“Never.”
38
Cody
My confessions weren’t over.There was still one more that I wanted to unload before the day came to a close.
And when I perceived the slightest discomfort from Liem—whether it was real or imagined, I would never know—I decided our wandering was over, grabbed his hand, and took a slow pace back to the bungalow.
I had to get back to Bay Springs tomorrow for an important, vaguely secret meeting, but that was the last thing on my mind now as I clamored into the hot tub and perched on the captain’s chair, eager for the best vantage point to watch a lithe and very naked Liem step in after me.
His movements were as graceful and fluid as they always were, so maybe I had my answer.
“I need to tell you something,” I started, so incredibly smoothly.
His smile was relaxed as he draped his loose braid over the edge of the tub and settled back. “Tell me.”
Dunking my head backward into the hot water, I wet my hair and brushed it back with my hand, surprised at how fast it was growing back out.
“I broke into Bree’s grandmother’s house.”
He rose from his relaxed position like a phantom, his braid splashing into the water as he regarded me. “Oh?”
I swallowed. “Yeah. After I got back. It was a, um….” I splashed my hand across the surface of the water. “A whole thing.”
Liem seemed to be processing, so I reached over and turned the jets up and left him to it, the noise thickening the space. After a few moments, he glided over to me and straddled my lap, emptying my brain of all thought as the jets pulsed around us.
“Why?” he asked mildly, his dark gaze lit by the lights underneath the water and the patio lights strung around us.
I draped my arms across the edge of the tub behind me, opening myself to him in every way. “It felt like a good idea at the time.”
“Why?” he repeated.
“I was angry.”
He nodded in encouragement. “Why?”
“For so many reasons, but I don’t think I have it in me to dig deeper into it tonight,” I replied honestly. “But I wanted you to know because my dad’s garage is full of singed, burnt, and otherwise messed-up picture frames from the house, and I need your expertise to restore them for Bree.”
Liem stared at me, his eyes wide for a long moment, and then he attacked.
It was neither gentle nor graceful.
His arms flung around my neck and his mouth crashed to mine as he ground himself on my lap all at once, and I was so stunned that I didn’t even move my arms from the back of thetub. I just took it. I took everything Liem was giving me, meeting the strokes of his tongue and the motions of his hips.
“You are magnificent,” he moaned between swipes of his tongue.
My head fell back as he moved his lips from my mouth to my jaw, then down to my throat. He sucked on my hammering pulse, and my hips jackknifed as I pressed into him and let out a pained sound.
“Fuck,” I cursed to the night sky. He sucked again. “If this is how you respond,” I panted out as he moved his sucks, licks, and kisses all around my throat, “I may throw out my plans and just take up a life of crime.”
He smiled against my skin and then licked a path to my ear, kissing me just below it.
Things moved quickly then as Liem, with one last kiss to my lips, eased off my lap and reached past me, his face coming back into view a second later with the lube in one hand from the bedroom and a towel in the other.
I raised my eyebrows at him, not having noticed the former earlier. “Presumptuous little minx.”
“Optimistic,” he corrected, his sweet voice huskier than I’d ever heard it as he carefully laid the towel on the edge of the hot tub.
