Loving The Temperamental Adonis
Chapter 292 - 30

Chapter 292: Chapter 30

Few hours later. Scanning the surface of the water for a sign of Liam, Rayne absently brushed sand off her legs and reached for one of the robes they’d brought from their room. The night was balmy, but she was beginning to shiver in her wet bathing suit, more from alarm than cold.

When they left the casino, Liam had offered to take her to the mall so she could spend her winnings in one of the high-fashion boutiques that stayed open late to cater to the nightclub and casino crowd. He’d said she’d like the clothes and designs in the boutique.

But Rayne had suggested they go back to the hotel and go swimming instead.

The last thing she wanted was Liam paying for her shopping, and from what she’d noticed, he never argued with her when she refused to use his money for something; he simply went behind her back and paid. Since he was so persistent about taking her night shopping with the excuse of her using her winnings, she’d convinced him to go for a swim instead.

In her mind, she’d envisioned lazily floating in four feet of soothing salt water for half an hour. They’d done that, but when Rayne was ready to get out, Liam said he was going to swim a little longer for some exercise.

As she discovered as soon as he kicked off, when Liam swam for exercise, he did it with fierce force, driving his body through the water at maximum speed, as if demons were closing in on him.

At first, Rayne watched him in admiration, but a few minutes after she lost sight of him in the water completely, she began to worry about his safety.

Trying not to let her concern escalate to panic, Rayne continued to search the moonlit water as she shoved her arms into the sleeves of her robe and tied the belt.

Finally, she made out a speck on the surface and sank onto a lounge chair weak with relief.

Freed at last of her worry about Liam, she drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them.

Tipping her head back, she gazed at the black night sky filled with shimmering stars while a profound sense of awareness swept over her.

In a few days, she would go back to her old life where her days were all about the restaurant and how to keep it going. Not to mention Max; she hadn’t heard from him today yet...

She needed to get a strong hold of herself before she returned to Zen. Though she’d allowed herself a whole day of enjoyment with Liam, she didn’t know what would happen tomorrow and she did not want to think of it now. Not yet.

Finally, she brushed away all those thoughts and glanced at the water to check on Liam. He was swimming in a straight line directly toward her, his shoulders and arms visible above the surface. In that moment, she suddenly understood.

This was meant to be; they were meant to be. That’s why she’d felt such an indescribable sense of magical closeness with him yesterday. But then, what sort of relationship did they have now?

Liam’s words earlier in the day came back to her. He’d said, "Let’s get involved." Did that mean they were now in a relationship?

Rayne dismissed the thoughts yet again as she saw Liam stand up in the water.

Raking his hands through the sides of his hair, he waded out of the sea with water streaming from his powerful shoulders and long legs, his dark swimming trunks clinging to his muscular thighs.

He was so outrageously handsome that Rayne shook her head. Smiling, she glanced back up at the stars and silently said, What on earth were you thinking when you decided I deserve someone this good-looking?

Liam reached for the towel she held out to him and suppressed the urge to rumple the springy wet curls framing her face and tumbling over her shoulders.

With her hair like that she looked delectable; in fact, she looked exactly the way she had when he met her in the restaurant yesterday. "Hi," he said with a smile.

She smiled back at him. "How was China? Did you pass any sharks on the way there?"

Grinning at her sarcasm, Liam started toweling off his chest and arms. "I’ve been lazing around down here for a week," he explained. "I needed the exercise."

"Do you normally swim for exercise?"

He shook his head. "I have a gym back home, you know. I only swam for exercise when I was in the camp with Neil," he said as he reached out and wrapped his arm around her waist to pull her closer.

She gasped in shock as her breast collided with his solid chest, and before she could react, his mouth was on hers. "Let’s go back inside," he whispered breathlessly as he pulled away from the kiss. His hands slid away from her waist and found her hand. He interlocked their fingers, something Rayne noticed he liked to do.

****

Propped up naked in bed with Liam’s arm around her, Rayne watched the night sky giving way to dawn.

When they’d returned from swimming, they’d showered and then discovered they were famished. The remnants of their shared feast were on the coffee table and they ate together.

Afterward, they went to bed, but sleep was not what Liam had in mind.

The fierce, demanding urgency and relaxed playfulness of his earlier lovemaking were gone. This time, he made love to her with slow, torrid sensuality, driving her steadily toward a final climactic destination while detouring on previously unexplored erotic routes to get her there, whispering directions and encouragements that were as arousing to Rayne as the things he was doing with her.

By the time he finally let her finish, Rayne was writhing wildly in his arms, frantically whispering "Please," over and over.

When the last spasm had shaken her, he changed the tempo of his strokes, and Rayne’s limp body suddenly arched up like a tightly strung bow, straining toward him of its own volition while he poured himself into her.

Rayne heard herself moan, and she clung to him, caught up in a moment that was not only wildly sexual but almost fiercely spiritual.

Later on, when she looked back on it all, she might have seen herself as a naive student who’d just been tutored by a skilled, perhaps less-involved master—except that afterward, he’d gathered her against his full length and kept their bodies clamped tightly together with his face buried in the curve of her neck for a very long time, as if he’d been profoundly affected by their lovemaking too.

Even now, as they watched the sunrise through the glass wall, his hand was curved around her arm, his thumb caressing her skin.

They were both drowsy, the periods of silence between them growing longer, but as the sky continued to lighten, the dawn of a new day was banishing Rayne’s quiet happiness and filling her with worry and fresh guilt about Max.

She had waited to return his phone call yesterday until she was getting dressed for the casino because she knew Max would be hanging out with his friends by then.

She’d left him a voicemail message assuring him that she wasn’t at all angry with him, that she was having a lovely time visiting neighboring islands, and that there was absolutely no need for him to worry or feel guilty about anything.

Everything she told him was true, but the things she did not tell him made her message a tawdry, unforgivable deception.

On the other hand, she couldn’t possibly break up with him by phone, not after the years they’d been together, and especially not after he’d just brought up marriage. There were only few days left of their planned ten-day trip. If his business issues dragged on another day or two, he’d surely decide there was no point in flying back down to the island.

Sensing her change in mood, Liam glanced at the woman who was responsible for the most exhilarating, fulfilling sexual experience of his life.

Her red curls were in wild disarray, tumbling over her shoulders and the tops of her naked breasts, and her porcelain cheeks were still slightly flushed from their lovemaking, but her expression had turned very thoughtful.

Liam assumed she was probably thinking about her boyfriend and wondering whether he was going to arrive that day. He’d been thinking about the same thing, too.

"Troubling thoughts?" He whispered.

She turned her head on the pillow. "Not really. Not about you, anyway," she amended. After a moment, she smiled and said, "Can I ask you something?"

He nodded.

"Those times when the media used to spread rumors about your relationships with different women...were you really in love with them?"

Ordinarily, that question in this particular situation would have evoked a wary reaction in Liam, but they had been lying there asking each other casual questions off and on since they finished making love.

They were, after all, two people who had intimate carnal knowledge of each other, and they had feelings for each other, but they had no facts. And since they had already traded information about favorite movies, favorite foods, least favorite politicians, and so forth, her question seemed perfectly reasonable to Liam.

"No. But they believed I was," he explained. "When I take a woman, I take her for one reason, and I make it clear to them that I don’t want to get emotionally involved, but they still harbor the thought that I love them."

Rayna felt her heart knot. She wanted to ask him about her. How did he feel about her, and if she was just like any of those women? But she didn’t want to come across as desperate or clingy, so she fell silent.

She sought an innocuous question to ask and, after a moment, decided to ask about the tiny scar on his chest. "Where did you get this scar?" she asked, touching it with her fingers.

Liam had gotten the scar when he was caught in bed with a married woman years ago when he was still insensitively young and naive. He had been beaten senseless by the man’s bodyguards. He could never forget that night; he had just turned twenty, and the woman had seduced him into going to bed with her while assuring him that her husband wouldn’t be coming back anytime soon.

But who would have thought the man would be back that night?

However, he wasn’t going to share such an embarrassing story with Rayne, not when she was all he needed right now in his life.

"I got it somewhere in the military," he lied with a straight face. Then after a moment of silence, while Rayne was silently tracing her finger around the scar, he spoke up again.

"You never mention your mother," Liam asked. "What happened to her?"

Lifting her brows, Rayne said, "You never mention your mother either."

"Is she alive?" Liam persisted.

"I refuse to tell you unless you tell me about yours first."

"I think you’ll tell me anyway."

"You couldn’t pry it out of me with a weapon."

"I can pry it out of you with two fingers," he promised with absolute certainty, sliding his hand under the sheet to seek out her legs.

"Don’t you dare—" Rayne warned, clamping her legs together.

Suddenly it was important that he not be able to keep his secrets while manipulating her so easily into telling hers.

His fingers slid through the triangle at her thighs. "Open your legs, Rayne."

"No." It hit her when his hands began tracing her thigh that her logic was totally wrong and that she was silly to resist. She relaxed the tension in her legs, gasping when he slid one finger deep inside of her and rubbed his thumb against her sensetive areas; then she relaxed and let him spread pleasure and warmth through her.

"Is there something you want to tell me?" he asked, slowly increasing the pressure and altering the movements of his fingers.

"No," Rayne whispered faintly, putting her arms around his shoulders and closing her eyes. He was getting her so close she could barely stop herself from moving with him.

"Isn’t there something you want to tell me now, little red?"

She was clinging to him, her heart racing, her nails digging into his back.

"No," she gasped, but her body was on the verge of convulsing.

He stopped. "How about now?"

She was hanging on a cliff, desperate, and he knew it; he’d intended to deprive her of a climax just when she was on the verge and withhold it from her until she yielded.

Somehow she’d mistakenly thought he believed he could get an answer out of her by giving her pleasure, while he intended to do it by depriving her of pleasure.

Her body was begging her to give in; her heart wouldn’t let her.

She let go of his shoulders and dropped back onto the pillows, looking up at him with wounded eyes, silent and disappointed.

He stared back at her, his black eyes heavy-lidded, his expression unreadable. Suddenly, he scooped her into his arms, his fingers seeking the same places he’d touched and left, driving her all the way to the climax he’d deprived her of before.

Rayne clung to him while shudders shook through her, and when they passed, she lay back on the pillows and lifted her hand, sliding it across his hard jaw, tenderly smoothing back his thick black hair.

"My parents got divorced years ago, before I graduated from Ivy Grove. My mom lives in Mirage Mesa with her new husband," she whispered, conceding victory to him—but a victory that was won on her terms, not his.

Liam felt unfamiliar emotions swelling in his chest. He realized she was meant for him; they were meant for each other.

But later today or tomorrow, another man would come for her, a man who had more right to her than Liam did. In his mind, Liam heard trumpets and heralds calling his name, summoning him to the arena of commitments. He imagined himself like a gladiator, without weapons or armor, armed only with his secrets and fragile hopes. The horns were already blaring, and he was walking toward his fate, defenseless but fearless.

Rayne’s hand rested against his cheek, her fingers gently caressing his jaw while her green eyes beckoned him. Smiling, Liam turned his face into her hand, kissed her palm, and whispered, "For whatever lies ahead, I am prepared."