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 started 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.
“And it just kept going?” he asked after a moment. “You were what—twelve years old when you went back to school? Are you saying that people continued to avoid you?”
“Not completely, of course not,” Natalie murmured. Was that anger she heard in his voice? She pulled the comforter up higher over her chest, feeling awkward in the knowledge of her nudity. “I made a few friends. But things have a sort of domino effect. Because of what happened to me when I was young, I became known as the shy girl, I guess. The quiet one…the different one.” The scarred one, Natalie added in the privacy of her mind. No reason to state the obvious. “The girl nobody ever asked out on a date,” she finished with a self-conscious laugh.
His head turned sharply.
“That’s the most…” He paused, his mouth shaping into a frown that made it look like he wanted to spit something out in furious disgust. “Infuriating thing I’ve ever heard. How could people be so insensitive?”
She exhaled in relief when she understood the reason for his anger.
“It’s only natural, Liam,” she said softly. “It just seems strange to you. You were the captain of the football team. You were the homecoming king.”
“What the hell has that got to do with anything?” he asked, his bewi
ldered expression telling her loud and clear she might as well have just told him the moon was made of green cheese.
“You lived in a different world than I did during your teenage years. Think about it—if we’d been in the same year at school, would you have sought me out as a friend?”
He looked mutinous. “Of course I would have.”
She smiled, grateful to him for his indignation. “You’re just saying that because we both were affected by the crash. That made you see the world a little differently than a typical teenager. I should have included in the hypothetical question that you weren’t involved in any way in the accident. Would you have wanted to hang around me then?”
He opened his mouth but then paused. Something flickered across his features. He turned his head.
“I was an idiot when I was teenager, especially before the crash. I didn’t take anything seriously. It’s not fair to judge me based on that.”
“I’m not judging you, Liam, that’s the point,” Natalie said earnestly. “I don’t judge any kid for being a kid. It’s their right to live in an uncomplicated, happy world and want to stay there.”
“You were a kid, too,” he said stiffly. “You deserved that as well.”
Natalie wasn’t sure how to reply. She hadn’t been sure what to expect from Liam at her admission, but it certainly hadn’t been this frothing, simmering anger.