A Vine Mess (Love on the Vine #4)

12. Ella

The longer I laid there in the silence, the more my anxiety rose. I had no idea why. Maybe because I was all alone in a new place. Maybe it was Liam’s parting words. Whatever it was, my chest felt painfully tight. Not to mention the fact that my stomach roiled from that beer Corm had given me. I needed to recall the name simply so I could stay the fuck away from it in the future.

And when some sort of animal howled in the distance, I was throwing open the door to the van before I could think better of it, wrapping my sleeping bag around me, and shuffling across the dirt between there and Liam’s tent.

Without a door to knock on, I scratched at the fabric and whispered, “Liam?”

“Ella?” His response was instantaneous, and after some rustling, the zipper on the tent lifted to reveal him.

Holy fuck.

The man should never wear a shirt .

With only the light of the moon to guide me, my gaze raked over his exposed torso and the tattoos there that I’d never been privy to before.

The massive floral piece on his left shoulder which trailed into a skeleton hand holding a long-stemmed rose on his left pec, the petals floating off of it and morphing into the feathers of a bird in a cage on the opposite one.

I didn’t have a hope of inspecting them all tonight, not when my eyes finally returned to his, their blue depths seeming to glow in the moonlight.

“Are you okay?” he asked, standing and meeting me outside. Clad in only a pair of boxers, revealing more tattoos on his thick thighs, he had to be freezing, but he didn’t seem to notice.

He only cared about me, and when his hands came up to grip my upper arms, I shivered.

“I heard howling,” I said lamely.

“They’re not going to hurt you.”

“You don’t know that!” I protested, a little too loudly, and he shushed me with a finger over my lips.

Liam nodded, as if coming to a realization. “So you get paranoid when you’re high,” he mused. “Good to know.”

“What? No! I’m not high. What would make you say such a thing?”

Although, I had been feeling a little off since the campfire earlier. Had our new friends laced the smoke with something?

“Ella,” Liam said gently. “You ate a brownie.”

“And?”

“And those were Gertie’s special brownies.”

I clapped a hand over my mouth. “Oh my god! I’ve been drugged!”

“Wildflower,” Liam groaned, and my nickname soothed the panic creeping up my throat. “You haven’t been drugged. It’s just weed.”

“I’ve never done weed in my life!” I hissed.

The laugh he’d clearly been holding back burst free, and he said, “I thought you knew!”

“Well, I didn’t,” I pouted, crossing my arms over my chest, willing myself not to cry.

I didn’t like being high, and I definitely didn’t like coming to this state unknowingly. We were in an unfamiliar place, surrounded by nothing but these rock-and-clay deposits for miles. It would take ages for any sort of help to reach us.

My panic swirled higher, coiling around my heart and lungs, making it difficult to breathe. My breaths came in short gasps. With a whispered curse, Liam pulled me to him, one hand anchoring in my hair while the other rubbed soothing circles up and down my back.

“Shh,” he murmured. “It’s okay. Nothing is going to happen to you. I promise I’ll keep you safe. Just take deep breaths.”

With his heartbeat beneath my ear, his warmth wrapped around me, and his gentle words slicing through my hysteria, my heart rate gradually slowed. As it did, I noticed he was swaying us side to side, his arms tight and unyielding around me.

He must’ve felt me coming back to myself because he pulled away slightly, swept aside the tent flap, and said, “C’mon. We can share.”

The adrenaline crash was coming, and I didn’t have it in me to protest, to remind him that this was a terrible idea. Instead, I nodded and ducked inside.

The space was barely tall enough for me to stand upright, the flyaways atop my head brushing against the ceiling, which meant Liam had to hunch to get in here. Along one side were his bags, and the rest was dominated by a blowup mattress with a pile of blankets atop it.

Still cocooned in my sleeping bag, I merely shifted his blankets to the side and curled into a ball on one side, attempting to make myself as small as possible.

Liam loomed over me for a moment, making some sound I couldn’t decipher the meaning behind before he laid down next to me.

The silence was deafening.

As soon as I’d settled, my anxiety rose again when I realized what a bad idea this had been. I was a grown woman; I should’ve been able to sleep in a locked vehicle by myself. Instead I’d made a scene like some damsel in distress.

I trembled in my sleeping bag, the fabric doing nothing to ward off the midnight chill, as I waited—and waited and waited—for Liam’s breaths to even out. Once he was asleep, I could sneak back over to the van and forget this ever happened.

But then Liam did something that made it impossible to move.

He rolled toward me and sat up, head hovering just over my left shoulder as he said, “You’re freezing.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” I quipped through chattering teeth.

“We could…cuddle,” he whispered. “You know, for body heat.”

I thought back to him appearing in the tent opening, how he was wearing nothing but boxers, and how fucking warm I’d been when he held me. He clearly wasn’t cold. Meanwhile my toes were minutes from falling off, and my jaw was starting to hurt from clenching it against my shivering.

He was hot—in more ways than one—and while I knew I’d probably hate myself for it in the morning, I scooted back in acceptance.

“For…body heat…” I stuttered out, unzipping my sleeping bag and shifting out of it.

The damn thing clearly wasn’t doing its job anyway.

Liam wasted no time in gathering me to his chest and tucking the blankets around us. They were warm from his body and smelled like him, some heady mixture of pine and a masculine scent I couldn’t name. I shifted around so I faced him, pressing my cold nose against his pecs and sliding my icicle toes between his calves.

He tensed only briefly before saying with a chuckle, “Make yourself comfortable.”

I responded by pressing my hands flat against his abs, the muscles there jumping against my touch. Liam’s free hand, the one not resting under my head, brushed up and down my arm, back and forth in a hypnotic rhythm, then slipped it over my shoulder, his fingertips dancing along the bumps of my spine. Lower still it traveled, over the gentle swell of my hip until it came to rest on the curve of my behind.

“You do realize that’s my ass, right?”

“Really?” He flexed his fingers in an exploratory squeeze, a hum of satisfaction rumbling through his chest. “I hadn’t noticed. ”

Then he pulled me even closer, hooking my thigh over his hip.

“I thought you were mad at me,” I whispered.

“Wildflower, it’s impossible to be mad at you with this perfect ass in my hands.”

“God,” I breathed, willing myself not to react to his words. “Are you high too?”

“Duh,” he said, and I couldn’t help but giggle.

“So I get paranoid, and you get…”

“Horny,” he supplied. Then, with a soft kiss to the top of my head, he said, “Where weed apparently makes you anxious and paranoid, it mellows me out. Lowers my inhibitions. With you in my arms right now, an unfortunate side effect of that is I want to fuck you. But don’t worry, Wildflower. I’ll keep my dick where it belongs.”

While I reeled from that pronouncement, Liam appeared entirely unburdened. A moment later, his soft snores filled the space between us, leaving me with a throbbing clit and no idea how I’d gotten myself into this mess.

While Liam had passed out quickly, sleep did not find me easily. I was comfortable, and thanks to Liam’s heat, had warmed up quickly. Even with our bodies pressed tightly together, I’d managed to relax in a way I never had before when sharing a bed with a guy.

Alfie wasn’t a cuddler.

But the thought of Alfie reminded me why I was having difficulty sleeping in the first place.

As silly as it was, I felt guilty.

To be wrapped in another man’s arms when I obviously still wasn’t entirely over the shit Alfie had put me through felt…icky somehow.

I realized that sounded insane given he’d cheated on me, and I was a free woman to do what I wanted with my time, but the last thing I wanted to do was hurt Liam. I’d never forgive myself for dragging him into my mess, but I couldn’t ignore that…something was brewing between us.

He hadn’t minced words when he told me he’d wait for me. Was that something I wanted?

Honestly, it felt good to be wanted. To be reminded that I was desirable for who I was. For a man to be interested in what I had to offer the world without trying to change me.

I could do a lot worse than Liam Danvers.

In fact, he was one of the best men I’d ever known.

With that thought, I burrowed deeper into his embrace, his arms tightening around me in his sleep, and drifted off at last.

We took what Liam referred to as “the back roads” from our campsite in the Badlands to Hermosa, South Dakota, which was about an hour south of Rapid City and where we’d be staying for the next two nights.

The KOA campground Liam selected was full of amenities, including a restaurant within walking distance of our cabin, a corral where people could feed and pet horses—or take them out on a trail ride for the more adventurous guests—a playground, and a massive outdoor swimming pool.

Once again, Liam had encountered a minor snag in that he couldn’t secure us two separate cabins as they were fully booked, but thankfully the one he’d already booked had two bedrooms.

Although, us sleeping separately seemed to be a moot point after we’d spent the night before tangled together in the name of body heat .

My body was heated, alright, and it had nothing to do with the balmy temperature outside and everything to do with the man in the driver’s seat of our van.

I’d woken this morning with his hand still firmly gripping my ass and the other tangled in my hair, his morning wood pressing insistently between us.

I didn’t acknowledge it when I extricated myself from his embrace, merely hopped to my feet, wrapped my sleeping bag back around me, and rushed out of the tent in search of the bathroom before he could rouse himself from sleep.

And we’d barely spoken since then.

God, we needed to do something to break this awkwardness. We were only four days into the trip, and I wasn’t sure I could survive another minute of this.

“What do you say we get our stuff unloaded, take a quick grocery run, then spend the rest of the day at the pool?”

“Deal,” I grinned, feeling a bit of that tension bleed away.

Our cabin wasn’t very large, probably less than five hundred square feet total, but it did have a small kitchenette, bathroom, living area, and two bedrooms. Despite the close quarters, it was clean, bright, and comfortably furnished.

“Which room do you want?” he asked after we’d hauled in the last load of our stuff.

I moved deeper into the cabin and peeked into each. They were roughly the same size, but one seemed to have more space around the bed, which I was sure Liam would appreciate with that big body of his. Ultimately, I pointed to the slightly smaller one and grabbed one of my bags, hauling it in and dropping it on the bed.

Liam followed me in with my other luggage then disappeared to settle in his room.

After changing my shirt and swiping on some deodorant, I walked back into the shared space to find Liam standing there waiting for me with his hands on his hips.

“You gave me the bigger one,” he said.

Slinging my purse over my shoulder, I breezed past him and back outside, blowing him a kiss along the way.

“The big boy gets the bigger room,” I shrugged. “It’s science.”

Though I couldn’t be sure, he grumbled something lowly that sounded an awful lot like, “I’ll show you a big boy.”

Nope . I wasn’t going within a hundred miles of that .

Later, after stocking up on groceries, we found ourselves at the pool. According to Liam, the campground was booked solid, but only a few souls had ventured out to swim. It was still the first week of May, but whereas back home it was chilly, the weather here was in the low seventies, the sun hot enough to make laying out poolside comfortable.

I took that as an opportunity to work on my tan. The problem with dating an aspiring musician was that he spent a lot of time inside, and his controlling nature meant I was always with him. My naturally olive skin had washed out and faded to a creamy shade, and I was desperate for some color once again.

I always felt better with a tan, and it made my tattoos look even better .

Liam, meanwhile, took the chance to actually get in the pool, diving under with a splash and surfacing moments later, wiping away the water dripping out of his hair and down his face.

I was grateful my sunglasses hid my eyes and allowed me to ogle him in peace.

Although, he seemed to have this sixth sense about me, and even from fifty or so feet apart, I swore I saw the corner of his full mouth kick up in a smirk.

The man was gorgeous in any situation, but in nothing but board shorts, water sluicing down his heavily inked and muscled skin?

He was damn near godlike.

In the darkness the night before, I hadn’t been able to fully appreciate his tattoos, and in the light of day, I couldn’t tear my eyes away. The ones on his chest and abdomen were even more beautiful now, especially the floral piece that dominated his right shoulder and deltoid. The colors were vibrant against his skin, the flowers incredibly lifelike. Then there were the thigh tats which, especially paired with his shorter swim trunks, had always been a weakness of mine. One leg had words scrawled across it that I couldn’t read from here, the other a detailed lion’s head with a set of roman numerals above and below it.

And when he turned around? Snakes started at the base of his spine, dipping just below the waistband of his shorts, and coiled upward, twining around each other until the massive cobra heads rested on his shoulder blades. I wanted to trace them with my fingers—and my tongue.

His chest was lightly dusted with dark hair that disappeared before the trail picked up again below his belly button and disappeared into the waistband of his shorts. I imagined running my mouth over his lower abdomen, following that line of hair and tasting the surprise that waited for me at the end.

And thanks to the way his bright blue shorts suctioned to his body when he rose out of the water like a goddamn tattooed Poseidon, not to mention the boner pressing into my stomach this morning, I knew exactly how big he was.

Long and thick.

Would likely break me in half.

I’d probably thank him for it—and beg for more.

At least I’d go happily. Because a man with hands like his and a cock like that? He knew what to do with them.

Peals of laughter snapped me out of my haze, and I came back to myself in time to watch a group of five little girls—all blonde and gangly-limbed—tossing themselves into the water, their towels and shoes carelessly abandoned on the deck.

“Be careful!” a woman who could only be their mother called after them as she selected a round table in the corner, dropped an oversized bag on the chair, then reclined in one of the chaise lounges nearby.

Liam stood at the edge of the pool, a speculative look on his face as he watched the girls splash around the deep end.

And then he did the last thing I expected him to.

With a wink over his shoulder at me and a finger to his lips urging me to be quiet, he slipped back into the water unnoticed, inhaled deeply, and disappeared under the surface.

The little girls were so caught up in their game of Marco Polo, they didn’t notice a shark was in their midst until Liam breached the surface with a playful roar that sent them all screaming and splashing away.

Across the way, their mother tipped her head back and laughed, and a moment later, a man who probably wasn’t much older than Liam appeared at the gate, towing pool noodles, goggles, and a small cooler that I assumed held snacks and drinks.

“What’s so funny?” he asked the woman.

She pointed at Liam, who was now carefully lifting the girls out of the water and tossing them in different directions, their giggles turning to sputters as they went under and resurfaced. “He popped up in the middle of their little circle and scared the shit out of them.”

“And now he’s playing with them,” the man, who I guessed was her husband and the father of the girls, said disbelievingly.

The woman smiled widely, then flipped the brim of her sunhat over her face and reclined, closing her eyes, fully trusting a stranger to care for her children.

Then again, her husband was right there.

But Liam…at first glance, he wasn’t the kind of man you expected to be good with kids. Everything about him screamed danger —or maybe that was just to me. Some invisible red flag waving over his head, warning me off.

Unfortunately, like I was a goddamn bull, it only urged me closer.

The father set down his things and splashed into the water as well, joining Liam and his daughters.

I hadn’t realized the mom noticed my presence until she said, “You lucked out with that one.”

“I’m sorry?”

Her eyes popped open and leveled me. “Your guy”—she nodded in Liam’s direction—“you lucked out with him. Having a partner who is good with kids is so important,” she stressed, nodding at her husband, whose girls circled him like he was the sun, giant, toothy smiles on their faces as he played with them.

“Oh, we’re not—” I cut myself off, searching for some way to explain. “It’s not like that. We’re…just friends.”

The woman’s brows rose, her eyes darting between me and Liam.

“Could’ve fooled me.”