“No. I’m a little taken aback that you think sex with me will bethatunderwhelming.”
I picked my head off the headrest. “I never said that.”
“Destroy my pedestal?”
I twisted a lock of hair into a long rope. “Oh. What I meant was—I’ll just stop talking. I’m sure it’ll be fun.”
“Fun?” He popped the word out as though it were the most insulting thing I’d ever said to him.
I found myself smirking. At least, this was helping smother my twittering nerves.
He reached over and placed a hand on my thigh. My nerves revved right back up, jangling so loudly I expected them to create ripples in the air.
“It’ll be more thanfun, Nicole.” He really hadn’t liked that adjective.
When his hand glided beneath my skirt, I held my breath.Andheld it. His fingers were so close to where I wanted them.Soclose.
“Breathe. I don’t want you to pass out before we reach the cabin.”
I glowered and exhaled. “It’s been alongtime.”
“How long?” His palm drifted back toward my knee, stayed there.
“Eighteen months.”
“That is a long time.”
“What about you?”
“It’s been a while too.”
I doubted our measure of time was anywhere near equal. “Like what, two weeks?”
“More like last New Year’s.”
My eyelashes hit my browbone. “Really?” I said this before I realized that Storm was born around that time. Well, a month later. “Shoot, I didn’t mean to remind you of . . .”
“It wasn’t with Tamara.”
The goosebumps pebbling my thighs sank right back into my flesh. Even though I told myself I didn’t get to judge him, the question leaped out before I could squash it back, “You cheated on her?”
He pulled his hand away, returned it to the wheel as he spun the car up the drive to the compound. “To cheat on someone means you’rewiththem in the first place.”
I frowned.
“I don’t want you thinking I’m an asshole, so I’ll tell you this much, but then I don’t want to discuss my past again. Tammy and I tried to make it work during the first trimester of her pregnancy, but she was constantly on my case about not spending enough time together. She hated that the pack came first, and that hatred festered. Contaminated everything in our relationship. When she asked me to pick between her and the Boulders, I told her it was an impossible choice.” A nerve feathered his jaw. “She said being Alpha had turned me into someone else, someone she didn’t recognize, someone too difficult to love.”
The compound gate ground open, and yet Liam didn’t press on the gas pedal immediately, just idled in front, locked in the morose memory I’d dredged up.
Contrition made me nibble my lower lip. “Sorry for assuming you’d cheated on her.”
Liam didn’t answer. Just put the car in gear and drove past the gate, then past my parents’ house.
Its darkened windows made me check the digital clock glowing on his dashboard—1 a.m. “What time do you need to pick up Storm?”
He kept his eyes on the road winding toward the pond. “Your parents offered to keep him overnight and through tomorrow.”
“Because of your trip?”
