by Ford, Hannah
“Emery,” he said when he answered, and as soon as I heard his voice, I lost it.
“Someone was here. Someone tried to… it was man, he…” My voice cracked and I couldn’t catch my breath.
“Where are you?” he demanded.
“At the hotel. In my room.”
“Stay right there. Keep the door locked and do not move, do you understand? I will send Tony up to stand in front of your room, but do not leave, do you understand me, Emery?”
“Yes, I understand.”
“I’ll be there in five minutes.” The line went dead and I stared at the phone.
Five minutes.
He was going to be here in five minutes.
He wasn’t on a plane to California.
He was here. He hadn’t left after all.
* * *
True to his word, Liam showed up five minutes later, five minutes which had seemed like forever. Also true to his word, about thirty seconds after I’d called him Tony had shown up outside my room. His presence comforted me somewhat, but it was nothing compared to how I felt when Liam burst through the door.
He was still in his leather jacket and jeans, and at the sight of him, I lost it, bursting into tears.
He pulled me into his arms immediately, pressing my cheek against his chest. His body was warm, and I hadn’t realized how cold I was until he pulled me close. I wasn’t sure if it was because of the shower I’d taken earlier still affecting my body temp, or the shock of what had just happened to me, but I felt cold.
I inhaled his scent, leather and cologne and power, and instantly, my heart rate began to slow.
“Liam,” I tried. “Liam, he was…”
“Shhh,” he said, stroking my hair. “Shh, baby, it’s okay. You’re okay now, just relax.”
I closed my eyes and sobbed into his jacket and he held me close, letting me cry. “I’m ruining your jacket,” I said, my voice muffled.
“Like I give a fuck.”
“It seems expensive.” I pulled back and looked at it, and he rubbed the pad of his thumb over my cheek, wiping away the tear that was there.
“Emery,” his voice caught with emotion, and I raised my gaze to his. “Who was it?”
“He said his name was Robbie.”
Liam’s jaw clenched, as if the idea of that guy even having a name was enough to send him over the edge. “What did he do to you?”
“He was hitting on me at the bar, and then… I’m pretty sure he followed me around the casino until we were up at my room.”
“And then?”
“He tried to choke me.”
Liam nodded, his eyes blazing fury as he turned and began to walk toward the door. “I’ll find him.”
“Stop,” I said. “Liam.”
He turned around, his hand on the open door.
“He had a tattoo on his neck. It said Starlight.”
7
EMERY
“Order something,” Liam said an hour later. He’d insisted on leaving the hotel, deeming it unsafe, and had taken me back to the jet. He opened a drawer in the center console that was located in the middle of four oversized chairs and pulled out a stack of menus that labeled VEGAS on the big black binder clip that held them together.
“You’re going to get food delivered to a jet?”
“No, I’m going to send someone out to pick food up for us.” He glanced out the window and began removing his leather jacket, the muscles in his biceps flexing with the movement. I shivered watching him. Even in a moment like this, when I was overwhelmed and scared, I still couldn’t help but to appreciate and notice the perfection of Liam’s body.
He glanced out the window now, tilting his head because he was too tall for it to be in his normal sight line.
From the way he was acting, and the security detail that was now stationed outside of the jet -- four beefy security guards, all of them with the same crew cut, the same black cargo pants, the same guns on their hips -- I had a feeling that Robbie had been more than just some guy who’d randomly found me in the casino. Of course, I’d already known that from his tattoo. But I hadn’t realized just how bad it was.
“Are you going to send one of the black pants brigade?” I asked, using my secret name for them. Liam had made me stay outside the plane with one of them while he and another man had entered the jet and searched it before he would let me inside.
“No.” Liam didn’t elaborate. He turned back to me, his eyes softening. “What do you want to eat?”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You need to eat, Emery.” He picked up the menus and spread them out into a fan shape. “There’s Chinese, burgers, whatever you want. But you will eat.”
He was back to being bossy, but now I welcomed it. “I’ll just have whatever you think is best.”
He picked up his cell phone and barked into it, telling some faceless, nameless assistant to order us sandwiches from a nearby bistro. When he hung up, he turned to me.
“You’re cold.” He walked to the other side of the room and hit the heat on the plane, turning it up a couple of notches.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine.” He came over and sat next to me, his eyes scanning my body. “You’re shivering.” He ran his hand over my arm, which was covered in goose bumps.
“I’m fine,” I insisted. “I took a cold shower at the hotel, and I just… I never warmed up.”
He looked at me, and I could see the concern reflected in his eyes. He thought this had to do with my aversion to the cold, to the flashbacks I had of the hospital and how it felt to be laying on that cold gurney, how as a result of that I needed my bedroom to be hot at night, the heat cranked so high Liam thought it was unhealthy.
“I’m seriously just cold,” I said. “I never warmed up and I – what are you doing?” He picked me up from the couch and threw me over his shoulder, and now he was walking purposely toward the bathroom.
He set me down and immediately began drawing me a bath in a claw foot tub with gold-plated faucets, a bathtub so beautiful it had no business existing, much less being in a jet.
“You have a bathtub in your jet?”
“Yes, Emery. I have a bathtub in my jet. Not that I ever use the damn thing.” He sounded ornery, as if the bathtub was more of a hindrance than a luxury. His back was to me as he pulled out a container of vanilla bubble bath and poured some into the water. I watched as it swished and swirled, the bubbles frothing against the smooth sides of the deep tub.
“What does it feel like?” I asked, mesmerized by the running water. “To be able to buy anything you want?”
“You’d be surprised at how much I want that I can’t buy.” He held his hand under the tap to test the temperature of the water, then straightened up and turned his attention back to me. “Arms up,” he commanded.
I put my arms up and he pulled off my t-shirt, then peeled my jeans off slowly. I was wearing no panties, just a bra, and he unhooked that, pulling the straps down slowly, loosening the cups from my breasts gently until the bra was off and I was standing before him, naked.
He reached into a drawer under the sink and pulled out a black hair tie, then gathered my hair up into and slid it into a messy ponytail. I let him, enjoying the feel of his hands running through my hair and trying not to think about why he would have hair ties in the bathroom of his jet, if perhaps they’d belonged to London Banks or the mysterious Vienna, or if perhaps he made it a practice to keep hair ties on hand for whatever random woman he happened to be traveling with. I wasn’t sure which option was worse.
He ran his hand over my neck. His eye twitched, and I knew from the way the darkness swirled in his eyes that he was thinking about how Robbie had put his arm over my neck.
“I’m okay,” I said.
“You’re not okay, Emery,” he said. “Stop saying that. That man attacked you.” He shook his head, seemingly disgusted. “I should never have left you, I should never have....” He trailed off, the words getting caught in his throa
t, and it was the first time I’d seen this kind of real emotion from him.
“You didn’t leave me,” I said, reaching up to grab his hand. I let him touch my neck, let him touch my skin, letting him see that I was okay. I ran my fingertips over his forearm, hoping that my touch would provide him some kind of proof that I hadn’t been hurt. “You were here, you stayed. You never left. You were five minutes away.”
“You got hurt because of me.”
“No.” I shook my head. “No, you couldn’t have known.” It was true. I didn’t blame Liam. It wasn’t his fault that the crazy assholes who were after my father were taking things to another level. “Liam,” I said. “What… I mean, did you pay the ransom?”
“Yes. As soon as I left the hotel, the money was wired immediately.” He shook his head. “I’m not sure why they came after you.”
“Did they – ”
“Take your bath,” he said, pulling my fingers to his mouth and kissing my knuckles gently. “I’ll get you some clothes, and then we’ll eat.” I noticed he didn’t say “and then we’ll talk.”
He went to move toward the door, but I grabbed his forearm until he turned around. His defenses were down in this moment, at least a little, I could tell. I wasn’t sure what was causing it, why he’d picked this time to let me in a tiny bit, but I wasn’t going to let the opportunity pass me by.
“Stay with me,” I whispered.
“Emery – ”
“Please,” I said. “Please, I want…I want to be close to you.” I reached out and placed my hands flat against his chest. I could feel his heart pounding through his expensive t-shirt, the rhythm betraying that this was what got him anxious, that this was what caused his heart to beat fast. Emotions. Closeness. The same way I would feel when he pulled out the whip or pulled me over his knee was the way he felt when I asked him to do something like this.
He reached up and took my hand in his wrist. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do you want me here with you, after what I did to you?” His tone wasn’t demanding. He sounded sincere, curious and a little sad.
“Because.” And then I said the words that had been on the tip of my tongue ever since that day in his basement. “I love you.”
His face cracked, and his nostrils flared as he took in a breath. “No, Emery, you can’t love me.”
“Why not?”
“Because you can’t love someone you don’t know.”
“Whatever it is, whatever you’re hiding, whatever’s inside of you, it’s okay. I want to know it.”
“You don’t know that.”
My hands slipped under his t-shirt, my fingers running over the ridges of his abs. I couldn’t feel his scars – they were too flat and faded to feel them – but I knew they were there, and he knew I was touching them, too.
He grabbed for my wrist.
“Please,” I said. “Let me undress you. I need to feel you.” He took in another deep breath and looked away, as if his emotions were so powerful that he couldn’t stand to look at me. His eyes closed loosely, the long lashes that should never have been allowed to be wasted on a man brushing against the top of his cheeks and making him look more like a lost little boy than a man who owned almost half of New York, a man who was feared and/or lusted after by everyone he met.
His grip on my wrist loosened a tiny bit, but he left his hand there as I grabbed the sides of his t-shirt and pulled it up over his head. As I tossed it onto the floor, I ran my hands over his pecs, feeling the heat of his body.
My nipples hardened at the sight of him, at the masculine perfection that was slowly coming into view in front of me. I leaned down and kissed his nipple, my tongue sliding around the circle, then moving further down his body, over the washboard of his abs.
I licked down further until I was on my knees.
He groaned as my mouth found the dusting of hair that started at his navel and disappeared into the waistband of his jeans.
I gazed up at him as I unbuttoned his pants and slid his fly down slowly, enjoying the look on his face, unbridled lust and want as he stared down at me.
“I’m yours,” I said as I saw a look of panic flash in his eyes as I guided his jeans down over his narrow hips. He stepped out of the jeans and I slid my fingers up past the waistband of his boxer briefs, letting my hands wander over the scars on his torso.
The whole time he held my wrists, lightly, letting my fingers and hands wander, but also letting me know that he could stop this at any time if he decided it was necessary, if he decided that he didn’t want me touching him anymore.
It was my job to keep that from happening, so I kept talking to him.
“You own me,” I whispered as I pulled his boxer briefs off. His cock was hard and it sprung from the fabric.
I grabbed it in my hand, running my thumb over the vein on the underside. His cock turned to stone under my touch, and I loved that I could have this kind of effect on him.
“You own me,” I repeated. “I am yours.”
He groaned, and my name escaped from his lips. “Emery. God, Emery, what are you doing to me, baby? What is this?” It was half a strangled cry, half a pray to some God I knew nothing about.
“You own my hands,” I said, and gave his cock one long stroke. “You own my body.” I held my tits up to him, brushing them over his dick. Then I stuck my tongue out and licked him from root to tip, enjoying the velvety hard feel of his dick in my mouth. When I reached the head, I slid my mouth over the sensitive tissue and sucked.
“Fuck,” he ground out.
“You own me,” I murmured, and pressed my cheek to his cock, letting the head run over my skin. A drop of precum leaked from the tip of his penis and hit my face, and I saw his eyes burn with desire.
I knew he loved seeing me like this, down on my knees, submissive to him, marking me with the prelude to his seed.
After a moment, his need to control got to be too much for him to take, and he reached under my arms and pulled me up roughly, his hands against my ass as he pushed me against him.
“And I own your pussy, too,” he growled, his cock, now rock hard, pushing against my naked slit.
“Yes,” I agreed. “Yes, you own my pussy too.”
He picked me up by the ass, and I wrapped my legs around him. He moved us toward the bathtub, and I caught sight of the back of him in the mirror. His tight, perfect ass and the back of his strong thighs, the wide expanse of his back, his muscles flexing with his movements.
I saw my eyes, reckless in their depths, and yet there was a look of serenity on my face. I looked away and buried my face into Liam’s shoulder as he lowered us into the tub.
The water was warm, and he lowered us into it, me still facing him, my legs still wrapped around his waist, his hard cock nudging against my opening, which was now slick and not just from the water.
“Tell me what he did to you,” Liam demanded once we were settled. “I need to know everything.”
“I already told you everything.” He’d interrogated me on the way from the hotel, peppering me with questions until I’d told him everything I could remember.
“Tell me again.”
“He saw me at a wine bar.”
“You were drinking?” Under the water, his hands tightened around my waist.
“I ordered a glass of wine. One glass.”
“You were drinking.”
I thought about protesting again that it was just one glass of wine, but I could tell from his face that it wasn’t going to matter to him if it was one glass or five. “Yes. I was drinking.”
“Go on.”
“He was sitting at the other end of the bar, and he asked me… he asked me if I’d broken up with someone.”
“And what did you say?”
“I said yes.”
“You said yes?”
“You left, Liam. You told me to go, you said that we were through.”
“I never said any of that.”
“You mig
ht as well have.”
He began to get up, and I knew what was going to happen next. He was going to take me into the other room, he was going to take his belt or a paddle or a hairbrush or whatever he could find and whip me. And while my body craved it, I craved him, this closeness, more.
“Please,” I said. “Don’t leave… we can…I’ll take my punishment. But I want to talk about this first.”
“Then you will answer every one of my questions.”
I nodded.
He lowered himself back into the tub, the V of his hips slipping back underneath, his strong body making waves in the water. He’d released me from the grip he’d had on my hips and now he reached for a bottle of body wash that was sitting on a metal shelf that was hung on the side of the tub. He picked up a loofah as well.
“You have a loofah?” I asked, biting back a laugh. “A pink one?”
He glared at me. “I like it because it has strings,” he said, running one of them over my wrists. “They can be tied tightly.”
My eyes fell to the metal shelf again, and now I noticed there was also one of those long brush things that was used for washing your back. Jesus. These weren’t just bathroom objects, they were Liam’s torture and punishment devices.
“Did you think he was a attractive?” Liam demanded now.
“What?”
“When he talked to you at the bar. Did you find him attractive?”
Liam hadn’t asked me anything like that in the car on the way over, and I struggled for an answer. “What does that have to do with what happened?” If Liam was trying to figure out who Robbie was and what he wanted, then why did he need to know if I found him attractive.
“Answer the question.”
“I wasn’t thinking of him in that way.” It was true. He was just a man sitting at a bar. I was having trouble even remembering exactly what we’d talked about, how we’d even started conversing, because it had seemed so banal at the time. This must be how eyewitnesses always ended up forgetting what they saw. When you don’t realize something is important, you have no reason to remember it, and it’s easy to forget details.
“But did you? Find him attractive? Don’t lie to me.”