“Yes, I am.”
Liam pulled a chair next to the bed and offered her first choice of where to sit. She chose to remain standing. “When I first learned your mystery man in Mexico was Daniel,” he began, “I kind of shut down about the reality of the situation. I was happy to have you come to New York, and then I was confused about why you were there.”
“I was there because you invited me, Liam,” she said, trying to keep her voice from disappearing into a sudden whirl of confusion. “Because you had ideas about...about us. About working together.”
He looked at her blankly then shook his head. “I know I asked you. But in that moment, when everything was caving in, I wasn’t sure why I asked you.”
Anna restrained the wings of fear moving up the front of her chest, caught like little birds in the netting of her ribs. “Wasn’t the why because we were enjoying being together?”
“Yes.”
“Then what was the problem?”
“The problem was, and perhaps still is, I got territorial. It makes sense that you and Daniel would have picked up your relationship in Mexico, and when I was confronted with that reality, I felt jealous and angry.”
She let his words hang in the air and waited for their charge to dissipate before adding her own confession.
“Daniel and I did get sexual, to a degree, but we didn’t… There was no…” She released her hands and let them flutter in her search for a word that wouldn’t cause her to die from blushing. She pushed on. “We never consummated, not fully. He did some things that upset me,” she admitted, “like check out other women and take way too long to kiss me the first time, and his indecision, his doubt, just cut me to the bone.”
Liam stared, his face blank.
Anna pushed ahead, wanting to share her biggest revelation. “Daniel and I had a connection in college, and in the decades since we last saw each other, we assigned that connection greater meaning than it warranted. And that’s one thing we failed to recognize until it was too late.”
“Thank you for clearing that up for me.” Liam sounded almost…sarcastic, although the tension in his hands belied the odd emotion in his voice.
“Did you reconnect with Cassidy because you’re attracted to her again or because you wanted to get back at me for being with Daniel?”
“I’ve been asking myself that question. The answer is, a little of both,” he answered, looking to the window and back to her. “When you and I went to bed that night, when we were supposed to be getting ready to go out to dinner, I felt…whole. That feeling of wholeness got me hard.” His voice lowered, deepened, and the pacing of his words slowed for emphasis. “Seeing you naked, in my bed, got me hard. Entering you was so easy. You were so ripe and wet, and there was no pressure, only the possibility of pleasure.
“When Cassidy invited me to dinner the next night I had this…flash…of being angry with you and wanting to prove something to her. I wanted to show her what she chose to walk away from. We ate, she came back to my house, and we started to fool around in my bed.”
“Where we’d made love?” Anna clutched at the fabric lining the pockets of her jacket. How could he bring another woman into the bed he’d made for her?
“Yes, where we made love. And all I could smell was you, Anna, and that’s what got me hard. A little bit of anger and a lot of residual scent from us having sex.”
Liam leaned forward, elbows on his knees, twirling a pencil around and around as he described the scene. Anna’s reaction confused her. She was angry and upset with Liam. And she was sexually aroused, the animal part of her wanting to mark him as her territory and claim him with more of her scent. She was going to have to look through her books on women’s health again to see if these feelings were normal or more like a random hormonal surge that would leave as quickly as it had arisen.
“But I couldn’t do it,” he whispered, snapping her attention back to the moment.
“Couldn’t do what?”
“Couldn’t have intercourse with Cass. Could not and have not.”
The last of the fight drained right out of Anna. She plunked herself into one of the rickety wood kitchen chairs. “What do we do now? What do you want?”
Liam looked over at her from under a sweep of hair. “I want everything having to do with Daniel and Cassidy out of my head. And I want to fuck you, in my bed, now.”
Anna appreciated a man who could speak his mind. If they were lucky, neither of them would have much of a mind left by morning.
They left their clothes on the floor and tossed their inhibitions on top. Liam replenished the stack of wood by the stove twice, keeping the room hot enough to slick their skin and make staying naked the only reasonable option. For Anna, there was no saying no to the man who kissed, stroked, licked, bit, murmured, and groaned his way into her body. The lovemaking opened the front door to her heart and ripped it off its hinges, and she reveled in the feel of the moon and the stars and the morning sun entering her hidden places.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Before she could find any kind of handhold on the days flying by, Liam was gone. The darkened windows of the house next door confirmed the loss coursing along the surface of Anna’s bones, pooling in her joints, creating an unfamiliar ache. The ache of missing a lover. Her lover.
She rubbed her upper arms and lowered her forehead to the cold glass of the window.
They had that one night together after the disastrous weekend in New York, a night that would live on in her body as
