His hands—half cherishing, half commanding—moved over her body. Her breasts tingled beneath his touch. She arched into him, eager to make his heat her own.
The earlier conflict seemed to have created a pressure in both of them, the type of friction that required release. Her clothes seemed to melt off her beneath his hasty, adroit fingers. He urged her on to the cushioned recliner. She laid back and stared up at the black night sky, puffs of air and moans flying past her parted lips. His hands and mouth seemed to be everywhere at once, seemingly turning her into a single, throbbing nerve ending.
When he settled on her hip bone, treating it to a gentle kiss, Natalie cried out in rising need and reached for him, trying to urge him up to her, begging him silently to quench the fire he’d set in her flesh.
He made a hushing sound and grabbed her wrists, restraining her. His head moved between her thighs.
She keened softly in awe as pleasure flooded her.
Did he know he kissed her very soul?
The sound of the waves hitting the rocks became obliterated by the pounding of her heart. It became unbearable to exist in this taut world of bliss, friction and intimacy Liam built in her. She strained tight in surrender. The explosion of pleasure—of sheer feeling—that detonated in her flesh was so intense, it almost hurt to succumb.
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She still was recovering when she felt Liam slide inside her, filling her, stopping only when they were pressed tight, belly to heaving belly.
“Shh, I’ve got you,” he whispered, his voice a rough caress in her ear before he kissed her there. She distantly heard her own whimpers of anguished release still escaping from her throat and realized he’d been soothing her.
Then Liam began to move, and her pleasure-dazed brain once again focused on approaching ecstasy.
“I’m going to go to Lake Tahoe,” Liam said later, his lips lingering to caress her breast after he spoke.
The hair on the back of her neck stood on end when she registered his words. They lay together on the cushioned recliner, their bodies entwined, the perspiration from their heated lovemaking drying on their skin in the gentle breeze. Natalie realized her stroking fingers in his hair had frozen at his statement.
“To talk to Lincoln DuBois?”
She felt his nod. She resumed stroking him, her mind whirring into overdrive.
“I’m going with you,” she said, glad at that moment he couldn’t see her apprehensive expression because of the darkness.
Once, the truth about the crash had haunted her, eluded her, a hazy outline she could never quite bring into focus. Now Natalie wished she’d never coveted that prize.
What if that elusive truth destroyed the powerful, but still newborn and fragile connection between Liam and her?
Chapter Thirteen
If it weren’t for the breathtaking Lake Tahoe scenery distracting her, Natalie might have thrown up. She was glad Liam was driving the car up the curving mountain road that overlooked the topaz blue alpine lake, and not her. He handled the tight curves like a pro. A thought struck her as she stared at the steep drop-off that looked to be only a few skinny feet from the right front tire of the rental car.
“You said your mother grew up in Tahoe. Do you still have family here?”
“Not anymore. My aunt and uncle lived in Incline Village until I was about nineteen, when they moved to Sacramento.”
“Did you visit when you were young? I was wondering why you seem so comfortable driving on this road.”
Liam gave her a quick glance, his brow furrowed. Natalie barely resisted an urge to shout at him to look back at the road.
“Is my driving making you nervous?” he asked, a grin tickling his mouth.
“Not your driving, no. You seem very confident. It’s this road. I mean…maybe you can’t see it, but there’s like a hundred foot drop about two inches away from my door,” she said, glancing anxiously out the passenger window.
Warmth spread inside her when he started to laugh, a lighthearted sound she hadn’t heard from him for several days. In many ways, they’d grown closer in the past week, spending quiet time together, swimming in the continued warm summer weather, taking walks or just sitting on the terrace, always touching, as if they wanted to know the other was there in some tangible sense. He was always warm and considerate with her; he was a great deal more than warm in bed.
But in many ways, she couldn’t help but feel he’d grown distant since that night at the fundraiser. He seemed as if he was constantly trying to work out some kind of puzzle in his head. Over the past few nights, she frequently saw him on his computer. On several occasions she heard him talking on the phone in the distance. He’d spent the duration of the flight from Detroit to Reno working, looking over his notes with a sober expression of concentration.
So his deep, earnest laughter filling the interior of the car sounded especially wonderful to her at that moment.
“I’ve driven this road maybe a dozen times or more in a car, but my cousins and I have circled it a hell of a lot more in dirt bikes.”