Fingers still inside me, he looks up, eyes soft and earnest and swallowed by his pupils. “Thank you.”

Oh. “I think . . .” I clear my throat. My voice remains scratchy. “Maybe I should be the one thanking you.”

He shakes his head and lifts himself over me, balanced on one arm, and my eyes widen. He strokes himself with the other hand while staring down at my breasts with an awestruck expression. “This is so good, Mara. You are so good. Why do you want it to be fast?” He leans forward to kiss me again, licking the inside of my mouth, nibbling down my throat. “I just want to make it last,” he rasps against my skin.

I have no idea what he’s referring to. I don’t want this to be fast. I’ve never said I did, but he keeps telling me that . . .

Except that I did say it. Shit, I did say it. Just not to him. “You heard me.”

Liam is preoccupied. Licking one of my nipples. Biting gently. Licking again. Doing a fantastic job.

“You heard me,” I repeat. I twine my finger in his hair to slow him down. “On the phone.”

He stops, but doesn’t lift his head. His breath, warm against my breast, has me shivering. “Remember when I found you in my bathroom? I haven’t stopped thinking about your tits ever since—”

“Liam, you heard me tell my friends about . . .” He’s currently busy sucking on the underside of my breast, but for some reason I cannot bring myself to repeat the words. “About what I wanted you to do. You heard me.”

He looks up. He’s flushed, turned on, and more beautiful than ever. “I can do it, Mara. I can do it for you. What you want.”

“I don’t—” This is mortifying. I push him away, but he barely budges. “If this is some kind of charity, I don’t need a pity fuck. I am perfectly capable of—”

He takes my palm and drags it down his chest, past his abdomen, until his cock is hot in my hand. He is massive, and almost automatically my fingers close around him. Liam grimaces, biting his lower lip, and I have the sudden realization that he’s been touching me in all sorts of manners, but I haven’t touched him yet, not at all. It seems sad, and unfair, and unbearably stupid. Something to remedy.

“Does this feel like I’m giving you a pity fuck?”

No. No, it definitely does not. But. “I don’t know.”

Of its own free will, my hand starts moving up and down his length, simple strokes that have him gasping and shutting his eyes. His lips part as I circle around the damp head with my thumb. The arm he’s leaning on shakes. Visibly.

“Come on, Mara.” His hips are thrusting now. In and out of my fist. He’s getting closer. Closer to something. “You must know.”

“Know what?”

“How hard it’s been, to—fuck—to keep my hands off you. How much I’ve wanted this, almost since the very beginning.”