Liam’s hands worked at her pants—his pants—and slipped them down over her legs. She pulled her shirt over her head and fell back again, her heart in her throat, pulse pounding. Liam stripped off his own shirt. And then he looked down at her like she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in the world. His eyes shone with it, and Mina watched as if from outside her body as he lowered his hands to her skin. First he worked the bra away from her breasts and bent to kiss each one, making a low noise in the back of his throat.
Mina arched underneath his hands as he inched them down over her stomach and to her thighs. “Mina.” His voice was a pull of desire from somewhere deep inside. “Are you sure about this?”
She opened her eyes and looked into his. “Yes. I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”
Then Liam bent his head between her legs, and Mina was lost for words.
She had never, never, never had a man devour her like this. Where had Liam learned this? The question faded away into the nothingness that it was. He licked her and teased her and explored every inch of her, his shoulders braced between her legs to keep them apart. She thought she would die when he swirled his tongue around her clit. She almost did die when he sucked it into his mouth and flicked it with his tongue. The orgasm came on her suddenly, explosively, and Liam had to hold her in place as her hips rocked and bucked.
He scrambled on top of her as she came down, his powerful arms holding him in place above her, and his hips pressed out against her thighs. “Yes,” she gasped. For so long she’d wanted to pull him in for a kiss and now she did, tasting herself on his lips. The thick head of him pressed against her entrance and another flash of light went off in her mind—this was it. This was the chance to pull back.
She didn’t want to.
He entered her slowly, worshipfully, every inch a lesson in restraint. He was big. Mina felt herself stretching around him, a delicious pain, and then he was seated fully inside her. This was what it felt like to start a race. To listen for the crack of the gun. “Go,” she whispered in his ear. “Go.”
Liam rocked into her, no longer holding back, and she came up to meet him again and again. He dropped his head into her shoulder and cursed. “Mina, I’m—I—” She felt all his muscles tense with his release, which was hot and powerful inside her. It would change everything. Everything.
The only thing she could hear was her own ragged breath, and Liam’s. Silence reigned. How long was it before he moved, slowly, like he’d spent all of himself on this one act? A long time. A short time. It didn’t matter.
Liam sat up in the bed and gathered her in to his arms. And then he leaned down and kissed her forehead. So gentle. So romantic. It was all Mina could do not to cry.
11
Mina spent two more days in Liam’s cabin while the storm petered out and the wind died down. They fell into something like companionship. More than once, he brought her small plates of food while she worked on her laptop at the kitchen table. She’d catch a flash of a smile out of the corner of her eye, and then he’d be gone, taking Lucky to cut firewood.
By Wednesday afternoon she had to admit that the snow wasn’t keeping her trapped there anymore. Liam’s brother Cade came over in his truck. She watched at the window as the brothers shoveled out Liam’s truck. Then the two of them made their slow way out to the road, where her car still waited in the ditch. By the time they were finished, it would be easy enough to back her car out and onto the road.
She almost wished the snowstorm had lasted a month. Almost.
Mina packed up her bag with the clothes Liam had washed and lingered by the pull-out couch for longer than was strictly necessary, feeling more than a little silly. “What do you think, Lucky?” Lucky barked and pressed his nose into her hands. She led the dog into the kitchen and fed him an extra piece of bacon. “Will you miss me?”
Liam probably wouldn’t. Moving in wasn’t on the table—not by far—and she had to get back to her life. And her business. And her new pregnancy, hopefully. They both had lives—lives that had nothing to do with each other. If this worked, they’d talk about the baby once in a while, and that would be the extent of their relationship. She had to be all right with that. There was no other option. She would be too busy with work and motherhood and life to pine for Liam Wells.
He came in on a burst of cold, shaking the snow from his coat. She saw him take in her packed bag and her boots, and then his green eyes lingered on hers. What was she supposed to say? Thanks for the sperm? This has been a dream come true? No. None of that.
Liam looked back toward the door with a pensive expression. “Weather looks fine,” he said. “You should be good to drive home.”
“Yeah.” She hoisted her bag a little higher on her shoulder. “I’ll let you know how things turn out.”
He arched an eyebrow. “Do you think you’ll need to…see me again?”
Heat spread across Mina’s face in time with the memories from Monday. The pull-out couch. Liam‘s hands. That kiss. “No,” she said finally. “I think it was perfect timing. There shouldn’t be a reason to…have an encore.” It frankly couldn’t get any more embarrassing than this conversation. All the same, she felt a strange regret at having to turn him down. Something inside her wanted to ask if she could stay for the next two weeks just to be absolutely sure, but there was no way. It wasn’t going to happen. Especially if she wanted to keep any kind of buffer between them, which she did. Facts were facts—he had plans to return to the rodeo. He didn’t want settle down with a family. All of it was fine. She hadn’t planned on getting a boyfriend out of this. Just a baby.
Her tiny fixer-upper seemed empty when she walked in. No snuffling dog waiting to greet her. No fire in the fireplace. No fireplace, come to think of it.
And no Liam.
She’d been mad at him for so long that it felt like something was missing. Honestly, she hadn’t realized how much space he still took up in her mind. For the last few days, he’d occupied a very physical space in her life. And now…
Mina sat down heavily at her desk. She hadn’t technically taken time off work during the storm, but a few new assignments had come in that she hadn’t completed. No matter how much she wanted to just lie on the couch and Netflix away the hours until she could take a pregnancy test, she had to get to work.
Work did not keep her mind off Liam Wells. The immediate problem was that every time her mind wandered, it wandered back to his green eyes and his strong hands and the way it had felt to sleep so close to him. It didn’t matter that she’d been pissed off at him since high school. Some hidden part of her heart had still hoped that one day Liam would notice that she wasn’t just a girl who had a sewing machine. Now he had. Now it was over. One day passed, then two. The doctor’s office called and offered to give her back fifty percent of her deposit. Everything felt a bit like an anticlimax.
No. She could not think of it that way. If she was pregnant, and she hoped she was, everything was only beginning. The end of her little vacation with Liam wasn’t an ending. Things were different now. Vaguely dissatisfying, yes, but that could just be the anticipation. Soon, she’d be able to take a test, and the next phase would begin—whatever it was.