Page 101 of Veiled in Brick

I chuckled, “No.” I wiggled my hips, we both inhaled sharply, and I suggested, “Wanna move this party to the floor?”

He smiled, nodded emphatically, and we began our rapid relocation to the ground. I hopped off of the bed and kicked my shorts to the floor, Liam snatched the ivory quilt and laid it over his shoulders as if he were wearing a makeshift cape, and when we reached each other again, our naked bodies smacked together. We stood at the foot of the bed, Liam draping the quilt over both of us as he wrapped his arms around my shoulders, and he groaned a quiet noise as I kissed him deeply. We sank down, I straddled his hips, and I took him inside of me as we both sat on the rug beneath us.

Liam let out a gritty, “God, Zo—”

I cut off his words with my hand on his mouth this time, repeating his prior gesture back to him, “Shhh.”

His eyes smiled, and he kissed my palm. Our bodies writhed together, a leisurely tempo that made me want to stretch against him and bury my head in his neck. There were longing glances of our heated eyes, fiery touches grazing each other from hip to head, and our delicious motions never stopped.

Liam kissed the space behind my ear and whispered, “I think I like you best like this.”

The full force of my voice taken from me, I breathed jokingly, “On the floor?”

He reached up with his blanket-laden hands, brushing either side of my face, and replied in a serious tone, “No, just…like this.”

Like this. Intimate. Slow. I understood the sentiment entirely, for our gentle motions had worked both of us up to the point that we were borrowing each other’s breath. The air was hot between us, rushing from one of our mouths only to be sucked in by the other’s in desperate, soft gasps. Each movement that we made turned to one that I craved with my entire being; his fingers gliding along my back then reaching up to tug at my hair, his palpable yearning sounding in my ears in a quiet moan as I kissed his face and neck, our respective shuddering as we knew that we were both close to the point of no return.

I mewled, “Yes—just like this.”

He whimpered beneath me, the sound strangely primal, and our bodies continued to rock together—no faster, no slower—until we were vibrating. Our names were called to each other with barely audible mutterings, and when I watched him silently come with a look of desperation in his gaze, I felt it. We had never said the words, but I felt my love for him reflected back to me in his eyes. My insides convulsed, I bit his neck to stop my scream, and he held me to him tightly as we both spiraled down.

For quite some time, our collective panting breaths were the only noise in the room. I rose and fell as his chest moved, unsure if it was his rapid pulse or mine that I could feel thrumming through my cheeks as I buried my head in the crook of his neck. It all slowed, eventually, and then it was simply silent. We remained still for so long that Liam’s grip on me had loosened. I wondered idly if he had fallen asleep, and I pushed myself up off his chest to peek at his face.

He grinned lazily, blinking a few long, slow blinks as he looked up at me.

“Hi,” he whispered.

I smiled, returning just as quietly, “Hey.”

“Not to ruin this,” he murmured, “but I think my ass is going numb.”

I felt my shoulders shake with a silent laugh. “I have to get up, too.”

He chastised me softly, “Don’t tell me you’re going somewhere, I was promised that you’d be in bed with me.”

I squeezed his jaw in my right hand, the shadow of facial hair prickling my palm, and I planted a brief kiss on his lips.

“Bathroom,” I clarified. “And water—be right back.”

Liam nodded, and I stood. Keeping the quilt on his shoulders, he took a few bumbling steps to where his boxer briefs had landed, stepped into them and pulled them on, and all but fell back into bed on his front with a grunt and a loud creak of the mattress. I chuckled at his exhausted behavior, quickly dressed myself, and tiptoed out of the door with only one glance back at his smiling eyes.

My feet padded against the hardwood, my jelly-like legs bringing me straight past the living area and into the kitchen. I reached into the cabinet to the right of the sink overlooking the lake, stretching on my toes to grab a tall glass. I filled it from the tap, drank it quickly in just a few gulps, and the glass made a hollow noise as I set it back down in the stainless-steel sink. I stared out into the night, entranced by the way the water rippled under the moonlight.

A touch caressed the back of my neck, and I felt my mouth pull up in a gentle smile. Warm fingers traced their way up, wrapped around to the side of my face, and just as I was allowing my head to loll into the palm spanning my entire cheek, I gasped—because it wasn’t Liam.

Liam’s hands were calloused—not to the point that his skin was rough, but they held enough of a grit to them that I could feel the texture on my skin. I regularly relished in the soft scratching when he would trace his fingers along my spine or over my shoulders. This touch, however—it was soft. Far too soft.

And it clasped over my mouth in the blink of an eye.

Chapter 17

One would think that the specifics of a traumatic event would be burned into the victim’s brain. That’s what had happened any other time that I had encountered this man, after all. This was…well, this was different. There were bits and pieces—snippets of the interaction that I had just experienced which were remarkably vivid, as expected. The remainder, however, seemed to have been erased.

The beginning, I remembered.

He had approached me from behind, clasping his hand over my mouth to ensure that I wouldn’t scream, and while I did gasp at the realization that it wasn’t Liam caressing the back of my neck, I had otherwise frozen. I didn’t know how he had gotten into my parents’ home, and I didn’t have the ability to ask for my limbs and vocal cords had locked themselves in terror.

“Found you,” he whispered in my ear, and I focused on my breathing—in and out, in and out. “So quiet for me,” he crooned. “You know just what I like.”

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