Too much. Not enough when I want more, and I have no business
wanting anything at all.
We enter the bedroom and a light glows dimly, though I am not
aware of how or when
Liam turned it on, and to my surprise, he bypasses the bed that sits in
the center of the main wall of the room. Instead, he sets me on my feet in
front of a massive bathroom I barely glimpse, before he shuts the door. And
that intense edginess I’m coming to know as Liam has cranked up several
notches. He is mad or…wounded? Over me? That can’t be. He is confident
and experienced and I am…whatever I am, but I am less, if I have hurt this
man who has already proven he is so much more than his Wiki page.
“Liam—”
“No more talking.” His hands come down on my waist, a possessive
branding, and his voice is hard, a tight band I have the impression might
break with his mood at any moment. He walks me backwards several steps
until my heels hit the door and I lean against the hard surface.
His legs shackle mine, holding me as captive as the burn in his eyes.
“You want me to fuck you, Amy, I’ll fuck you.”
I think he is angry and suddenly, the word “fuck” feels like a slap
when I am the one who all but shouted it at him. “Yes. Yes, I do, but—”
His mouth comes down hard on mine, hot with demand, with anger. I
do not want him to be angry and I lean into him, hoping it will fade, hoping
to get lost in him, but it doesn’t work. I taste the bite of his mood, the
roughness of his tongue, and I shove at his chest and tear my mouth from
his. “Wait. Not like this.”
“You want to fuck or you don’t. I am not a yo-yo any more than you
are one of my mathematical equations.”
“Don’t say it like that.”
“Don’t challenge me to fuck you and then run away.”
Run away. I am always running away and sick of that being my life.
“You’re just”—I make myself look at him—“you’re you, Liam, like you said
I’m…me. And you, Liam Stone, are like a bull when you want something.
You charge.”
“What I want is you.”
Even though I know this, hearing it stirs a sweet spot in my belly and
all I want to do is savor the sensation and the man who created it. “Then
please. Just be with me. Just be with me, Liam.”
He wraps his fingers around my neck and pulls me to him. “I get
wanting to block things out. Been there, done that, baby, but I won’t let
you do it to me. We’re going to talk tomorrow, but tonight, we’ll forget.”
He brushes his lips over mine and I feel myself tremble from the simple, but
powerful touch. “Now. Turn around.” He doesn’t give me time to respond,
rotating me to face the door, my hands on the hard surface, and I am
beginning to think he likes me like this. I think I might like me like this. He
leans into me, his body deliciously heavy and hard, his breath a warm
seduction against my neck as he declares, “No more barriers,” and tugs my
zipper down, though I do not think he is talking about clothes.
I was kidding myself to challenge him to “fuck” me, to think sex is my
sanctuary from words with Liam when I am headed deeper into this web of
intimacy with him, a place where he will want, and even deserve, answers
to all of his questions. But as his hands glide my dress down my shoulders,
leaving goose bumps in their wake, I find it hard to care. He promised to
take me away and I believe he can. Already, I am sinking into the sweet
oblivion of pleasure that only Liam has ever helped me find. He is my
sanctuary from everything else. He alone is my escape.
“Step,” he commands, and I lift my feet one after another and let him
kick my dress away. Then I squeeze my eyes shut when he unhooks my bra,
and I shrug out of it, and just like that, I am, as I was only one night before,
naked before this man, my breasts swollen and heavy, my nipples tight
balls of aching need. His hands flatten on the wall by my head but he does
not touch me. He likes this, I think. To trap me. To be in control. And I like
it. I like him being in control instead of the world outside. I like that when I
hand control to him there is pleasure, not pain.
“Turn back around,” he commands, and I like that, too. The
roughness of his voice, the absoluteness of him being in charge. I do not
hesitate to comply. I face him, and his gaze does a hot up-and-down
inspection of my naked body, that sizzles every nerve ending I own.
“Take off the shoes.”
I kick them off.
“Now the panties and the thigh-highs. I want nothing between us.”
But he is fully clothed. “Are you…?”
“When you ask questions, I ask questions.”
I swallow hard at the pointed remark and the clear message he
intends. He knows that’s what I do. He knows I play dodgeball, and with
anyone else it would work. With him, I’ve already run out of rope. I shove
aside the worry this creates inside me and focus on just what I told him.
Tonight. An escape. With him.
I roll down my thigh-highs and toss them away, and waste no time
with my panties. I am naked before this man but I am so much more. I am
exposed, vulnerable, and somehow I feel protected and safe.
“On your knees,” he orders softly.
“My knees?”
“No questions, baby. You do what I say.”
I inhale and hold in the air. I trust Liam. I trust Liam. When was the
last time I said that about anyone? I lower myself to my knees, the soft
carpeting padding my bare skin. Liam squats in front of me. “Hands over
your head and on the door handle.”
This time I gulp. I cannot believe I am doing this, but I do. I curl my
fingers around the knob above my head, and now I am truly exposed, my
breasts thrust high, my body stretched out for his viewing. But he does not
look at my body. He watches my face, searching my eyes, an intense,
inscrutable look etched in the hard lines of his handsome face.
He loosens his tie, then pulls it from his neck. Adrenaline surges
through me with the certainty that his shirt and pants are next, but he does
not undress. He reaches over me to my wrists, and I gasp at the realization
that Liam is using his tie to bind my arms over my head.
I am more than naked and vulnerable. I am at his mercy.
Chapter Thirteen
Willingly tied to the door and at his mercy, I am remarkably without
fear, and there is a burn in my belly. Cool air conditioning teases my
nipples, a striking contrast to the heat in Liam’s gaze as it rakes over my
body. The tie is snug silk on my wrists, a promise I cannot escape whatever
Liam intends for me. I do not want to escape what he intends for me.
Anticipation is liquid fire between my thighs. I am aroused, wet, and
aching with an emptiness only he can fill. It is beyond erotic to allow him
this control, and for someone who often feels I do not know myself, I am
suddenly aware of why his control pleases me. When I am with him like
this, I don’t have to calculate what comes next. He will do that. He is doing
that. I trust him to the degree of allo
wing myself to be tied up with my
hands over my head, when I do not trust anyone.
Finally, Liam begins to undress, and I am spellbound by this powerful,
sexy man, downright hungry to see him completely naked, stripped down in
all his masculine glory, a pleasure I didn’t have the night before. There was
just us ripping whatever clothes off we could to come together. This time is
slower, more luxurious.
He toes off his shoes and slides his jacket down his shoulders. Almost
impatiently, it seems, he unbuttons his shirt. Or maybe it is simply me who
is impatient. Adrenaline pours through me as dark, springy hair peeks from
the fine material and finally, his shirt is gone. My mouth goes dry at the
sight of taut skin over flexing muscle and when his hand goes to his pants, I
suck in a breath and I do not breathe again until he is without clothes,
standing before me, his thick erection pulsing thickly in front of him.
I take in the sight of him, tall and finely carved, and he is truly a work
of art, the definition of masculine beauty but I hone in on my obsession,
one that I am sure many women have shared. The tattoo. My gaze tracks
the path of the equation that trails down, down, down, and I swallow hard
at where it ends and he is, ah, well, hard. Liam has singlehandedly made
math sexy for a girl who has despised every number she’s ever met.
Liam turns away and my heart thunders in my chest as he opens a
dresser drawer and I anticipate what he might produce, but I am
remarkably unafraid for a woman tied to a door. I am quite sure I should
be, though. What if it’s a whip or chains, or…what do people do when they
tie up a lover? He pulls out a box and a pinch begins in my chest as I digest
the packaged condom he’s removed from inside. I am suddenly
excruciatingly insecure, aware that there have been many before me, few
before him.
He tears open the package, and I drop my head between my
shoulders, hiding the emotions expanding where the pinch had been. I am
not sure why this is affecting me this way but it is. I am over my head. Way,
way over my head. I’m probably not even his first bathroom-door affair.
Maybe this very tie has been around another woman’s wrists. I do not
know what to do or say or how to be. I do not even know my own name
half the time. I am not—
Liam squats in front of me, and the sight of his strong thighs and
thick erection cuts off my rambling thoughts, and I struggle to gain my
composure and recreate some version of Amy that is worthy of this man
even if I, myself, am not.
His finger slides under my chin, and he levels my gaze with his. “I
bought the condoms today for us, if that’s what you’re wondering. For us,
Amy. I don’t stockpile and have women in my hotel room ever night. I don’t
have women to my room, or let them inside my life, at all.
Never. Just you.”
He reads me like an open book I thought I’d shut years before. “Me,”
I whisper, reminded of his declaration that we are raw and honest or we
are nothing.
“You,” he agrees. “And us.”
Us. I have never truly been a part of an “us”, but the idea strokes a
raw nerve ending, then caresses it with possibilities. I wet my suddenly dry
lips and Liam leans in and brushes his mouth over mine before he murmurs,
“And we need to get you to a doctor and on the pill.”
“That takes weeks,” I whisper, and the words vibrate with the same
wistful quality I’d had earlier on the sidewalk, a wistfulness that I cannot
seem to control any more than my feelings or reactions to Liam.
He cups my face and kisses me again, a soft brush of his mouth
against mine, and I can feel myself sigh inside. This is what gets to me with
Liam, the way he is so tender, and yet so dominating. It works for me. He
works for me. So does the way he’s trailing kisses over my jaw, teasing my
neck, then my ear. “Until then,” he voices, all velvet and seduction, “I’ll be
fantasizing about the moment the only thing wrapped around me is you.”
My sex clenches with his words, slickness gathering on my bare
thighs, and I decide right then that no woman knows what she has been
missing until she has a man like Liam say such wicked things to her while he
is naked in all his male perfection.
He leans back to study me, his blue stare probing, intimate. “Have
you ever been bound before?”
I laugh and the sound is nervousness personified.
He doesn’t laugh. His hands frame my face. “And you let me tie you
up.” It is a statement, not a question, and there is a husky rasp to his voice
that tells me he is affected by this realization.
“Yes,” I confirm, knowing somehow this is what he desires of me.
His hand reaches behind me, cupping my backside, and he pulls me
to him. His shaft settles between my thighs, and I soften instantly against
him. “And I’m just barbaric enough to like the idea of being the first of
many things.”
He’s said something to this effect before. It’s just as arousing now as
it was then. “You do seem to have a bit of a liking for the word ‘teacher’.”
He caresses up my back and closes his hand on the back of my head,
pulling me to him, his cheek finding mine, his voice low, raspy, as he
murmurs, “I haven’t even begun to start teaching you, Amy. We have not
even begun to go where I plan to take you.” He drags his lips over my jaw
and his mouth lingers a breath from mine. “You trusted me with your body
by letting me bind you. I’m going to make sure you don’t regret it. That’s
step one, baby.”
I do not know what he means by “step one”, but his seductive purr
on the word “baby”
does funny things to my chest and his lips begin to trail over my jaw,
teasing me with the promise of a kiss that I hope soon will follow. And it
does. His mouth finds mine, a feather-light touch, a lick of his tongue, and I
moan with the barely there, teasing taste of him.
“I do like those little sounds you make,” he murmurs, rewarding me
with another brush of his tongue against mine. I moan again, unable to hold
it back, ultra-sensitive to all this man does to me. I’m relieved when he
deepens the kiss, when he takes me to that sweet spot where only he
exists. This is what I want. To be lost in him, and I arch into him, needing
him closer, craving that connection. Seeming to answer my plea, Liam
inches forward, leaning me against the door and cradling me more fully on
his lap, and his hands are all over me, teasing me, driving me wild. The need
to touch him spirals through me, and I tug at my hands, but there is no
escape.
There is only the growing ache of need inside me.
His lips leave mine, and I reach for his mouth, only to be denied.
“Untie me. I need to touch you.”
He frames my face with his hands and I need them to be other
places. Lots of other places. “You’re not ready to be untied.”
I laugh without humor. “Yes. Yes, I am.”
“What are you thinking about right now?”
“I…I d
on’t know.”
“The first thing that comes into your head. Don’t censor, just speak.
Say it. Now. What are you thinking of now?”
“Your tattoo.”
“Anything else?”
“Touching you.”
“And?”
“Ripping the tie off my arms.”
He lowers his forehead to mine and his hands brush my breasts,
tease my nipples. “And now?”
“How much I don’t want you to stop.”
“That’s the idea. Escape, baby. The lack of control i s control. When
you’re hanging on each moment, anticipating what comes next, it leaves
room for nothing else. That’s what I want to do for you.”
I think of his comment about sharks and the certainty there is more
to his story than I know. “And who helps you escape, Liam?”
“We’re going to the same place, Amy. I’m not standing outside
watching.” He dips his head low and his lips find my neck and then my ear.
“I’m right here with you.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, lavishing in the deep stroke of his hand down
my back and the seductive reply of his words in my mind. Right here with
you. That phrase shimmers down my spine and settles deep inside me. Liam
is with me. In a tiny window of time, he has slipped past every wall I’ve
erected.
“Look at me, Amy.”
I pry my lashes open at his soft command and I feel a punch in my
chest when my eyes meet his. I am going to fall hard for this man. I already
have.
He leans in and kisses me, pressing my breasts together before
dragging to tease my
nipples, then dragging his mouth down my chin, to my neck and
chest until his tongue laves one of my nipples, fulfilling a wish I so desired. I
suck in a breath at the rough, wet heat suckling me, moving from one
swollen tip to the next, mercilessly licking, nipping, teasing, and I can take
no more.
“Liam, enough. Please. I need—”
“What I say you need,” he finishes, his hands cupping my backside,
lifting my belly to his mouth, dipping his tongue in my belly button, and
then licking all the way to my hipbone.
Nipping the sensitive flesh, licking again.
“Liam, damn it,” I pant, and I never curse, but then I am never this
undone. “You are making me insane.”
He smiles against my belly. “That’s the idea.”
My quaking body disagrees. “No. No, it’s not. Pleasure is the idea.”