His mouth sought hers again, ravaged it while his hands clasped her bottom and lifted.
Even though her brain had stopped functioning minutes ago, her legs seemed to have developed their own consciousness. They wrapped around him the moment her feet left the floor. Anchored him to her in an intimate embrace.
Their tongues tangled in long, drugging kisses. She wanted to feel the hot press of his skin against hers, the thickness of his cock stretching her, soothing her with long, slow glides, and fast, pounding possession.
A throat cleared.
Like she would a mosquito, she mentally batted the irritating noise away and reached for Zeke’s zipper.
The throat cleared more loudly, breaking through the erotic haze. As one, she and Zeke stilled and rolled their heads toward the open doorway.
Kayla and Phin stood arm-in-arm, both grinning. But where Phin averted his gaze, her devilish friend did not.
“Parents this way come,” Phin said. “You might want to . . . disengage.”
Heat scorched her face and she tried to do just that. When Zeke didn’t oblige her frantic pushes against his chest, she chanced a look at his face. What she saw there made her heart stutter to a halt. But her mind didn’t have time to fully process it before he kissed the corner of her mouth and eased her back to the floor.
Zeke looked at his brother. “Buy us a minute.”
Phin’s smile grew louder. “It’ll cost you.”
A growl erupted from Zeke’s throat.
Giving Kayla a conspiratorial wink, Phin asked, “Shall we save the evening?”
She pushed him into the hallway and sent Liv a we’ll-talk-later smile.
After they departed, Zeke tucked a stray hair behind her ear, and she straightened his tie and re-buttoned his jacket. An awkward silence filled the air space once they finished putting each other back together.
“Promise me,” he said, “that you won’t do that with another.”
“I don’t think you understand what you’re asking.”
“I damn well do.”
Liv stopped her lips from twitching. As sexy as he was in his earnestness, she had to make sure his lower half hadn’t siphoned off every drop of blood going to his brain.
“You don’t get just this body. You get the total package—career, kid, and,” she motioned toward the door, “Thorntons.”
“And you.”
“Yes, and—” She waved at the growing volume of voices down the hallway.
With thumb and forefinger on her chin, he nudged her attention back to him. “You.”
She frowned.
His finger traced a path from her chin to her left breast, to the area covering her madly beating organ. He rested the pad of his finger there. “You.”
“Zeke, I—”
“There you two are.” Regina Thornton marched into the room, followed by Liv’s sister and brother. Her keen eyes traveled over Liv as if reassuring herself that her daughter hadn’t suffered harm at Zeke’s hand. “I see you’re showing Zeke the place where we spent so many happy moments as a family.”
Liv said nothing, still off-kilter from Zeke’s revelations and now her mother’s lioness behavior. A person could only take so many shocks to the system in a five-minute time period.
“You and Mr. Thornton have enjoyed a full life,” Zeke said to fill the silence.
Regina glanced around the room before her gaze fell on Callie, Pierce, and finally Liv. “In some ways, yes.”
Was that regret forming deep lines on her mother’s forehead? Liv looked at her sister and noted that she wore the same confused expression.
Zeke said something else, but the words flowed over her as if she were sinking below water. She might have drowned there if it hadn’t been for the large, warm hand at her lower back, keeping her afloat.