangled together, hands moving. Hips rocking.
Giving myself to him fully would be the things fantasies were made of. I pictured it, him sliding his thickness into me for the first time. Taking me. I lost the hold. My climax hit me hard and fast and right as I began to come, he followed me. Spurts of creamy liquid fell into my hands, hit my stomach, my shirt, and my shorts. I forced my eyes to stay open, watching everything as he continued his flicking, pressing, pushing against me and I collapsed against him, shivering from the onslaught and the suddenness of it all.
I was wrong before.
Liam touching me didn’t scare me.
Liam Allistor terrified the hell out of me and everything he made me feel. But it didn’t matter what we said here or for the next year. He would never be fully mine.
I was already promised to another, and I still knew that at some point, he was coming to collect.
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
LIAM
Good freaking Christ. My breath trembled and my knees were shaking so hard when she finally let me go, I stumbled backward almost tripping over my shorts pooled at my feet.
That had to have been the hottest thing I’d ever seen. Or ever done. Getting someone off like Claudia, pure and so damn perfect, made my dick still hard even after she jacked me so hard I thought my balls might explode.
I yanked up my shorts, grunting as I caught the waistband over my dick and pulled my hands down my face.
“Fucking hell, Claudia. What was that?”
She gaped at me, hands still covered in my cum, shirt and shorts wet, and still flushed from the orgasm I gave her. All at once, like I hadn’t just had the orgasm of my damn life, she turned and washed her hands at the kitchen sink.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have.”
“Shouldn’t have made me come so hard I thought I was going to die? Yeah,” I laughed. I was fucking laughing. She’d pulled my brain through my dick and I couldn’t see straight. Much less think clearly. “Yeah, that was a bad thing. Definitely.”
She wiped her hands on a towel and peered at me, uncertain. “You’re teasing me.”
God. This girl. Had she never been teased? Or given a fucking compliment?
“Yeah. I’m teasing you. That was so damn hot I’m still shaking.” I held out my hands to prove it to her but didn’t stop walking closer. I hadn’t made out with a girl, fingered her through her clothes since I was fifteen years old and Mary Baker took me into the woods during a summer bonfire and dared me to kiss her. We dated for six months and she was my first. It wasn’t fucking pretty. It was sloppy and over too damn quick, but I’d learn enough in the few months before it took us to go all the way on how to make sure a girl got off before I did.
I’d mastered it since, but sliding my fingers against Claudia’s silky and hot slit had almost been my undoing.
My palms went to her cheeks and without thinking, without hesitation, I yanked her to me until I was pressing my lips against hers. She was ramrod straight, stunned by my move, but quickly relaxed, melted into me. Her hands splayed at my hips, drifted to my back, up and beneath my shirt and then we were moving, heads tilting and tongues sliding and gasping and moaning into each other’s mouths.
And it was insane, this feeling I had for this woman I barely knew but thought of whenever she disappeared from my sight. There was something about Claudia that brought out protective instincts I hadn’t had since Sophie was fucking raped at her first keg party in college, when she called me battered and abused and bleeding from her lip and her cheek when some assholes with small dicks had punched her before tearing off her underwear and assaulted the hell out of her.
I was only sixteen, barely old enough to drive when she’d called me, freaking out. I’d hauled my ass to Lawrence, took her to the police station and then as soon as she’d told me where she was partying, I stormed out of there and proceeded to rain down my own brand of justice before cops showed up, arrested us all, and let me off with a warning and ten hours of community service.
Why did I get off so easily? Because every fucking officer knew they’d do the same damn thing if it was their daughter or their sister or any fucking girl they’d ever said hello to.
Claudia evoked that same damn anger and jealousy and the thought she’d touched other men made me want to slide my tongue so far into her mouth my taste would be branded on her permanently.
Fuck the contract. This girl was so far beyond three pieces of paper and a signed name on a dotted line to me.
I slowed the kiss, keeping my dick away from her where I knew she’d feel how hard I still was. Or again. I had no damn idea but I couldn’t push this farther.
Not yet.
Pressing my forehead to hers, I maintained my hold on her cheeks. Our breathing was harsh, panted, the only sound in the room and it wrapped me in wa
rmth. My hips stung from where she clung to me and I wanted her to press harder. Dig her nails into my hips and ass and back and leave marks on me.
Because I sure as hell planned on marking her. Everywhere.
Fuck. I hadn’t even sunk inside of her and I was already claiming her. Fucking or not, contract or not, this woman was mine.
I didn’t give a shit what the paps said. What happened after we left. I was debating getting on a flight home and getting the shitstorm and gossip over with so we could move on when she pulled back.
Her lips twitched, fighting a grin and she made a face. “I should go get cleaned up.”
My cum had already dried on her shirt and her shorts but who could blame her.
“All right.” I kissed her nose. The corner of her upturned lips. The pink hue on her cheek and her eyebrow. “Come to my studio when you’re done. I want to play something for you.”
“Okay,” she whispered softly.
“Also, before you walk away and re-think everything that happened here this morning, I want you to know I don’t regret a single second of it. Best damn morning and breakfast of my life, Claudia, and I’m not shitting you. You okay with everything?”
“Yeah.” She nodded, nibbled on her bottom lip and grinned. “I don’t regret it either.”
“Good.” I kissed her again and stepped back. Hands on my hips, I kept my eyes glued to her until she moved around me, left the kitchen and disappeared around a corner at the top of the stairs.
Once she was gone, I cleaned myself up in the downstairs bathroom and headed to the music room.
I was playing at the keyboard when she arrived, chords and melody that made no sense and weren’t necessarily a song, but sitting on the bench, keys beneath my hand was almost as calming as having the strings beneath my fingers. Music had been bled into me, my mom a local bar country singer. On my eighth birthday, she handed me my first guitar and sat with me for hours, teaching me how to play basic chords and spin them into music.