‘I’ve known you since you were still crapping your pants in school, Sullivan. I know how hard it was when your folks split up, and your mom took Ashling out West. I saw the way you held it all in, kept it together while your old man went off the rails. And I know you avoid any kind of meaningful emotional entanglement like the plague because you don’t want to get close to anyone so you can be hurt again.’
Liam felt so tight inside it hurt. All he could think about was when he’d been singing like a proverbial canary that night on the rooftop of the old hotel. He lashed out at Candy for seeing too damn much and sneered, ‘Where did you learn all this? At your pop psychology module in college?’
She shook her head and leaned back. ‘I’ve never seen you behave around a woman the way you do around her. And if you’re not careful, you’re going to lose the best thing that could have ever happened to you, because as we both know, that good-for-nothing, stuck-up ice princess Julie did a real number on you. You’re you around Caitlin.’ She grimaced. ‘Well, a grumpy version of you at the moment, but that’s just sexual frustration.’
Candy jumped lithely off the desk and went to the door, stopping to look back at him. ‘And the only reason you’re getting away with what you just said is because you were the only one there for me when I came out. Now I’m doing the same for you. It’s time to come out, Liam.’
Something raw in Liam made him blurt out, ‘I told her I didn’t want to complicate things and she agreed.’
Candy rolled her eyes. ‘Dude, you’ve been handling complicated for decades. Honestly, I don’t know how you straight people ever manage to get it together.’
Chapter Eleven
I gritted my jaw so tight it hurt. Even though it was killing me, I was determined not to take the easy way out and leave my job at Sullivan’s. I told myself stoutly that it had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the prospect of never seeing Liam again was more painful than seeing him every day.
At least that would improve slightly once I began my internship, which was four days a week. Two weeks had done nothing to put a dent in my levels of sexual frustration. Every time I closed my eyes, all I could hear were two heartbeats and feel the sweaty tangle of limbs, the delicious slide of Liam’s big body into mine.
‘Red, I’ve gotta split, my mom’s got some emergency she needs help with. You okay to lock up? Liam’s doing stocktaking in the office.’
My heart lurched. No, I wasn’t okay to be left alone with Liam, even if he didn’t emerge from his office. But I’d have to go in there to give him the keys. I would have preferred if he’d been snarling at me the way he had done that first week, but it was much worse now, he completely avoided me and was distant but polite if we interacted.
I smiled brightly at Toby. ‘Sure. Absolutely not a problem.’
He lobbed the keys at me and I caught them.
‘I’ve already locked the main door, I’ll go out the emergency exit. Night, Red, see you tomorrow.’
The heavy door closed with a fatalistic-sounding bang, and then I berated myself. No doubt when I went in to give the keys to Liam, he’d barely glance at me.
Even so, he’d surprised me by telling me that he’d asked a detective friend of his to put feelers out for Johnny. His thoughtfulness had rubbed salt into the wound that I kept telling myself wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. I’d fallen for an orgasm, not the man.
I cleaned up, checked the fridges were stocked for the morning for Candy, finished locking up and turned off the lights. And then took a deep breath and went to the office.
The door was ajar and I knocked lightly and pushed it open. ‘Liam?’
No answer. I went in all the way and Liam was standing there with his hair awry, a stubbled jaw and wild eyes.
Something lurched in my chest, ‘Are you okay? You look a little...’ Crazy. I didn’t say it.
‘No,’ he ground out. ‘I’m not okay. I haven’t been okay since the night I first saw you.’
My belly swooped. My hand tightened around the keys. Distant and polite Liam was gone. The air crackled. I held out the keys.
Liam looked at them and almost snarled, ‘I don’t care about the damn keys.’
Feeling as if I was in some kind of mad dream, I asked, ‘What do you care about?’
For a long moment he said nothing. Tension pulsated between us.
When Liam uttered a guttural-sounding you, I almost didn’t believe it. But then he was closing the distance between us and taking the keys out of my hand and dropping them to the floor.
He’d maneuvered me onto his desk and was between my legs before I knew what was happening. Every cell in my body was sizzling. Without wanting to think about what this meant, I wound my arms around his neck and almost sobbed with relief when his mouth crashed down onto mine.
It felt as if we were devouring each other. Ravenous. Tongues sucking, teeth nipping, I tasted blood and didn’t know if it was mine or his. Desperation infused us, there was a hunger like I’d never experienced before, making me beg incoherently, please...now.
Liam stripped off my T-shirt as I scrabbled for his. His hands were on my jeans, undoing them, as I did the same to him, fingers clumsy on his buttons. He was lifting me up to pull my jeans down over my hips and down my legs, taking my panties with them.
I was feverish. Caught up in a lust so powerful it was awesome. With my feet I pushed Liam’s jeans down, too, and then he was pulling down his boxers, releasing his impressive erection, a drop of pre-come glistening at the head. I must have licked my lips or something, because I heard him say roughly, ‘No time for that now. I’ll explode.’