Page 15 of Holiday Home 5

“I saw the tour guide asking you something at the end of the tour. You shook your head.”

Idiot! Idiot, idiot, idiot!

“You saw that?” Victoria asked. “Were you watching me?”

Holding in a wince, he settled for a shrug. “I noticed it out of the corner of my eye.”

“A perceptive eye.”

“Yeah…”

Victoria could have kept the clamps on, adding pressure. Instead, she changed tact. “He pretty brazenly asked if I’d like to return later for a more private tour of the Garden.”

Liam’s scowl must have been a sight to behold, for Victoria drew up her eyebrow.

“Would that be problematic, in your eyes?”

“I wouldn’t like it,” Liam admitted. After the response he’d just shown, it’d be pointless to deny it.

Again, Victoria could have heaped on the pressure. Again, she allowed it to dissipate. She and Avril really were ice and fire. “As you saw, I shook my head. I’m not interested in a man who clearly wants to fuck me—and nothing else.”

Liam blinked. Had… Victoria just swore? He rolled through his memories, seeking any time before that when she had. He couldn’t find one. It was like hearing a cat go moo, like an echo in the ear that wouldn’t stop ringing. His brain needed a few moments to process things before he could give her a response.

“I’m glad you said no,” Liam said, uncertain what else to say.

“Why is that?”

Liam held Victoria’s gaze, determined to recover from his initial blunder. This was the week he wanted to see the stars align. Not just see them align, however, butmakethem align. That was his hope, the paradise he was after.

“Because I wouldn’t want some other guy to put his hands on you.”

“Some other guy?” Victoria inquired. Her voice seemed to be falling, growing softer, sultrier. “Is there alreadysomeguy whoisputting his hands on me?”

The moment of truth arrived. Liam didn’t back down.

“There’s one who’s hoping to,” he whispered. “I could tell you were paying plenty of attention to the massage I gave Tess.”

The water wasn’t so high that the two of them, the tallest members of the group, struggled to keep their feet planted. In fact, for them to submerge themselves to their shoulders while leaning against the wall, they needed to bend their knees a bit.

Staring into her eyes, remarkably avoiding a shiver as he stared into the tundra, Liam turned hope into reality. Sliding his right arm behind Victoria’s waist, he laid his hand on the beginning of the deep curve that led toward the narrowest part of her hourglass figure. She neither rebuked nor pulled out of his grasp.

She watched and waited, silent but intense. As if anticipating more.

So, he went a little further.

Pulling her toward him, tilting her diagonally, he set her long, delicious—he’d keep using that word to describe her until she was fed up with it—legs over his thighs. She half-floated, half-sat on his legs, her knees bobbing out of the water in her new position. Her much, much closer position, her left breast rubbing against his side.

No rebuke, no attempt at escape, no slap to the face—which might have been a very real possibility had he overestimated her interest in him.

It was as thrilling a moment as he could recollect. Utterly amazing. Awash with mixing strands of excitement and trepidation, he moved his hand from her waist to the lowest possible part of her back. In response,shemoved her left arm, lifted it out of the water, and settled it behind his neck. Going the final step to stabilize her position on his lap, he set his other hand just above her knee. From any way anyone looked, they must have surely looked like a couple.

That was what he wanted. Not just to look like one but to be one.

He wanted Victoria Moreno. Just as badly as he wanted the other three women in the hot spring.

“Is this a satisfying amount of touch?” Victoria asked calmly, staring at him with an almost unnerving focus. Reading him, judging him.

“For right now,” Liam said, voice crackling with the desire hurtling through his veins. “Until you decide to ask me for a massage.”

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