Because of His Name (2 page)

She looked at him.
 
“Why are you making me say it again?”

“Because it’s just too perfect,” he said,
and then shook his head.
 
He pulled
completely away from her and laughed to himself.
 
“I knew I could get you to cave,” he said.
 
“I knew it.”

“Wait.
 
What’s going on right now?” she said,
her desire turning to embarrassment.

“What’s going on,” Liam said, “is that I
never seriously intended to pay you for sex.”

“You’re a real asshole,” Grace said, as
her cheeks grew hot with shame and fury.
 
“You brought me up here just to humiliate me.”

“No,” Liam said, laughing, folding his
arms.
 
“I just wanted to teach you a
lesson.”

“Oh, yeah?
 
What lesson is that?”

He looked at her and his blue eyes were
cold.
 
“I was trying to be nice to
you today, trying to make conversation.
 
And you had to take that little dig at me about how I wouldn’t understand
what it means to work.
 
Like just
because my family has money, it means I’ve never worked a day in my life or
something.”

Grace couldn’t believe this.
 
“You really are a jerk,” she said.
 
“I knew it.
 
I should’ve listened to myself.”

“Are you sure I’m the jerk?” Liam asked
her.
 
“You’re the one prejudging me,
Grace.
 
I was trying to get to know
you, but all you see is money.”

“That’s such bullshit.
 
Nice try, though.”
 
She looked at the key on the floor, bent
down, picked it up and threw it at him.

He moved his head just in time, as the
metal key careened past him and hit the wall.
 
“Hey,” he said, seemingly surprised by
her outburst.

“Fuck off!” she said, tears in her eyes,
and started for the door.

“Hey, Grace—wait a second,” he
said, running after her.

He caught her by the elbow and she used
her free arm to swing at him, catching him on the shoulder.
 
“Asshole!” she yelled, hitting him again
in the chest.

Now he grabbed both of her arms.
 
“Calm down,” he said.
 
“Just listen to me for a minute.”

“I don’t have to listen to you,” she
said.
 
She couldn’t believe she’d
been set up to look like a fool.
 
He
really had been making fun of her this entire time.
 
And now he’d have a really funny story
to tell all of his rich friends.
 
A
story about the time he made some pathetic, average poor girl think she
actually had a chance to sleep with him.

“I wanted you to come to my room for
real,” he said.

“You’re a liar.
 
I can’t believe a word you say.”

“It’s true, though.
 
Yeah, I was messing with your head a
little.
 
Maybe I took it too far.”

“Maybe?” she said, struggling to free her
arms.
 

He squeezed her biceps tighter.
 
“I wasn’t lying about wanting you,” he
said, and then his lips were pressed on her lips again.

Grace had never felt so completely torn,
so confused in all her life.
 
One
part of her wanted nothing more than to give into him again, to let him do
whatever he wanted to her.
 
Deal
with the consequences and the fallout later.

The other part of her was screaming
inside, that he was bad—that he was toying with her, humiliating
her.
 
She needed to stand up to him
right now and refuse to be a slave to her hormones.

She turned her head, breaking off the
kiss Liam had initiated.

He let go of her arms.
 
“Fine,” he said.
 
“Leave if that’s what you want,
Grace.
 
But I think you always
wanted to stay.
 
I think we both
know that you like this…you like me.”

She stood there, shaking.
 
“I think you’re cruel and mean,” she
told him.

He put his hands on his hips.
 
He was breathing a little heavily, and
his cheeks were flushed.
 
“Join the
club,” he said, looking down.

“You didn’t need to do that to me,” she
said, her voice raw and wounded.

Finally, Liam lifted his gaze and locked
eyes with her.
 
“Not everyone is as
perfect as you, Grace.
 
Not everyone
does the right thing all the time.”

“I never said that.”

“It’s what you think, though.
 
I can read it all over your face.
 
From the second I met you I could tell
that you judged
me, that
you hated me because I just
so happened to be born into a wealthy family.
 
But you don’t know a thing about me or
what I’ve been through.”

Grace was stunned to realize that she’d
been so obvious in her disdain for the wealthy elites like Liam who’d attended
the wedding.
  
“Well it’s hard
to be dead broke and running around serving all of these people who look down
on you and think you’re just nothing,” she explained.
 
“People look through you, and they treat
you as though nothing you think or say or feel even matters.”

 
“I never made you feel that way,” he
replied.
 
“I never treated you like
you were invisible.”

“But you don’t
know
what it’s like to be invisible, do you?” she said, challenging
him with her eyes, her jaw turned up.

“No,” he admitted.
 
He stepped towards her now.
 
“I don’t.
 
And I don’t like the idea of anybody
treating you that way, either.”

Grace’s jaw was shaking a little, and her
fists were still clenched.
 
“You
intentionally hurt me, though.
 
I
went against everything I believe when I came up here tonight and said I’d be
with you.
 
You made me feel worse
than invisible.”

“Come here,” he said, grabbing her hand.

She half-heartedly pulled away.
 
“No.
 
Just forget it.”

“Come here, Grace.”
 
His voice had softened and she allowed
him to pull her into his body again.

She’d already missed the feeling of being
close to him, of feeling his warmth, his strength, his touch.
 
And Grace hated that she was already so
hooked on him, because she knew it would hurt so much more when they never saw
each other again.

 
“Why are you trying to torture me?” she
asked him, as his fingers pressed against her skin and nudged her to look at
him.

His blue eyes were ice and fire at
once.
 
“Maybe we’re here to torture
each other.
 
I kind of like it,” he
smiled.

“You’re so mean,” she said again, but her
voice had softened too.
 
She felt
young, like a teenager in the presence of the cool, older boy.
 

“I’m not going to be mean to you anymore,”
Liam said.
 
His lips were close to
hers now.

“Stop lying,” she whispered, as her lips
waited for his.

And then he was kissing her again, and she
wanted him, she allowed herself to want him back, to show him how she felt.

His hands began exploring her body at
will now, as both of them seemed to have thrown aside whatever game it was that
they’d been playing at.

Grace could no longer pretend that she
was here to tell this rich guy off.
 
And Liam wasn’t trying to tease her with his money.
 
There wasn’t much talk at all now,
because they’d said everything there was to say.

Grace didn’t want to say anything more.

Her voice had betrayed her.

She just wanted to forget who and what
she was—where she came from and what Liam or his friends might think of
that.

She hadn’t been drinking, but she felt
drunk as she inhaled him, smelled him,
tasted
him.
 

Liam’s hands deftly pulled up her dress,
hiking it up to her thighs as his hands slid up her bare skin towards her hips.

Grace kept her legs open for him, as he
turned her around and pushed his hips against her buttocks, his cock grinding
against her ass cheeks through his pants.

This
is hot.
 
This is pure sex.

She had never been with a man that made
her feel quite like this.
 
Liam
seemed to know what she liked, where and how to touch her without her saying a
word.
 
Some men were clumsy, and
even though Grace wasn’t very experienced, she’d been around enough to know
that most guys thought of themselves first.

But Liam seemed to know his way around a
woman’s body.

One of his hands gripped her full breast
over her dress, while his other hand was sweeping up her leg, and under her
dress.

When his fingers finally reached her
wetness, he hesitated outside her panties.

Grace moaned as his hips rotated, pushing
against her ass.
 
“Fuck,” she
moaned.

“What’s that?” he whispered, biting her
earlobe as he did it again.

“Touch me, please,” she begged.

Her hands were grabbing onto his hips,
helping to pull him against her behind, while his fingertips slowly, tortuously
slid under her panties.
 
Soon, he
was brushing the sides of her folds, her bare pussy.

Liam’s kisses on her shoulder and neck
and earlobe drove her wild, as his hips continued to grind against her butt,
and his hand started to get ever closer to the very center of her.

I
want him inside me.
 
Not just his
fingers.
 
All of
him.
 
I want to wrap his cock
around me and ride it until he comes.

As she thought this, Liam slid two of his
fingertips just inside her folds, pressing her clit.
 
“I’m going to put the head of my cock
in, just the head like that,” he said in her ear.
 
His breath was hot against her neck as
his hips swiveled into her from behind.

Now his fingers were rubbing her clit,
and she could feel herself getting swollen and excited, the juices flowing more
freely.
 
Liam’s fingers stroked her
folds, guiding her to open for him.

“Fuck me from behind,” she said.
 
“Oh, please.
 
Just fuck me now.”

He hiked her dress all the way up to her
hips and pushed her against the wall.
 
Then she heard him unbuckling his pants and soon she felt him pressing
against her from behind, stroking his cock against her ass cheeks.

“You want me to put it inside you?” he
asked.
 
His voice was breathy.

“God yes.
 
I can’t stand it, I’m going to come
soon.”

And then he was sliding his cock between
her legs, rubbing up against the underside of her pussy lips.
 
She could feel his bare cock in all of
its glory, pushing her folds, but not entering her yet.

“I want you to come on my dick,” he said,
grabbing her hair and pulling it as his other hand smacked and grabbed her ass
cheek.
 
Meanwhile, his thick cock
was sliding on her pussy, rubbing her folds, stimulating her clit.
 
She was dripping all over Liam Houston’s
cock.

“I’m coming,” she said, and then she was,
and her legs shuddered and Liam pressed himself up against her from behind,
sliding his cock all the way up against her pussy, but still not inside her, as
she came.

His hand slid between her legs and
stimulated her clit more as she came again, and then he withdrew completely.

Grace stood there, gathering
herself.
 
She could hear him pulling
up and buckling his pants behind her.

She felt suddenly vulnerable, her pussy
soaked, her dress hiked up, her legs shaking as she faced the wall.
 
She pulled her dress down and tried her
best to straighten it before turning around again.

Liam ran a hand through his hair.
 
“Do you want something to drink?”

“No,” she said, watching as he moved to
the wet bar and started fixing himself something.

“Well I’m going to have a gin and tonic.”

“Is something wrong?” she asked, as he
went through the motions like a professional bartender.