“I nearly punched him in the face,” Seth said, and I could see the rage still simmering within him. “If he’d hurt Nicole…”
“I know.” I put my arm around his shoulders. “But he didn’t. She’s probably shaken up, though, so you should take her back to the hotel.”
“Vince rode with me,” Seth said.
“We’ll take him back,” Chad offered. “Naomi might talk to him a bit.”
“That’s a good idea.” I nodded. “He might stomp off during dinner on Friday, but he can’t very well tuck and roll out of a moving vehicle on the highway.”
“I would have agreed with you if I hadn’t just witnessed his complete lack of thinking with his actions,” Seth said. “See you guys tomorrow.”
19
The ride back to the hotel was quiet. I could tell Liam was preoccupied but it wouldn’t take a psychologist to figure out what was troubling him.
I was sure Vince nearly hitting Nicole had been an accident. But it put a damper on an otherwise perfect day, knowing just how bad it could have been. Lounging with Liam on his boat had been gloriously relaxing. Indulgent, really. I kept reminding myself that I went to Vegas for a bachelorette party and had landed myself a sort of husband in the process. I liked Liam’s friends so much that they felt like mine, despite only knowing them for a few days.
Liam and I made it inside the hotel room. He sighed, the motion loosening the tension that had lived in his shoulders for the ride. During the car ride, he hadn’t brought up what Vince did except to thank me for my quick action. Instead, we’d talked about what to do for dinner (room service), the plan for tomorrow that he insisted I shouldn’t feel obligated to attend (the visitation), and what the day after visitation entailed (riding UTVs out in the desert).
“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked gently as he washed his hands at the sink just outside the bathroom door.
“Honestly, I’d rather not.” He met my gaze in the mirror.
“Okay,” I said, easily. “We don’t have to.”
Those five simple words seemed to have a relaxing effect on him. His gaze dropped down to his hands and he blew out a breath. He walked into the bathroom and turned the nozzle in the shower on. I watched as he scrubbed his hands over his face. “I think I just need a shower and I’ll be good as new.”
“All right,” I said, but I didn’t think a shower would ease the tightness in his shoulders. “Do you want company?”
His eyes whipped back up to stare at me in the mirror. I held my breath for four full heartbeats. There was that stare, the one that had arrested me the first night we met. Liam around his friends was carefree, friendly. Liam, when it was just us, was more. Oh, so much more. Broody. Dark. There was danger there too—but the delicious kind, the kind that made you ache in places you couldn’t relieve unless you were undressed.
Warmth bloomed between my legs, radiating up my chest, as steam from the shower spilled out of the bathroom.
“Yes.”
Oh, that one-word answer was enough to make me want to collapse in a needy puddle at his feet. But he didn’t let me fall; scooping me up and carrying me—fully dressed—directly into the shower.
I wrapped my legs around his waist as he carried me, not worrying about the clothes that separated us. My mouth fused to his, my fingers dragging across his scalp. His hold sent dozens of sensations throughout my body and I craved to give him the same kind of feelings.
The water was deliciously hot, pounding powerfully over us. It only served to stoke the fire that had begun burning in me when I had first met Liam. This was an inferno, and I couldn’t wait to burn with it.
His mouth moved down the column of my throat as his hands slid under my tank top. His knuckles grazed over my stomach, behind my back, and his fingers dipped into the waist of my shorts as he played with the strap of my thong.
There were too many clothes between his body and mine. I lifted his soaking wet shirt and tried to drag it up his chest, but it got stuck from the weight of it. Laughing, I gave up and let him finish what I’d started. He whipped it off over his head, sending it to land in a