Virgin Dot Com

Chapter 173

POV: Jasmine

I closed the door and leaned my back against it.

Liam was already there — not hovering, not performing concern, just standing close, watching me, waiting to see if I needed to speak first.

"His forehead," I said. "When he bent to kiss me goodbye. He was running a fever, Liam. Not warmth from dinner or the wine."

Liam swore quiet and flat, one word, the exhale of someone who had been bracing for it.

"I'm going after him." He was already turning.

"No." I put my hand flat against his chest and kept it there. "Not when he is already primed to feel cornered. He just spent an hour telling us to stop pressing." I held his eyes. "We lose him because of it."

The muscle in his jaw moved once.

"Tomorrow morning I will go to his apartment, bring coffee, don't phone ahead, and I don't leave until he tells me what is happening."

"He'll know you're coming."

"Then he'll know. He still won't be ready for me at eight in the morning with nowhere to be." I dropped my hand. "He taught me that move."

Liam's mouth did something adjacent to a smile. "Tomorrow," he said.

Finn came out of the living room with Aurora against his shoulder, her eyes already the weight of the almost-gone. He looked at us both and said nothing about what he had clearly heard.

"I'm going to head out." He passed Aurora to me. Finn's hand found my shoulder for a brief press. "Call me if anything happens."

He pulled on his jacket and was gone, and the apartment was ours.

I carried Aurora to the bedroom, laid her down, pulled the blanket up, kissed her forehead. I stood at the crib rail longer than I needed to.

When I came back out Liam was at the counter, jaw set. I pressed my forehead to his shoulder and stayed there until the tightness in my chest moved somewhere I could manage.

Then I lifted my face. He was already watching me.

"Hey." His thumb traced the line of my jaw. "Think you can handle me tonight, Harlow? Because I've been very patient."

I laughed despite myself. Low and real. "Is that what we're calling it."

"I've been calling it heroic restraint." He lifted my chin with two fingers. "I'm expecting recognition."

He kissed me slowly, and the cocky edge dissolved the moment his mouth found mine — deliberate, unhurried, saying the thing that words had run out of. I kissed him back harder than he started it and felt him exhale against my mouth.

His hands slid under my blouse and up my spine, palm flat against my skin. I felt the tension in my back unlock under the pressure — the release of being touched by someone who knew every place I carried it. My hands found his belt. He made a low sound against my mouth.

We did not make it to the bedroom.

He lifted me onto the counter and stepped between my knees and I grabbed his collar and pulled. He kissed my jaw, my neck, the base of my throat — and I tilted my head back to give him more of it.

His hands worked my blouse open button by button and pushed it off my shoulders, and then his mouth was at my collarbone, my sternum, dragging slow and deliberate down the center of my chest.

"Liam." His name came out unsteady.

"I know," he said against my skin. Not an answer. Just acknowledgment.

I got his shirt off and ran my hands down his chest and he made another sound, lower this time. He reached behind me and unclasped my bra with one hand and dropped it somewhere behind me without looking.

His mouth closed over my nipple and I exhaled hard and grabbed the back of his head and held him there, his tongue moving in slow circles until I felt it pull low in my stomach.

He pulled me to the edge of the counter, got his jeans down, pushed my skirt up. His hand slid between my thighs and his fingers pressed against me through the fabric, then moved it aside and ran two fingers along me slowly — just enough pressure — and I pressed into his hand and bit down on my lip to keep quiet.

"Look at me," he said.

I did. He held eye contact and worked his fingers in slow, deliberate strokes, watching my face with full attention, in no hurry to rush past it. My breath went shallow.

My grip on his shoulders tightened. He curled his fingers slightly on the upstroke and kept the rhythm until my thighs were shaking against his hips and I had to press my face into his neck when I came, his name muffled against his skin.

He gave me two seconds. Then he positioned himself and pressed forward — slowly enough that I felt every inch of it opening me, my breath releasing in a long exhale against his shoulder as he seated himself fully.

He set the pace and I let him. Deep and unhurried, his grip firm at my hips, pulling me into each thrust. My legs wrapped around him, heels pressed into the backs of his thighs.

His forehead dropped to mine. I could feel him fully every time he rolled his hips forward — the pressure of it, the friction exactly where I needed it, the counter edge biting into the backs of my thighs in a way that registered only distantly because everything else was louder.

The pressure built again, deeper this time, a slow tightening that climbed with every stroke. I gripped the back of his neck and he felt the change in me and kept the rhythm exactly as it was, patient and steady, until I clenched around him and came a second time with my mouth open against his jaw and no sound coming out.

He followed moments later — his hips stuttering, his breath breaking apart against my temple, his hands pulling me hard against him as he shuddered and stilled.

Afterward I stayed wrapped around him, one of his hands moving slow on my back. Neither of us said Asher's name.

We did not need to. He was in the room the way worry always was — not spoken, not gone, just carried.

Liam's phone buzzed on the counter beside my hip. I reached for it before he could.

Asher: Come over tomorrow. Both of you. We need to talk.