“You taste so good,” he muttered, sounding a little incredulous. Natalie moaned when he pressed his entire face to her abdomen and nuzzled her belly button with his nose. His whiskers scraping gently against the skin should have sent her into a fit of ticklish laughter, but instead, his actions created a hot, thick sensation in her lower belly. The sensation only increased when he opened his mouth and she felt the heat of his mouth penetrating her.
He rose over her and took her mouth heatedly. It was a wild kiss, a torrid one. It told Natalie loud and clear how much he wanted her.
She treasured that knowledge.
The tips of her breasts ached. She pressed closer to his chest, desperate to alleviate the prickling sensation. He groaned into her mouth and reached between them, his fingers finding the fastenings of her shorts. Then his fingers were touching her—gentle and knowing.
Natalie stared blindly at the ceiling fan, poised on a precipice of bliss, listening to Liam whisper an anthem of desire to her, overwhelmed by sensation. She clung to his shoulders as if she thought they were the only things saving her from falling. “You’re even sweeter than I thought you’d be…and I imagined plenty.”
It suddenly struck her through a thick haze of arousal what was happening. She was supposed to let go…surrender to this hot, building need. Surrender to Liam.
The realization felt huge in that moment…frightening. If she gave herself in this physical way, she doubted she could ever go back. Her soul, too, would be his. And Liam didn’t know this about her; that she was a novice when it came to love. For him, this was just the inevitable conclusion of two people desiring each other. He could give of himself in just a physical sense, while Natalie couldn’t.
Not with Liam, she couldn’t.
Despite her doubts, however, his hand kept moving, creating a wild tempest in her body, his mouth kept burning her lips and neck and breasts, and she was falling…falling. She struggled for a thread of reason in the midst of flooding pleasure.
“No, Liam…wait,” she managed to whisper next to his mouth. Despite her words, she shaped his lips to hers feverishly.
“I don’t care about our families, Natalie. I don’t care about the past. Nothing matters right now but this.”
“No…it’s not that,” she whispered. She clutched desperately to his shoulders and arched against his hand. The need for release from this delicious, mounting pressure nearly ruled her in that moment. It would rule her. She couldn’t seem to stop it—
“It’s just…I’ve never really done this before.”
She barely noticed his mouth pausing against the throbbing pulse at her neck. Pleasure loomed like a wave about to crash over her.
It did.
She couldn’t control it. Her body shook at the impact, bliss shooting through every nerve and muscle. She distantly heard Liam say her name, and then he was using his right arm to roll her on her side. He held her against him, as though he used his body to buffer her in a storm, helping her absorb the shock of her pleasure. She pressed tightly to him, needing his strength as she rode the waves of an uncertain ecstasy.
She opened her eyelids a moment later, her body still zinging with aftershocks of pleasure. Liam straightened slightly, looking down at her. He felt hot next to her—hot and very aroused. It took her a moment to focus on his face. His goatee looked dark in the dim room, outlining the grim set of his mouth.
“What did you mean?” he asked.
Her breath froze on a pant. She had no doubt to what he referred. Vulnerability oozed up, breaking through the surface of her dazed consciousness.
“I…I meant I’ve never been with a man,” she said in a cracking voice when she noticed that his rigid expression didn’t break.
“Why not?”
Her mouth fell open. She shrugged helplessly.
“The right opportunity just never came up.”
Her cheeks heated in rising embarrassment when he continued to stare down at her. She’d thought about telling him the truth ever since he’d first mentioned he wanted to make love to her, but she’d never imagined telling him at such a charged, intimate moment.
She closed her eyes. He must think she was a freak of nature. A virgin…at her age.
“I know it must seem strange to you,” she whispered through lips that still felt swollen from Liam’s kisses. “But after the crash—once I got out of the hospital and went back to school—everything was different for me.” She opened her eyes. A rising sense of trepidation grew in her when she noticed the hint of bewilderment in his eyes. How could she make him understand, when she’d hardly put the experience into words herself? It was just part of the air she breathed, those lonely years of her adolescence, daily feeling her difference in comparison to the children and young adults that surrounded her.
She licked her lower lip nervously when Liam didn’t respond. She sensed he was listening, however, with a tight focus, so the words continued to spill out of her as if a pressure valve had been released.
“I was a year behind in school because I’d spent so much time recovering in the hospital,” she continued in a cracked voice. “The friends that I’d had moved ahead of me, and I didn’t know anyone from the lower grade. That was bad enough. Add to it that Harbor Town is so small. All the kids knew what happened to me. They were cautious. They were curious, too…about the scars. They were actually worse when I was younger. I had a few surgeries after I start
ed school again. Most of the kids avoided me. I don’t blame them at all—they didn’t know how to talk about serious things.”
“Most adults don’t, either,” Liam said suddenly, startling her. She wished she could interpret the expression on his face. Disappointment swooped through her, so strong it felt akin to nausea when he released her. He pulled the blanket around her, covering her, before he flung his long legs over the side of the bed. Natalie watched in growing helplessness as he remained there, seated at the edge of the mattress with his elbows on his knees and his forehead pressed against his hand.