Just like that, it’s all over. Liam hasn’t even moved yet, but my mind goes blank. The world recedes and I start coming without warning, arching against him, biting into my lip to silence a scream. Pleasure sinks into me, and I’m helpless to stop it.
I don’t know how long passes before I’m back to myself, his breath sharp in my ear. “Did you just—?” Liam sounds in pain. “Did you really come, just from me...”
I’m dazed. My nerve endings are still tingling. I shut my eyes tight and nod my embarrassment just as his teeth close around the fleshy part of my shoulder. He grunts like an animal, like he’s desperate to keep whatever control he can.
“Fuck, Mara, you... can I take you to bed?”
His tone is unlike anything I’ve ever heard from him, pleading and a little raw. He’s still twitching inside me; every few seconds or so he seems to lose whatever grip he has on himself and rolls his hips. It doesn’t help my focus. Or his focus. Our focus.
Which we maybe should keep. This should stop right now, maybe. As good as it’s been—and it has just redefined sex for me—I’m not quite sure why Liam wants this, and if it’s just some impromptu fucking that means nothing to him but has lots of heartbreak in store for me... Maybe we should stop here?
“I’ll try to keep it fast.” He’s licking away the sting of his earlier bite. “But let me take you to bed.”
The thing is, I don’t want to stop. I’ve come once, already, just from him sliding into me and stretching me too tight, from the feel of his hand clutching my hip bone—a small miracle in and of itself, because it usually takes me forever. But if I let him take me to bed, he’s going to wreck me. He is going to ruin me for anyone else. He is going to destroy me in each and every possible way.
“Please,” he murmurs.
I don’t really have a choice: I want to say yes, so I nod. Whatever you want, you can have, Liam.
It’s not pretty, when he pulls out. He gasps a breath of pure frustration and it’s clear that he hates it. I hate it, too, and I’m the one who just had a life-altering orgasm. Liam’s the one who gave it to me and took very little for himself—which doesn’t even come as a surprise.
I wouldn’t have fallen for an unkind man.
He takes my top and bra off, and I’m too stupid with aftershocks of pleasure to do anything but stand there and let him, watch him stare his fill with dark, unreadable eyes, even though I’m completely naked and my belly button is still an outie and the lacrosse scar is there, gleaming white in the dim lights of the room.
“Come here. Mara, you... Fuck. Come here.” His jaw is tense as he picks me up and carries me to his room. My first time here, but I know this place—because I know Liam. Dark colors. Framed pictures of semihostile nature from the trips he told me about. Sparse furniture. A stack of books on his bedside table. Reading glasses, the ones I tease him about, unfolded in the middle of his desk. I want to explore every corner, but there’s no time. The mattress bounces underneath my back, and then he’s taking up my entire field of view.
“Can I kiss you?” His mouth is hovering a few inches above mine, so I press my hands down his nape and arch into him, kissing him myself.
It’s slow, and warm, and achingly careful. He was fucking me less than a minute ago. He was so deep inside me that I felt deliciously split in two. But now there’s this gentle sliding of lips and tongues, Liam nibbling on me, holding first my chin, then the back of my head, and my heart sings for him.
I am catastrophically, ruinously in love with you.
“I love kissing you,” I sigh in his mouth.
“Mara.” His lips. His voice. “I want to kiss you everywhere.” He moves back, as if something occurs to him just then. “Can I go down on you?”
I feel my cheeks heat. Does he really want to?
“Just for a minute,” he adds, and then... Incredible, how he’s waiting for my answer. He just bent me over the kitchen sink and slid into me and made me come on his cock, but he’s asking for permission to eat me out like I’d be doing him a favor.
“Are you sure?”
“Thirty seconds. Please.”
“Yes. I mean, if... if you’re sure that you— Oh.”
He’s very good at it. Not... Maybe not deftly skilled, but he is completely lost to it, so thorough, so noisy in his utter, amazed enjoyment of the act, of me. My hips arch and he has to hold me down, carry me through the pleasure. It lasts more than thirty seconds. It lasts more than three minutes, maybe more than ten—but my thighs are trembling and my pussy spasms and I start to come like an ocean wave, and when I think the pleasure is finally subsiding he slides two fingers inside me and my hips buck up, because it’s not over. My entire world is spinning. I’ve officially had more orgasms in the past twenty minutes than in the last year.
Fingers still inside me, he looks up, eyes soft and earnest and swallowed by his pupils. “Thank you.”
Oh. “I think...” I clear my throat. My voice remains scratchy. “Maybe I should be the one thanking you.”
He shakes his head and lifts himself over me, balanced on one arm, and my eyes widen. He strokes himself with the other hand while staring down at my breasts with an awestruck expression. “This is so good, Mara. You are so good. Why do you want it to be fast?” He leans forward to kiss me again, licking the inside of my mouth, nibbling down my throat. “I just want to make it last,” he rasps against my skin.
I have no idea what he’s referring to. I don’t want this to be fast. I’ve never said I did, but he keeps telling me that...
Except that I did say it. Shit, I did say it. Just not to him. “You heard me.”