Page 47 of Gravity of Love
Frankie feltLiam’s eyes on her as she walked down the hall and into his bedroom. When she reached it, she paused in the doorway and ran her hand down the inside of the wall, flipping a switch and turning on the light. It must have had a dimmer setting because a soft hue illuminated the space. Not even the mood lighting helped the cold feeling of a hotel room that no one ever checked out of. Except, unlike those rooms, just like the rest of the house she’d seen, the eggshell-colored walls were bare. No art. No photos. No mirrors.
After one step inside, she stopped and took inventory. A masculine black four-poster king-sized bed appeared untouched by sleep, a gray comforter, four pillows at the head, and a throw blanket at the foot of the bed made with military precision were the stars of the show, anchoring the room in the center. Black nightstands, each adorned with an identical sleek, white table lamp and nothing else, sat on each side of the bed. Two large windows framed the bed. A black dresser stood on the side wall. There was nothing on the dresser, not a single photo, cologne, watch, or other personal item. A maroon armchair in the right corner provided a single pop of color. The only evidence that anactual human inhabited the space was the fluffy dog bed that was comically large for little Lucy now, but she would obviously grow into, filled with dog toys—a rubber chicken with one leg missing, a yellow tennis ball, a plush duck who looked slightly worse for wear, and an alligator stuffed animal that appeared two times larger than the puppy.
Frankie circled the room, fingers trailing along each one of the items. She felt Liam’s gaze following her like a physical touch. When she finished her lap, she turned and found him still in the doorway. His arms were above his head, hands resting on the top of the doorframe.
He was radiating an energy that she’d rarely felt come from him. She sensed he had a lot to say about what she’d told him, and it was killing him not being able to talk about it, but that’s not where she wanted the conversation to go. There was something else she felt they needed to discuss. Something that if she didn’t bring up now, she wasn’t sure she ever would. She walked up to him and stopped barely a foot in front of him, looking up so her eyes met his.
While she was getting out of her Elsa costume, she’d had a wine cooler, she wasn’t drunk, but her thoughts skipped the rails anyway. Somehow the words lined up in her throat and came out as if she’d rehearsed them: “Are we ever going to talk about it?”
A crease appeared between his perfect brows as he stared down at her. Time ticked by, and he remained quiet. She waited for his response. She was not going to speak first.
Random thoughts began to pop up in her head.
Had he always been this tall?
Did men keep growing after the age of twenty?
Did she look like a human Pez dispenser with her head flipped all the way back, just to look him in the eye?
“That depends,” he finally said.
His two-word response caused her heart to pound so hard she could feel it in her toes.
“Depends on what?” she countered with a three-word retort.
His eyes narrowed slightly, which caused her core to explode with fireworks like it was the Fourth of July between her legs.
“On whatitis,” he came back with a four-word reply.
Maybethiswasn’tan unspoken word count ping-pong game, but that’s what it felt like to her, and she wasverycompetitive.
Before speaking, she counted the words in her head. “What do you thinkitis?”
Five. Nailed it.She’d beat him at the word count game and cornered him by asking a question he couldn’t question his way out of.
His jaw twitched and his nostrils flared. They only did that when he felt cornered.
She heard Zee’s voice in her head saying,Hopefully it’s a corner he’ll fuck his way out of,and her lips curled into a smile.
“What?” he asked.
“What, what?” she repeated his question, her tone laced with a completely appropriate level of defensiveness. She found herself doing that a lot around Liam, getting defensive. It seemed that’s what happened when someone abandoned her for a decade. Also, he was breaking the rules of their unspoken game, and she did not appreciate it.
“What were you just thinking?” he clarified.
Frustration boiled up inside of her.Liamof all people asking someone what they were thinking, that was rich. She wanted to ask him how that shoe felt on the other foot, but she felt that might be getting into petty territory.
“Why? Why do you care what I’m thinking?”
He didn’t respond. He just stared at her. That was the thing about Liam, he had no issue with silence. In fact, she was pretty sure he preferred silence. She did not. But for once, she was notgoing to fold. This was a staring contest she was going to win. Or it was more of a silence showdown, but whatever, she was not going to speak first. If they stood there in silence all night, so be it.
There was one tiny problem with her plan. The longer she looked into Liam’s eyes, the more fireworks went off. On her end, the air surrounding them grew dense, thickening with each passing second, crackling with a static energy that vibrated between them. At first, it was just a quiet awareness—her pulse fluttering, her skin prickling with anticipation. She did her best to ignore what she was feeling and match Liam’s energy, to meet this challenge head-on and let the unspoken stretch between them like a charged wire.
She focused on him, cataloguing every nuance, the way his chest rose and fell, deliberate and measured, and the way his arms flexed as he gripped the doorframe, making his shirt tighten across his biceps. His jaw was clenched, a muscle ticking in his cheek, and his green eyes glittered with something wild and unreadable. That only made things worse. Frankie’s own body betrayed her—her breaths grew fast and short, heat bloomed under her skin, and the space between her thighs suddenly became hyperaware and achy with want.
In a failed attempt to distract herself, she counted the seconds—one, two, three—waiting for him to blink, to glance away, to do anything that would break the spell he was casting over her. But he didn’t. He just stared, unblinking, breathing, watching her with an intensity that made goosebumps race along her arms. The silence, which she’d expected to be uncomfortable, became almost intoxicating. She wondered if this was what it felt like to be hypnotized. She swayed slightly and realized that in an attempt not to have labored breaths, she’d been holding her breath.
Her mind scrambled for something to sayifshe were to break the silence, something that would wrestle back control, but all she could think about was how close he was, how good he smelled—soap and something darker, like cedar or earth—and how badly she suddenly wanted to taste his mouth. It was as if every nerve in her body had converged at one point, just below her navel, tingling and twisting tighter with every second that passed. She pressed her thighs together and sucked in a sharp breath, hoping he didn’t notice. Of course he did.
