Tell Me It’s Right (Sweetspire #1)

Chapter 37

Chapter Thirty-Seven

GRACIE

I was so goddamn nervous. At least, I was at first. But once we got started, that all slipped away. And now seeing Liam practically unravel with overthinking, one of us has to keep it together. I don’t know what switch flipped in his brain, because he certainly didn’t seem nervous when he made me see God a few minutes ago.

I kiss him slowly and run my hands through his hair, over his shoulders, along the muscles of his arms as they brace against the bed on either side of my face. He relaxes, and I move my hands to his chest, moaning into his mouth as my fingers trail down lean muscle.

His hips grind into me, and I lift mine as an invitation.

“You’re ready?” he whispers.

I nod. The same way I convince myself to do anything I’m scared of, I just have to surge ahead before I let myself think too much.

He never stops kissing me. Not as he lines himself up with my entrance, not as he slowly pushes in an inch, then another. Not as he slides a hand down to my clit.

The combination of sensations steals my breath.

“Am I hurting you?” he murmurs.

“Not at all,” I gasp.

His lips trail down my neck and chest until he takes my nipple into his mouth. The flicks of his tongue as he slides in another inch make my head fall back. My body stretches around him, but the sensation isn’t discomfort, and it isn’t pain. Whatever it is, it’s new, and I don’t want it to stop. It all comes together—his slow, testing strokes, his fingers, his tongue, like he’s playing my body like an instrument. I don’t know how he could’ve possibly been that nervous when he’s this good at this.

Vaguely, I register that noises are coming out of me, but I can’t stop them. Whimpers, moans, I think some sound like his name.

He seems to grow more sure of himself after a minute, and his pace increases as his lips land back on mine. I sink my teeth into his bottom lip, and he groans low in his chest, the sound vibrating through my body.

“You feel so fucking good, Gracie,” he breathes. “You doing okay?”

Much, much better than okay. But all I can manage is “Yes.”

In all my friends’ accounts of losing their virginities in high school or college, their stories were full of jackhammering and lying there for a few minutes and waiting for it to be over.

Liam’s hips meet mine in slow, sensual movements that have my lungs forgetting how to breathe. He shifts and experiments with different angles, different speeds, different force, until he finds whatever moan of mine he likes best and sticks with that.

“That’s it. I’ve got you.”

“That feels so good,” I gasp.

I feel his mouth curve into a smile against my neck, and he grabs one of my hands, links his fingers with mine, and presses it into the pillow above my head.

All I can think is Thank God.

Thank God I didn’t sleep with any of those losers in college.

Thank God I waited.

Because there’s no way any of them would’ve compared to this.

“I love you,” Liam breathes against my skin, so low I almost don’t hear it, don’t know if he means for me to.

But still, I murmur, “I love you, Liam.”

I recognize the relief in his eyes and regret not saying it sooner.

We crash together in a hungry, desperate kiss full of tongue and teeth and gasps. My nails dig into his back as he drives into me harder, faster, the heat in my core building until it’s impossibly hot. I hope he’s as close as I am because I can already tell I’m not going to be able to move anymore after this.

Please don’t stop. Please don’t stop. Please don’t stop. I don’t know if I manage to say it aloud, but his grip on my hand tightens to a nearly painful degree, the movements of his hips starting to jerk.

I think I stop breathing. All I know is I don’t just come over the edge. I’m shoved off the cliff, suddenly and violently, and then I’m falling. I think he finishes too. I think he groans my name.

Every part of me trembles as I gulp in a breath, and Liam slows to a few more gentle thrusts before stilling between my legs. His head falls to my shoulder with a shaky exhale, and we lie there for a moment, panting and holding each other. My heart pounds in my chest, and I can feel his just as clearly against my palm.

Slowly, he pushes himself up and smoothes his hands over my hair, his smile uncertain as he searches my face.

I bite my lip. “Is it always that good?”

He throws his head back, his laugh full and relieved. “No.” He kisses me. “It’s not.” Again. “But I have a feeling with you and me, it will be.”

What I’ve done doesn’t fully occur to me until I’m sitting on Liam’s couch in one of his T-shirts. Liam returns to his spot next to me with a glass of water, and I cover my face with my hands.

“Oh my God,” I moan.

“What? What’s wrong?”

I stare up at him with wide eyes. “That was so rude of me. To just walk out on my own party. To leave all of my friends there—some who flew all the way here from the West Coast just to see me! And I just walked out! Where’s my phone? I should—I should call, or?—”

“Gracie.” Liam takes my face between his hands before I can get far and forces me to look at him. “Breathe. I’ll find your phone.”

After a few seconds of searching through the couch, he pulls it out from between the cushions and hands it over.

“Shit, it’s late,” he mutters as he checks his own phone. “Damage control might have to wait until the morning.”

I chew on my lip and send a few copy-and-paste texts to apologize and let everyone know I’ll fill them in tomorrow.

“Hey.” Liam gently taps beneath my chin with his knuckles. “Everyone who was at that party loves you. They’ll understand. You want to order food and watch something?” My eyebrows inch up, and he laughs. “I’ll take that as a yes.” He takes the seat beside me on the couch, pulls out his phone, and leans forward on his knees. “What are you in the mood for? There aren’t a lot of vegetarian spots around here, are there? And there are only a few places still open. What about sushi? Do they have stuff for you?”

I peer at his phone over his shoulder as he scrolls through a delivery app and pulls up the sushi place a few streets down. “Oh yeah. Their asparagus one is really good. The sauce is delicious.”

He clicks on the roll. “This one?”

I rest my chin against his shoulder and nod.

“Perfect. That’s what I’ll get too.”

“Liam, you don’t have to. I mean, you can get whatever you want.”

He turns, putting our noses an inch from each other, and searches my face. “It doesn’t bother you when people eat meat in front of you?”

I look away and lean back. Obviously I don’t like seeing it. Or being around it. Or, God, smelling it. But I get enough jabs and jokes when people find out I’m a vegetarian as it is. Bringing more attention to it is the last thing I want to do.

He ducks his head to meet my eyes. “You’re just too nice to ask me not to, right?”

My face burns at how easily he can read me.

“Gracie, I want the asparagus roll. You know, I think the only thing missing in my life right now is some asparagus, actually.”

“Do you even like asparagus?”

He shrugs and finishes making the order. “I will now. So.” He settles into the couch, then grabs my legs, pulls them across his lap, and hands me the TV remote. “What’ll it be, birthday girl?”

I chew on my lip and sift through the options. Something I haven’t seen before or an old favorite…

“Can I ask you something that’s none of my business?” Liam says.

“Sure.” I switch to a different app that’s usually better about having new releases.

“This being your first time…why is that? I don’t believe for a second you didn’t have guys throwing themselves at you in college.”

I stop scrolling.

“You don’t have to tell me. I just wondered if there was a reason.”

I inhale slowly, considering my words. It’s a fair question, but I’ve never tried to put together the words for an answer.

“There were a few guys in college,” I say slowly. “And we fooled around a little bit. But the first time I ever got close to having sex, I ended up telling him I wasn’t ready yet. And, you know, he was nice about it in the moment, but then afterward he pretty much ghosted me. We talked sometimes, but nothing like it had been, until he stopped reaching out altogether.”

I hated the way I could still feel butterflies in my stomach every time his name popped up on my phone, how that turned into a gaping pit in my gut when I finally realized I was never going to hear from him again. I’d held out hope for weeks—far longer than I should have.

“And he’d seemed so genuine before that,” I say softly. “But as soon as he realized he wasn’t going to get to sleep with me, he turned into this completely different person. So then whenever there were other guys, and I actually did, you know, want to sleep with them? I would tell them no. Just to see if they reacted the same way.” I swallow hard. “And they did. All of them. I just wanted to see if they would wait—they wouldn’t have even had to wait long!—if a single one of them cared about me more than they cared about that, and it never happened. So I decided I would rather stay a virgin than have my first time be with someone like that. At some point I stopped bothering with dating. It felt…pointless. Shallow.” I give him a wry smile. “The hopeless romantic in me couldn’t take it.”

He frowns, the tension in his forehead carving deep lines, and his hands tighten around my legs. “I’m really glad you didn’t. Not just because selfishly I’m glad it was with me. I hate that you experienced that. I don’t understand how a single one of them could have gotten to know you and not fallen completely in love with you.” He brings me into his chest and kisses the side of my head. “I’m crazy about you, Gracie,” he murmurs in a voice almost too low for me to hear. “And I’m still going to say that tomorrow and every day after.”

My throat tightens. I hadn’t realized how much I needed to hear that. He traces the backs of my hands, his fingers playing idly with mine. Such a simple action, but it makes the last of the tension in my body deflate, like this, finally, is what convinced it we’re safe right now.

In fact, being with Liam, I don’t know if I’ve ever felt safer in my life.

The sushi arrives halfway through the movie—a recent romcom release—and Liam ends up liking the asparagus rolls so much that I have to fight him away from stealing pieces of mine too.

He tries to pull me against his chest, but I wiggle away.

“Would you just get over here?” he says with a sigh.

“You’re trying to distract me so you can take the last piece.”

“Fine. Finish it, then come here.”

I narrow my eyes at him as I chew, and he lifts an eyebrow while he waits. When I’m done, I cautiously scoot closer, not sure if he’s trying to lure me in to put me in a chokehold or wrestle me to the ground or something.

He stretches an arm out to make room for me. “So paranoid.”

“I grew up with Leo. Sue me.”

But as I settle against his chest and he props his chin on the top of my head, all he does is pull up the camera on his phone.

“I’m sorry I didn’t get one at the party,” he murmurs. “I don’t want to not have a picture with you on your birthday.”

I look up at his face as he snaps the picture. Simple words, and he says them casually enough, but the romance-book girl inside of me is melting. Because despite how hard and intimidating and cool he may seem on the outside, I think Liam Brooks is as much of a hopeless romantic as I am.