Far too late, I scrambled for clothes. ‘Do you mind?’
But instead of leaving again or apologizing, he came in and closed the door behind him, a dangerously stern look on his face and in his eyes. My breath left my chest. A sudden image almost floored me, of him putting me over his knee, fingers hooking under the waistband of my panties to pull them down, exposing my butt cheeks.
Wetness oozed between the lips of my sex. I cursed silently. I’d been permanently wet all week.
I held my clothes to me like an outraged virgin. I answered myself. ‘Well, I do mind. I’m trying to get changed and this is coming very close to sexual harassment in the workplace.’
‘Ha!’
He laughed. Laughed. I glared at him and tried to maintain an outraged expression when all I wanted to do was ogle him like some sex-starved groupie.
His voice was harsh. ‘You’ve been undressing me with your big brown eyes all week, so don’t talk to me about sexual harassment. And that’s when you haven’t been flirting for Ireland with every punter on the other side of the bar.’
The unfairness of this attack made me gasp. When I could find my voice, I said, ‘How dare you. You know damn well that part and parcel of serving behind a bar is charming the customer. I noticed you’re not exactly shy about coming forward yourself. What was it that blonde said earlier?’ I affected a simpering little-girl voice, ‘“Liam promised to make me a Dirty Cosmo just the way I like it.”’
I realized that I was so angry right now I was shaking. A master of keeping my emotions at bay when I’d learned early to lock them away and to mediate between Mary and Johnny, I wasn’t used to this. I didn’t like it.
I threw down my clothes and stalked over to Liam, sticking a finger right in the middle of his chest. ‘Either take off your clothes, too, if you want to continue this conversation, or get out.’
His eyes burned like two blue flames. ‘Fine.’ And then he was pulling his T-shirt up and off, and his hands were on his jeans. I gulped and took a step back, but Liam was pulling his jeans down now, kicking them off, and all I could see was the prominent bulge in his snug boxers. The one I’d been drooling over all week.
‘Now. Where were we?’
I looked up and felt dazed. My anger had drained away.
Liam’s heated gaze dropped to my breasts and then down farther to my hips, thighs and legs. When he looked back up, he was no longer angry either, he looked a little wild. Feral. And I wasn’t sure how I was still standing.
He uttered two words. ‘Fuck it.’ And then I was being hauled into his arms, against his body and I realized just how badly I’d been craving to feel this again. A small moan of ecstasy slipped out just as Liam’s mouth crushed mine.
I was wrapped around him like a vine, but I felt as if I couldn’t get close enough to him. I wanted to climb into his skin. He felt hot against me. His mouth was hard, tongue rough and thrusting deep, hands roving up and down my back...undoing my bra, ripping it off. His other hand delving beneath my panties to cup and squeeze my bum.
Things were moving so fast I could hardly breathe. Alarm bells went off, but I ignored them. That delicious tension was building inside me. Usually it took ages for me to feel this hot with a guy, but with Liam it was instantaneous.
His hands were on my breasts now, palming them, fingers pulling at my nipples, making me want to scream, I was so turned on...wet and ready.
Desperate to avoid crashing and burning again, I pulled my mouth from Liam’s. He opened his eyes and looked at me. They were heavy-lidded and so full of illicit danger that I knew if I could, I’d probably have orgasmed on the spot.
His voice sounded thick, slurred. ‘What is it?’
I was hurtled back to that night. The post-coital humiliation. I couldn’t face that again, not with him. I had to avoid it at all costs. And all I could feel was the insistent thrust of his hard-on against me.
‘Nothing...’ My voice was husky. ‘I just want to...do something.’ Mentally, I counted on Liam being in the vast majority of guys who liked what I was about to do.
I started to drop to my knees before him and saw his eyes flare. Bingo. Anticipation made my belly tight, when I’d never particularly enjoyed doing this before, even though I’d become proficient at it as a means of getting the focus off me when I was with a guy. After a blow job they’d be hard pushed to recall their name, never mind if I’d had an orgasm or not.
Liam’s hands, dislodged from my breasts, clenched to fists by his sides as I settled on my knees in front of him. I hadn’t expected this, but my mouth watered at the thought of uncovering him, stroking him, tasting him.
‘What are you doing?’
He sounded hoarse. I put my hands on the sides of his boxer shorts and looked up, all wide-eyed innocence, enjoying the heady rush of knocking him off his axis for the first time. ‘I would have thought that was perfectly obvious.’
* * *
Every functioning brain cell Liam possessed seemed to have migrated to the straining head of his cock. Caitlin was on her knees in front of him, about to pull his boxers down. He spasmed with lust. Fuck...
‘Caitlin...you don’t have to do this...’ His voice sounded as if it was grating over rusty nails. Why was he talking? He just wanted his mouth to stay shut and hope for the best.
She was pulling down his boxers now and he winced with a mixture of pain and pleasure when his erection sprang free of the constriction. A week’s worth of sexual frustration was beading at the tip of a painful erection.