She blushed. “Yeah, well, at least my imperfect asshole is still a secret. I guess.”
“Definitely didn’t look. For long.”
She tried to swat at me, but I caught her hands. “As far as assholes go, yours was spectacular.”
“Stop it. You’re going to make me blush, and I don’t blush.”
“You’re already blushing.”
“No, that’s just internal bleeding of my face. Don’t flatter yourself.”
“My mistake. I thought maybe my seduction was finally starting to work.”
“Maybe just a little.”
“Either way. I’m glad tonight happened. I liked getting to see behind the curtains, even if only a bit.”
“And what do you see behind my curtains?” she asked.
“I’m not sure. My eyes were closed when I went down there.”
She paused, then grimace in disgust. “Oh my God. Please never call any part of female anatomy “curtains” again.”
I laughed. “I’m sorry. Completely agree it’s a horrible and unflattering word. But I couldn’t resist. You practically gave me a layup there.”
She raised her eyebrows and spread her hands out wide. “So? Your terrible sense of humor aside. What secrets did I reveal to you?”
“That maybe you have a little bit of an excuse for being such a cold bitch all the time.”
She laughed. “Just say how you feel. Damn.”
“I’m mostly kidding. You put up a good front, but I never really bought the act. Not entirely.”
“Who says it’s an act?”
“Your eyes do. You can control your face pretty well, but not your eyes. And the way your mouth twitches when you think something’s funny. That, and the way you’ve been eye-fucking me since the first time we met.”
She opened her mouth to protest and then clamped it shut.
I barked a laugh. “Damn. Was I that spot on?”
“Shut up. No. I just couldn’t believe how cocky you sounded.”
“But was I wrong?”
“I wasn’t eye-fucking you. I would sometimes imagine what you were like, maybe. But that’s as far as it went.”
“For someone who spends all day pretending, you’re a bad liar.”
“You’re skating on thin ice, Bob.”
I looked down. “What? This is solid”
She rolled her eyes. “Poor choice of words. You know what I mean. If you want all these romantic gestures of yours to pay off, you might want to stop teasing me.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m not making romantic gestures, and I’m not hoping for some kind of payoff.”
“We’re ice skating together while snowflakes are drifting down around us. Come on. This is a maximum effort romantic gesture. Ninety percent effort at the least. Just admit it. You’re trying hard, even if I can’t figure out why you’re interested in me in the first place.”
“More like a hundred and ten,” I admitted with a chuckle. “I’m trying so hard because I can’t help it. I don’t understand it completely, but I know it feels different with you. From the moment we first talked, I felt drawn in. I went from never thinking about anything but work to having to force myself to focus when I was working. I couldn’t stop running through scenarios of how I could win you over or break through those barriers of sarcasm you put up.”
“Barriers of sarcasm. Ouch.”
“I wasn’t complaining.”
“So why haven’t you asked the important question yet?”
I turned to face her, forgetting I was on skates, and promptly busted my ass.
To add to the humiliation, I continued sliding for a few feet on my butt before my back bumped against the outer barrier of the rink.
Lilith gracefully went down to her knees and slid up to me until she was squatted right between my legs, eyes intent on mine. The sudden silence of the night without the scrape of our skates on the ice felt startling.
“I think I’ve hit my head too many times tonight to figure out the important question,” I said. “Maybe you can help me out.”
“You haven’t asked why I’ve agreed to go on two dates with you.”
“Isn’t it obvious?” I asked with a grin.
She punched my chest, drawing a laugh from me. “I’m serious.”
I let the smile fade from my mouth and shook my head. “Do I have to make the correct guess, or is this a rhetorical question?”
“I’ve agreed to go on dates with you because normally, people wear me out. A few minutes of social interaction and I’m ready to call it a week. You’re the first guy I’ve ever wanted more from.” She let her eyes fall, and the silence that followed seemed to add more weight to her words.
I reached up to touch her chin, tilting her face up toward mine. “This is the part where I’d normally make some kind of move, but I don’t actually think I can move more than my arms without falling down even more.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m going to need you to just drag me out of here and then forget it ever happened, if you want this to go further, at least.”
She got to her feet, stepped to my side, and took both my hands. She pushed off and started pulling me across the ice on my back.
“Your ass looks nice from down here,” I said as I stared up at her.
She turned and glared. “You’re saying it doesn’t look nice from your normal vantage point?”
“Not at all. Just that it’s great from every angle.”
“Yeah, I wonder if your step-sister agrees.”
I winced a little at that. It was fair, even if I hated what Celia had done just as much as Lilith must.
She dragged me up to the gate and I was able to plant my hands and shimmy off the ice in a highly undignified way. “I think I enjoyed getting dragged across the ice more than skating on it.”
“Because of my ass, or because you weren’t at risk of falling?”
“Definitely the ass.”
She bit her lip, then knelt down and started pushing against my shoulders. I was still sitting down, and for a second I thought she was trying to get me to lay back down on my back.
“What are you doing?”
“I want you just how you were back there. Yeah,” she said, nudging my legs a little until I opened them up. “That looks right.” She knelt down between my legs again, just like she was a minute ago on the ice. “You were saying if you could move properly you’d make a move, if I recall.”
I took the back of her neck and pulled her down to kiss me. Her lips were a little cold, but her tongue felt white-hot. Distantly, I hoped the security guard I’d bribed hadn’t stuck around where he could catch a view of us making out, but I also wasn’t about to let anything stop me from taking her the way I wanted this time. Not again.
“Are you sure she isn’t filming this?” Lilith asked.
“No,” I admitted. “But I’d be pretty impressed if she had thought to hide cameras here. I was planning on taking this inside, though. Frostbite on your ass isn’t exactly my idea of a great finale to the night.”
11
Lilith
By the time we forced our way into one of the glassed-off shops beside the skating rink, we were both in our socks, my shirt was half-way undone, and Liam’s pants were unbuttoned. We had kiss-walked our way toward the door, tearing at clothes and the ice-skates with whatever brain cells we could spare.
I licked my lips. “Hypothetically speaking, what happens if I let you have me?”
“What happens is I lay you down, stand you up, or hold you sideways—doesn’t matter—I spread you out. I dive into you like it has been years instead of days since I first decided I wanted to fuck you. I had to fuck you. You say the word, and I’ll devour you. Every last goddamn inch. That’s what happens.”
I tried to swallow but only produced an awkward clicking noise in my throat. Damn. He was hot when he was horny. “Hypothetically, of course,” I said quietly. “That sounds like a little
more fun than seven point two inches of silicone.”
“Hypothetically,” he agreed.
Two minutes later, Liam had me pressed against a wall behind a door marked “Staff Only.” It had turned out to be a kind of maintenance room, and we could hear the sound of the security officer watching some laugh-track sitcom through the thin walls.
His hand pinned my wrists over my head and his face was inches from mine. Every nerve in my body screamed for his touch until my skin felt like glitter, prickling all over. I could worry about consequences and implications later. From the moment I saw him, whether I wanted to admit it to myself or not, I’d been on a collision course with Liam Hightower. He cut straight through all the attempts I made at showing the world I didn’t care. When it came to him, I cared. A lot.
I wanted what he had to give, and I wanted it so badly it hurt. It hadn’t been a matter of if, but when.
He kissed me in that hard, possessive way of his, like every touch of his lips was a mark to show the world that I had been claimed and they had better stay away.
“What are we doing?” I asked between kisses.
“This is called foreplay,” he said slowly, like he was explaining something to a child. “First I get you so horny you can barely stand, then I—”
“I understand the concept,” I interrupted. “What is this? What does it mean?”
He shrugged. “It doesn’t have to mean anything. For once, stop trying to assign meaning to everything. Just experience it. Live it. Deal with the questions later.”
His words washed over me, hardly sinking into my mind because I was so preoccupied with his closeness. His body was hard against mine, warm and full of delicious promise. His length was rock-hard and pressing into my stomach, giving me no doubt where he wanted this night to go.
“What if it’s not that simple?”
He leaned forward, taking my lower lip between his teeth and pulled away slowly, leaving me with a slight sting and a burning hunger for more. “What if it is?”
I tried to channel some of his nonchalance. This wasn’t high school anymore. People did have casual sex. Casual relationships. Sometimes the lines didn’t have to be black and white. Couldn’t I just step into that world this one time?
Liam put his hand on the inside of my thigh, yanking my thoughts away from any doubts I had and bringing them straight to the neon sign flashing in my mind that said “Do it.”
So I let go. I relaxed my body, letting his hand swallow up my wrists and letting his other hand burn a trail up the inside of my thigh. I let him slide my pants down and then I let him cup me between the legs, his skin hot against my already-soaked panties.
He kissed my earlobe. “Your pussy doesn’t seem to be having doubts.”
“That was never the part of me you had to fight to win over,” I admitted. “You had me between the legs from the first glance. It was the rest of me that wasn’t ready to admit it.”
“Fuck,” he rasped, fingers moving slowly and rhythmically against me. “I knew you were dirty from the first moment I saw you. You hid it well, but I knew. I could see you wishing for it in the apartment lobby, wishing I’d make a move.”
“I don’t see—oh God—how you would’ve thought that.”
He squeezed my wrists harder, lips still so close to my ear that I could feel them move as he spoke, as his fingers snuck up to the waistband of my panties and dove inside, spreading my slick arousal along his fingers. “You were eye-fucking me from the first time you saw me. Admit it.”
“Liar,” I said.
He chuckled, and I felt the sound vibrating through his chest to mine. “I’m a lot of things, but I’ve never been a liar.”
I almost argued with him—pointed out that he’d been far from honest when he introduced himself under a fake name—but the sensations flooding me were too much to think, too much to speak. The only sounds that came from my mouth were unintelligible, moans so loud I hoped the security guard couldn’t hear it over his TV show.
He finger-fucked me so hard I came while shaking and holding on to him to keep from falling down. My knees were like jelly, my brain like scrambled eggs as some distant, logical part of me was still trying to grapple with what this moment meant, what it implied about our future or lack thereof.
He sank to one knee like he was about to propose, then looked up at me with a wolfish grin. He held up his forefinger and middle finger, which were slick with my juices. Without looking away from me, he ran his tongue up them from base to tip, drinking me in. He bit his lip and his grin widened. “Fuck you taste good. I need more.” He yanked my panties down in a quick motion, pulled them off of me completely, and then hooked his arms under my legs, dropping me down until my back was against the wall and my weight was on his shoulders. There was no time to think, no time to doubt or question.
“You have the sexiest pussy I’ve ever seen,” he growled before he kissed the insides of my thighs. His face was so close to my sex that I could feel the heat radiating from his skin like a lingering promise of what was coming. I felt like I should be embarrassed or self-conscious, because it was much brighter in here than it had been in his apartment at night, but all I could feel was anticipation.
When he put his lips to me, it was like time stopped. The warmth of his tongue in such an intimate place almost pushed me to climax instantaneously. I thought of all the wicked things that tongue had helped him orchestrate, and how watching him use it to please me felt so deliciously naughty. I hadn’t expected the sense of power to be so sexy.
He pulled my clit between his lips, circling it with his tongue before plunging it inside me and tongue-fucking me. It was too much, and I clenched around him, scissoring his head between my thighs when the orgasm came barreling through me like a freight train.
He eased me off his shoulders, and set me down on the ground before stripping out of his remaining clothes. He quickly peeled a condom from its wrapper and slid it down his erect length.
He got to his knees, grabbed me by the legs, and pulled me toward him until his cock laid between my legs and he was looking down at me with heavy-lidded eyes.
I wanted to do the dainty thing and wait for him to put himself inside me, but the bastard seemed like he was going to just stay there, roaming my body with his eyes. Taking things into my own hands, I reached out for him and guided him inside me. I was soaked already, and he slid right in.
I laid back and reached above my head to hook my fingers underneath the closed door and hooked my legs around his back, spreading myself so he could drive himself deeper and deeper, until I thought it wasn’t possible for him to fill me any more fully.
“You feel so good,” I gasped.
“You’re surprised?”
"Asshole," I said, trying to laugh but losing the sound when he ripped another moan from me. I'd never been the loud type before, but it was impossible not to be loud with Liam. He had a way of making me feel like I was in a movie or a fairy tale. He wanted to take me for his own, and bit by bit, I realized that I wanted that, too. I wanted to be tangled up with him, part of his life and his world. I wanted to curl myself up in his heart and make my bed there.
My thoughts were soon blasted away by his increasing pace. I watched his expression, loving the way his beautiful features twisted with raw pleasure. He gripped my hips, and the last of the delicate, slow way he had been taking me was obliterated when he started using my hips like handles, slamming me into himself like a fuck toy. God it was so hot.
The line between orgasms blurred. I wasn’t even sure if I was about to climax, in the middle of one, or coming down from one. All I knew was if the kiss had felt right, this was right. Sex like this didn’t exist between people who weren’t meant to be together. I believed that. I had to believe that.
He groaned, collapsing onto me as he came.
“Fuck,” he gasped into my chest. “I was planning on lasting a lot longer than that.”
I laughed, but the sound was weak. My body was still
convulsing all over, skin ablaze with pleasant waves of bliss. “Fortunately for you, it’s quality, not quantity that counts. I’m starting to reconsider my stance on the merits of sex toys versus the real thing.”
“Dork,” he laughed.
I slapped at his chest, but bit my lip and smiled. “It’s rude to call someone a dork while you’re balls deep inside them.”
He leaned down and kissed my chin while grinning wickedly. “I want to hear you admit you’d do anything for more of this.” He moved his hips in a subtle little thrust that immediately re-ignited all the heat in my stomach.
“I’ll do no such thing.”
“Too bad. I guess I’ll just pull it out then.”
I sat up and gripped his tight ass, holding him inside me. “No. You won’t.”
“Damn, it’s kind of hot when you get all bossy on me.”
“Good. Then you won’t mind when I order you to do it again. Just like the last time.” I leaned back and looked up at him with an expression that probably wasn’t as menacing as I wanted since I couldn’t stop from smirking.
He gave a quick salute and nodded. “I should warn you. I’m an overachiever, so I hope you weren’t planning on making it to work tomorrow morning.”
12
Liam
Price and Kade were already waiting for me outside my office. I tried to look alert, but I was running on about one hour of sleep, and even that had been invaded by a particularly enjoyable dream involving Lilith.
Price, as usual, elected for the business-very-casual look. He sported a button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up. At least it looked like he had combed his wild hair, which wasn’t always a given. For some reason, women seemed to eat his lazy, carefree style up, even if I would’ve preferred some more professionalism when he was on the company clock, I couldn’t complain. Price got the job done and done well in his uniquely frustrating way.
Kade loomed like a statue by the door, as if he’d been placed there to frighten off anyone who might think about coming in my office.
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