Chapter 277: Chapter 15

Instead of agreeing to that as he expected, she shook her head; then she cleared her throat and said, "No. I’ll manage on my own tomorrow, but thank you for your help and it was nice meeting you again, Mr. Thompson."

She was sulking, Liam decided, and because he couldn’t stand women who sulked, he was perversely pleased to discover she was one of them. Except that when she turned around and looked at him, he realized she wasn’t sulking at all.

Smiling softly, she said, "Goodbye. And thank you for a lovely, memorable evening. I wouldn’t have missed it for anything in the world."

Liam was so disarmed by her expression and what she said that he reversed his earlier decision about the best way to end the evening. "It doesn’t have to end now," he pointed out.

"Yes, it does."

Although Liam was willing to change his mind, he was not willing to be backed into a corner or forced into a compromise. "Because I don’t want to tell you the story of my personal life?" he speculated impassively.

"No, because you made me tell you the story of my life, but you’re offering nothing in return."

"Nothing?" he mocked, lifting his brows. He was reminding her that he’d offered her his body in bed, in place of his biography, and as Rayne fought down a fresh surge of temptation, she suddenly rediscovered that strange feeling of destined friendship that had come over her earlier.

Without realizing what she was doing, she laid her hand against his hard cheek and smiled winsomely into his shuttered dark eyes.

"What you’re offering would be enough for any woman, I know," she teased, "but the problem is that I have a feeling you’re a whole lot more than just another pretty face..."

At that remark, reluctant laughter flickered in his eyes and a muscle twitched at the corner of his mouth, and the warm connection Rayne felt with him grew stronger, along with her aching sense of loss.

"The truth is, I think you have a lot of layers, and if we were together again tomorrow, I would keep trying to peel off one layer at a time to peek beneath it and see what’s hiding there. To see you..."

When he didn’t reply, she did it for him: "But you won’t let me, and you won’t like it if I try, will you?"

Caught between shock at her sincerity and admiration for her courage, Liam gave her the tribute of an honest answer. "No."

"I knew that," she whispered with another smile, and pulled her hand slowly from his cheek, sliding it down over his shoulder until she finally forced herself to lift it away from him entirely. "Now go away before I change my mind."

Liam noticed the way her hand lingered on him, he heard the slight shake in her voice, and he knew beyond any doubt that he could pull her into his arms and change her mind.

He even sensed that on some level, she wanted him to do exactly that almost as much as he was tempted to do it. Instead he decided to do exactly what she said she wanted him to do, partly because he knew that was probably the wisest course.

However, rather than end their brief acquaintance on a grim note, he deliberately joked with her about her decision as he prepared to leave.

"You are going to regret this, red," he predicted with sham gravity.

She nodded in complete agreement and matched his tone perfectly. "Without a doubt," she assured him, ignoring the nickname but her eyes were suspiciously bright. Attuned to each subtlety of her expression now, Liam assumed tears were responsible for that sheen in her eyes.

"If you change your mind about tomorrow—"

"I won’t," she interrupted quietly. "Goodbye," she added, and held out her hand to shake his, just as she’d done thirteen hours after spilling a drink on him.

He looked down at her hand, and without warning or reason, he felt a sharp compulsion to change her mind for her and spend the night with her after all.

Ignoring her outstretched hand, he took her chin between his thumb and forefinger, tilted her face up to his, and smiled into her eyes. "In my culture, when a man and woman have spent an evening together, they kiss each other goodbye."

If she’d looked away or tried to free her chin from his grasp, Liam would have forced her to kiss him and subdued the rest of her objections with his mouth and hands. Instead, she gave him a confused, feign innocent look.

"I’ve never heard of that. What culture is that?"

Liam’s brows snapped into a scowl. "You’re not going to give in anymore, are you?"

"Do you mean in your Casanova culture?" she persisted, ignoring his question.

Liam dropped his hand in irritation. She stepped back. "I’ll walk you out," she said politely and turned to walk into the suite with him.

He declined her offer in a bored, impatient voice. "Don’t bother; I know my way out. I’ll pass the path at the back of the building."

Fighting back tears of loss, Rayne watched him walk off the terrace and turn left, striding along the back of her villa.

As he reached into his pants pocket and withdrew his car keys, he stopped for a moment, his dark head bent in thought, then he turned toward her. Rayne’s hope soared at the sight of his brief smile, but the words he spoke yanked her back to a painful reality. "You made the right choice, Miss Wallace."

Inwardly, Rayne flinched at the additional damage he inflicted on her with his automatic smile and indifferent words, but she forced her aching facial muscles into an answering smile. "I know," she lied.

He nodded, as if completely satisfied with matters between them now; then he strode down the path and disappeared around the corner of the villa. And out of her sight and...life.

In the trees at the border of the garden behind her, something made a rustling noise, but this time Rayne didn’t feel any alarm or bother to look around. Since she knew it wasn’t Liam, she didn’t care what else was back there.

Squeezing her eyes closed, she dropped her head in a losing battle with doubt and shame.

The reasons she’d given Liam for putting an abrupt end to their time together were nothing but half-truths. When she originally decided to go to bed with him, she hadn’t needed to know how many languages he spoke or how many siblings he had before she could make that decision.

The reasons she’d given herself for backing away were logical but lame and dishonest. She’d realized all along that she might feel guilty or mortified later if she slept with him tonight, and she’d been prepared to risk that and accept it if it happened.

What she had not been prepared to do was go back to Zen and torture herself with unanswerable questions. Her father’s death had changed the course of her life completely, and the future of the corporation he’d devoted his entire life to was an uncertain mystery with Rayne, who was inexperienced, in charge.

When Liam refused to talk about himself, she’d panicked at the realization that she would forever wonder who he truly was if she returned to Zen. Instead of focusing on the corporation, she would be focusing on him.

She wanted so desperately to know him personally—standing right in front of her, in fact, looking at her with sexy, heavy-lidded eyes and a deceptively lazy smile while he practically dared her to try to unravel what was going on inside him.

What made Rayne so furious with herself now was that she could have done it, at least partway, but she’d let him go. Perhaps it was because she’d been madly into him as a teen that she wanted to know the feeling of being in his arms, in her bed.

At dinner tonight, she’d realized within minutes that there were carefully rigid emotional barricades around Liam, and she’d presumed that they’d been there a very, very long time—probably since his childhood—but he’d hidden it so well with his easygoing personality and charisma.

Instead of granting him the right to have boundaries and admiring the amazing amount of warmth and strength he obviously possessed—instead of letting him put all that irresistible, confident sexuality of his to use, which he’d intended to do with her—Rayne had focused on the probable foundation of his barricades and started digging there with probing questions about his family members.

Every adult male had some sort of useful emotional barricades. Sometimes, they let them down for a woman they cared deeply for, but never did they let them down simply because a woman they barely knew wanted to make them do it—and do it immediately!

Swallowing back tears of frustrated regret, Rayne stepped off the terrace where she’d laughed and joked and danced with him...and been melted by one unforgettable kiss.

Lifting her hand, she rubbed the aching muscles at her nape, then dropped her hand to her side. Less than half an hour ago, she remembered clearly, his long fingers had been at her nape, shoved into her hair, his mouth hungrily on hers.

The music had ended when he left, she realized as she wandered aimlessly toward the beach. The night had died when he left.

She thought about the way he’d turned back when he was walking away, as if the act of taking his keys out of his pocket had suddenly reminded him of another act he needed to perform, and he’d told her that she’d made the right choice; and for the first time, Rayne regretted making such a right choice.

She paused, looking up at the starry night with a longing and loneliness that gripped her heart and squeezed it in a way that made her breathing slightly labored. She wrapped her arms around herself, as if that was enough to give her the comforting company she desperately wanted and longed for.

Though in the past she used to make fun of Mia whenever she spoke of waiting and wanting the perfect dream guy who would love and care for her, who would put her first, Rayne had secretly harbored that dream as well. At first, she’d thought Max was that person, but it turned out she was wrong.

However, with Liam, she knew he wasn’t that person either, but she wished she’d let herself experience one night of being held in his arms like her teenage self had always dreamt of.

But because of her own cowardice and her infatuated eagerness to know everything about him, she’d spoiled her chance to discover anything about him at all, and the chance to feel his kiss again.

Knowing that made her feel so miserable that it was almost a consolation to think he hadn’t really given a damn about her. At least she couldn’t blame herself for spoiling chances she’d never have had with him.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by Aunomay Read