Page 17 of The Mood Board

“You ready?” I asked, feeling him at my entrance.

“Hell yes” was his breathless reply before I sank down, taking his length into me. I didn’t try to muffle my moan and immediately started rocking my hips back and forth. We were both quiet, lost in the pleasure and our movements, not wanting to move too fast and end everything almost before it began, no matter our arousal.

But when my movements grew harder and faster, I started slipping, and Liam had to dig his fingers into my butt and contort slightly to keep us moving.

He wouldn’t have to do that if you were taller, like Janelle.

I growled and moved more decidedly, ignoring the way my thighs suddenly looked so much larger compared to the woman’s model-like proportions. Liam groaned, his head falling back at the jump in movement and pressure.

“Just like that,” he gasped, his eyes opening again to reveal pupils dilated and hazy with lust and pleasure.

No,I told myself firmly. I’m what Liam needs.

Wrapping my legs more firmly around his hips, I ground against him at the bottom of every thrust, clenching to press against his entire length as I pulled up again.

“You are so damn good at this,” Liam groaned, his fingers digging into my arms as he crushed me to him, his mouth raiding mine as though he couldn’t get enough.

Not as good as Janelle, I bet. She has way more experience.

Shut up, shut up, shut up, I told the voice in the back of my head, determined to drown it out as my movements became frenzied, my fingers tangling in Liam’s hair.

His breath became gasps, and his hips rose to meet mine so hard he had to let me go to brace himself. We had left the slow and sweet behind in favor of wild and passionate, of fire and thunder.

The harder I went, the more his cries rang out, mine rising with them as we writhed together furiously, sweat breaking out, making the skin sliding together slick. Finally, Liam stiffened and grabbed fists of the quilt in his hands, his guttural cry echoing in the room.

I came to the feel of him pulsing deep within me, and I welcomed the nothingness that the wave of orgasm brought, carrying me under or maybe holding me up.

Even if it was only for a moment, for that moment, the only thing to exist in the world was Liam, me, and our twined pleasure.

But what went up had to come down. Liam had fallen asleep almost instantly as soon as we had crawled into bed and pulled the covers up, but sleep wouldn’t come for me. Instead, I lay there, my head on his chest, staring into the dark of the room.

What was happening to me? I felt like an entirely different person, someone I didn’t know.

I hadn’t had the most self-confidence in school, but I hadn’t lacked it, either. I hadn’t been homecoming queen, but I hadn’t been on the bottom rung of the popularity ladder, either. Mostly, people had failed to notice me. I had a couple of friends, people I had met through art club, and that had been that. Dates had been nothing special, nothing serious, nothing that would come to resemble love or even puppy love.

Body issues had come for me just as they did for most girls, wishing to look one way instead of another. Trying new hairstyles, learning how to put on makeup and not look like a clown, trying to figure out how to attract a crush—it was all part of the experience. Awkwardness had come with the territory, and looking back, I knew no one, not even the perfect, beautiful, confident homecoming queen, had escaped it.

True lack of self-confidence had come in the wake of my relationship with Russ, and it had happened slowly. With his help, I had chipped away at my self-confidence, allowing his actions and comments and the comments of his friends, who I had thought were my friends, to wear me down until I was barely a shadow of who I had been. It was the old frog in the boiling water adage—it happened so slowly I didn’t know I was in trouble until it was too late.

By the time our relationship ended, I had lost myself, questioning my own thoughts and feelings, wondering whether I was good enough for anything or anyone. Russ had made me feel small, useless, ugly, and stupid. And I had let him.

Well, I hadn’t let him. But I had begun to believe as he did, see me as he did—someone who wasn’t worthy of his affection and attention, who had to work and beg for it, to improve myself until I was perfect, exactly what he wanted. Until I had become someone I didn’t recognize, and even that hadn’t been enough for him. I had spent many nights, whether alone or with him, wondering how I could be better, look better, make myself better. How I could be a better lover so he wouldn’t find solace in another woman’s bed yet again.

Looking back, I could see how stupid I had been—hindsight made it easy, and I still cringed and grew angry when I thought about it. At Russ, of course, but also at myself for being so easily taken in, so caught up in what I thought was love, I couldn’t see the nasty, narcissistic asshole behind the charismatic mask. He had made me feel less-than-human, and it had taken me a long time to understand I was exactly who and what I needed to be.

And yet here I was again, beginning to worry that I wasn’t enough. And it had nothing to do with Liam—he told me every day, he showed me every day, that I was enough. But old scars covered wounds that healed slowly, if at all, and I wasn’t yet far enough removed from the pain and damage of my last relationship to withstand the test.

Something about Janelle was slicing those scars open, and I had to find a way to close them, and fast, because nothing good could come of what I was feeling.

Nothing.