Liam broke the kiss and rested his forehead to hers, trying to mask the fact he was breathing hard.
Don’t hide this. Let her see how strongly she affects you.
“What’s wrong?” Her fingertips traced the line of his jaw. “You’re kind of shaky.”
“Nothing is wrong. But if I don’t get my mouth on your pussy in the next minute, there’s a good chance I’ll die.”
Stirling released a sultry laugh. Then she peppered kisses across his jawline, stopping at his ear to whisper, “Well then, let me save your life.” She pushed down on his shoulders until he dropped to his knees.
A gentleman would’ve said something sexy and complimentary before taking that first taste.
Not Liam.
A primal instinct overtook him completely.
He shoved her thighs apart and buried his face into her creamy folds, his mouth open wide, his upper teeth pressed into her mound, his tongue pushing into her pussy deep, lapping up every bit of ambrosia and diving back in for more.
Again and again and again.
Stirling fisted her hands into his hair and held on.
When she released a sharp cry, he froze.
That hadn’t sounded like a cry of bliss.
Because you are eating her like this is your last meal.
Christ. He was fucking growling. He needed to calm the fuck down.
He retreated to temper his raging hunger for her with soft nibbles and delicate licks as he nuzzled her swollen tissues. Sucking her clit and dropping kisses on the downy blond strip of hair covering her mound.
Four sharps tugs on his hair got his attention. Alarmed, he looked up at her.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Overthink this. If you were too rough, I’d tell you. Give me back the guy who might die if he doesn’t get his mouth on my pussy.”
“You liked that.” A statement. Not a question.
“I loved it.” Stirling lowered to her knees. She held his face in her hands and ravaged his mouth. Licking the taste of herself from his lips, sucking it from his tongue. Rubbing her body against his. She released his lips long enough to say, “I taste good on you.”
“Let me—”
Another tongue-tangling kiss ended that half-assed protest.
And Stirling proceeded to drive him out of his fucking mind. When she rubbed his nipples, it felt like she’d opened an erotic conduit to his ass and his balls. His skin seemed to shrink with each teasing sweep of her thumb. When she used her tongue… Christ, it felt like she was licking his entire body.
Enough.
He stood, plucked her off the floor and set her on the bed.
She cocked her head when he yanked his T-shirt off. “Change in plans?”
“I’ll come back to the pussy eating later.” He shed his jeans and briefs, and then bent to retrieve a condom from his luggage.
Stirling whistled. “Look at you, Dr. Hottie. All cut muscles and an awesome dick.”
Liam slipped the condom on and joined her on the bed, stalking her as she scrambled up toward the headboard. He paused between her legs. Keeping his gaze on hers, he swirled his tongue around her clit and down to where all that sweetness pooled. “You’re wet enough to take me.”
No argument from her.
On his way up the bed, he stopped to lash his tongue across her nipples.
She squirmed beneath him. But she didn’t beg for more. Or less.
He planted his hands beside her head and skimmed his body over hers.
A breathy sigh escaped as she twined herself around him, arms, legs, hair. All she had to do was cant her hips…
And he surged inside.
“God. That is so good.”
Her hands explored his arms and chest and shoulders as he moved in her and above her. Rolling her pelvis to meet his every deep stroke.
The smooth arch of her neck was impossible to resist. A groan rumbled free when the taste of her skin—lemons and sunshine—hit his tongue.
His steady pace wasn’t enough so he picked up the speed.
The bed started to squeak. Before he could return to a slower rhythm, Stirling slapped his ass and murmured, “Gimme that dirty, loud sex you promised.”
Seeing the passion and joy on her beautiful face, all for him… Liam’s overwhelming urge to prove himself worthy resulted in him breaking out his best porn move, swiveling his hips on the upstroke, grinding against her on the downstroke.
“Yes,” she gasped. “That. Don’t ever stop doing that.” She urged him on with the scratch of her nails down his back.
Their mouths would meet and part. Sharing a tender kiss. A kiss that bordered on brutal. Ebb and flow. Perfection. He’d found it, even when he never really believed it existed. But it did. Here in this space and time with her.
The way Stirling held her body changed. Her stomach tightened, the bow in her lower back deepened. Her knees squeezed him harder.
He put his mouth to her ear and growled, “Give it to me.”
“Liam.”
“All of it, Stirling.” He added an extra grind at the end of every bed-rattling thrust.
Sweat dripped into his eyes but he didn’t tear his gaze away from her face as she started to come.
Her low moan got louder. She set her teeth on his shoulder to muffle it.
He shuddered from the sharp prickles of pleasure racing across his skin after her bite. The pressure of her pussy muscles contracting around his dick… He was done for.
He didn’t just blow; he erupted like a volcano.
The world spun. Hazy gray space obscured his vision. His arms shook but he couldn’t stop the short jabs of his cock into that tight haven.
His mouth was bone dry. His skin was damp. He had a cramp in the back of his calf. His abs ached. Fuck, even his hair hurt.
Still…Liam felt nothing short of invincible.
Stirling bumped her pelvis up.
He opened his eyes.
“There you are,” she said softly. “Where’d you go?”
“Sex as Nirvana isn’t a myth.”
“Aha. I thought we reached transcendence. And without chemical stimulants.”
Liam nestled his face into her neck and breathed her in.
She swept her hands down his back. “Let’s stay here. If they ask what happened to us, we’ll tell them we were exhausted from traversing the astral plane.”
He lifted his head. “If we tell them that, they’ll assume we got too baked to leave the room.”
“There’s a plan.”
“Stirling.”
“Gotta face the music. Literally.”
“’Fraid so.” He pressed a kiss on her forehead and then on her mouth. “Will I lose my status as Dr. Aloof if I say I’m crazy about you?”
Her eyes softened. “Yes. But that’s a good thing because the feeling is mutual.”
Liam eased off her and casually walked to the garbage can to ditch the condom. But inside he was jumping around, pumping his fist in victory. If he kept grinning like an idiot his face would hurt from smiling too.
Be cool.
He ran his hand through his hair, wondering if he could skip a shower. “Will it take you long to get ready?”
“I have half a mind to wear my Pooh pajama bottoms to this shindig.”
“Not your finest clothing option, crazy pants.”
Stirling draped her forearm across her eyes. “That name fits today. Pretty soon the sex buzz will wear off and I’ll be back to hand wringing and pacing.”
“You need another distraction.” Liam pulled out a plastic baggie from his shaving kit and crawled back on the bed. “Luckily, I can help with that. Open wide.”
“You’d better not shove your dick in my mouth right now,” she warned.
“Would you bite?”
“Yes.”
“Might be worth it to see these pretty pink lips wrapped around my cock.”
“Liam!”
He laughed. “I’m se
rious. This is not a prank. Open your mouth.”
She shifted her arm to watch him suspiciously, but she opened her mouth.
Liam dropped a gummy bear in and blocked her from spitting it out.
Then he popped a gummy in his own mouth. “See? I won’t make you do something I’m not willing to do myself.”
“This doesn’t bode well for our relationship since this is the second time you’ve slipped me a mickey, pal.”
“Mickey. Who even uses that word anymore?”
“Minnie Mouse does,” she said with a snicker.
“Hysterical. I heard these gummies work fast but not that fast.”
“Whatever. Get dressed. Our hour is almost up.”
He bent down and picked up the T-shirt he’d been wearing today.
A naked Stirling hopped off the bed and his train of thought vanished. He could not believe he was here with this beautiful, brilliant goddess.
She said, “Not that one.”
“What’s wrong with it?” He loved the saying on his T-shirt: The Good Thing About Science Is That It’s True…Whether Or Not You Believe In It.
“Nothing. But I’m a dreadlock-adorned bohemian who owns a marijuana dispensary. You’re my arm candy, baby, so you need to look the part of my hot rebel man. Wear something that shows off those sexy tattoos.”
He groaned after he opened his suitcase. “I was in such a hurry I forgot to pack my dress clothes.”
“Show me what you brought.”
Grumbling, he unsnapped the straps that were supposed to be holding his dress clothes. The other shirt he’d packed was part of his workout gear, a sleeveless nylon-cotton style, resistant to wrinkles. When he faced Stirling, she was gaping at him. “What now?”
“That’s how you pack for an overnight?”
“That’s how I pack for everything. Isn’t that standard?”
She laughed and unzipped her suitcase.
Somehow he masked his horrified expression. Crazy pants had just wadded up clothing and shoved it in without order. Nothing was folded. She’d even mixed shoes in with the clothes. Should he force himself to say something…nice?
Stirling’s arms came around him. “Since you haven’t been to my place, I can assure you that I don’t live in a pigsty. I’m kind of a neat freak. But after years of traveling and having to iron suits because they always ended up wrinkled, I let go of order.”
“You have to fit your rebelliousness in where you can, Miss Gradsky.” A vivid orange article of clothing hung out and he tugged it free from the rest of the clothes in her suitcase. A pair of her crazy pajama pants. But these… He read the writing beneath the cartoonish character out loud. “Boys are stupid throw rocks at them.” His eyes met hers. “Seriously, Stirling? You paid for these?”
“No.” She snatched them away. “Nana gave them to me after I dumped Nick the Prick, okay?”
“But you were planning on wearing them tonight?”
“Maybe.”
He snatched them back. “Maybe not.”
“Liam.”
“You’re not wearing these tonight. Put them on when you’re watching rom-coms with your girlfriends and doing each other’s nails. But never with me, all right?”
“What is the big deal?”
“Would you be offended if my pajamas said: Girls are stupid throw rocks at them?”
“Yes, but that is different. Men stone women to death. Women don’t throw rocks.”
“But little girls do,” he said softly. He dropped the pajamas on the floor and snagged his shaving kit on the way to the bathroom.
Way to admit to your loser past.
He braced his hands against the countertop and took a couple of deep breaths.
When Liam raised his head and looked in the mirror, he didn’t see the athletic, confident thirty-five-year-old man he’d become. He saw a skinny ten-year-old runt, his eyes enormous beneath eyeglass lenses as thick as the bottom of a pop bottle. Glasses he’d carefully taped together after Jana Oster had hit him in the face with a rock. His glasses had gone flying and he’d crawled on the ground until he found them. While he’d inspected the lenses, silently praying they weren’t broken, Jana had continued to pelt him with rocks and insults. He’d ended up with bruises on his arms, the backs of his calves, and the top of his head. But not on his face, thankfully, because his gramma would have demanded to know what happened.
He’d never told her.
He’d never told anyone.
He kept those memories buried most days. He hated that something as trivial as a phrase on a pair of pajamas could make him overreact.
But did you?
Two soft knocks sounded and the door slowly opened. Stirling didn’t say a word; she just ducked under his arm and wrapped herself around him.
He held on.
She whispered, “I’m sorry,” against his chest.
“It’s all right.”
When Stirling tilted her head back, tears shimmered in her eyes.
His stomach tightened at the humiliating thought that she felt sorry for him.
“It’s not all right. You had every right to point out the cruelty and reverse discrimination. I’m throwing those crazy pants away.”
Liam wiped away a tear. “You don’t have to do that.”
“Yes, I do. I can’t right the wrongs of your past, Liam, but I’d never keep something that brings back awful memories.”
He kissed the top of her head. “Thank you.”
“Did you ask me if I bought those pajamas because you feared I might’ve been like the girl who hurt you? The pajamas were a reminder of how fun it’d been to bully and belittle someone when I was a kid?”
I don’t know.
“I wasn’t a mean girl, Liam. I was awkward. I’m still awkward.”
“We have that in common.”
Stirling kissed his chest, above his heart. “We have a lot in common.”
Not as much as she thought. Liam had no idea how to do this family thing. Granted, he’d had his gramma, but that was it. Someone like Stirling, who’d grown up in an environment with siblings, cousins, aunts, and uncles, wouldn’t understand why he’d freaked out at the idea of being thrust into the middle of it.
Truth was he hadn’t brought those gummies for her. He’d brought them for himself.
On the drive here he’d silently panicked when she’d confessed her family problems. When she’d reached the point that he’d run out of anything resembling advice to offer her, he’d seduced her instead.
And now he couldn’t tell her his issues because he was here to support her.
“Liam?”
He looked down into her beautiful face and those eyes filled with concern for him, wondering for the hundredth time how he’d gotten so lucky. He did not want to fuck this up. He smiled. “Sorry. I think the gummy bear is kicking in.”
“I hope mine kicks in soon, because we need to get ready.”