Loving The Temperamental Adonis -
Chapter 278 - 16
Chapter 278: Chapter 16
Subconsciously, Rayne wandered to the edge of the garden. Immersed in regret and helpless yearning, she watched the shimmering surf spill onto the sand and then chase itself back into the moonlit sea.
She was so wrapped up in her thoughts that she didn’t notice soft footsteps in the grass behind her until a shadow moved directly across her line of vision.
She froze, afraid that if she glanced around, she’d discover that it was only a hotel guest going for a late stroll on the beach. A breathless moment later, her dread exploded into a burst of elation when Liam put his hands on her waist and moved so close behind her that his shirt brushed her back and arms.
For several moments, all Rayne heard was the pounding of her heart and the restless rustling of palm fronds overhead.
Then he said solemnly, "I have sisters, but something happened a year ago that tore us apart. They chose to side with my stepbrother Alvin, because our father said in his will to let Alvin who had never been a part of the family have the larger share. Because I was against it, he manipulated them to go against me. Alvin died last year, and my sisters thought I had something to do with it."
Rayne understood immediately why he didn’t want to talk about his family, and she dropped her head in shamed remorse for forcing him to talk about it.
As if to reassure her, he said, "It’s no big deal." Deep down it was, because it still hurt him to think his sisters would rather support a total stranger over him and then accuse him of murdering Alvin.
"I’m so sorry for asking," Rayne whispered, "but thank you for telling me."
He slid his hands soothingly up and down her arms, and when he spoke again, he hesitated between each sentence as if he found it difficult to articulate what he was trying to tell her.
"Neither of us knew the other one existed until a few years ago when my father sent for him and told him he was a Thompson and the rightful heir to the wealth as he was older than me. Immediately after he learned he had a wealthy family he brought his wife and children into the Thompson’s main mansion and began to act like he owned everything..."
Remembering all the times he’d fought with Alvin for how he was misusing their family wealth and ruining the company Liam had worked half his life to build with his father, he felt a fresh new anger towards the deceased. Alvin, Liam thought with an inner grimace, had all the makings of a bastard son and an irresponsible man who didn’t care about the aftermath of his actions.
No person in their right mind would sit back and watch some random stranger who was suddenly brought into your life as your stepbrother ruin everything you’ve built in the blink of an eye. Whenever Liam tried to talk some sense into him, they always ended up fighting with Alvin going to his sisters and manipulating them.
"I was a bastard too," Liam told Rayne. "I was conceived out of wedlock by a struggling Chinese woman and a wealthy Italian man who wanted desperately to have a male child. So Alvin used that to his advantage to manipulate my sisters and told them that I planned to take everything for myself and run back to my mother’s country and leave them with nothing." He said, absentmindedly stroking her hips.
"Though I despised Alvin, I like his son very much. He has all the makings of a Thompson, unlike his father."
Warning flags went up in Rayne’s mind about his sisters easily believing Alvin over a brother they’d known all their lives, but the last thing she wanted to do was pry further. Instead, she seized the most uplifting part of his story and smiled as she turned around to face him and made her comment.
"What’s your nephew’s name?"
"Milo."
"Did he also blame you for his father’s death?" she asked curiously.
"No," he said, but his expression had softened enough to make Rayne guess that he indeed liked his nephew, as he’d said.
He looked away from her before he added, staring over her head at the sea. "He likes me more than he did his father," he said, and after several seconds, he added in a low voice, "And I like him very much like my own."
Tears stung the back of Rayne’s eyes at the wealth of concealed emotion in that last sentence.
He tipped his chin down and looked at her. "What else would you like to know, red?"
The only thing Rayne wanted to know now was how to extricate them both from this serious topic.
Despite her earlier belief that she was utterly insignificant to him, the truth was that he’d come back here to tell her whatever she wanted to know. He’d actually come back. That was all that mattered to her.
After a moment’s thought, she came up with a playful way to answer his last question and hopefully transform their mood. Trying to look extremely serious, she said, "There is only one more question I really need an answer to, it’s very personal, but it’s extremely important to me."
His brows lifted inquiringly, but his expression was so wary and unenthusiastic that Rayne laughed and asked the ’extremely important’ question: "How many languages do you speak?"
His startled chuckle transformed into a lazy, sensual smile as he pretended to seriously contemplate his answer.
"I’m not certain," he said, shifting his hand down her spine and drawing her closer. "I’ll name them for you and you can count them for me, how about that?"
She nodded.
His gaze fixed on her mouth, and he bent his head. "I’m fluent in Italian—" His warm mouth touched hers and slid languorously from corner to corner and back again in a long, slow exploration of the shape and texture of her lips that twisted Rayne into knots.
"And Mandarin—" He deepened the kiss, his mouth stroking hers insistently, his arms tightening. His tongue slid across the seam between her lips, and Rayne’s pulse rate soared.
"And a bit of Spanish—" His hand curved around her nape, his mouth slowly opening on hers. His tongue made a brief foray into her mouth, probing lightly, and Rayne returned the intimate kiss, wrapping her arms fiercely around his neck and molding her body to the hardening contours of his.
To Rayne’s surprise, her response made him abruptly end that kiss. Instead, he brushed a light kiss on her forehead and whispered, "I also speak a little of Greek..."
Touching his lips to her temple, he added, "and a little Korean, and a little Japanese." He slid his mouth across her cheekbone to her ear, and his warm breath made her shiver and lean into him as he finished playfully, "How many was that?"
Despite Liam’s lighthearted tone, her shivering response made him yearn to make her shiver again, only harder, and longer, and he had to force himself to lift his head. He could not fathom why kissing her had such a powerful physical effect on him, and he was genuinely relieved that he’d managed to name all the languages he spoke while keeping things from getting out of hand.
Rayne stirred in his arms and tipped her chin up. "You forgot to mention English," she said with a smile.
In the interest of conformity, Liam suddenly felt that the English language needed to be mentioned in the context of a kiss, just as the others had been.
"Did I?" he asked, slowly rubbing his thumb over her soft bottom lip; then he looked at what his thumb was doing. And his restraint snapped.
He pressed his thumb down hard, forcing her lips apart, and abruptly seized her mouth in a hungry, devouring kiss. His tongue plunged into her mouth, and the kiss went wild. She kissed him back, her fingers flexing against the muscles in his back, clasping him to her while his hands slid restlessly over the sides of her breasts, then swept behind her, cupping her hips and pulling her tightly against his rigid erection.
When Liam finally pulled his mouth from hers, lust was raging through his entire nerve stream, and the idea of walking toward her villa in the condition his body was in struck him as being too humorous to consider.
Instead, he held her in his arms, her face pressed to his chest, her auburn hair spilling over his arm in a rumpled cascade.
Lifting his gaze from the top of her head, he looked out at the shifting sea, his emotions caught somewhere between excitement, amusement, and disbelief. She was leaning against him for support, her hand splayed over his pounding heart, her fingers moving slightly in a feathery caress.
He liked the way she was touching him. He knew she was in much the same emotional and physical state he was in, and he liked that, too.
In fact, he liked everything about her.
If you find any errors (non-standard content, ads redirect, broken links, etc..), Please let us know so we can fix it as soon as possible.
Report