Playing It Close (31 page)

He tugged away from her, but the ghost was out there now. The specter of his fear and confusion floated between them, putrefying the air. “She lied to me, Tess. She told me she was fine—just a little tumor that could be taken care of with a minor procedure. I found out later that ‘minor’ procedure was a fucking
hysterectomy.
There were complications, and she was in hospital for two days before she must’ve realized it wasn’t going to be okay.” His voice broke before he could fix it. “She phoned, but I was at training. She left a fucking
voicemail
asking me to come to the hospital if I had time.
If I had time.
Fuck.
”

“Oh, Liam.” Tess backed him into the corner and wrapped herself around him.

He clasped her shoulders, not sure he whether he could stand the torture of her being so close as she realized that he’d let down the one person who would’ve done anything for him. “I didn’t leave right away. I phoned her back, but she didn’t answer. I dragged my feet, joked around with the lads before leaving the training ground. By the time I got there—”

He couldn’t go on, but he didn’t have to. Tess had lifted onto her toes, grabbed his head and pulled him down for a kiss. A long kiss full of contrition, comfort. He held her close until the shock and pain had ebbed some. He’d never told anyone that he’d arrived ten minutes too late. Not his sports psychologist. Not even Bailey.

“Liam,” she whispered against his lips, “it’s not your fault.”

“The fuck it’s not. She should’ve been able to count on me, but she knew she couldn’t so she didn’t even bother to tell me. And I proved her right.”

“Did she ever
tell
you that she felt she couldn’t count on you?”

He reached back in his memory and found nothing. “No,” he admitted. “But I didn’t visit her as much as I should’ve. I should’ve made her a bigger part of my life. If I’d known how little time I had with her...”

“Liam, you can’t blame yourself for this. She was the one who made a choice—a bad choice, it turns out—but I doubt she did it for the reason you think.”

“What other reason is there?”

“Maybe she thought she was protecting you. She was your mum. She probably didn’t want you to worry about her. Or maybe she didn’t want to admit her fears out loud because then they would become reality.” She stroked his chest, and some of the ache loosened beneath her fingertips. “There are all kinds of reasons she would keep the truth from you, and none of them are because you failed her.”

He squeezed her shoulders. “And why are
you
hiding the truth from me? You said it’s a woman thing. Tess, I’m a grown man. Women’s bits don’t scare me or disgust me. Being kept in the dark?
That
scares me.”

Her voice softened. “I’m sorry about your mum. I really am. This isn’t the same situation at all, though. Please take my word for it.”

He swiped a hand over his face, his eyes stinging and throbbing while every muscle in his body tightened. “I can’t do that. I won’t be able to let this go until you tell me what’s going on.
Please.
”

The silence between them seethed, made infinitely worse by the screech of the alarm. Tension held him hostage as his brain imagined all of the worst scenarios, leaving him dumbfounded when she murmured, “I’m getting breast implants.”

He slowly dropped his hand so he could see her. A blush had stolen across her face, and she stared at his shoes as if they were mesmerizing. “What?”

“I’m getting breast implants. Or, at least, I think I am. No—I plan to. Definitely. I think. God, I feel like such a dick admitting this after what you just told me about your mum.”

Heart caught in the back of his throat, Liam collapsed back against the wall and slid down like a marionette with severed strings until his arse hit the floor. “That’s it?”

She sliced him with her burning, angry gaze. “I told you I was fine. Why couldn’t you just believe me?”

Relief washed over him in waves, but he’d lost so much energy through worrying about her that he couldn’t stand. Not yet. He was down for the count. He reached up and took hold of her hand, tugging. “Sit with me.”

“On the floor of the lift?”

“Yes.”

Her breath whooshed out in a sound of capitulation, and she sat next to him, facing him. The outside of her thigh brushed against his. He drew her a little closer so he could skim his fingers over her jaw in gratitude. She wasn’t dying. He’d wanted to believe it but hadn’t been able to. “Look at me, Tess.”

She did, her face grim.

“Why do you want implants?”

“Because I’ve heard they’ll give me superpowers. Why do you think?”

His fingers trailed from her jaw down her soft neck to her shoulders, where they caught under the collar of the Legends shirt he’d given her. He pushed it as far down as it would go, then slipped his thumb under her bra strap, finding enough space that he could stroke her shoulder without the strap cutting off his circulation. The strap didn’t cut into her skin, the way it sometimes did with big-breasted women. For Tess, wearing a bra wouldn’t be about support but about coverage, or maybe modesty. She could probably go without and still be decent. “You’re unhappy with the size of your breasts.”

She raised her brows and tilted her head, giving him a look that said, “Well done, genius.”

“I have some experience with breast implants, you know.”

She smirked toward his pecs. “I knew those couldn’t be real.”

She might’ve intended to put him off with her barbed tongue, but he’d met far tougher opponents, and he understood that her sarcasm came from embarrassment. He tugged the hem of her shirt up to reveal her abs. “Did you know that some women lose sensation when they get implants?”

“I’m sure the doctor will explain all of the possible consequences to me.”

“And that’s a risk you’re really willing to take?”

Her nostrils flared a little. “Liam, I just—”

“What, sweetheart?”

“I just want to be shaped like a woman, not a fourteen-year-old boy. Right now, I’m flat all over. I’m nipple on bone.”

He kept up his gentle stroking across the top of her back, her shoulders, the sensitive skin behind her ear. “You might forget, but I haven’t. I’ve seen you naked. You’re not flat all over. Not by a long shot. And I happen to like your nipples. A hell of a lot.”

“Why are you saying that to me?”

“Because it’s true, and I think you should hear it. Take it from a man—you don’t need implants.”

She snorted. “I’ve taken it from plenty of men that I do.”

“What do you mean?”

“Never mind. I don’t want to go into it.”

“Look, we’re stuck here until they can get us out. You might as well tell me. Come on. Confess to Father Liam.”

She propped her chin on her knees, hiding her chest from him. “I’ve seen how disappointed men look when I take off my top. It’s not something they usually comment on, but a few of them have said really hurtful things, the kind of things that stick with you.”

“Such as?” Blood already boiling, Liam was sure he didn’t want to know.

“I lost my virginity at uni. I tried to before that, but the one boy I was interested in laughed and said sleeping with me would be like molesting a child.”

She winced, and Liam realized his fingers had tightened across her shoulder, squeezing her collarbone as if it was the boy’s neck. “Sorry,” he murmured, rubbing gentle circles over the area. “That was a really shit thing to say to someone.”

“I can’t blame him too much. I
was
still built like a child, even if I wasn’t one. I just thought that seventeen-year-old boys were looking to get it wherever they could. He was hardly discriminating, but apparently I didn’t inspire an erection in him.”

“And since then?”

“Since then I’ve mostly been with men who had the nous not to say anything about it, but I can tell they’re gutted that all my padding disappears when I take my bra off.”

“Tess, you still have padding here.” He brushed his fingertips across the tops of her breasts, and she sucked in a breath, her gaze flying to his. “See how sensitive you are? Did you see any disappointment on my face when you stripped for me at the waterfall? Or anytime since?”

“First of all, I stripped for myself, not you.”

“Duly noted. And what was my reaction?”

She muttered something, forcing him to tilt her face up so he could hear her. “What was that?”

“I said, I wasn’t watching you. I’ve learned not to look at men when I undress. It spoils the mood.”

His chest ached with disappointment for her. She was beautiful. At first he hadn’t realized how stunning she was—he’d mostly been dumbstruck by her pink hair—but her beauty had grown until he practically shook with longing whenever he saw her. “You want to know what I saw the first time you took your top off for me?”

“I didn’t—”

“—take your top off
for me
. I get it. I’ll try to be more accurate. Do you want to know what I saw the first time you took your top off
for yourself
when I happened to be in the general vicinity and watching with very close interest, deluding myself that you were doing it for me?”

“Not really.” But the crack of her voice betrayed her.

“I saw these perfectly formed, perky tits that looked like the best fantasy I ever could’ve ordered. That water wasn’t warm, Tess, but I went hard so fast I thought I’d pass out from the sudden rush of blood away from my brain. And don’t even get me started on your nipples.”

“Do. Start on my nipples.”

He grinned. “So pretty and rosy. Like sweet strawberries just begging for my mouth. They’re big and bold and so responsive I thought I’d taken a wrong turn and landed in heaven. I can’t stay away from them.”

He brushed her hair back from her face, tucking it behind her ear. “You do whatever you feel you need to, Tess. It’s your body, and you need to be happy with it. I certainly wouldn’t want advice on whether to surgically enhance my cock. I just hate the thought of you making this decision because a few arseholes have made you feel you’re not good enough, and I think it would be a shame if you lost sensation. Your tits obviously bring you a lot of pleasure. Fuck, I bet I could make you come just by playing with them.”

Her brows shot up. “Is that a challenge?”

Now it was his turn to be surprised. “Is that an acceptance of my challenge?”

“Maaay-be.”

He swept his hands down her back and grabbed the hem of her top before she stopped him. “Not here!”

“Why not?”

She glanced around, and he realized there could be cameras so he checked too. “I don’t see anything even remotely looking like a camera. Do you?”

She shook her head slowly. “You really want to do it here?”

“Play with a nymph’s breasts until she comes? I’d want to do it anywhere she lets me.”

She hesitated a moment before reaching down and whipping off her top so quickly his head spun, leaving her in a plain white bra that shouldn’t turn him on the way it did. But it wasn’t the bra that had his bollocks tightening. It was the cute set of breasts inside, the fact that he knew them so well and would get to play with them again. The fact that he loved them.

“Okay,” she said, “but you have to take your shirt off too. I’m not sitting here topless all by myself.”

“Deal.”

He leaned forward and stripped his shirt off much more slowly, teasing her with a hint of ab, a flash of pec before she groaned, “Come on, Cally. They could fix the lift any minute now.”

Good point. He had no idea how long they had together, and he had to make every second count.

Chapter Nineteen

Off came his shirt, and dry went Tess’s mouth.

Liam had the kind of body most men would kill for. And why shouldn’t he? It was his career to strengthen his muscles, to see food as fuel and to burn that fuel with almost constant exercise. When he whipped the shirt clear of his head and leaned back, Tess’s brain went numb. She’d always loved being active. Her career was far too sedentary, so she’d found ways of burning her energy and staying fit, like cycling to work through London traffic—which had the added benefit of making her feel like she’d run a gauntlet, leaving her exhilarated every morning and evening. She liked her thighs and her arms, but her breasts and bum lacked padding, and those were two areas she couldn’t seem to build up.

How could a man who looked like this—a man who’d slept with some of the world’s sexiest women—be interested in seeing her naked? Was it simply because he was a man and would want to see pretty much any woman naked? Or was it insulting to even think that about him?

He wrapped his hand around one of her legs and pulled her closer. She slid against the floor and dreaded to think what her dad would suspect when she showed up in the hospitality suite with dirt covering the bum of her jeans. But then Liam was draping her thigh over his lap and lifting her hips so she sat on him, and everything outside the lift faded away.

He sat on the floor with his knees bent and she straddled him, her back resting against his thighs. His eyelids had gone heavy as he stared at her chest, still decently covered by her padded bra. She’d expected him to yank it off her immediately or at least to ask her to take it off, but he seemed content to watch her as he let his big hands rove up and down her rib cage so slowly that she almost didn’t notice the infinitesimal rise in her body temperature. The slower he was, the hotter she became, and she squirmed on his lap, making him groan.

“Christ. Just—” He couldn’t seem to finish the sentence, but he grabbed her hips and repositioned her on his lap, and she felt his hard-on cushioned between the cheeks of her scrawny arse.

“Am I hurting you?”

His laugh sounded tortured. “Yes. It’s the best pain in the world.”

His fingers danced up each bone in her spine until he reached her bra strap. Why hadn’t she worn a nicer one? Hadn’t her mother always taught her to wear clean underwear in case she was hit by a car and doctors had to strip her? As if she would’ve worn dirty underwear. If she was ever a mother, she’d give her daughter much more useful advice: always wear sexy lingerie, because you never know when you might be stuck in a lift with a man you want to show it to.