“I want you to know.” I looked up into his eyes as I ran my hands down his chest, his abs, up again to his powerful shoulders and biceps. “Even if you weren’t such a nice guy, I’d love you just for your body.”
“That means so much to me.” He leaned down, kissing my mouth, my throat, my ear. “I love knowing you’re so superficial. It really gives me a lot of leeway.” He caught me in his arms and lay me dow
n on the floor, spread before him.
“Yes, I—” But whatever witty comeback I had on the tip of my tongue was quickly forgotten when he started using his. One hand to either thigh, he opened me wide and started feasting like a starving man, his tongue flicking, pressing against my clit, sucking and kissing and working me into a writhing, panting mess in under a minute.
He lifted his head and allowed me to catch my breath for a moment. “I like it when you tease me,” he said with a smile. “But I like it better when you can’t even manage to do it.”
Down again, he played with me, getting me close then moving away, pressing light kisses to my inner thighs, making me squirm until he told me to stay still or I wouldn’t get what I most wanted. Finally, he decided I’d had enough, or he couldn’t wait anymore, either, and he bit into me, telling me to cum for him in his mouth. That was an offer I could never refuse and I did it just the way he liked it, unrestrained, unashamed, giving him all I had.
That night we did have champagne over dinner. Liam scoffed at my grill pan, a poor substitute, but I didn’t have a yard or even a patio outside to accommodate a real grill. I knew he was putting up with it on a purely temporary basis. He hadn’t asked me again, but I knew the offer was still standing to move in with him. I could feel how good it would be, living with him. Waking up next to him, falling asleep in his arms. I couldn’t imagine anything I’d love more.
Lara had found a place to sublet, but it was only through October. Once winter set in, the owners planned to shut it down, preferring five months of no income to fully winterizing and maintaining their property during the cruelest months. She’d love to move into the apartment over the studio. I hadn’t made any promises, to her or to Liam, but I was seriously considering it.
“Have you heard from Margot?” Liam asked as we danced around each other in my small kitchen. I wasn’t exactly ready for a competitive spot on Top Chef, but I was learning a thing or two about cooking. It turned out that butter and salt were key ingredients in just about anything and everything. The mashed potatoes I was making were getting a lot of both.
I sighed, as I almost always did when discussing my sister. “They’ve found a house to rent.” I relayed what she’d told me, about the nice neighborhood and the good school Eloise would attend for kindergarten. Because she’d taken Eloise and moved back to the town in North Carolina she’d recently left. Now she’d returned without a job lined up or a stable set of friends to help secure her sobriety.
It broke my heart to see it happening. Saying good-bye to Eloise had nearly killed me. I’d managed to not cry while I’d hugged her sobbing little body. I didn’t want her to go, either. But I’d sure cried that night, remembering how she’d whispered softly in my ear, “Can’t I stay here with you, Auntie?”
I wanted to say yes, but I knew I didn’t have the right. I wasn’t about to get into a custody battle with my sister. Plus, who knew, maybe Margot would straighten out this time? What I could do was stay in better touch. I promised I’d go visit that fall. And if I didn’t like what I saw, then I’d think about what I could do to help Eloise.
“You’ll see her again soon,” Liam reassured me, a hand to my shoulder. He knew without my saying how worried I was about Eloise.
“Yeah,” I agreed. That was all I could do for now. “And Mom’s back in Wellesley.” I shared my other piece of news. Once Margot and Eloise had left, with me in my own apartment, I’d figured her days on the island were numbered. It was mid-August, anyway, and most of the social events of the summer season had already passed. It was a good time to pack up and head to the mainland.
“I’ll miss our long talks,” Liam joked, and I had to laugh, even though it also made me sad. My mother was like an impenetrable fortress. The best times I had with her were those in which she practiced restraint. In the past couple of weeks since I’d gotten out of the hospital, she’d held her tongue about Liam. Now that we were out in the open, spending most of the time he wasn’t at the fire station together, officially a serious couple, I was expecting a long, heated lecture. I’d been waiting for her to tell me what a mistake I was making, how I’d thrown away an amazing opportunity by letting Theo Bartright slip through my fingers. Maybe if she’d really gone for it she might have revisited her earlier theme about how Liam was to blame for Ian’s troubles, and dating him was tantamount to treason.
But she didn’t. She remained oddly silent on the Liam subject. I didn’t know what was the cause, but it simply could have been his act of heroism. In the middle of a blazing fire, I’d been abandoned. I knew because my burns were on my back, I’d been lying face-down on the ground. If it weren’t for Liam’s fortitude, his perseverance, his love of me pushing him down into the bowels of the ship to search and rescue, I’d be dead. That had to make a difference, even to someone as emotionally wounded, and as class- and money-conscious as my mother.
We ate dinner, enjoying that mix that came so easily between us of laughter and conversation. We washed dishes and teased each other, talked about what we wanted to do that night when both of us knew exactly what we wanted to do that night. We wanted to get lost in each other.
But there was something we needed to talk about. We’d been intimate since the accident, in more ways than one. He’d been true to his word, never leaving in the middle of the night but staying with me the whole time. He’d told me he loved me, asked me to move in with him. He was truly a changed man, opening himself up to me in a way I’d never thought possible.
But he’d also changed the way he expressed himself sexually. We made love, fierce and passionate, clawing at the sheets raw and sweaty and panting for more. He went down on me and gave me breathtaking orgasms that made me see stars and scream out his name. But he wasn’t rough with me anymore. No bondage, no toys, he hadn’t even spanked me once.
Was it sick and twisted to admit that I missed it? Was it perverted and ungrateful to say that great sex wasn’t enough for me? Regardless, the absence of kink was glaringly obvious. Each day that passed it seemed more and more like the elephant in the room, sitting there on the bed with us as he caressed me gently and lovingly.
“OK, Liam. We need to talk,” I said as we headed into the bedroom, kissing each other as we moved. Like a bucket of water on a fire, that statement seemed to douse his ardor.
“About what?” He looked at me, instantly wary.
“You don’t spank me anymore!” When I’d thought about how to broach the subject in my head, it had gone a lot smoother. I’d started by saying how much I enjoyed our sex life, how attracted to him I was, how he gave me the best orgasms I’d ever had. Then I’d start in about the changes. But that had been in my head. Apparently in reality I blurted.
“What?” He took a step back, clearly completely surprised.
“You used to get rough with me, tie me up and spank me. And I liked it.” Words tumbled out of my mouth. Better to get them out than let the embarrassment I could feel build, looming and threatening to wash over me like a rogue wave. “Now you’re so gentle. It feels good, but it’s…not the same.”
“You miss me being rough with you?”
“Yes!” I closed the distance between us, reaching out for his hands, wanting physical contact while I spoke so honestly. “I’m not saying it’s like every day I want that all the time. But, yes, that really turned me on.”
He swallowed, taking hold of my hands. “You want that again?”
“Yes,” I admitted, leaning into him. “Yes! It felt crazy and kind of scary and I don’t exactly understand it, but it was also so intense and good with you.”
He held me to his chest and I could hear his heart beating fast. “I want that, too, but I was afraid… I don’t always feel like a good person when I do that.”
“Why not?”
He sat down and I could tell he was struggling for the right words. “My father,” he began, and he reminded me about it all, telling me more than he ever had. I’d known that his father had been a violent man, parti
cularly when drunk. That he’d led a double life, the big friendly Irish guy everyone loved at a party to the outside world. The mean drunk who smacked his wife and kids to those who really knew him.
“It made me feel like him,” he summed it up simply but so painfully. “To enjoy hurting someone.”
“But that’s now how it feels to me,” I rushed to explain. “It doesn’t feel like you’re being cruel or sadistic. I’d never be able to trust you if it did.”
“How does it feel?”
“It feels…” Now I struggled for the words, not even sure myself how to explain how he’d made me feel. “It’s like this feeling of freedom. Tied up, you in control, you reading my body so intimately, it’s as if all the junk that usually clutters up my mind, all my to do lists, all my worries and insecurities and everything else just goes out the window. And all that’s left is you and what you’re doing to my body and it feels so good.”
“It does?” Now his voice grew deeper, his eyes looking at me with dark intent.
“You have no idea,” I whispered, longing for what I’d just described.
“Well what are we waiting for?” He had me naked in seconds flat, stretched across his lap, vulnerable and positioned with my back arched, ass up in the air for his discipline. “You need this?” he asked me, caressing my bare cheeks.
“Yes,” I exhaled, feeling it in my bones. “I need it from you.”
The first smack of his hand across my ass felt so electric, so charged it nearly made me cum in an instant.
“You wait until I tell you,” he reminded me, reading me as always with such expertise. He began what he did so well, peppering my thighs with slaps, getting me wet and panting and squirming on his lap, wanting to whine and beg for more.
“I knew you needed discipline,” he whispered, caressing my ass, burning and stinking from his palm. “You need it from me, don’t you my love?”