He glared at me. “I like it because it has strings,” he said, running one of them over my wrists. “They can be tied tightly.”
My eyes fell to the metal shelf again, and now I noticed there was also one of those long brush things that was used for washing your back. Jesus. These weren’t just bathroom objects, they were Liam’s torture and punishment devices.
“Did you think he was a attractive?” Liam demanded now.
“What?”
“When he talked to you at the bar. Did you find him attractive?”
Liam hadn’t asked me anything like that in the car on the way over, and I struggled for an answer. “What does that have to do with what happened?” If Liam was trying to figure out who Robbie was and what he wanted, then why did he need to know if I found him attractive.
“Answer the question.”
“I wasn’t thinking of him in that way.” It was true. He was just a man sitting at a bar. I was having trouble even remembering exactly what we’d talked about, how we’d even started conversing, because it had seemed so banal at the time. This must be how eyewitnesses always ended up forgetting what they saw. When you don’t realize something is important, you have no reason to remember it, and it’s easy to forget details.
“But did you? Find him attractive? Don’t lie to me.”
“He was good-looking in a generic way, yes,” I said, knowing that if I lied, whatever was coming would be much worse.
Liam was in the middle of squeezing the bottle of body wash onto the loofah, and he squeezed hard. He began to massage my chest with the loofah, and my core tightened at his touch.
“Then what?” Liam asked. He was already done with the loofah, setting it down on the side of the tub and staring to use his bare hands to rub the body wash into my chest. The feel of his bare skin against mine set my nerve endings on fire.
“Then he…he gave me some of his chocolate cake.”
Liam’s eyes blazed and his fingers tightened around my nipples, twisting and squeezing tightly. I gasped at the pain and surprise of the gesture.
“That was extremely foolish, Emery. You knew nothing about this man. He could have drugged you, he could have –”
“It wasn’t a drink, Liam. And besides, I saw the bartender bring the cake out and set it down in front of him. He didn’t drug it.”
“You’re defending him,” he spit, and then his hands moved from my chest, to my waist. He pulled me toward him, the warm water sliding around us.
“No.” I shook my head. “I wasn’t defending him.”
The head of his cock nudged against my entrance again, and the air hung heavy with anticipation. Anticipation of what Liam was going to do to me next, anticipation of where his conversation was going to go.
“Please,” I said. “I don’t… I don’t want anyone but you.”
“He followed you?”
“Yes. I saw him in the bookstore and then he was in the elevator when I went up to my room.”
“And then?”
“Then he followed me to my room.”
“What did he say?”
I licked my bottom lip, nervous about what he was going to do when he found out what Robbie had said to me. “He said that there were better ways to get over someone than by reading books about break-ups.”
Liam’s eyes blazed and his hands tightened again around my hips. He pulled me closer to him, his cock rubbing my clit.
“Please,” I said, running my hand through his hair. It was damp from the moisture in the air. My hand was wet and water droplets fell onto his shoulder then slid down the slopes and lines of his chest. I let my hand follow their course, touching his chest. “Stay with me.”
“I’m not mad at you, Emery,” he growled. “I’m mad at myself. I never should have left you.”
“It’s not your fault,” I said, and he looked at me, hope reflected in his eyes, that maybe it was true, that maybe it wasn’t his fault. “You couldn’t have known.”
“I shouldn’t have left you.”
I put my hand on his cheek and forced him to look at me. “You didn’t know. It’s not your fault.”
His gaze met mine, and the emotions crackling between us – love, attraction, desire, longing, regret – were so intense I could feel them. My breath hitched at how beautiful he looked in this moment, his lips slightly parted, the drops of water clinging to his chiseled chest, the concern he had for me in his eyes.
His gaze dropped and he ran his fingers over the scars on my thighs. I closed my eyes and let him. The urge to move his hand away was all but gone. I wanted to do the same for him, and I reached out and ran my fingers over his abs, felt the muscles clenching under his skin.