“How desperate, Peaches?” He leans toward my lips, hovering torturously close, letting them brush, but never fully giving in to the embrace. The need arcing between us is unbearable. Release, I want release. I lean forward, and he follows the dance. Oh, hell.
“If you think I’m going to let you tease me like this—I’ve squashed this before, I’ll do it again,” I scold.
“Oh, see, that’s not fair.” His nose brushes against my cheek, angling like he’s finally going to put me out of my misery and kiss me. “Because I’ve tried to kill this Evie, trust me, and I never quite found the trick.”
“And yet here you are torturing me when you could be showering me with affection.”
“If you don’t think I’m not going to enjoy every second”—he lays a kiss on my jaw—“of knowing you want me, too, then you don’t know me as well as I thought you did.”
“Oh, believe me, the knowledge that you’d make me a lovesick puppet—” I pause as he runs a finger up my side and I lose a breath. This man is going to be the death of me. “If…if you knew, is what’s kept it locked up so tight for years. I was just hoping if your affections are as you claimed, you might”—he presses a kiss to the corner of my lips, and it slices through any remaining lucid thought— “that maybe you would be more inclined to lavish me instead of this extended torture.”
“I can’t do both, puppet?”
“I swear to go—”
He cuts me off, pressing his lips firm against my mouth. Shivers of desire race through as he crushes his body against mine. The tension of anticipation slakes away, and we mold into one in the following embrace. My breath catches, and Liam takes the opportunity to deepen the kiss, thoroughly wrecking me with a spine-tingling, hungry pass of his lips.
Warmth spirals through me, curling my toes. Nothing has ever felt as free as this kiss, like before we were doing everything with an elephant of false pretenses on our backs, and now it’s just us being honest for once in our damn lives.
My hands fall to his shirt, soggy and freezing, plastered to every ounce of his skin, and the need to have a living, breathing Liam Kelly wins out over my urge to keep kissing him. I pull away. “You still need a towel.”
He hovers, lips swollen, a glorious half-dazed expression washed over his face. Maybe I wasn’t misreading his decimated appearance at the Eiffel Tower.
“I’m not really thinking about towels right now, Peaches.”
I bite the lower portion of my lip, the need to take care of him and kiss him senselessly at odds with each other.
“Especially when you do that,” he groans, reaching for me. Pushing up off the counter, I walk us backward, never breaking the kiss, toward the bathroom doorframe. I miss a bit and whack my back and head against the wood. He cradles my noggin with a “fuck’s sake,” still greedily devouring my lips.
I snatch a towel and back him up again, thankful for once this apartment’s square footage is so tiny. We walk in tandem to my bedroom, and I finally pull away. Grabbing the folds of his shirt, I tug it up over his head, running the towel over his chest and ridges. His body shakes, and my scowl returns.
“Coming here without your jacket.” I tsk. “What were you thinking? Look at you. You’re still shivering.”
“I wasn’t thinking, and that’s not why I’m shivering.” He smirks, catching my wrist as it passes over him with the towel. He brings me up against the bed, and the crook of my knees hits the mattress. I allow myself to collapse, dragging him on top of me. He brushes his lips to mine, but when I reach out and touch his skin, it’s still too cold for my liking.
“Get your ass under the blankets, mister.”
“Such a bossy caretaker, my goodness.” He nibbles my earlobe.
“I’m serious.” I giggle, pushing him away. “I’ll let you steal my body heat if that’s any kind of incentive, but go. Now.” I wiggle off the covers and snap my fingers. He raises his hands in surrender, getting into the bed and burrowing under the blankets.
There’s a camisole underneath my shirt, and I gather the edges of my top layer to take it off for more skin contact. Raising the edge of my shirt, I inadvertently meet Liam’s stare, and my heart stutters.
Gene Kelly had this face. This one look that he fashioned on his leading lady that made it seem like he’d go to the ends of the world for them. Like nothing else mattered, and he was irrevocably theirs. In my teen years, I dreamt about being on the receiving end of that face. Of having someone so far gone, they’d look at me with that soft admiration, and I’d just know that at least one person on this earth thought I was worth something. In my twenties, though, I buried that desire with my other dreams, certain that look, and most of the magic I thought existed in life, were reserved solely for Hollywood pictures.
So imagine my surprise as I inch closer to my twenty-seventh birthday, with very little magic left in the world, to have that particular attention pinned on me by none other than Liam Kelly himself.
The desire reflected in his eyes emboldens me, and I slow my stripping, winking at him when my shirt is finally off. He crooks a finger, beckoning me to the bed, propped on one elbow, the sheet falling at his hips.
I shake my head, a slight smile lifting the corner of my lips, and meticulously fold the shirt, placing it on a pile of clothes flung haphazardly on my desk.
A groan from behind deepens my smirk. “What, you know I like to keep this room tidy,” I tease with a slow turn back to him.
A tortured muscle flicks in his jaw.
“Oh, I’m sorry.” I put an innocent hand to my chest, highlighting my cleavage. “Do younotlike being teased—I just assumed.”
“I don’t mind the teasing, Peaches. It’s just—” He fists the blanket, pulling it tight to his chest and flashing a dopey needy smile at me with an overexaggerated shiver. “I’m so cold. I need you.”
