Chapter Eleven
Kayla was sick with nerves, which wasn’t all that uncommon in her life, really, but it was uncommon when it came to Liam.
Still, they hadn’t exactly discussed . . . anything. They’d agreed to see each other tonight, but what did that mean? She didn’t have a time, a place. All he’d done was fucking nod at her and repeat tomorrow.
She kind of wanted to punch him right about now.
Instead, she’d picked up a pizza at a place kind of close to his house, and she was going to be damn brave enough to march up to his door and offer dinner and sex. And if he turned her down, she’d live.
Maybe punch him too, but mostly she’d live.
But as she turned onto his street, his truck was parked where he always seemed to park it, which meant he was home. Probably.
Her stomach lurched and even the smell of pizza didn’t help. Why was she doing this? What was the point of potentially embarrassing herself?
She looked at his little house and thought about his meticulously organized workshop, the way he’d kissed her last night, the scrape of his beard on her thighs.
Okay, well, there were some convincing arguments there. She grabbed the pizza and got out of her car. She breathed through the nerves as she walked up to his front door.
Embarrassment wasn’t fatal. Feeling foolish would eventually fade, so she had everything to gain and nothing to lose. If she could only get that through to her churning stomach.
She stood on his porch and probably the only thing that eventually got her to knock on Liam’s door was a man staring at her a little too intently from across the street.
It didn’t take long for the door to swing open, and he must have looked out a peephole or something because he was smiling when he opened it. “Hey.”
“Hi,” she managed. “I hope I’m not . . . overstepping,” she offered lamely, and then inwardly berated herself for it.
“Not at all.”
Before she thought better of it, she reached out with her free hand and cupped his cheek, rubbing her thumb over the coarse texture. “You look tired.”
His mouth curved in that world-weary way of his. “I was up half the night taking care of a drunk person.”
“That’s a nasty habit you have.” Something like jealousy poked at her, though she didn’t want to be that girl. But apparently she was. “Who?”
“Aiden.”
“Oh.” She felt unaccountably awkward at the mention of the brother she’d first agreed to go out with.
“It was . . . Well, you brought pizza. Come inside.” He took the box from her and walked toward his kitchen. Kayla closed the door and followed him.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
He grabbed two plates from a cupboard. “Why?”
She studied him for a moment, coming to the conclusion he was well and truly baffled. That it would never occur to him to unload his problems on someone else. It was fascinating because she recognized that, though they came at it from different places.
She’d always been told by someone or another that her problems were less important, and so she’d learned to stuff them down. Liam seemed to take responsibility for everything, to hold that responsibility to himself because he felt as though it was his job to fix.
But maybe that came from a similar place. She’d been an avoider. He was clearly a fixer, but maybe it all stemmed from feeling like their own problems weren’t worthy.
“Sometimes it feels good to tell someone what’s bothering you.”
He stared at the pizza as he seemed to puzzle over her words. Something in her chest pinched. Maybe her heart. She wanted . . . She wanted him to tell her what was wrong, and she wanted to offer him some comfort.
“It is what it is.” He squared his shoulders and smiled at her. “I’ll fix it.” So certain and sure.
“You’ll fix what exactly?” she pressed, and then wondered why she was pressing when she could be eating pizza or having sex or not talking about his brother who’d asked her out not all that long ago.
His eyebrows drew together and he moved his gaze to her as if the question didn’t make sense.
“Aiden isn’t an it, any more than he’s someone who’s your job to fix,” she said gently.
“He’s my brother.”
“Yes.” Kayla accepted the plate he’d handed her and took her time taking a bite of pizza. “You know, I’ve spent the time since I stood up to my grandmother and father and quit waiting for something to happen. I did the hard part. I stood up to them, and the world was supposed to reward me with some grand sign or gesture.”
He didn’t say anything, and she took another bite of pizza while trying to organize her thoughts. “But in the end, the world couldn’t magically give me what I wanted. I had to . . . Don’t you see? Six months ago, I never would have shown up here with a pizza. I never would have gotten drunk and insisted on coming to your workshop. I would have retreated into some safe place, no matter that I had been told my whole life that that’s what I did. I had to decide I didn’t want to be that anymore.”
“He stood—okay, well laid there—and told me I fixed things, but I never . . .” Liam stopped talking, shaking his head and looking away from her.
And clearly this was not some misunderstanding, some little blip in his relationship with his brother, but something far bigger, because Liam held his jaw tight, his eyebrows furrowed, and though outwardly he looked stoic, Kayla thought there was a vulnerability in that stoicism.
She sat her plate down on the counter and crossed to him, placing her palms on his chest. “He said you never what?”
Liam’s blue gaze met hers for the briefest second, but he didn’t hold it, so she couldn’t be sure it was a naked hurt that had lingered in their depths. “He said I’d never even tried to fix him.”
Kayla shook her head. “That isn’t your job.”
He was silent for a while, but she noted something that maybe shouldn’t have brought her pleasure, though it did. He didn’t step away from her hands, didn’t push them away. In fact, as she rubbed them up and down his chest in what she hoped was a comforting gesture, he even seemed to breathe a little easier.
“Why are we talking about this?” he asked, a forced smile curving his mouth but not reaching his eyes.
Still, she smiled up at him, because she didn’t know the answer. This wasn’t exactly what she’d come for, and still . . . She wanted it. Those moments of getting to know a person, because she was finally brave enough to open up to that instead of shy away from it. “I don’t know.”
His fingers brushed over the hair that waved over her shoulders, rubbing the ends of a few strands between his thumb and forefinger. His gaze moved from her hair to her face, and everything inside of her mind went totally blank.
He was just so handsome, and . . . He was something she struggled to define. Not fierce, exactly, but something more dazzling than sturdy and sure.
Slowly, stretching out the moment until it was nothing but vibrating anticipation, his mouth lowered closer to hers. When his lips finally touched hers, feather light, sweet and seductive, it had the power of a gunshot. Loud and disorienting, a bolt of feeling that was so sweet it was almost painful.
And that was all the kiss was. A brief, sweet thing that left her shivering and desperate for more, especially with his mouth still so close to hers.
“I like you,” she blurted out, feeling somehow half brave and right and half embarrassed beyond belief.
But his smile shifted from that fake, blank thing it had been before to something warm and exciting. “I like you too,” he said in his low gravelly voice, his hands sliding over the backs of hers, still on his chest.
She had to look down, to swallow at the way that waved through her, strong and potent. It even made her throat a little tight, but it also made her think of last night. “So why’d you lie to Dinah?”
“I don’t know. There was an awkward silence, and I just . . .” His fingers curled around her hands, but he didn’t remove them from his chest. He just held them there. “I thought maybe you didn’t want to tell her. Or maybe you didn’t want anyone to know.”
She forced herself to be the brave, take-a-stand woman she wanted to be in this . . . relationship. “I don’t care who knows,” she said firmly.
He inclined his head. “Okay.”
They stood there, for she wasn’t sure how long, just staring at each other. She’d come here and he’d welcomed her. She’d broached an uncomfortable subject and they’d talked it out.
But she was done talking. She slid her hands up his chest, his hands falling to his sides as she wrapped her arms around his neck and tugged his mouth down to hers. They’d talked and shared and opened up to feelings, but she wanted different feelings now.
She didn’t want to talk about how she felt. She wanted to show him. So she pressed her mouth to his, outlined his lips with her tongue. She curled her fingers in his thick hair and poured every ounce of herself into that kiss.
He banded his arms around her, pulling her so close she could feel his erection against her belly. She pressed against it, satisfied at the groan that emerged from the back of his throat. She wanted him desperate and needy for her. The way she was for him at something as simple as that little whispered kiss.
She scraped her teeth across his bottom lip and he pressed her firmly against the counter behind her. She tried to angle her hips, to rub herself against him, but he was so much taller and broader and stronger, she didn’t have any leverage.
But leverage didn’t matter with his mouth hot on hers, his beard abrasive and wonderful against her chin.
He tugged her shirt up and as they had to break contact she realized neither of them had eaten very much. “Oh, the pizza . . .”
“Is microwavable. I want to be inside you, Kayla.” He paused for a second, his mouth a whisper away from hers. He cleared his throat. “You, uh, can tell me not to say stuff like that.”
“I like it.” She nipped at his bottom lip, gratified when he grinned that rare, wolfish grin. Like she could tug down that capable, unfazed facade, just as he tugged down her timid, fragile one.
His hands slid down her arms and then his fingers curled around her wrists. She was pressed up against the counter and he wasn’t just caging her in. He held her hands behind her against the counter so she couldn’t move her arms.
And then he sighed with something very close to disgust in his expression. “I left the condoms at your place last night.”
* * *
Liam was ready to drag Kayla right out the door and head to her apartment. Or maybe a drugstore would be closer, but something about the way Kayla grinned at him made him pause.
“What do you take me for?” she asked, wiggling out of his grasp and grabbing the purse she’d set down. She rummaged around in the bag that was pink and about the size of her head before she pulled out the box of condoms he’d dropped at her place last night.
She looked so pleased with herself, self-satisfied and easy with it, nothing like the woman he’d seen her as not that long ago.
It was kind of amazing he got to see this side to her, because she hadn’t always been that free and easy with it. Maybe it was part of the new path she was blazing, but maybe it had something to do with him. Or them together.
“You do come prepared,” he managed to say, keeping himself from rubbing at the weird tightness in his chest.
“We’ve had a few things interrupt us. I wasn’t about to let that happen again.”
“Come here.” Because if she didn’t come to him, he was liable to lose whatever locks he had on the control it took to keep from simply taking her to the floor and ending this all too quickly. He had no qualms about the floor, but he wanted more than quick and reckless.
God help him.
She arched an eyebrow at him. “In the kitchen?” she returned skeptically.
He returned the arched eyebrow look. “I think we can do it anywhere we want.”
She ran a finger under the top of the box, carefully pulling it open. She pulled one condom out of it before walking slowly toward him. Not even a walk. She downright sauntered, and Liam stood where he was watching Kayla Gallagher walk across his kitchen straight for him. Him.
She held out the condom. “You’re in charge of that.”
He took it from her, and though he wanted to immediately touch her, take her, he simply placed the condom in his pocket and waited. He was too curious to see what her first move would be. Would she be bold? Shy? Would she do that shoulders back, deep breath thing where she mustered up all of her courage and did something clearly out of the ordinary for her?
The funny thing was, he liked all of those parts of her. The shy and the brave. The timid and the bold. All of it made up this woman standing before him, and he was so damn gone over her he could barely see straight.
She reached out and brushed her fingertips over his beard. It never failed to send a shudder through him. She did it when she wanted to comfort him, like when they’d been talking about Aiden. She did it when they kissed. She did it and it was always a certain level of sweet to feel someone reach out and touch him so gently.
It was a . . . rarity. So much of one he didn’t even realize it was rare until she did it. He supposed that was his own fault, as gruff and quiet as he could be. Still, it didn’t seem to faze Kayla.
Though he’d meant to wait and see what her next move would be, he placed his hand over hers on his jaw, unable to resist connection over connection.
“You like it when I do that?” she asked softly.
“Yes.”
“Do you like having a beard?”
He laughed at the odd question. “Well, yes, that is why I have it. Do you like it?”
She grinned and nodded. “I’ve never dated a guy with facial hair before.” Her eyebrows drew together. “I guess technically we’re not dating.”
“I . . .” He didn’t know what to say to that. They hadn’t exactly been on any dates. He should probably rectify that. She definitely deserved dates in nice restaurants and, like, art places or some shit. Stuff she was interested in. He should be trying to impress her, and instead they were always at his place making out in his kitchen.
Which truth be told was his preference, but this wasn’t all about him.
“I didn’t mean to make it weird. It’s not like we have to date. I . . .” She shook her head and did that squared shoulders thing. She opened her mouth, likely to say something more confident sounding, but he didn’t want to let that awkward silence stand enough for her to be the one who had to fix it.
“I guess we haven’t been on an official date, but it’s not like we’re not seeing each other.”
“Seeing each other,” she repeated and she smiled.
“But we can. I mean we will. Date. And . . . shit.” He closed his eyes feeling like a tool. “Can we go back to the precursor to sex, because I’m fairly confident in my skills there. Talking, not so much.”
She rubbed her hand up and down his jaw again, and Liam never took his hand off of hers. He just followed the movement.
“I think you do okay,” she offered, her mouth still that sweet curve, her hand a gentle, comforting pressure against his face.
“If that’s actually true, it’s because of you, because no one has ever given me credit for being good with words. Unless they were to break up a fight.”
She bit her bottom lip, looking at him through those golden lashes. There was something in her expression he couldn’t read. “Ever the fixer.”
She didn’t say it with awe or gratefulness, not an ounce of Aiden’s sarcasm. She said it as if it were simply an inexorable part of himself, and he’d always thought that was true. Fixing wasn’t a choice he made. It was simply who he was.
Still, he didn’t know what that meant with Kayla. She needed none of his fixing, and somehow that was both terrifying and . . . tempting.
Something good and bright and sweet, all for him. He didn’t have a clue what to do with that, so he lowered his mouth to hers. He tried to give her some semblance of what he felt in the kiss. Sweetness and hope. A chest-tightening, heart-pinching, brain-defying feeling that was all gentle brushes and light pressure.
Her fingers moved up over his cheeks and his temples and into his hair. She melted against him soft and sweet and pliant.
For the first time in all the ways they’d come together, he felt content to take things slow. To run his hands over her neck, feeling each goose bump pop up. To memorize the slope of her shoulders and the soft texture of her inner wrist. To mold his hands over her sides and hips and commit them to a memory of more than just brain, but soul and heart.
She sighed into his mouth, and though his dick throbbed with the need and want, his heart pounded slowly and contentedly to exist here in the sweet honey taste of her mouth and the velvety softness of her lips. He was happy to exist in this moment of perfection.
Until she gave his hair a little tug. Hard enough to pull his mouth a fraction away from hers. His eyes fluttered open and he glanced down at her. She had a flush to her cheeks and her lips were wet from his mouth and tongue. Her eyes were dark metallic blue and everything about her was a study in perfect beauty.
She didn’t say anything and for a few seconds they simply looked at each other, his heart beating hard against hers.
She released his hair slowly, and then her fingers dipped under his shirt and she tugged the hem up with a slow, almost agonizing pace. Her fingertips explored the expanse of his stomach, back and forth and up and down until he practically had to shudder with the need for more. But she only laughed and moved higher, his shirt lifting only as far as her arms did.
Her fingertips missed nothing. They moved feather light over the ridge of his stomach, moving across the indentations of his chest. She scraped her fingernails across his nipples and he choked back a moan. All the while she watched the path of her fingers, grinning. It was that grin, that self-satisfied smirk he only just learned she had, that kept him from stopping her or doing anything in return.
She pulled the shirt up over his head and dropped it onto his kitchen floor. He supposed another man would give Kayla candlelight and flowers and bedrooms and something that made sense, something that fit her grace and beauty. But he couldn’t find it in him in this moment to offer those things to her. He wanted her. Her hands on him, her body bared to him. He didn’t particularly care what kind of lighting there was or what room in his house they were in. He just wanted her.
Her fingertips scraped down his chest and stomach to the button of his pants. She began to unfasten his jeans, tugging them down. With every move she made, she carefully avoided the thick protrusion of his erection. She was teasing him and something about that struck him as perfect.
But when she began to lower to her knees, he grabbed her hard and quick to stop her. “No.”
She looked up at him with something like a pout. “But I want to taste you.”
Christ, she was going to kill him. “There will be very few times in my life where I say no to that, Kayla, but tonight I want . . . I need . . .” He thought back to earlier when he’d said the crude words to her. And she’d said she liked it.
“You want to be inside me,” she said, not quite meeting his gaze.
“I need to be inside you.”
She bit her lip again. “Well . . .” She glanced up at him, her smile spreading. “That can probably be arranged, but you might have to take off my clothes.”
He laughed, though it came out more of a strained chuckle. But he didn’t reach out to take off her clothes.
Maybe it was foolish to want this to be special. He’d never been any good at making things special. Romantic. That just wasn’t who he was, but when it came to Kayla, he wanted to be able to find it in himself to give her something special or important. He wanted to show her that even though he could be rough and not very good with softness, he did have it in him. When it came to her.
Which was probably stupid.
“Okay, I’ll do it myself.” She pulled her shirt up and over her head, dropping it on top of his on the floor. She reached back presumably to undo her bra, but he put a hand on her soft stomach, splaying out his fingers to revel in the velvety satin of her skin.
“Stop,” he ordered. He needed to get in the game. Focus. Stop worrying about “special” and shit like that and enjoy the damn moment.
She cocked her head as if considering whether or not to listen to him. “You know, as much as I like your orders, and believe me I definitely do, I think tonight . . .” She nodded her head as if she’d made some important decision. “Tonight I’m going to be in charge. And I’ll take very good care of you,” she whispered, kissing his chest right above where his heart thudded hard.
It was meant to be about sex, but in the context of this night and her asking him what was wrong, and listening to his problems, it felt so much more weighted.
People didn’t take care of him. Why would they? He could take care of himself.
“Not so used to that, are you?” she asked, brushing her mouth against his jaw.
“Which part?”
She chuckled. “Both, I think. Not used to being taken care of, and not used to letting anyone else be in charge. Well, I think it’s time you experience both.”
“Do you now?”
She moved onto her toes, pressing a firm kiss to his mouth. “Yes,” she said, meeting his gaze, so sure and beautiful. “Prepare yourself for total domination.”
He raised an eyebrow at that and the pink flush of excitement on her cheeks turned darker, closer to red.
“Okay, maybe domination wasn’t the right word,” she said, her voice ending on a squeak.
He laughed and he couldn’t remember ever laughing with someone over sex. Couldn’t ever remember feeling this lightness along with all of the hammering need and heat.
There was a little prickle of unease at the back of his spine. The concern this was too much for him. Too big. He would ruin it.
He shoved that thought away, because he was not a ruiner. He was a fixer.