expression sobered a little. “I’m sorry. But you know it’s not because I didn’t want you. You wouldn’t believe how I’ve imagined this. So long. You got me through some dark days, Gracie. Actually, this is probably going to sound pretty creepy, but when I was penniless in LA, doing all those awful jobs that got me from audition to audition, my favorite pastime was thinking of you. Off at school. Standing in front of that apartment door with the trench coat open and sheer black bra and panties...I could still draw a picture with every detail preserved. If I could draw.”
“You pictured me a lot?”
“Every day.”
“Just dark times?”
“No, of course not. Good times too. When I had some time alone. Going to sleep. Running.”
“Was I the carrot?” she asked, leaning down to kiss him again, her fingers combing through his hair in a way that was both soothing and arousing at the same time. Increased pressure encouraged him to roll over, and she went with him.
“Sometimes,” he murmured.
“Sometimes it was some other woman in her underwear?”
“No,” he said, pushing her hair back from his face, the tenderness in his eyes making her inexplicably teary. “I don’t think I’ve ever daydreamed about another woman like I do about you. But I don’t always run happy. Sometimes...”
“Sometimes you run mad? Sad?”
“Yes. Though that doesn’t always work out well. Running if you’re too distracted can result in a sprained ankle.”
Sprained ankle? She probably shouldn’t ask, but it was right after he and his girlfriend had split. “Because of Simone?”
“No. No, not Simone.” He slid a hand around the knee she had hooked over his hip and rolled to his back so that she was on top of him.
She sat up then, settling herself against him at the wrong end for penetration, but still in a place where she knew he’d enjoy a little friction.
“What were you upset about? The part?”
“No. Less talk. More... Where’s the condom?”
“Not until you tell me what made you fall,” she said, flattening her hands against his chest and grinding her hips down just enough to slicken him.
His eyes got that unfocused look of pleasure and he grabbed her hips to keep her right there, even as he groaned his complaint. “Not fair.”
“I don’t play fair.” She usually played fair, actually, but if it wasn’t important, he wouldn’t be trying to hide it. “No holding back. You agreed.”
He sighed then and stopped her hips. “It was the anniversary of my father’s death. It’s always a bad day.”
A bad day, he’d said. Like those words were powerful enough to carry all the meaning that went with them.
When she’d first met Liam she remembered thinking he was different, and the discussion she’d had with her parents about foster care, and why Liam was in foster care. Her parents had told her enough that she’d have been nice to him even if he hadn’t been the most handsome boy she’d ever seen. But Liam wasn’t much for sharing. He minimized things. And she was beginning to understand that the things he minimized most were the things that hurt the most.
“Did I kill the mood?”
Grace realized she’d been staring at him a long time and that she had tears in her eyes.
That no-holding-back rule... “Does that happen on your mother’s anniversary too? Or were you too little when she died to really—?”
“I don’t remember much about that.” He lifted that tattooed shoulder, minimizing further.
“But you do remember your father’s death. Were you there?”
“No. I found him later.” His words were delivered so flatly and emotionlessly...
Her heart ached, her eyes burned, and she leaned forward to kiss him, unable to say anything.
Warmth slid up her body as his hands crept to her cheeks, and as he accepted and returned every wet kiss, his thumbs brushed away her tears.
When she’d kissed him enough to give him a glimpse of all the sorrow she felt on his behalf, she leaned up to look at him again. The tears still came, but his eyes were dry.
“Don’t cry. I’m okay now. You got me better.”
“It’s not that. It’s not that you got distracted and fell. Can’t I just be heartbroken for you? Because I am.”
“I’m not.”
Lies. Lies he might have even believed.
He reached to the side, grabbing one of the foil packets she’d put out and tearing it open as he sat up, pushing her up as he did so, freeing the erection once captured between them for the condom.
“Liam...”
“Do you still have those panties and that bra?”
“No.”
She knew what he was doing. He’d done what he’d promised, he hadn’t held back, but now he was getting this fantasy-fulfilling evening back on course.
“I went home and burned them. They were all tainted with unrequited longing and...”
A little shifting and she felt herself stretching to accommodate the hardness pushing insistently into her.
“Do you have some other ones? I think... I deserve some black underwear to complete this memory.”
She wanted another night. Another ten thousand nights wouldn’t be enough.
ANYTHING SHE WANTED. After their night, when they’d both been drunk on pleasure and each other, when the idea that everything would be okay somehow had dominated his mind, Liam had announced he’d give her whatever she wanted. Ask him anything, he’d say yes.
And he had. Even when she’d asked him to be her date to a wedding.
So dumb. All of that was going to make this harder.
Consequences.
Liam tossed his keys to the valet and went to offer Grace his elbow. The boot that made it easy to walk without support didn’t go with his formal wear, so he was back to tape and a cane. Only today it didn’t hurt much at all with the tape. Unlike before. A sign of progress: that he’d healed enough for tape to work. At least physically, though his heart and conscience were starting to feel battered from the effort.
He looked down at her smiling face and the pit of acid eating a hole through him widened, and he had
