His expression sours.
Having produced a wickedly perfect parting line for the second time tonight, I decide to make my exit before either the elevator doors close again or he hits me with a wickedly perfect comeback. I do my best not to hurry even though I feel the steady zap of his piercing gaze between my shoulder blades, propelling me like a cattle prod. Luckily, I don’t have far to go and arrive at the closed door of the fourth bedroom just as the elevator doors whoosh shut again. So he’s gone. Thank God. I feel a huge wave of relief tempered with disappointment and sexual frustration. I feel oddly deflated. All the emotional turmoil makes my hands shaky as I reach for the knob.
That was a close call. I’ll give him that. I’m woman enough to admit that I felt the temptation to take another bite of his forbidden fruit and see if it’s as sweet as I remember. But did that arrogant SOB really expect me to drop my panties and spread my legs for him all just like that? After everything he’s done?
I make a derisive sound.
“Not in this lifetime, Liam,” I say with a surge of triumph. “Fuck you.”
“That’s not very nice, is it?”
Liam’s voice, velvety as a puppy’s muzzle, comes from behind me. As in, right behind me.
Startled—only vampires and cats with lost collars move that silently—I stiffen and start to turn, my twitchy hands eager to smack him away from me and open some space between us. But there’s no time for that. He steps closer, bringing the entire front of his body, including an erection notable for both its size and hardness, up against the entire back of my body. Worse, he plants one of his big hands on my torso for a lazy caress that sparks tingles in all the valuable real estate between my breasts and pussy. Worst of all is the way he runs his nose and lips across the tops of my shoulders, audibly inhaling the scent from my skin and causing me to melt from the heat in his.
The effect on me is instantaneous and devastating. I tip my head to one side, giving him access to my neck. Tiny hidden muscles between my thighs begin to ripple and clench. Goosebumps erupt over every inch of my overheated flesh. My hips pump involuntarily, thrusting my ass against that big dick. My knees weaken. So does my resolve to do the right thing and keep the walls up between the two of us.
An insidious little voice starts to wheedle inside my head.
It’s been so long. You’re older and wiser now, right? It’s just sex. Where’s the harm?
But another part of me, the stubborn part, refuses to give him the win.
Seething now—Liam’s just being Liam, but how dare my own damn body betray me like this?—I do my best to break free. Hey. Better late than never.
“Get your hands off me,” I say.
I’d have better luck wriggling free from a pool of quicksand, not least because I don’t really want to be free. That insidious hand of his slides higher, rubbing my aching nipple before cupping the entire breast and making me moan. I can do a lot of things, but thinking straight when Liam Wilder has his hand on my breast is not one of them. In case there’s any doubt, I’m sure the sharp hiss of my breath clears it up for him pronto.
“Forget it. I’m going to make you come until your head explodes, Starlight.” His voice is thick now. Rough with a need that sounds as though it matches mine. “Which is what we both want. So are you going to open the door, or should I? Or we could do it right here if you want to brace your hands on the wall for me. Doesn’t matter to me.”
Wild thoughts race through my mind while I grimace and battle physical need, humiliation and euphoria.
Thank God he’s back. Thank God he’s not giving up. Thank God he’s taking control.
But I can’t just surrender without drawing blood. My pride won’t allow it.
So I look back over my shoulder at him, catching a glimpse of the hard glitter in his eyes.
“I never thought I could hate you worse than I did back then. I was wrong.”
To my absolute outrage, he laughs. Laughs.
“You think I care? You think you hate me any worse than I hate myself for still wanting you after the way you ripped my guts out? Get real.”
With that, he lets me go and opens the door with a hand that’s a lot steadier than mine. Then he grabs my wrist, yanks me in after him and slams the door shut.
Part of me wants to dispute who did the gut-ripping in this relationship, but there’s no time for that in this arrested moment when our harsh breathing is the only sound in the universe. The glittering skyline on the other side of the endless windows provide just enough ambient illumination for me to see the hard planes of his face and the wild light in his eyes. He looks older now, obviously, with hints of crow’s-feet fanning out from the corners of his eyes. He feels bigger, the reedy boy he was back then having given way to this powerful man. He seems harder. Unforgiving. I don’t know this current Liam at all. God knows exactly who or what he’s been doing since I saw him last.
Despite all that, everything about this scene feels familiar and inevitable.
And I loved him once. Loved him with every ounce of blood in my naïve soul.
“Liam,” I say, my voice cracking as I reach for him.
We come together hard and fast, our mutual frenzy making it more of a bruising grapple than an embrace as he backs me against the nearest wall. Doesn’t matter. He pulls my hair in his eagerness to hold my head in place as his lips cover mine and his tongue sweeps home. Doesn’t matter. He leaves no room for space, air or thoughts between us, and that doesn’t matter either.
All that matters is that this is Liam and he’s here with me again. His fresh linen scent is the same. His hot skin is the same. The rough silk of his hair as I fist it in my hands is the same, and so is the taste of scotch in his mouth. His urgent but incoherent whispers and his heavy handprints over every part of my body—breasts, hips, ass, thighs—are exactly the same.
If anyone else manhandled me like this, I’d laugh, throw him out of my bed and finish myself off with my favorite vibrator. With Liam? I can’t get hot enough or shimmy out of my damp panties fast enough.
He knows it, too, damn him.
“This is ancient history?” I get a glimpse of the unmistakable glimmer of satisfaction in his eyes before he yanks down the stretchy bodice of my dress and licks each of my nipples. This, naturally, elicits another round of helpless mewling from me. I rake my nails over his back, wishing there’d been time to get rid of his jacket and all his other clothes, then reach for his belt when he straightens again. He bats my hands away and takes care of it himself, leaving me to work on the zipper. “You expect me to believe that bullshit? That you never thought about me?”
I cannot let him get away with this galling arrogance. “Sometimes I think about the poison ivy rash I had when I was thirteen. That doesn’t mean I want it back in my life.”
He flashes a smile that’s full of wicked intent and bitterness but no humor as he reaches into his back pocket for his wallet, pulls out a foil wrapper and tosses the wallet aside.
“I don’t give a shit what you want, Starlight. I’m back. Deal with it.”
“This is a one-off,” I say, watching him with rising impatience as he tears the wrapper open with his teeth and sheathes himself. At this rate? I’m coming in the next thirty seconds whether he’s inside me or not. “You know that, don’t you?”