Текст книги "Italian Kisses"

Автор книги: Lucy Lambert

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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 15 страниц)

Chapter 4

We walked hand-in-hand down the broad hallway. It was a beautiful building, with marble floors and tall, arched windows that let in the light to play across the frescoes and decorations. But right then I only had eyes for Liam.

Other people had eyes for him, too, I noted. I squeezed his hand tighter and pressed my side against his while we walked, basking in the jealous gazes I felt from the other female students we passed.

Yes, he’s holding my hand. Yes, he’s as good a kisser as he looks. No, you can’t have him!

I put my giddiness down to the adrenaline rush of nearly being groped by my professor and then saved by the handsomest man in Rome. We continued down the hall, taking a turn that would lead us to one of the visitor parking lots.

“So, not that I’m not grateful, which I am. Very grateful, that is,” Stop babbling! The rational part of my mind said. But he’s so good looking. You should kiss him again!  The rest of me replied. Liam pretended not to notice. “But why are you here?”

His eyebrows knitted together and he glanced at me. “To take you to lunch.”

“We never had a lunch date.”

“Yes, we do,” he said, the corners of his mouth twitching up in a tiny, sly smile. I couldn’t help returning the expression.

“I think I would have known. Since when did we have this date?”

“Since you agreed to it in the lecture hall, of course.”

“Ah. Sneaky. Lunch does sound good, though,” I said. The crowd in the hall began thinning enough so that I could hear the sound of our footsteps off the polished floor.

“Yes, I’m quite sly like that, aren’t I?”

***

Ten minutes later, I again found myself sitting outside of a small Roman café. A large umbrella protected out bistro table from the noontime sun, which beat down hard enough that heat radiated in undulating waves off the patio stones.

Except there were several key differences. First, I’d never been to this place before (though the aged Italian waiter with the silver platter looked rather like Giancarlo, so much that I thought they might be brothers).

Second, instead of a beautiful woman sat across from me, it was a handsome man. When we sat down, he’d undone the buttons of his cuffs and rolled the sleeves up almost to his elbows. I had to keep myself from openly admiring his muscular forearms.

And when he smiled and turned that full wattage on me, it was like the afternoon sun dimmed in comparison.

It took every last straining inch of my willpower to retain something like a level head. Besides, I didn’t think Liam was the type who appreciated googly-eyed airheads. And I wanted to be the kind of girl that he appreciated.

Horns honked down the street, and two men climbed out of their tiny Italian cars and began waving at each other. Some children kicked a soccer ball around down the other way, stopping their game briefly each time a car drove through.

For probably the first time since I’d come to Rome, I felt like I was in a movie. The streets looked exotic. The food smelled delicious. I was Audrey Hepburn having an adventure with a handsome man I’d just met.

“So I don’t want this to come across the wrong way,” I said, “But are you stalking me?”

Liam blinked. Then he smiled again. My heart jumped and a sudden heat blossomed very low in my stomach. “No, I’m not.”

“Then how did you find me?”

“Well, it’s not like you’re a spy trying to escape from me. You had me drop you off at the campus. I already knew you were a student of Dr. Aretino’s from our introduction at the fundraiser. All I needed to do was ask a few people where the pretty blonde American girl was and they pointed me right to the lecture hall.”

For a few seconds, my brain went haywire. He thinks I’m pretty! I kept thinking. Schoolgirl giggles attempted to burble up my throat, and it was all I could do to keep myself from melting into a giddy little puddle right there in front of him.

I couldn’t believe what had happened. I’d spent the night with a guy Hollywood would probably love to put in front of a camera. A guy who knew how to kiss. Who knew how to... well, do other things women like, who could (possibly?) cook up a frittata, and who had a smile like that. And now he wanted to spend more time with me.

It was too good to be true. I heard Isabella’s voice joking that he had to be married. And he had to be, right? There was no way a man of this caliber was just walking around single. No way a guy like this could show interest in a Plain Jane from St. Louis despite all the dark-haired Italian hotties wandering around.

“Are you married?” I blurted out. I wanted to gobble the words back down right away. But I wanted to know the answer more.

Liam held out his hands and examined them, showing two bare ring fingers. “Not last I checked. Why? Are you?” One corner of his mouth ticked up in another small smile. I couldn’t tell if he was amused at me or with me.

I couldn’t blame him, if we switched places I’d definitely be wondering about the sanity of the mousy blonde sat across from me. And how to make a quick escape.

I couldn’t let him escape!

“No! Definitely not,” I said, holding up my own hands for proof.

“Why do you ask?” Liam said.

“Well, because you are hot. I mean really smoking. Like habanero pepper hot.” I couldn’t look at him anymore, so my eyes drifted down to the round bistro tabletop. I could see a silhouette of my reflection in it, as well as various white puddles of nondescript light.

Liam chuckled. It was a rich, throaty sound. It suited him, and I liked hearing it. “Habanero pepper hot? I’ve never heard that one. Thanks, I guess. What does my apparent hotness have to do with anything?”

“It’s just that I’m... I’m like mild salsa hot. Maybe medium on a good day.”

Liam sighed. I glanced up long enough to see that those eyebrows of his had knit together again. My heart plummeted into my stomach, which in turn fell down through my feet. This is it, I thought. He saw it now, too. Saw that my lukewarm mild salsa hotness did not compare at all to his.

“You’re wrong,” he said, followed by “Grazie,” when the Giancarlo-clone waiter came and set our drinks (Americanos for both of us) on the table. I barely looked up, worried that the heat in my cheeks had my face glowing cherry red.

“You’re definitely much hotter than mild salsa. You’re beautiful and funny and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you since our night together. I want to get to know you, Emma. Now, how about some lunch?”

“So long as it’s not frittata,” I said.

He snorted. “I can’t believe you’re bringing that up!” He laughed again. It was an easy laugh. I think that laugh was what really did it for me. Not his looks, his smile, his kisses. It was because his eyes laughed, too. They scrunched up, made him look boyish and innocent. The eyes don’t lie, I remembered.

“How long have you been in Rome?” he asked.

“Two months,” I replied, “I’m here studying abroad for a year.” It was my first semester here. And, if I didn’t bring my grades back up, possibly my last. “Art history,” I volunteered.

“I’ve always loved Rome,” Liam said, “There’s just something about it...” He looked around at the old buildings, the narrow, winding streets, the fountain that burbled down in the middle of the intersection closest to the café. “So much history all in one place. Sometimes I think about it and it overwhelms me. Does that make any sense?”

“Yes!” I said, “If I think about it, it starts to make me feel smaller. But somehow better about myself, more secure. Kind of like looking up at the stars at night.”

“That’s it exactly!” Liam said.

At least, I used to feel that way. Before I came to Rome, before the reason for my coming to Rome, anyway. I hadn’t felt that way in a long time. But I did know what he was talking about.

I wondered if he did actually have a real interest in the city, or real knowledge about its history. I wondered if maybe this was some kind of line he ran on girls, trying to sound romantic and mysterious. If it was a line, it worked very well for him.

“So how long have you been in Rome?” I said, tossing his own question back at him.

“Five days, so far.”

“And what are you? Some kind of businessman, I’m guessing. Here for some important meeting for your boss.”

Liam tugged at one rolled up sleeve that had begun falling back down. “Business, yes.”

The waiter came back and Liam ordered antipasto for the both of us.

“Bold,” I said. Something light like that had been what I’d been thinking of ordering.

“I’m good at reading people, remember? I figured out where you’re from, didn't I?. Don’t you think I can also guess what you like to eat?”

Still, I couldn’t let him have all the satisfaction. No matter how cute the dimples he got in his cheeks from smiling like that were. “Well, what if I told you I’m allergic to olives? Wouldn’t that have been good to know before you ordered something that has olives?”

“Oh God, you’re allergic? I’ll get the waiter,” he said, the grin disappearing, replaced with concern.

“Relax!” I said, “I’m not allergic. Not to olives, at least. You were just so smug is all.”

His grin returned. As well as a mischievous twinkle in his eye. “Ouch. That hurts. Right here,” he said, jabbing a finger against his chest.

“You’re a big boy, you can take it.”

We kept chatting, no lull lasting more than a moment. All the while, we both laughed and smiled. I couldn’t remember the last person I felt this comfortable with. There was Isabella, I supposed. But certainly no other men.

I didn’t quite understand why, but I could tell that the two of us just clicked. Like two pieces in a puzzle that went together perfectly. I felt like I could be myself around him. More, it felt like he wanted me to be myself, and that he could just be himself.

But who did he have to pretend with, and what did he pretend? Stupid Isabella, I thought. Her teasing remark that Liam was already involved with someone still niggled at me.

Probably because I never thought of myself as particular special or good in any way. There were prettier girls than me. Smarter ones. Funnier ones. All better candidates for the handsome man sitting and laughing in front of me as he popped an olive into his mouth.

I suppose I’m probably just the kind of person who, when presented with a gift horse, would promptly open its mouth and count its teeth. What was the catch, here? Was there a camera crew nearby, ready to punk me right after Liam confessed he was never actually interested in me?

I guess it all came down to me wanting to know how he could have possibly noticed me among all the possibilities.

But I tried to push that out of my mind, tried to tell myself to stop being so suspicious. To enjoy things and go with the flow. I’d done that at the fundraiser, and it had led me to one of the most incredible nights of my life. Maybe I could make it work a little longer.

Besides, I wanted to know everything about Liam. Although what surprised me more was that he wanted to know everything about me!

Liam’s foot slid under the table, the toe of his shoe bumping against mine. Was it an accident? Had he done it on purpose?

My heart raced, all the heat in my body coursing through me, converging at one single point between my thighs. I glanced up at him, my eyes tracing that strong jaw line, then down to that delicious slash of flesh revealed by his unbuttoned collar.

My throat tightened. I had the sudden urge to have him right there on the bistro table. I could already hear the platter of antipasto shattering on the tiled patio, olives leaving smears of oil to bake in the heat of the sun while we tore at each other.

Before I could work myself up into a lather over it, I forestalled the issue with another question.

“So any brothers or sisters?” I said, taking a cold cut from the plate in the middle of the table.

“A half sister. Younger. You?” I watched the way his lips formed the words, mesmerized by the way they shaped each individual syllable. I didn’t even need to close my eyes to remember how his mouth tasted against mine, or to recall the other hidden talents of that tongue.

You’re getting obsessed, I told myself. More, I wasn’t even certain why. No guy had ever driven me crazy like this. Especially not on the second time meeting him. Like I said, something about the two of us together just clicked.

Even though I knew next to nothing about him, I felt like I’d known him my whole life. Sort of like meeting a friend you haven’t seen in a long time and picking up right where you left off, despite the gulf of time between last seeing them.

Though, of course, Liam was more than a friend. Much more.

I shivered, a patch of goosebumps running up my back. “I’m an only child, actually. Couldn’t you tell?”

He shrugged, and I wished I could see the play of muscles beneath his shirt. “I was being polite. So, being an art history major in Rome must be amazing. I bet you’ve seen everything a dozen times each.”

That put a bit of a damper over my flame. A bashful weight pulled my chin down to my chest. I sensed Liam’s sudden confusion, but embarrassment kept me from setting him straight.

“What is it?” he said, the concern in his voice melting my heart.

So I took a deep breath in through my nose and let it out through my mouth, agreeing with my impulse to tell him the truth rather than to make some excuse.

“Actually I haven’t really done any sightseeing. The closest I’ve been to the Coliseum and the Forum is back in your hotel room.”

Just saying that brought images of two glistening bodies writhing together on a sumptuous king-sized mattress. The heat of the recollection helped to break up my embarrassment. A little.

He hadn’t answered me. Instead, he stroked at his clean-shaven jaw like some wizened Greek philosopher, plumbing my depths with those baby blues of his.

I felt the urge to fill the void in the conversation. “I know, pathetic, right? An art history major in a city full of art history for two months and I haven’t seen a single thing! Pathetic.” I repeated. Beating myself up was almost as easy as returning one of Liam’s blinding smiles.

He shook his head, the motion disturbing that perfectly tousled hair. I wanted to run my fingers through it like I had that night, feel the softness of it, use it to pull him harder against me.

Pathetic, I thought again.

“You aren’t pathetic. Don’t say that about yourself.”

“But...” I started.

Then his baby blues hardened into two chips of ice and froze me mid-rebuttal. “No. Pathetic people don’t have the courage to go half way around the world for a year, away from everything and everyone they know. They stay at home and wallow in their self-pity. So, you’re not pathetic. If anything, you’re brave. And too self-deprecating. You wouldn’t let anyone else call you that, so why beat yourself up?”

I don’t think I blinked through his little speech. The hairs on the back of my neck had stood up, though. In a good way.

Not pathetic. Brave, I thought, followed quickly by, he thinks I’m brave!

I realized then that I’d just gotten a glimpse of the hard, business-minded core hidden by the handsome exterior. He’d spoken with such confidence, too. I bet he got his way at all the board meetings.

I kind of wanted him to get his way with me, right then and there. “What are you? Some kind of self-help guru?” I nudged his foot beneath the table.

“I’m good at reading people. Don’t you believe me yet?” he said, the ice over his eyes cracking at the same time he smiled. It was a one-two punch, first the lecture delivered so clearly, then the smile to smooth everything over.

He definitely got his way in the boardroom. And everywhere else, I bet. I hoped his boss knew what they had in Liam. Whatever meeting he was in Rome for was in the bag, as far as I was concerned.

“I believe that you have a really high opinion of yourself,” I said, unable to keep my own lips from curving up into a matching smile. I could lose myself in those eyes of his. Escape my sliding grades, escape the memories from St. Louis. All of it.

“A well-justified opinion of myself.”

I slipped my shoe off and then ran my toes up his calf, loving the warmth coming off him, the smoothness of his khakis against me. Liam’s smile twitched. Reaching down, he ran his fingers up my calf, stopping right behind the knee.

He squeezed that spot. It was like he’d lit a pilot light inside of me. A furnace roared to life low in my stomach. It wouldn’t have surprised me if my panties burnt to ash with the heat of it.

“A very well deserved opinion,” I said while teasing electric fingers ran up and down my back. If only we hadn’t been in such a public place.

I wondered if I could be brave enough to ask him to take me back to that lovely hotel room with its equally lovely, large bed.

His hand slipped away, leaving the back of my knee cool and aching for his touch again. Liam crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair, regarding me with that philosopher’s gaze again.

“Tell me something about you I don’t know. Something good.”

“Like what?” I said. I’d be his open book if only to feel his eyes discover me.

“Anything. Ten seconds. Something I don’t know.” He then jerked his watch out from beneath his cuff, actually counting off the seconds.

I opened my mouth, smiling hard enough that my cheeks hurt. But nothing came out. It was crazy. We hardly knew anything about each other. There was an entire ocean of life behind me I could tap, but I didn’t know when or where.

“Five...”

“Liam!” I said, laughing around his name. It was a nice name. Lyrical.

“Four...”

“I don’t know!”

“Three...” He couldn’t keep his own smile off his face, amused at the way he’d put me on the spot.

Desperate, I picked something. “Before I came to Rome I’d never been on a plane before.”

He frowned. “Something interesting.”

“Once, in third grade, I made a boy I had a crush on eat a worm.”

The frown disappeared, replaced by that winning smile. “Remind me never to play in the dirt with you.”

“So you think I have a crush on you?” I said, leaning across the table.

He smiled again, but didn’t answer. Probably because the answer was obvious. I definitely had a crush on him. Third-grade me would have tried to force-feed him a whole handfuls of wriggly worms.

Of course, now that that memory had surfaced, I recalled that the boy in question ran away from me every time I approached him on the playground after that.

“Your turn,” I said.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” he replied.

He started saying something else, but his cell began beeping furiously in his pocket. He pulled it out, frowning at the screen. He sighed, and I knew instantly that he had to go.

I wanted to beg him to stay, to hang out with me some more, to tell me about himself. But instead I let him go.

“I have to attend to some matters,” he said, his voice and eyes switching back to that confident businessman mode I’d gotten a glimpse of earlier. “But first you’re going to tell me where you’re staying.”

I scribbled the address of my little flat onto a napkin and pushed it across the table to him. He picked it up, folded it neatly, and tucked it into the inner pocket of his jacket. He also took out a few bills and tucked them under the antipasto plate.

When he stood, I did, too.

“I want to see you again,” he said.

“I want that, too.”

Then he pulled me close, his hands clasped at the small of my back. His lips found mine. He tasted of olive oil and desire. It was the sweetest kiss I’d ever had, and I didn’t want it to end.

The way his hands squeezed against me, I didn’t think he wanted it to end, either. But it had to.

“Until next time,” he said, his cheeks flushed and his dark pupils dilated. He was breathless.

I hated to see him go, but I loved to watch him leave.

Chapter 5

I missed Liam. I missed the feel of his skin against my fingertips. I missed the way my heart fluttered in my chest when he smiled.

I missed him so badly that I'd started writing a sentence about the Renaissance painted Giulio Romano about fifteen minutes earlier and gotten no farther than typing his name out. It was supposed to be a paper exploring Romano's tutelage under Raphael. Similarities and differences between the styles of student and teacher.

Yet, I couldn't bring myself to type another word. I'd rather write something about the perfect symmetry of Liam's face. I'd focus on his eyes first, I thought. That light, baby blue shade that deepened the more you looked into them. As though you could fall into their fathomless depths.

It was kind of funny, actually. I'd been putting this paper off again and again, giving myself a new excuse every time I looked at the assignment sheet and the ever-approaching due date.

I'll get to it tomorrow. There's still a month left. There's still two weeks left. There's still a whole business week left. You know that sort of thing.

And the closer that deadline crept, the heavier the rock in the pit of my stomach became. And since the only way to relieve the pressure of that weight was to give into temptation to put writing the paper off again, I did it more and more easily each time.

Since I'd wanted to leave Rome and the program anyway, that made it even easier. Except now I didn't want to leave.

Now, I wanted to stay. Ever since I'd met Liam, I wanted to stay. And staying meant writing that damned paper.

Somehow, deciding I needed to write it resulted in my sitting to write it and instead commencing to daydream.

That had to stop.

Leaning my elbows against my desk, I cupped my chin with my hands and put myself through a little artist's meditation I'd learned back in a sophomore art class in high school.

Art, paintings, sculptures, frescoes, and the like, my teacher, Mr. Drayton had told us, weren't just visual. An artist needed to be in touch with all their senses if they truly wished to tap into their creative spirit.

This, of course, was back in my more idealistic days when I thought I could be an artist myself, rather than a studier of artists. But I'd always found the exercise helpful.

So I closed my eyes. Immediately, I saw Liam projected onto my mind's eye. I concentrated harder.

Follow your senses, all of them, not just sight, I heard Mr. Drayton's voice as I dredged it from my memory, let them pull you into the present. Life happens in the present. There is no past. No future. Only here and now. Art happens in the here and now. Be there.

So I opened my other senses to the world. The rich smell of the small bakery I lived above wafted through the air, the smell of the dough so pungent now that I paid attention to it that I could almost taste it.

There was something so very comforting in the smell of baking bread.

That made me smile. An old lady called Mrs. Rosselini owned and operated it. It had been handed down father to son for the last 150 years. But Mrs. Rosselini's father had only the one daughter, and she did her best to keep the family business going.

She also offered me a fresh roll every morning, banging on the door and greeting me with a smile each time.

I always tried to be polite, thanking her as she clicked her tongue at me, fussing and telling me I was too thin.

I always ate the roll, but now that I thought about it, I never really tasted it. That, I resolved to change.

What next? Touch. I let my hands fall to my keyboard, slid them down the smooth plastic keys, feeling the little humps over the F and J. Soon they touched the desk. It was an old wooden thing that creaked alarmingly if you dared lean against it. The varnish was rough and worn. But the wood itself was warm, alive.

One of the drawers was missing the little brass knob so that I couldn't pull it out. And someone had long ago shoved an old Italian coin beneath one of the feet to keep the whole thing from rattling.

It took no effort at all to remember the warmth of Liam's bare skin against mine. The heat of it.

A shiver running up my back made me suck a sharp breath in through my teeth.

Next, I concentrated on what I could hear. There were the normal city noises, of course. The rush of traffic outside. Shrieking car horns. The buzz of engines. Children laughed somewhere.

I thought of Liam's smooth voice. It was the type of voice that resonated in your chest when you heard it. I remembered the first time I'd heard him say my name in that voice. I wished I could hear that voice right at that moment.

Finally, I opened my eyes and let them play across my small flat. Back home, folks would probably call it a studio apartment (or a bachelor pad, if I'd been a man).

A Euro-style kitchen with the washing machine to the right of the sink, a tiny stove and an equally small fridge.

My desk sat beside my bed, which was a creaky affair. With no air conditioning to speak of, I always kept the single window open.

I'd always thought of it as cramped and spare. But now it seemed homely and warm and the thought of leaving it all behind gave me pause.

Mr. Drayton's exercise worked, it seemed. When I looked back at my laptop, I started tapping away feeling focused and confident.

I'd gotten two-thirds of a page done when the knock came from the door. The sudden, sharp noise jolted me.

"Coming!" I said in Italian, expecting to see Mrs. Rosselini on the other side.

Instead, when I pulled the door open I found Liam waiting on the other side. The door to my little flat was at the top of a set of steep and narrow stairs that always left me uneasy. Yet Liam had his hands in the pockets of his khakis while he leaned easily against the wall like there wasn't a neck-breaking fall just a few inches beyond the heels of his shoes.

My throat tightened and my heart lurched, leaving me standing dumbfounded there in front of him for I didn't know how long. Too long, anyway.

"Hey," he said.

"...Hi," I replied, my shocked brain finally remembering that I'd given him my address. However, I also remembered scrawling my cell number there.

"Not expecting to see me?"

The shock of his appearance on my doorstep wearing off, I rallied, "Well, I was sort of expecting a call first. A text, even."

He smiled, glancing around me into my small, one-room flat. He could have fit it into the kitchen of his suite back at the hotel with room to spare, and I felt myself get defensive about it, getting ready to rebuke anything he cared to say.

Except I didn't see disdain in his eyes, or amusement.

"Aren't you going to invite me in?"

"You need an invitation? Are you a vampire?"

Amusement did sparkle in his eyes, then. "I hope not. I enjoy sunshine and garlic far too much."

He wore a polo shirt a few shades lighter than his eyes, the buttons undone to give a tantalizing tease of the body the rest of the shirt hid. I leaned against the doorframe coyly, my hands pressed against the small of my back. Right then, those hands started clenching with the desire to touch him again.

"So why did you come?"

"Maybe I just wanted to see you."

"Just to see?" I said, all thoughts of Italian Renaissance artists and school papers forgotten.

"Should I leave and give you a call? Set this straight?"

He turned and grabbed the handrail a though about to start back down the stairs.

"No!" I said, reaching out and grabbing his hand, sudden panic setting in. I knew somewhere that he was just teasing, but part of me couldn't bear the thought of such a fleeting visit with him. Not after I'd just spent all morning thinking of nothing but him.

Liam turned back to me, pulling me close, our hips touching. "Good, because I don't think I could stand the wait."

Then he kissed me. Lightly, so that I could feel the soft smoothness of his lips and the warmth of his mouth. He tasted sweet.

A tingle ran down my chest and stomach, bursting into incredible heat when it reached its final destination.

Just when it began getting really good, just as my knees began turning to jelly, he pulled back from me.

"Hnh?" I said, unable to put a real word to my confusion. Part of me hated the effect he had on me. That complete disarming of all my defenses.

It was a small part. The rest of me wanted him to fold his arms around me and hold me against the heat of his body for the rest of the day. And the night. And the next day.

"Come on, get your shoes and let's go."

"Go?" the word was alien to me. The word I liked most at that moment was Stay.

He saw the effect he had on me. A quick tug on my hand pulled me close again, and once more his mouth found mine.

His hands slid down my back, moving over the swell of my hips. Grabbing my ass, he pulled our hips together. Hard. I throbbed for him. Ached. Deep inside, deeper than I thought possible.

I felt him come oh-so-achingly close to tearing off my clothes right then and there, putting that creaking bed frame to the test. But close isn't all the way. And sometimes the smallest gap can feel like a Grand Canyon's worth of space.

Like then, when he forcibly parted our bodies. This time, he looked just as flushed as I felt. It was a good look on him. Clean and natural and without pretense.

"You're making this really difficult," he said. I could practically see his heart thumping against his ribs.

"Why does it have to be difficult?" I said, eager to escape school and papers and life for a few more blissful moments with Liam.

"Well, I wanted to get you out into the car before I said anything..." His cheeks dimpled with his smile. A somehow still vocal and cynical voice inside of me wondered how many women had fallen prey to those dimples and the eyes that sparkled above them.

I told that voice to shut up. Over thinking things had never helped me in the past. And I'd already promised myself to try and live more in the moment, to be impulsive, to try and enjoy what life had to offer.

"Say anything about what? What are you planning, mister?"

Liam traced the tip of one finger over my cheek, smoothing a few stray strands of hair back behind my ear, his hand cupping my jaw. I knew he could feel the way my pulse hammered beneath the thin and sensitive skin of my neck.

I closed my eyes again, letting myself fall into the moment again, fall into the sensation of the warmness of his palm.

"I couldn't stop thinking about something you said to me."