I’d thought about this moment for days. I’d pictured it the entire drive over here. Still, the real thing was better. Being that close to Liam, kissing him again, it felt like being alive. It was a feeling I’d lost over the last couple years.

It was stirring up a heat I thought I might never feel again, and it spurred me to press in closer, deepen the kiss.

“Christ, gypsy,” Liam groaned, and I gasped at the way my muscles clenched in reaction to hearing that.

He bent, dipping me backward a bit and he put his hands under my thighs and hoisted me up. A startled laugh popped out of me as I wrapped my legs around him, but it dissolved into a moan at the pressure that created right where I was starting to need it. I couldn’t stop myself from rolling my hips, seeking more.

A moment later, I was on my back on the couch, Liam looming over me.

“You’re going to kill me,” he groaned, dropping in to kiss me breathless again.

When he’d well and truly accomplished that, he leaned up, chuckling when I tried to follow.

“Not yet,” he rumbled. I whined a little in response, past the point of being embarrassed about it. “We gotta talk first, gorgeous.”

He was right, I knew that. It didn’t mean I had to like it.

I went to move away and sit up, but he pressed down with his hips a bit. Through the haze of need that threw my senses, I noticed the hard ridge of his cock. My pulse skyrocketed even as I tried to calm myself down.

“No.” His voice was more rough and demanding than I’d ever heard it, and it did very delicious bad things to me.

“No?” I was distracted. I had no idea what he was talking about.

“We need to talk, but if you try to get out from under me now, I’m going to put you right back there again, and I won’t have the control to stop again.”

Okay. Wow.

“Oh.”

“Fuck, I hope you say that when I’m inside you.”

“You’re very good at this,” I breathed.

He tilted his head to the side a bit, bemused.

“The… uhh… talking.”

The confusion lifted, and pure masculine pride took its place. “Good to know.”

I bit down on my lip, my mind already wandering to how he might use that knowledge.

“Right now, you need to be the one to talk, though, gypsy.”

Okay. I was ready for this. I’d spent a lot of time thinking about what I was going to say.

“I’m sorry,” I started. “I didn’t mean to shut you out the last couple days. I just…” I took a deep breath, trying to collect all the thoughts that I’d been juggling. “Going back there made me realize a few things, and I needed time to work through all of that.”

“Like what?”

“Like that I haven’t really been living for the last three years.” I decided to leave out Cher’s involvement in acknowledging that one to keep from sounding like a lunatic. “I knew it. I knew that I’d narrowed my life down to just being about Owen, but it seemed like it was what I should do. Like I’d been gifted this love with Joel that it was all I was going to get, and now my job was to mourn it. I think going back there again made me really see that as much as it hurts, I didn’t die that day. Joel… he… he sacrificed himself to keep me and Owen alive, and I’ve been wasting it.”

I brought my hands up, running them along his chest. It should have felt beyond awkward to lay there with him above me while I talked about this, but having him there felt right. It was like he was shielding me, making this bubble where I could say anything I needed without fear.

“It’s partly because of you, too,” I went on.

“Kate—” he tried to interject, but I shook my head.

“I know this was on me. I’m not saying I wouldn’t have gotten there for one reason or another anyway. But it happened now because you came into my life and made me really feel something for the first time in a while, and you didn’t just let me run away when it scared me.

“I wanted to come to you as soon as I got back, but I didn’t want it to be a knee-jerk reaction to everything I was feeling. You were right, I had to know what I wanted. I’ve spent the last few days waiting for the doubt to take over again, but it hasn’t. I want this. I want to start living again, and I want you there with me.

“You told me all I had to do was say the word, so… ugh… this is me, saying it,” I finished inelegantly.

Liam stared down at me, his eyes roaming my whole face. He brought one hand up, tracing the edge of my cheek as he watched. None of it was what I expected. I’d thought he’d be happy. Excited, maybe? I might have pictured him ravaging me in response. This? Him staring at me so intensely, but without any emotion on his face? I didn’t know what to do with that. My stomach tightened.

That hand slid back into my hair, and his eyes shut for a moment, almost like he was in pain. Did he not want this anymore? Had he decided—

My train of thought derailed when he opened his eyes again, and he smiled at me like I’d hung the moon just for him.

“My gypsy,” he whispered, almost reverent.

And then he was kissing me again.

There was no restraint this time, from either of us. His body was flush with mine, his hips between my legs. Our lips and tongues danced, learning each other, giving and taking until we were both panting.

My hips started to rock again. It’d been so long since I’d felt this way. Desire was just a memory, and experiencing it again was more volatile than I’d let myself remember. The heady sensation of causing the same in him only drove me higher.

Liam ripped his lips from mine, and I groaned at the loss. “Owen,” he panted. “Do you need to get home?”

I shook my head. “He’s with Daz and Avery tonight.”

“All night?”

I knew what he was asking. It wasn’t just logistics. He was giving me a chance to cool this down, to back away and take things slow. But this didn’t feel fast. This had been building for weeks now.

“All night.”

He got to his feet, and I made a little noise of protest before he leaned down and picked me up.

“Where are we going?”

“My bed,” he clipped.

“Oh.”

He groaned. “Give me a break, and please don’t say that again until I’ve got you naked. Yeah?”

I felt myself get wet from the promise in those words.

“I can do that.”

His head came down, and I took the hint, craning my neck up to kiss him.

“I haven’t stopped thinking about that mouth,” he confessed as he carried me into his room.

How many times had I thought about that kiss? How many times had it crept into my thoughts even when I wasn’t sure I wanted it to? I couldn’t even count.

I traced his full bottom lip with a finger. “I like yours, too.”

He nipped at my finger before I snatched it away. “I’ll make you more than like it,” he promised.

I had no doubt he could.

Liam set me down beside his bed, and I unabashedly took a minute to look around. The furniture was all black stained wood, the bedding a light gray. On the walls though, there were paintings and framed drawings that were full of color and life.

“Are they all yours?” I blurted, moving from one image to the next.

He followed my gaze, landing on the largest painting of an old ship on a stormy sea. It had elements of classic tattoo style to it mixed with broad, exaggerated brush strokes.

“Not all of them,” he answered. “But that one is.”

“It’s incredible.”

“My second favorite piece at the moment.”

“What’s the first?”

One hand came up, gliding under my hoodie, then beneath my shirt on my side. He pushed the shirt away, revealing the side of my tattoo that he could see from in front of me.

“Liam,” I whispered.

“I was up against men I respect who are talented as fuck, and I created what you liked best. I got to get you in my chair and in my life. That gypsy might be my favorite piece forever.”

I threw myself at him, again.

There was no more stopping, no more distractions. It took no time at all for the heat between us to boil over. I reached for the hem of his shirt at the same time he pushed my hoodie from my shoulders. I let it fall while he pulled his shirt away, then went after mine. Each item went, one by one, our mouths drawn immediately back to each other any time they were forced to break apart. I managed to get his belt undone with unsteady fingers. My shorts and panties fell to the floor when he pushed them past my hips, and he yanked me tight against him, skin to skin. His kiss became impossibly deeper, like he was drinking me in as his hands roamed my back down to my ass. He groaned deep, the sound radiating from his chest through my own, as he cupped me there.

With a firm hold on each cheek, he lifted me in the air and laid me down on the bed. I gasped as I fell, but he swallowed the sound. His lips left mine, traveling down my neck. He teased with licks and nips down, down, down, until he sucked the tip of one breast into his mouth. My back arched, pressing up into his mouth.

“Oh,” I moaned.

Liam growled, moving to the other nipple while one warm hand covered where his mouth had been. He teased the other breast until I was writhing beneath him.

“Liam,” I begged.

His head came down, forehead against my upper chest. “Tell me you’re ready for more. I need to hear you say it,” he said on a constant, low groan there.

“Please, give me more.”

In a flash of movement, he was bent low, lifting my legs above his shoulders, and his mouth went between them.

I cried out as he gave a long lick on my clit, then sucked it hard. He ate me like he was starved, like he’d been so hungry for a taste it nearly undid him. He ate me like he wanted me to feel as wild as I’d made him.

He succeeded.

I buried my hands in the length of his hair, loving that I could hold onto him there. My hold on the strands only pushed him further, speeding the lashing movements of his tongue.

“Oh. Oh. Oh,” I panted. “Liam.”

He didn’t stop, didn’t waste time on words. He was driving me over the edge, and that was all that mattered.

“I…I…”

Just when I thought I was going to reach the precipice, he thrust two fingers inside of me.

I shattered.

My body, my thoughts, any sense of anything beyond the pleasure he was creating was lost. There was just Liam, his tongue, his fingers, and the way he owned my body in those moments.