My heart quickened the nearer he drew. I gasped when he began following his hands with his lips.
The muscles low in my stomach, in my bottom, in the back of my thighs, began tightening.
The heat of his breaths against my inner thighs was almost too much to bear, my body responding in an instinctual, primal manner to his advances, his two steps forward, one back manner of teasing me up to incredible heights.
He almost finished me when he pushed his fingers down into the waistband of my panties and began drawing them down. He followed the waistband with his lips, too.
“Not yet,” he said, “I’m not finished with you yet... I haven’t even started yet.” There was a promise in his deep voice that electrified me, that had saliva squirting into my mouth as the hunger built within me. And then he lifted up my feet one at a time to slip my panties all the way off, his fingers like hot shackles around my ankles.
“When?” I replied, my voice husky with desire.
“When I say so. I’ve been wondering something about you since we danced,” he said, in between kissing up the back of my thighs.
“What’s that?”
“How you taste,” he said.
He gave me no time to reply, pushing me down onto the bed and flipping me over onto my back. He moved to sate his desire right away, finding the source of my heat, tasting me.
Liam really did know his way around a woman’s body. Knew just where to kiss. How to put his tongue to good use. When to go faster and when to slow down.
He was also merciless, and it wasn’t long before I had all my fingers threaded into his hair, my body bucking against the mattress while my climax tore through me, hot and unstoppable, every muscle in me tensing to the point of snapping before relaxing.
He wrung out every ounce of pleasure that I had in me and more besides. Like I said, merciless.
And he still wasn’t done. He’d shrugged his jacket off quickly when we’d come into the suite, but still wore everything else. Standing from the foot of the bed, he grabbed his shirt and tore it open, the buttons pinging off. The sudden, savage jerking motion left my heart pounding. That, and what I saw beneath the shirt.
Liam kept himself in shape. Abs everywhere, the shadows filling the little clefts between each individual muscle. A chest and a pair of shoulders that begged for me to touch and scratch them.
I couldn’t resist sitting up and running my hands down those abs. Running them right down to his belt. He watched as I tugged the end out and then ripped the length of leather through its loops.
And then it was his turn for his clothes to pool around his ankles, the expensive fabrics not deserving of such indignity but neither of us caring.
He produced a condom from the nightstand, taking only a moment, building my need to desperate levels again through impatience.
Both of us on the bed, he urged my thighs apart and settled himself between them. When he sank into me, I gasped, my aching body not used to the touch of a man but needing it so badly.
He saw my expression and kissed my bottom lip, sucking it between his teeth and biting down on it gently before letting it slide out. We kissed again then, fiercely, as our two bodies joined into one.
He took control, took charge of my pleasure and his. Soon, beads of perspiration formed on our writhing bodies.
Effortlessly, he transitioned smoothly from one position to another. Working each angle, he found the positions that made me moan the most for him. Then, as he took me full force, I rode the waves of my climaxes higher and higher.
He took me every way I’d ever been taken before and more. Over me, beside me, behind me. In our embraces we kicked the bed sheets down off the bed.
The whole while, his curious hands explored me, sliding up and down my stomach, down between my thighs, turning my face to kiss him.
We both sank fully into that moment, becoming timeless, feeling nothing but each other for those endless minutes.
And then came the point where he kissed me roughly, my name escaping through his clenched teeth over and over, his hands catching mine up and squeezing them, both of us locked in our shared bliss.
“Stay the night with me,” he said as we recovered, both of us naked and spent on the bed. My whole body felt like a pile of limp elastic bands. I wasn’t going anywhere.
“If you insist,” I said, managing a smile. Already, I could feel the soreness building inside of me. It had been well-earned and, I think, well-deserved.
He kissed me again, smoothing some sweat-stuck strands of curly blonde hair off my forehead.
In the darkness of his five-star suite, I curled up next to Liam’s warm body, leaning my cheek against his chest, listening to the thump of his heart and smelling his clean sweat.
I went to sleep knowing that this was a one-night affair, but wishing that it could have been so much more. Especially after that performance, after the way he’d coaxed things from my body I’d never thought I’d feel. Maybe that was the way it was supposed to be, though.
But did that mean everything was downhill from here?
Chapter 3
“I really just wish I’d gotten his email or phone number,” I said. I stirred the foam of my latte with the piece of biscotti that sat beside the mug on the saucer.
The biscuit absorbed some of the hot liquid, softening it enough for me to take a bite. It was sweet, and it reminded me of the taste of Liam’s kisses. I don’t think I’d ever had such an erotic bite of food in my life.
Across the small, circular bistro table from me Isabella smiled at my unintentional display.
She was pretty in that traditional Italian way, with glossy black ringlets of hair falling to her olive-skinned shoulders and framing a lovely face with dark, sultry eyes. A true beauty. The type of woman I would have pictured a guy like Liam with.
“Didn’t you say it was a... What is it you call these? A one night stand?” Isabella’s dark eyes glinted with mischief. She and I had become fast friends after I arrived in Rome. She’d given me the tour of the university campus, and was herself a graduate student in classical studies.
While not an art history major like myself, she knew more than enough to hold her own in various conversations we had about Greco-Roman art. Behind those beautiful eyes lay a sharp mind. One more than a match to deal with any man who thought she was just another pretty face. It was a quality I’d come to appreciate in my friend.
“Yeah,” I said, “It was.”
“What something is supposed to be and what something actually is are often not the same,” Isabella replied before picking up her own tiny espresso mug, blowing the steam off the top, and taking a sip of the scalding black liquid.
“Sure,” I shrugged. It really was supposed to have been just a one night thing. Something to finally let loose, something to shake me out of this rut I couldn’t seem to escape.
And it had, I needed to admit. Being with him had awakened my mind and senses in ways I hadn’t felt for a long time. I took another bite of the hard biscotti, savoring the texture of it this time. When was the last time I’d thought about the texture of my food?
I sat back against the bistro chair, letting the warm light of the Roman sun hit my cheeks.
We were at an old café a five minute walk from the campus that we visited usually at least twice a week. However, it might as well have been my first time there. I studied the row of buildings crammed together across the street, the way little alleys cut in between them, branching off from the main road like vessels from an artery.
Somewhere down the street a young boy laughed as he ran through a flock of pigeons, the birds winging away in all directions with annoyed squawks.
I noticed our waiter as he shuffled between the tables on the patio. He was an older man with a horseshoe of wispy white hair clinging to his scalp. He was the same waiter we dealt with on every visit.
But this time, I noticed how, despite his age, he walked quickly and confidently, his polished shoes clicking off the pavement. He knelt to deposit a mug of espresso in front of a woman wearing an enormous pair of sunglasses, smiling as he did. I remembered that he always smiled, and that when his mouth smiled, his eyes did, too.
Liam’s smiles went to his eyes, too. I remembered that. A person’s eyes don’t lie, my dad used to say to me. Well, I definitely saw a certain truth in Liam’s eyes that night. And it was a truth that left the front of my stomach tingly and tight.
“Be careful. If Giancarlo sees you looking at him like that, he is likely to flirt with you,” Isabella said.
Heat rose to my cheeks while my eyes dropped to my latte. How strange I must look, I realized. Staring about like a tourist who’d just gotten off the plane.
“It’s nothing,” I said, “It’s just that everything reminds me of him.”
“Him? This Liam?” I liked the way his name sounded in her accent. Exotic, yet somehow familiar. “I think this was not just a one night stand, no?”
I shrugged, a sudden burst of frustration twisting my lips. “No, that’s all it can be. I’m just not in the right place for something like that... something like him in my life right now.”
“There is no place in your life for joy and happiness right now? Is that what you are saying? Because that is what I am hearing,” Isabella said, tracing the rim of her espresso cup with one long and lacquered fingertip.
I balked at that, hitching my shoulders higher, “Hey, come on, I’m happy.” I could taste the lie as it rolled across my tongue and then out through my lips. It was bitter. Not at all like Liam’s kisses.