His expression softens. “Amy, baby.”
“Don’t ‘Amy baby’ me right now,” I warn.
“You wanted to leave after your nightmare.”
“And you convinced me to stay,” I remind him. “It worked.”
“We’ll do the holiday and our wedding, no matter where we are.”
“I need it to be here. I need a home I share with you. You can’t tell me I finally have the freedom I’ve craved for six years, and then take it away.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Then don’t. We have no solid evidence of danger. I don’t want to be afraid anymore.”
He pushes off the wall and covers my hands with his, settling them between us, the shadows of his past etched in his eyes and fighting this battle for him. “Amy—”
“I need to stay,” I repeat. “And so do you. You aren’t even working, Liam. When was the last time you picked up a pencil to design?”
“I’ll design again when you’re safe.”
“I managed fine for six years. I’m not with you for protection. I’m with you because I love you.”
The shadows in his eyes deepen. They’re the kind of shadows created by heartache, loss, and something else I know all too well. “I can’t lose you, Amy.”
His voice is pure anguish, and any hint of anger left inside me vanishes instantly. “You can’t defeat fear without facing it,” I whisper, repeating what he’d once told me.
I watch his face harden, darkness swimming in his eyes, and this time, it’s him that snaps. His fingers tunnel into my hair, his mouth closing down on mine, his tongue caressing mine with hot demand. The taste of him is pure darkness and torment, and his need to drive it away is downright primal. His body presses into me. I melt into him and one of his hands splays on my back, molding me closer. In an instant, my bra is unhooked, his hands cupping my breasts and teasing my nipples. I feel the energy between us, the shift in Liam, and even in myself. We’ve solved nothing about going or staying in the city, but there is a wall falling from between us, a part of Liam he fights, which he’s unleashed for me to see, feel, and experience.
He tears his mouth from mine, staring down at me with a vow. “I won’t lose you.”
In the next second he’s turned me to face the wall and my hands flatten on the hard surface to right myself. He steps to me, leaning close, his hips anchoring mine. “Losing you is my fear,” he confesses, his voice roughened by emotion.
“You won’t lose me,” I pant, my sex clenching as one of his hands slides into my panties and strokes my clit.
“You’re right,” he assures me. “I won’t. I won’t let someone else take you from me.” He moves my hands up the wall. “Don’t move them.”
He’s gone then, and I’m cold where he’s no longer touching me, hot where I want him to touch me. I can feel him, though. Everywhere, in every part of me, and my skin tingles from the heat of his stare, my nerves prickle with the sound of him undressing. And I realize, too, that I know this man. I understand his need to take me, to control me now, because he feels he has none. He’s afraid he can’t protect me. He’s tormented by the idea that the nightmare I brought to him will never truly be over, no matter how much he’s willed it to be gone. And I get it. Oh how I get it. This is my world he’s living in now. The one where control is hard to come by and we take what we can, where we can. Like he’s doing now.
The air shifts and I know he’s closing in on me even before he kneels on the floor at my right hip, one of his hands flattening on the small of my back. The connection scorches me, sending heat waves up over my skin. He doesn’t move; seconds tick by and he lets me wallow in the anticipation building inside me. Already my sex is tight, wet, and I am desperate to feel him inside me. No matter how much I need or want control, I also need the way he owns me in moments like these. The way he demands I give him everything and leaves room for nothing but pleasure. Desire. Him.
His fingers curl around the silk string of my panties, his hot breath fanning my hip, his teeth scraping the delicate skin beneath the fabric. “My woman,” he murmurs, and as much as that one word defies my need to rule my life once and for all, it’s erotic and right in a way I can’t begin to examine right here and now. “My wife soon. Not soon enough.”
Wife. The word does funny things to my stomach. “Yes,” I whisper.
He nips my skin again, and I yelp. His tongue does a lavish swirl over the sting I swear I feel in my sex, in my nipples. I fight the urge to reach for him and my fingers curl on the wall. His hand flattens on my belly and I tremble with the promise of where he will go now. Where he will take me next. Slowly, his fingers walk downward, slipping under the tiny slit of black lace there. I hold my breath, waiting for the onslaught of sensations I know will follow. His fingers tease my clit, lightly caressing, and my legs wobble uncontrollably, leaving me no option but to plant my palms near my head to hold myself up.
His mouth finds my hip again, his tongue flickering erotically, his fingers straying lower, playing in the slick heat between my thighs. And then he’s in a sweet spot, so very sweet, and I squeeze my thighs together, silently pleading for him to stay there, but he doesn’t let my satisfaction win that fast. Suddenly, he moves his hand, shackling my hips and turning me to face him, leaning me against the wall.
“Hands back over your head,” he orders, his hands falling from my body, promising he won’t touch me again until I comply.
I do as he wishes, crossing my wrists above my head, staring down at him, and he is naked and beautiful, the kind of man who can make a woman beg. This woman. Because I hurt in all the places he’s still not touching me. “Please, Liam,” I whisper.
Satisfaction flickers in his gaze, as if my plea is what he’d been waiting for. He tangles his fingers into my panties, holding my stare as he oh so slowly drags them downward. They fall to my ankles and he presses his mouth to my belly, one palm on my upper thigh, his thumb flicking ever so gently on my clit. I try to suck in air but fail as over and over that thumb teases me, the delicate friction driving me insane, enough to make me burn, but not enough to let me breathe.
“Liam,” I gasp, and again, it seems to be another plea he seeks as it has barely left my lips when his fingers slip into the wet, swollen flesh of my core and enter me. And his mouth, his gifted, amazing mouth, replaces his thumb and closes down on my now throbbing nub. The wait is over as he suckles and licks, and when my knees tremble, his hand is on my hip, holding me steady, the way he has from the moment we first met.
Somehow I keep my arms over my head, when what I want is to reach down and touch Liam. Oh how I burn to touch him. A burn that radiates through my sex and suddenly I am on the edge of the sweet, blissful place that is release. I suck in a breath that lodges in my chest, my body tensing, and then I’m there, so very there, tumbling into a place that can only be called perfection. I lose everything. Worry. Time. Pain. And when I come back to the world, Liam is holding my hips, keeping me from falling.
He kisses my belly again but this time he lingers there, his cheek settling where his lips were seconds before, as if he’s holding on to me, making his claim that he won’t lose me real. There is vulnerability in the act, the kind that he shows no one else.
No one but me. He shows me. He trusts me the way I do him. And I have never felt so loved and complete as I do in this moment.
He’s different now, the edge that was there moments before shifting to something equally dark, but free of sharp corners. My heart squeezes with the impact of what he feels, and the way he dissolves the loneliness of my past. I reach for him, my fingers slipping into the thick, dark strands of his hair. He lifts his head to fix me in a deep, dark stare, cupping both my hands in his to bring them to his lips. I sink to my knees in front of him, my hand flattening over his heart.