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Liam sighed. “Let’s keep focused, yeah?”
I sank back on my stool and studied his shuttered facial expression. My mom would have a field day with him. “Have you ever seen a therapist?” I asked.
He barked out a harsh laugh. “Absolutely fucking not. And no shrink would have me either.”
“My mom is a therapist.”
“Thatexplains a lot.”
“I bet she’d see you. She takes online clients.”
“Not in a million years, Valentine.”
With a sigh, I stood and picked up the empty plates. While I rinsed them off in the sink, I tried very, very hard not to inhale Liam’s sex-soap smell, because he was standing close by.
“You moving your shit in or what?” he asked.
I put the plates in the dishwasher and shrugged as I closed the door. “Some of it. Not everything, though. I’ll keep most of my clothes and stuff over there. Just bring a couple of days’ worth at a time. I’ll probably still work in my office if you’re around.”
He eyed me carefully. “You taking their room?” he asked quietly.
My stomach filled with sloshing ice, the cold seeping up into my lungs, and I breathed through it. Mainly because I didn’t have a choice. The other option was to dive headfirst into a pint of ice cream, and that didn’t feel like a healthy coping mechanism. “I think so. I might change out the comforter and some artwork, make it look a little bit more like me.”
“Your ex’s head mounted on the wall?” he asked lightly.
“I don’t keep those trophies out for public consumption, but that’s really sweet of you to ask.”
Liam licked at his bottom lip, and my cheeks went a little warm.
There was no reason for him to make anything of mine warm, which just went to show how long it had been for me. Tyler, sweet though he was, had never progressed to the bedroom-activity phase of our relationship. He’d wanted to take things slow, and I hadn’t really hit a point with him where he made me want to tear my clothes off.
Which meant that Charles was, unfortunately, my last experience with sex.
And his idea of sex had been early-evening missionary so that he could stare at himself in the mirror over the dresser, as the lighting and the angle made his body look better than it actually was. After about seven minutes (give or take), he’d leave the room, and I’d always have to roll over, tug open the top drawer of my nightstand, and finish myself off with a little help.
It was theonlyreason I was having this reaction to Liam. The only thing that made logical sense, at least.
Because now I was thinking about sex with Liam, and absolutely nothing good would come from that.
“What aboutyourtrophies?” I asked, head tilted to the side. “Do I have to worry about intrepid football fans sneaking out in the middle of the night? Finding them in the kitchen in the morning, wondering when the coffee’s going to be made?”
He took a careful step closer, and I backed into the counter. His eyes searched my face.
“What do you think?” he murmured. “You think I’d parade women around here?”
I swallowed. Quite desperately, I wanted to answer him with something clever or snappy, to keep this little dance going, but I couldn’t find the words. They were frozen somewhere under my sternum, and the air was thick with unnamed tension.
I damn well knew that Liam didn’t sleep around. Chris and Amie had talked about it enough—how he was never in relationships.
Quite inexplicably, they’d felt like that was a shame. Personally, I could understand why the groupies didn’t go after him, considering he was a raging dick and all.
But raging dick or not, he looked like a man who’d never leave a woman needing to roll over and finish anything by herself. With the arms and the eyes and the accent and the voice ...
No. There’d be no help needed. My throat went bone dry as I stared up at him.
Finally, I shook my head.
He nodded slowly. “You’d be right, then.”
