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What would have happened if I’d screamed his name instead that night? Would he have confessed everything about Saoirse, told me he was breaking it off with her, and we’d be fine now? Happy, even?
There’s no way to know. But I’m not ready to call it completely, not yet.
“I’ve tried to forget Alexandre,” I tell him breathlessly, closing the door behind me and leaning against it so he can’t easily force me out. “I told you I hung up on him the first time he called. I was ready to tell you that I wanted to be with you, to put him in the past—I wanted to get there by the time you came home from your trip. And then Saoirse stormed in—”
“I was afraid Alexandre might call you.” Liam rubs a hand over his mouth. “I should have fucking known—”
My eyes go wide. “What do you mean? How—what would have made you think—”
“He called me, too. First,” Liam admits. “Out of nowhere. I thought maybe he was just trying to spook me into giving you up, but clearly—”
I stare at him, horrified. “And you didn’t think to warn me? You knew he’d found us, and you didn’t think that was something I should know? Why didn’t you tell me? Hearing his voice out of nowhere was an awful shock. I—I wish I’d had some warning—”
“I didn’t tell you because I was afraid of this happening!” Liam shouts, his voice rising again as he clenches his jaw with obvious frustration. “I was afraid of Alexandre coming between us again, of him ruining what little progress we’d made. I was afraid that if you knew there was a chance he’d come for you, it would confuse you all over again, and you’d remember how you felt for him. It’s the same reason I didn’t tell you about Saoirse.”
He’s breathing hard now, stepping towards me, and I move sideways, away from the door, but Liam is closing in on me. My heart is pounding wildly, and I don’t know if it’s fear or something else altogether making my breath catch in my throat as Liam backs me against the dresser, his face taut with half a dozen emotions that I can’t pick apart.
“Everything we have is so fragile, Ana,” he whispers, his voice rough, the words catching as he speaks. “I’m fucking terrified of losing it. I kept secrets from you because I was afraid of losing you, and now—” he lets out a breath, his green eyes shimmering with pain. “Now I might lose you anyway, and I—”
“What, Liam?” I’m whispering too; our voices suddenly hushed where they were raised a moment ago, close together in the space between his dresser and his bed. “Tell me—”
“You’ve made me feel things I’ve never felt before.” His hand comes up, touching the edge of my jaw, brushing over the line of it. “You’ve made me want things I didn’t know it was possible to want. I’d settled on the things that I’d been raised to believe a man in my position should have—and among those is an arranged marriage to a proper woman, a woman who fulfills the needs of a King. But I don’t want aproperwoman anymore, Ana.”
He’s very close to me now, his entire body rigid and taut, and I can feel the heat coming off of him. His voice is rough, tense, and it makes my heart race until I think surely he can see it beating wildly against my throat.
I can’t breathe. Every hair on my body is raised, my skin prickling, and I don’t know if I want to run from him or throw myself into his arms—if I even were to have a choice, right now, and I’m not sure that I do.
“I love you, Ana. I have loved you since the moment I set eyes on you, I think, and I—I can’t fucking lose you. Not now. Not over this.”
His fingers close around my chin, pulling me forward. “Liam—” I breathe, but it’s too late. My eyes lock onto his, and I can see the wild desire there, the need for me that’s taken him over.
I can’t imagine him looking at Saoirse like that. Only me.
His mouth comes crashing down on mine, his other hand hard on my waist as he pushes me back against the dresser, holding my lips to his. His tongue snakes over my lower lip, pushing into my mouth, forcing it open for him, and I can’t help but give in. I’m instantly swept away by the tide of desire that Liam always rouses in me. The moment he feels me start to kiss him back, my hands grabbing at his shirt instead of trying to push him away, that hand that was on my chin tangles in my hair.
His hand fists in my long blonde locks, wrapping them around his hand as he grinds himself against me. I can feel how hard he is, not just his cock but every muscle in his body, straining with the need to be closer to me. It almost hurts, how hard he’s gripping my hair as his mouth slants over mine, devouring me, but I don’t care. It feels good, too, and my hands tighten in his shirt, pulling him closer to me as if he couldbeany closer than he is now. I can feel the edge of the dresser digging into my lower back as Liam’s hips press into mine. I start to go up on my tiptoes, urging him further to pick me up and set me on it so that he can be between my legs, so that I can wrap them around him.
Instead, I feel his hand on my waist drop lower, squeezing my hip before his fingers hook into the waist of my pajama pants and the thin cotton panties that I’m wearing beneath them, dragging them down. I gasp as I feel him yank them off, the fabric pooling around my feet as he goes for my tank top next, his hand fisting in the thin material as he drags it upwards, baring my flat stomach, my ribs, my breasts.
He breaks the kiss just long enough to strip it off of me. He stands there, still fully clothed and panting, looking down at my slim, pale, naked body as I grab at the edge of the dresser for support, my knees trembling with the emotions crashing through me.
“Come here, Ana,” he growls, and then his hands are on my naked waist, burning into my flesh as he pulls me towards him while he steps back towards the bed.
Oh god. Desire, hot and furious, sears through my veins at the thought of him throwing me onto the bed. But instead, he drags me past it, almost picking me up as he moves towards the wing chair by the window.
“What are you doing?” I half gasp, half whimper, but he ignores me. I catch one glimpse of his face, his jaw set and his emerald eyes dark with mingled anger and lust, before he sits down, pulling me into his lap with my back to him.
“Liam, I don’t know what to do. I—”
“Shh.” One arm slides around my waist, his other hand beneath my jaw, pulling my head back to expose the length of my neck for him as he drags his lips down it, nipping lightly at the sensitive skin of my throat, his tongue tracing every inch that his teeth scrape across.
“Oh god, Liam—” I moan aloud, my thighs squeezing together. I’m suddenly painfully, achingly aware of how vulnerable I am, entirely naked and bare in his lap while he’s still fully clothed. Wearing the dark, fitted suit trousers and crisp white shirt that he’d had on when he arrived, his sleeves rolled up above his muscled forearms—one of which is holding me against him, tightly in his lap.
I can feel the hard ridge of his cock nestled against my ass, and I can’t help but arch backward against it, the sensation sending another flush of desire through me. His hand tightens on my jaw, his mouth sucking softly at my neck, and I hear him chuckle darkly.
“Liam—” I whimper again, feeling myself getting wetter, arousal pooling between my thighs until I know, with a flush of embarrassed heat, that any moment now, he’ll feel it soaking through the fabric of his pants. But he doesn’t seem to care.
“It’s okay if you don’t know,” he murmurs, his fingers sliding from my jaw down my throat, tracing the line of it until they’re curled around my slender neck, holding me in place as surely as the arm around my waist is. “I’ll decide for you now, lass.”
