by BETH KERY
“Twelve,” Liam said a moment later as he deposited the last bobby pin on the table.
“Thank you for solving that little mystery for me,” she said shakily. The flicker of amusement she experienced faded when she saw his face as he ran his fingers through her unbound hair.
He tried to smile at her comment, but he looked strained as he gazed down at her wearing nothing but a bra and low-riding shorts, her hair spread across the pillow. He extended one long finger and traced the curve of her hip to her waist. She shivered when he touched the side of her ribs. Her nipples prickled with pleasure. She’d had no idea she had so many sensitive spots on her body until Liam showed them to her.
“You were made by a true artist, Natalie Reyes.”
“So were you,” she whispered.
“You got some extra attention.” The muscles of his face were so tense with desire that he looked almost grim in the dim light as he reached behind her to unfasten her bra. As he slid it from her body, the combination of the cool air and Liam’s heated stare made her bare breasts tingle. She didn’t shrink from his gaze. Why would she, when he looked at her as he did at that moment?
“You’re so pretty.”
The hint of awe in his tone made her reach for him. She brought him down to her, wincing in pleasure when he placed his mouth at the upper curve of her left breast. His moving, caressing lips seemed to create a trail of fire as he explored her contours.
“So soft,” he murmured.
His palm came up to cradle her right breast, as if testing the weight of it. She knew how strong Liam was; she sensed his power like a tightly coiled spring. The gentleness of his touch contrasting with all that strength made her heart seem to swell in her rib cage. His hands were large, and his fingertips blunt, but they became precise instruments for evoking pleasure when touching her.
She shivered when he gently scraped his teeth over a rib just below her breast. Her nipples puckered tight at the sensation. As if Liam had known precisely the effect his caress would have, he slipped the sensitized crest of her breast between his lips.
Natalie’s breath caught at the feeling of being enclosed in his warm mouth. He applied a soft suction and laved his tongue over the beading nipple and Natalie forgot how to breathe, the pleasure that coursed through her was so sharp…so imperative.
She whimpered with need. As if desire connected them, Liam growled deep in his throat at the same moment, the sound vibrating into her breast and down to her heart.
She called his name in a plaintive plea, and he lifted his head reluctantly.
“You taste so good,” he muttered, sounding a little incredulous. Natalie moaned when he pressed his entire face to her abdomen and nuzzled her belly button with his nose. His whiskers scraping gently against the skin should have sent her into a fit of ticklish laughter, but instead, his actions created a hot, thick sensation in her lower belly. The sensation only increased when he opened his mouth and she felt the heat of his mouth penetrating her.
He rose over her and took her mouth heatedly. It was a wild kiss, a torrid one. It told Natalie loud and clear how much he wanted her.
She treasured that knowledge.
The tips of her breasts ached. She pressed closer to his chest, desperate to alleviate the prickling sensation. He groaned into her mouth and reached between them, his fingers finding the fastenings of her shorts. Then his fingers were touching her—gentle and knowing.
Natalie stared blindly at the ceiling fan, poised on a precipice of bliss, listening to Liam whisper an anthem of desire to her, overwhelmed by sensation. She clung to his shoulders as if she thought they were the only things saving her from falling. “You’re even sweeter than I thought you’d be…and I imagined plenty.”
It suddenly struck her through a thick haze of arousal what was happening. She was supposed to let go…surrender to this hot, building need. Surrender to Liam.
The realization felt huge in that moment…frightening. If she gave herself in this physical way, she doubted she could ever go back. Her soul, too, would be his. And Liam didn’t know this about her; that she was a novice when it came to love. For him, this was just the inevitable conclusion of two people desiring each other. He could give of himself in just a physical sense, while Natalie couldn’t.
Not with Liam, she couldn’t.
Despite her doubts, however, his hand kept moving, creating a wild tempest in her body, his mouth kept burning her lips and neck and breasts, and she was falling…falling. She struggled for a thread of reason in the midst of flooding pleasure.
“No, Liam…wait,” she managed to whisper next to his mouth. Despite her words, she shaped his lips to hers feverishly.
“I don’t care about our families, Natalie. I don’t care about the past. Nothing matters right now but this.”
“No…it’s not that,” she whispered. She clutched desperately to his shoulders and arched against his hand. The need for release from this delicious, mounting pressure nearly ruled her in that moment. It would rule her. She couldn’t seem to stop it—
“It’s just…I’ve never really done this before.”
She barely noticed his mouth pausing against the throbbing pulse at her neck. Pleasure loomed like a wave about to crash over her.
It did.
She couldn’t control it. Her body shook at the impact, bliss shooting through every nerve and muscle. She distantly heard Liam say her name, and then he was using his right arm to roll her on her side. He held her against him, as though he used his body to buffer her in a storm, helping her absorb the shock of her pleasure. She pressed tightly to him, needing his strength as she rode the waves of an uncertain ecstasy.
She opened her eyelids a moment later, her body still zinging with aftershocks of pleasure. Liam straightened slightly, looking down at her. He felt hot next to her—hot and very aroused. It took her a moment to focus on his face. His goatee looked dark in the dim room, outlining the grim set of his mouth.
“What did you mean?” he asked.
Her breath froze on a pant. She had no doubt to what he referred. Vulnerability oozed up, breaking through the surface of her dazed consciousness.
“I…I meant I’ve never been with a man,” she said in a cracking voice when she noticed that his rigid expression didn’t break.
“Why not?”
Her mouth fell open. She shrugged helplessly.
“The right opportunity just never came up.”
Her cheeks heated in rising embarrassment when he continued to stare down at her. She’d thought about telling him the truth ever since he’d first mentioned he wanted to make love to her, but she’d never imagined telling him at such a charged, intimate moment.
She closed her eyes. He must think she was a freak of nature. A virgin…at her age.
“I know it must seem strange to you,” she whispered through lips that still felt swollen from Liam’s kisses. “But after the crash—once I got out of the hospital and went back to school—everything was different for me.” She opened her eyes. A rising sense of trepidation grew in her when she noticed the hint of bewilderment in his eyes. How could she make him understand, when she’d hardly put the experience into words herself? It was just part of the air she breathed, those lonely years of her adolescence, daily feeling her difference in comparison to the children and young adults that surrounded her.
She licked her lower lip nervously when Liam didn’t respond. She sensed he was listening, however, with a tight focus, so the words continued to spill out of her as if a pressure valve had been released.
“I was a year behind in school because I’d spent so much time recovering in the hospital,” she continued in a cracked voice. “The friends that I’d had moved ahead of me, and I didn’t know anyone from the lower grade. That was bad enough. Add to it that Harbor Town is so small. All the kids knew what happened to me. They were cautious. They were curious, too…about the scars. They were actually worse when I was younger. I had a few surgeries after I start
ed school again. Most of the kids avoided me. I don’t blame them at all—they didn’t know how to talk about serious things.”
“Most adults don’t, either,” Liam said suddenly, startling her. She wished she could interpret the expression on his face. Disappointment swooped through her, so strong it felt akin to nausea when he released her. He pulled the blanket around her, covering her, before he flung his long legs over the side of the bed. Natalie watched in growing helplessness as he remained there, seated at the edge of the mattress with his elbows on his knees and his forehead pressed against his hand.
“And it just kept going?” he asked after a moment. “You were what—twelve years old when you went back to school? Are you saying that people continued to avoid you?”
“Not completely, of course not,” Natalie murmured. Was that anger she heard in his voice? She pulled the comforter up higher over her chest, feeling awkward in the knowledge of her nudity. “I made a few friends. But things have a sort of domino effect. Because of what happened to me when I was young, I became known as the shy girl, I guess. The quiet one…the different one.” The scarred one, Natalie added in the privacy of her mind. No reason to state the obvious. “The girl nobody ever asked out on a date,” she finished with a self-conscious laugh.
His head turned sharply.
“That’s the most…” He paused, his mouth shaping into a frown that made it look like he wanted to spit something out in furious disgust. “Infuriating thing I’ve ever heard. How could people be so insensitive?”
She exhaled in relief when she understood the reason for his anger.
“It’s only natural, Liam,” she said softly. “It just seems strange to you. You were the captain of the football team. You were the homecoming king.”
“What the hell has that got to do with anything?” he asked, his bewildered expression telling her loud and clear she might as well have just told him the moon was made of green cheese.
“You lived in a different world than I did during your teenage years. Think about it—if we’d been in the same year at school, would you have sought me out as a friend?”
He looked mutinous. “Of course I would have.”
She smiled, grateful to him for his indignation. “You’re just saying that because we both were affected by the crash. That made you see the world a little differently than a typical teenager. I should have included in the hypothetical question that you weren’t involved in any way in the accident. Would you have wanted to hang around me then?”
He opened his mouth but then paused. Something flickered across his features. He turned his head.
“I was an idiot when I was teenager, especially before the crash. I didn’t take anything seriously. It’s not fair to judge me based on that.”
“I’m not judging you, Liam, that’s the point,” Natalie said earnestly. “I don’t judge any kid for being a kid. It’s their right to live in an uncomplicated, happy world and want to stay there.”
“You were a kid, too,” he said stiffly. “You deserved that as well.”
Natalie wasn’t sure how to reply. She hadn’t been sure what to expect from Liam at her admission, but it certainly hadn’t been this frothing, simmering anger.
Her heart froze in her chest when he stood abruptly.
“I’ll be right back. Do you want some cold water?”
Natalie just shook her head, feeling as stupid as if he’d just asked her a complicated scientific question.
When he came back carrying a bottle of water, she was standing next to his bed, hurriedly fastening her shorts. He stopped at the door.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
Leave it to her to make a supremely confident man like Liam Kavanaugh look bewildered so many times in one night. Yet…he was the one who had pulled away from her. He was the one who had walked out of the room.
“Nothing,” she said, glad to hear her voice sounded even enough. “Just getting dressed.” She’d never felt so awkward in her entire life, and Lord knew she’d had her share of uncomfortable moments.
“Well…maybe we’d better…” She waved lamely at the door. If the earth couldn’t oblige her by cracking open and swallowing her whole at that moment, the best she could do was exit Liam’s bedroom as soon as possible.
“What…you want to leave?”
She barely suppressed a groan that would have told everything she was experiencing at that moment: embarrassment, hurt, confusion, regret.
“I’m not sure what I’m supposed to want, Liam. Or think. You just walked out of the room,” she added with more heat than she intended when he just gaped at her.
He winced and set the bottle of water on the bedside table. He came toward her, took her in his arms. Natalie remained stiff in his embrace, her mind churning out anxious thoughts at record high speeds.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Natalie,” he spoke roughly near her ear. “I was just…trying to get ahold of myself. I needed a second. I didn’t mean to make you feel like I didn’t want to be with you. I meant what I said earlier. I want you to stay here. With me.”
“You were put off. You were disgusted by what I told you,” she said in a pressured rush at the same time that tears leaked beneath her clamped eyelids.
“No. No.” He pulled her over to the edge of the bed and urged her to sit next to him. His palm cupped her jaw, tilting her face up to him. “I was just trying my damndest to compute what you told me, while still wanting you so bad it was cutting at me at the same time.”
She stared at him in amazement, tears still running sluggishly beneath her glasses and onto her cheeks.
“I can’t believe you went through all that. It’s not fair. I feel like beating the crap out of something…out of someone,” he bit out, his jaw tight.
“Liam,” she whispered, “I’m okay. I’m all right. I was just trying to explain to you. I’m not really used to talking about it. I’ve never had to talk about it before.”
He looked troubled.
“What’s wrong?” she whispered, not understanding the source of his unrest, but sensing the depth of it.
He didn’t respond for a taut moment.
“I’d like to kill my dad at the moment, if he wasn’t already dead.”
She inhaled sharply at the impact of his stark words. For a blinding second, she considered what it would be like to say something similar about her mother to another person. The thought horrified her. This thing she’d started with Liam had the potential to hurt so many people…. She placed her fingertips briefly on her eyelids and felt the burn.
“Don’t say that, Liam.”
“Why? It’s the truth. He’s the one who did it. He’s the one who took away your childhood. My own father.” He gave her a wild glance. “It’s like…I knew that before, but I didn’t know it. That sounds stupid, but it’s true,” he mumbled under his breath.
“No. It doesn’t sound stupid. I understand,” she assured him. She looped her arms around his waist in a comforting gesture. “Derry made a mistake. It affected a lot of lives. If I could have explained to you why I’m a virgin in a way that didn’t involve the crash, I would have. But for me, that’s where it all started. Who knows? Maybe I would have been this socially backward if the accident never occurred. I was certainly shy enough—”
“You don’t believe that,” Liam said with quiet bitterness.
“No. I don’t,” she admitted. She inhaled slowly. What a mess this was. “I guess this is one of the primary reasons why it’s a bad idea for us to get involved.”
“Hmm?” he asked distractedly.
“There’s too much between us. The closer you get to me, the more you might come to resent your father’s memory. I don’t want that for you.”
“You don’t need to take on the worry of what I think of my father,” Liam said in a hard tone. “That’s not your responsibility. If I want to be with you, then I’ll be the one to deal with that.”
Natalie looked up at him. “If you want to? Does t
hat mean you haven’t decided?”
His fierce expression faded. His thumb brushed against her cheek softly. “It means I’m starting to realize it was a bigger decision than I’d been imagining.”
Her heart seemed to drop when she heard that. So…she hadn’t been too wrong when she’d thought that making love was much more of a simple, mundane occurrence to him than it would have been to her. Now that he fully understood all the baggage that might come along with their intimacy, he obviously was losing interest.
Surprise, surprise.
“Don’t, Natalie,” he warned softly.
“Don’t what?” she asked, wondering what he’d spied on her face.
“Don’t think that I’m not making love to you right this second because I find you lacking in any way. You think you’ve led a secluded life so far. If you had any idea how sexy I think you are, you’d probably run out of this house and begin a life of isolation in earnest,” he added under his breath wryly.
Laughter burst out of her throat. He smiled at the sound.
“I guess you probably think I’m a real idiot, for not really getting how complicated this situation was for you,” he said.
“I don’t think you’re an idiot. And it’s complicated for both of us,” she whispered.
“I just need to absorb it all, that’s all. I don’t want to screw this up.”
She nodded. “I understand.”
He grimaced and grabbed a handful of her loose hair, seeming distracted as he let the length run through his fingers. “I kind of doubt you do, actually, since I’m not so sure I understand myself.” His head came up. “Do you think it’s selfish of me to ask you to sleep here tonight? Just to sleep. I meant what I said before—maybe I mean it more now. I don’t want to take you back to your place, but I will, if you want me to.”
“I don’t know, Liam,” she said doubtfully. “I don’t think that’d be a very good idea.”
He nodded. “Okay.”
“I mean…what would the point of that be? Me sleeping here?” she asked impulsively.
He shrugged. “Beyond my selfishness in wanting you near me, you mean? No point, I guess. It just…seems right,” he said slowly. “It seems like you should be here.” When he saw her indecision, he stood, her hand in his. “Come on. I’ll show you the guest room. It’s not as nice as I want it to be, but it’s getting there. You can decide after you see it.”