by S. Layne
I can feel myself growing slicker, wetting him as he moves and rolls his hips.
“Liam,” I plead. My hands try to pull from his grasp but his hold is too tight on them.
“You’ll come like this.”
I shake my head and look down at him. His eyes are on me and he moves to my other breast. I gasp as his tongue darts out, swirling around my nipples that are painfully hardened.
I need relief, everywhere. His dick rubs against me, between my folds and against my clit.
I shamelessly rock into him, needing more. I’m fucking him like a teenager who’s too nervous to make the final move and I don’t care.
I just know my entire body is warm. My mind is blank.
And I’m overwhelmed in the best way possible.
“Please,” I beg and I don’t even care.
“Soon.” He bites my other nipple, sucking it into his mouth. His hips rock faster, moving harshly against my sensitive skin when the beginning flutter of another orgasm starts.
My thighs tighten around his hips, gripping him, and my hips rock up, grinding against him.
“Liam!” I cry just as my body begins to convulse around him.
“Let go.” His command is my undoing and every animal instinct takes over. My breasts press against him, my hands struggle to become free, and black takes over my vision as I scream his name, orgasming harder than I’ve ever experienced.
His hips slow, patiently bringing me down, but I’m tingling everywhere and gasping for breath.
His eyes pierce mine, his pupils large, and his hair drapes over his forehead. I want to push it away, to slide my fingers through it.
As if he can read my mind, his grip on my hands tightens. “Leave them there.”
I nod reluctantly and he shifts off me.
He’s back in seconds, rolling a condom down the length of his hard shaft before he settles back on top of me.
“I don’t know if I can come again,” I tell him, my heart still racing inside my chest.
He grins, accepting the challenge, and sits back on his knees. His hand closes around his erection and he strokes himself as his other hand slides between my wet folds.
“Still so wet,” he declares, the edges of his lips tilting into something predatory. “You’ll come,” he promises, and begins pushing himself into me.
My core clamps down on him and he groans as he sinks inside of me. My hands move to his shoulders, but he quickly grabs them, clasps them in one hand, and pushes them back to the bed.
“Leave them.”
I shake my head. “I need to touch you.”
He rocks forward until I’m completely filled with him, and covers my body with his. I shift, needing him to move, but he stays perfectly still and his mouth drops to mine. His lips hover, not touching me, and I inhale a gasp.
“You’ll take what I give you,” he commands, and my mouth snaps closed.
I want to give him what he’s given me. I want to dig my nails into his skin and leave a mark on him, forcing him to remember this night.
But his grip is strong, his eyes determined, and as his hips pull back I feel every inch of him leave me. I tighten my muscles, pulling him back into me, and when he does…
I cave.
I surrender to everything he wants to give me.
If it’s anything like the other two orgasms he’s already given me, this is sure to be even better.
“Holy…” I groan as he slides back in. There’s a slight burst of pain as he hits the end of me. He’s stretching me wide and his hand leaves my wrists with only a warning glare.
“Keep them there.”
“I will.” I nod. I’ll do anything to have that feeling in me all over again.
Liam smirks and his hands move to my thighs. He pulls me wide open and presses my legs into the mattress as he begins moving inside me.
He pushes and pulls, harder and faster, and I can do nothing except thrash my head back and forth.
Sweat from his forehead drips onto my abs, but I can’t open my eyes long enough to see what he’s doing.
It feels like hours—it possibly could be—when he releases a roar and seats himself balls-deep inside me, and my insides clench and pulse around him as he releases himself inside me.
My brain has turned to mush.
My body melts into the mattress and I take the moment to revel in what I’ve done.
What I’ve felt.
It’s powerful and inspiring…and I instantly regret that I only get this for the night.
That it’s over.
I turn my head to the side to hide the emotions flooding my body.
Adrenaline crashes as my heart rate slows and Liam pulls out of me.
“I need to clean up,” he says as his weight leaves my body. “Stay here.”
I nod, but I’m swallowing a cry of guilt when I hear the door to the bathroom shut and the water turn on.
When he returns, Liam is carrying a washcloth and I’m sitting on the edge of the bed, re-buttoning my shirt.
I keep my head down, focusing on the tiny blue buttons that refuse to thread into the tiny holes, when he steps in front of me.
Even unaroused, he’s completely beautiful, and I catch a glimpse of him but quickly look away.
“What are you doing?”
His thumb presses under my chin and he lifts my head until I’m forced to look into blue eyes that swirl with slaked lust and something else. Anger?
“I said once,” I force out through my dry but swollen lips.
He studies me for a moment before lifting the washcloth in his hands, and then he crouches in front of me.
I’m still bare from the waist down and I gasp when the warm cloth hits my inner thighs.
I look away, hiding my face from him. What he’s doing is intimate, too personal, and I feel tears growing in my eyes. I exhale forcefully to push them away and blink before he can see them.
“I said one night.” He stands, tosses the washcloth to the floor, and his hands brush mine off my shirt.
My eyes snap to his as his fingers begin undoing what I’ve spent minutes trying to complete.
“And the night’s not over.”
The warm water on my skin does barely anything to soothe the aches and pains of the last twelve hours.
After tucking me in next to him, Liam declared that I go to sleep, insisting that he’d want more before the night was done.
He hadn’t lied.
I had woken up to warm kisses being peppered along the backs of my shoulders and neck, my hair brushed and held to the side by one of Liam’s strong, firm hands. He had barely woken me when his fingers pressed inside, but it didn’t take long until I was writhing against him, pushing into him and needing him to fill me.
He complied, taking me slowly but powerfully from behind while one of his arms wrapped around my chest and teased and pulled at my nipples until we both came.
When I woke for the second time, Liam was sleeping next to me on his side, his back to me.
Shame had covered me like a warm blanket as I took in his naked form, already wanting him but knowing that our one night was over.
Sneaking out of his room, I dressed quickly and quietly to not disturb him, and I didn’t bother leaving a note with my number.
There would be no more frenzied, ecstatic moments between the two of us—only memories that I was already regretting by the time I made it to my own hotel room twenty-four floors below him and stepped into the shower.
Now I can see the marks he has left all over my body. Memories from his teeth pressing into my breasts and my shoulders. Bruises from his fingertips gripping my hips and my waist.
Overwhelmed, I hide under the waterfall showerhead and close my eyes, trying to erase the memories before I hurry back to his suite and demand one more time.
Muscles ache from a night that screams passion, and I have been given exactly what he promised—intense pleasure.
For a brief period, I was able to forget the
pain that laces my heart every time I think of James and my friend Becky.
I was able to not be weighed down by the moment I stepped into my kitchen during a simple night of dinner and wine with our friends only to hear their hushed and angry tones filter through the kitchen until they hit my ears and sliced my heart wide open.
I took in Becky’s harsh pleading mixed with James’s scolding tone telling her it would never happen again.
I walked through the doorway and saw them in our kitchen, Becky bracing herself around him in the corner of our kitchen counter, looking up at him with tears in her eyes while he scowled at her.
Seconds passed before they noticed me.
Although that was most likely because the wine glass I’d been holding had slid out of my hands and shattered onto the tiled floor at my feet.
Red wine spilled, and it felt like it’d been my blood as the warm liquid pooled around my bare toes.
Being with Liam makes me forget.
I want to find myself in him again, get lost in his arms and his strength and his commands over and over again so I no longer have to relive the moment I found out my husband had an affair with my best friend.
James has apologized every day since then. Flowers appear at my office. My favorite take-out is delivered on nights I work late.
But nothing has soothed the heartache those two minutes caused when I saw them. When they didn’t deny it.
When Becky looked at me, her lips lifting into an evil smirk, and I learned that not only did I just lose a friend, but I had gained an enemy.
My head drops in the water as I scrub my hair, wishing I could take it all away but knowing I can’t.
And I haven’t made it better.
My week alone to figure everything out has only caused more questions and more confusion.
I swallow down my tears as the last of the soap swirls around the drain and disappears at my feet.
Then I suck in a large, shaky breath and exit the shower.
I have a conference to attend.
Tonight, when it is done, then I will deal with the last twenty-four hours and the future that awaits me in Denton.
I make promises to myself to be smarter. To do the right thing like I’ve always done.
To be the good girl.
To never again get swept up into a vortex of lust like last night.
But as I fix my hair and dress, pulling on my stockings and clasping them to my garters beneath a professional-length skirt, I know the promises are all lies.
Because if I was given another night like the one I just had with Liam Parker—I would do it all, all over again.
Even knowing the weight on my chest, filling my pores with condemnation, would increase tenfold.
I never had an urge for a change-the-world-type career. In college, I mostly dreamt of marrying James and someday becoming a stay-at-home mom to our children while he pursued his dream of becoming a prosecutor. Some might look down on me for that, but I always loved the idea of spending my day taking care of the people I loved most.
I was more than happy to stand by him, supporting him instead of trying to take my own world by storm.
As an executive secretary to the CEO of ParaMed Cells, the maker and creator of handheld defibrillators that are the size of a simple cell phone, my job is not glamorous.
It is, however, challenging and rewarding.
I work for a company that helps save thousands of lives every year, and I’m the assistant to the woman who not only thought of the idea, but has been involved in every part of the design and marketing process.
I no longer even care that I was given this job after college graduation as a favor from my boss, Anne Nelson, to my father. He made his first millions as the designer of defibrillators for the lay worker, the average person, and he stocked those medical devices into the halls of churches, school, malls, and sporting arenas.
Anne used to work for him, but when she had her own idea, she chose not to approach my father, but instead embark on her own adventure.
Seeing as she had very little money, he suggested I be her first employee as a broke and recently out-of-work college student with a major in Business Administration.
It’s the only time I haven’t begrudged my parents for their vast amounts of money or influence in Western Michigan.
But even then, I only reluctantly took the job, knowing it was a favor and I hadn’t earned it.
I have, however, earned every compliment from Anne since then. At twenty years my senior, old enough to be my mother, she values me, which is why she sent me in her absence until she arrives later in the week to begin discussing the new medical device we’ve spent the last three years creating.
It will revolutionize the lives of those who live with pacemakers, especially those in children, and give them a quality of life parents and patients have only dreamed of.
It’s exciting, and while Anne had to stay in Michigan finalizing a deal that will get her new product to market six months sooner than originally anticipated, she insisted I take her place at the Midwest Medical Conference until she can join me for the final day tomorrow.
I have been sitting in this conference room for three hours and have absorbed nothing.
My mind is not on my job, and I find my foot constantly tapping against the floor and my fingers fumbling with my pen instead of taking notes like I’m expected.
I can’t focus.
Liam Parker slammed into my life, spun me in circles, and has left my brain muddled and clouded.
I only wish I could hate him for it.
“Miss?”
My head jerks up from where I’ve been mindlessly tapping my pen, and I look to my right.
A man frowns and hands me a stack of sheets. Based on his look, he’s been trying to get my attention for several moments and I’ve been completely lost in my own sinful world.
“Sorry,” I whisper and take the stack of handouts.
More notes. More handouts discussing medical products and marketing techniques.
I have never found my job to be boring, but I have never cared less about my job or pleasing Anne than I do in this moment.
After taking a stapled stack of papers, I walk across the narrow aisle and slide them onto the table in front of a woman I’ve met before.
I should know her name, and I return her friendly smile and nod, but for the life of me, I can’t think of who she is.
It’s disgraceful the way Liam has overtaken my ability to think clearly.
And as I take my seat, I scrunch my lips together and focus on the speaker at the front.
I was given one night. It was more than what I wanted or expected. I never dreamed heading to Chicago for a business trip would mean a tryst with a stranger.
Now, I have to banish him from my mind forever.
My head successfully refuses to listen to me and what I want for the rest of the day.
By the time I’m able to leave the conference room and grab a quick dinner, buffet-style for all attendees, I’m cursing my own stupidity and innate pull to Liam Parker.
He’s ruined my day and my brain, and I’m fearful my body will never forget him.
As I enter my room, I’m hating my lack of self-control to say no to the stranger who swept me off my feet, and I freeze.
My eyes sweep the room, looking for the intruder who has been here.
My feet move forward, inspecting the small rolling table on wheels and covered with a white tablecloth.
I gasp, my hands flying to my mouth even though there’s no one here to hear my shocked inhale.
In front of me are two plates, covered with sparkling silver domes, an ice bucket complete with champagne, and two glasses next to it.
And draped over the edge…
…a blood-red lace lingerie set.
I move toward it without thinking. My blood is already beginning to warm my body and I’ve forgotten every reason why I should stay away from Liam.
He’s been here.<
br />
In my room.
Or he had someone deliver me dinner, but I doubt he’d let someone else deliver me lingerie unwrapped.
He doesn’t seem like the type of man to show off his illicit exploits.
A quiet knock at the door startles me and I jump, spinning on my tiptoes, and stare at the door.
My eyes flicker to the covered plates, the double glasses, and before my hand is on the doorknob, turning it and opening the door, I already know who awaits me on the other side.
Liam’s frame dwarfs the space in front of me. One hand in his front pocket, he uses the other to brace himself against the doorframe.
My eyes salaciously rake his body, starting at the bottom and moving up. Instantly my cheeks flush, remembering how strong his thighs and hips were when they rocked into me, sending me over the edge.
How he felt inside me.
His chest—the soft abrading against my sensitive nipples from his hair, and the way his abs rippled when he was above me.
And then I move toward his jaw, void of scruff, and I almost pout when I see his perfectly smooth skin, his lips, where the bottom is slightly larger than the top, but my eyes stop and my breath catches when I finally meet his eyes.
They’re on fire—the bright blue from the hottest part of a flame—and they’re set directly on me.
Instantly I want to reach out, drag and push my fingers and nails through his sandy brown locks before he can take control of my hands and stop me.
I shake my head and blink.
His lips curve upward. “Let me in.”
I lick my suddenly dry lips and find my voice.
It’s becoming a pattern, unable to speak around him. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
I doubt I will ever feel on firm footing when Liam Parker’s broody and confident body is in front of mine.
“You said one night.”
He pushes off the frame and his lips twist until they smooth into the smile I’m used to seeing. The one that doesn’t reach his eyes, and something about this time makes me want to ask him why.
How he can smile when he’s unhappy.
But I don’t. Because this isn’t about secrets—whatever this is—it’s about pleasure and forgetting.
