Page 59 of Veiled in Brick

His gaze dove into mine, seemingly trying to determine if I was being truthful or not. I gave him a soft smile, squeezing my hand that remained in his hair to silently convey my sincerity, and Liam’s head bobbed up and down in understanding. He leaned into my touch further, his forehead pinched together as if he were pained somehow, and his focus bounced across my face. Once it jumped from my eyes to my mouth and back again, I inhaled sharply. I found myself subconsciously repeating the motions back to him, and Liam’s mouth parted ever so slightly. He breathed out once as if to steel himself and leaned in towards me, halting only when his nose just barely began to brush mine. He waited there patiently. He waited until I could feel my heartbeat in my throat, and my breath began to shake. He waited until I nodded fractionally, giving him a semblance of permission, and he pressed his lips against mine.

It was soft. Simmering. Slow. So gentle that I felt like I could weep. And then he pulled away.

“Thank you for caring,” he spoke in a breath. Time ticked by as we stared at each other, my hand still entwined in his hair. The large clock that was hung on the wall behind his small dining table clicked away, the sound resonating in my mind as I allowed the dust of what had just happened to settle in my bones. The times that the clock had ticked, signifying another second passed, had become too many to count, and Liam begged quietly, “Please say something.” Both of our breathing ragged, I tightened my hand in his hair and lifted my other to his lip, tracing the scar that resided there with my thumb. He sighed, his breath warm and lingering between us, and he ushered me, “Zoey?”

I had thought before that the fire between us, if allowed to burn, could turn our friendship to ash—ruined to the point that it would blow away in the wind. Though I had begun to crave the scorching heat that it caused me regardless, I was wrong. The metamorphosis of our relationship that was now abundantly clear had, instead, made me feel as though I had turned to glass—and the bonfire that was now roaring inside of me was about to make me shatter. To crumble into a million tiny pieces and, inevitably, allow Liam to put me back together. The thought was daunting, and I couldn’t place the jolt that it sent through my chest as excitement or anxiety.

Because my next words had been taken from me by some unknown force, I pulled him to me, kissing him again to try to express what couldn’t be said. I hadn’t noticed that Liam’s shoulders had tensed until our mouths were melded together and he sagged against me with a low, long hum. Our tongues touched, the entanglement sensual yet not greedy, and I bowed into it.

Even before our last encounter, in the dark recesses of my mind, I had always wondered what his lips would feel like on mine. I had never imagined it to be like this, though. I always assumed that Liam would be the type to take what he wanted with a woman—his size alone made me question if he was domineering or demanding, but I had never allowed the thought to come to fruition. Now, as we had begun to slowly make our way into a horizontal position and his large hands kneaded at the muscles in my back, the imaginary concept dissipated entirely. His touches were light and patient, and it made me want him in the moment all the more.

We laid on the floor facing each other, his grip grazing down the flimsy shorts that I wore, over my thigh, and to the back of my knee. He grasped me there, pulling to hitch my leg up and over his hip and his hand slid back up, caressing me until he slipped under the hem of my shorts, squeezing my backside. He flexed his hips just slightly, enough for me to feel him hard between my legs and I broke our kiss with a quiet moan.

Liam peppered kisses across my jaw and up to my ear, muttering in a sultry tone, “I want you so goddamn bad.”

The admission sent a shiver through me, and I replied in a breathy, “Yes.”

He trailed his lips down my neck and to my chest, and when he reached the soft cotton on the v-neck of my pajama shirt, he gripped me tighter and rolled us both just slightly enough to pull at the hem of the garment and whisk it over my head. Before it had the chance to flutter to the ground, his mouth began to wander. First, he was at my breasts and my ribcage, languidly lowering down until he reached my shorts and tugged at the waistband with his fingers. I angled my hips up, allowing him to pull them down along with my underwear, and I kicked them away. He could only afford a quick glance at the space between my thighs before I wrapped my hand in his hair again and pulled him back to me.

I kissed him like it was a necessity and as he returned the favor, I reached between us. Only the thin fabric of his briefs separated us and I slipped my hand under the waistband, dragging the material down as far as I could muster before he finished the task for me. I grabbed him, pumping up and down the length of his cock slowly and glancing down to view the sight before me. He was well endowed, certainly, but what was more thrilling to witness was what lured my attention back up.

Liam’s head had lolled backward, and he groaned a soft, “Fuck.” His eyes screwed tight for only a moment, his mouth forming the shape of an o that I so desperately wanted to bite, and when he opened his eyes to find me watching him, he stated, “Come here.”

He grabbed the back of my neck, pulling me to his mouth with fervor, and as our tongues touched, I placed my leg over his hip exactly where it was just moments ago and angled his length toward me with a squeeze of my grip. I rolled us to situate myself on top and as I sat up, Liam moved with me. I sank down onto him, our collective gasps at the pleasure of it all dissipating into each other’s mouths, and we began to rock slowly. An arm wrapped around my waist tightly; his fingers gripped at my ribcage as I leisurely moved up and down.

I broke our kiss to murmur, “You feel so good,” in a sweet voice that I only vaguely recognized as my own.

He looked at me with a reverence that I could drink in forever and ushered me back to his lips with a squeeze on the nape of my neck. We remained like that for a long while—just slowly moving against each other, allowing our mouths to go wherever they wished. The gentle passion was almost too much to bear, and I whimpered against every motion we made.

It was when my lower half began to deliciously tighten that I called his name in a wispy, “Liam,” and he groaned, gripping me in a vice to flip us both over.

My legs wrapped around his waist; my feet hooked at the ankles behind him as he drove into me. His embrace around my back never faltered as his hips undulated in and out in a slow, smooth metronome. His strokes were long, his thrusts rough as our pelvises met, and I squirmed beneath him. I grazed my fingertips along his upper back, feeling his broad shoulders flex with every motion. He exhaled sharply as he moved in and out, and when he rested his forehead against mine and moaned, I began to unravel.

“Shit.”

“Zoey,” he spoke in a rush, “I—I’m gonna—”

“Come—” I replied in several breaths, “come in—me—oh.”

“Fuck.”

As I felt myself begin to squeeze around him, he attempted to silence my scream with his mouth. It did little to stifle it, and his tongue on mine only amplified the pleasure that shot through me. The shockwaves through my lower half were almost over, my body a limp mess, when I felt Liam’s grip on me tighten even further. The rumble of his vocal cords reached the base of my throat as he moaned unashamedly into our kiss, and we lowered all the way to the floor. He collapsed onto his elbows, panting, and after a moment he slid off of me and onto his back, a hand splayed across his diaphragm as it moved rapidly up and down.

Peaceful tingles emanated through me, and I watched him lay beside me. Acting off of whatever instinct I had, I reached for him and placed a hand on his chest. My fingertips danced along the scar of the bullet wound on his left shoulder, and Liam looked to me. Though his grin held a lazy look to it, his eyes were hesitant. He shifted himself, resting his hand on the side of my face gently as his gaze searched across it.

There were several questions that I was certain were running through Liam’s mind just as much as mine:

What does this mean?

What do we do?

What are we?

They all would lead to a similar conversation that I didn’t want to consider right now. Though we were laying on the hardwood of his kitchen floor and my right hip bone was beginning to ache from the discomfort of it, I didn’t want to move. It felt as though any straying from the position that we had gotten ourselves into would signify that we needed to discuss what had just happened between us. Liam leaned in to kiss me deeply, I felt it all the way down to my toes, and he pulled away after all too short of a time.

Instead of asking any of the dreaded questions that I had pondered, he mumbled sweetly:

“When do you have work? I can walk you.”

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