HIS PROPERTY (Book Three)

by Ford, Hannah

  “He was good-looking in a generic way, yes,” I said, knowing that if I lied, whatever was coming would be much worse.

  Liam was in the middle of squeezing the bottle of body wash onto the loofah, and he squeezed hard. He began to massage my chest with the loofah, and my core tightened at his touch.

  “Then what?” Liam asked. He was already done with the loofah, setting it down on the side of the tub and staring to use his bare hands to rub the body wash into my chest. The feel of his bare skin against mine set my nerve endings on fire.

  “Then he…he gave me some of his chocolate cake.”

  Liam’s eyes blazed and his fingers tightened around my nipples, twisting and squeezing tightly. I gasped at the pain and surprise of the gesture.

  “That was extremely foolish, Emery. You knew nothing about this man. He could have drugged you, he could have –”

  “It wasn’t a drink, Liam. And besides, I saw the bartender bring the cake out and set it down in front of him. He didn’t drug it.”

  “You’re defending him,” he spit, and then his hands moved from my chest, to my waist. He pulled me toward him, the warm water sliding around us.

  “No.” I shook my head. “I wasn’t defending him.”

  The head of his cock nudged against my entrance again, and the air hung heavy with anticipation. Anticipation of what Liam was going to do to me next, anticipation of where his conversation was going to go.

  “Please,” I said. “I don’t… I don’t want anyone but you.”

  “He followed you?”

  “Yes. I saw him in the bookstore and then he was in the elevator when I went up to my room.”

  “And then?”

  “Then he followed me to my room.”

  “What did he say?”

  I licked my bottom lip, nervous about what he was going to do when he found out what Robbie had said to me. “He said that there were better ways to get over someone than by reading books about break-ups.”

  Liam’s eyes blazed and his hands tightened again around my hips. He pulled me closer to him, his cock rubbing my clit.

  “Please,” I said, running my hand through his hair. It was damp from the moisture in the air. My hand was wet and water droplets fell onto his shoulder then slid down the slopes and lines of his chest. I let my hand follow their course, touching his chest. “Stay with me.”

  “I’m not mad at you, Emery,” he growled. “I’m mad at myself. I never should have left you.”

  “It’s not your fault,” I said, and he looked at me, hope reflected in his eyes, that maybe it was true, that maybe it wasn’t his fault. “You couldn’t have known.”

  “I shouldn’t have left you.”

  I put my hand on his cheek and forced him to look at me. “You didn’t know. It’s not your fault.”

  His gaze met mine, and the emotions crackling between us – love, attraction, desire, longing, regret – were so intense I could feel them. My breath hitched at how beautiful he looked in this moment, his lips slightly parted, the drops of water clinging to his chiseled chest, the concern he had for me in his eyes.

  His gaze dropped and he ran his fingers over the scars on my thighs. I closed my eyes and let him. The urge to move his hand away was all but gone. I wanted to do the same for him, and I reached out and ran my fingers over his abs, felt the muscles clenching under his skin.

  He took in a shuddering breath.

  “Please,” I whispered. “Let me.” I ran my fingers over the scars, tracing them with the softest of touches. The lines were thin, but there were multiple lines, and they had obviously gone deep, you could tell. While my scars were more medical looking – the doctor had at least tried to be a little bit professional when he’d cut into me – Liam’s slashed across his abdomen like they’d been done in a fit of ferocity. I wondered what had made him want to do that to himself, what horrors had made him cut himself.

  He let me touch his scars for a few more moments, which must have felt like an eternity to him, and then he reached for me, pulling me toward him viciously.

  His breath was coming in short pants, and he flipped me over so that my back was to his chest. He leaned back in the water and tilted his pelvis up so that I could feel his hard cock pushed into the crack of my ass.

  He pressed his mouth to my ear and nipped on my lobe, licking it before he pulled away, the pain and warmth he inflicted zapping right down to my pussy and setting it on fire.

  “You’re mine,” he growled. His hand moved over my stomach, down to my pussy, his fingers probing the folds open. “This pussy is mine.”

  I groaned as he pushed his middle finger inside of me.

  “Yes,” I said, greedy for his touch. “Yes, my pussy is yours.”

  “Your body is mine. I own you.”

  “Yes, you own me.” He pushed another finger inside of me, stretching me around him. Even though I’d taken his thick dick, I was still very tight, and he fit snugly inside of me.

  I gasped as he thumb began to make circles on my clit. His other hand traveled down to my other hip and he began to rock me up and down, his cock sliding up and down the crack of my ass.

  “Yes,” I moaned. “Yes, Liam, please…” Precum coated my ass, making his cock slid up and down easily, lubricating me, and for the first time the thought of him in my ass didn’t make me terrified.

  “Your cunt is so nice and snug,” he murmured into my ear, his tongue flicking against the lobe, hot and wet. “I bet you could take another finger in there while I take your ass, couldn’t you?”

  I ground against him.

  “Greedy little girl,” he murmured. “You want my cock in your ass, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” I breathed. His chest heaved against my back, and he pulled me back against him tighter, so I could feel the thickness of his shaft probing against my backside.

  He began to slide another finger inside of me and pain ripped through me.

  “Does it hurt?” Liam asked as I whimpered. He’d stopped the movement he’d been making, stopped moving me up and down on his cock.

  He’d also stopped the circles on my clit -- now he just had two fingers shoved inside of me, the third coming dangerous close to joining them.

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  “Good.” He shoved another finger inside of me, spreading me out on him and I gasped and tried to push back into his cock, wanting him inside of me, wanting him to fuck me with his hard dick, wanting him in that forbidden place.

  But he’d decided to torture me and instead, he held my body still, preventing me from moving as he fucked me with his fingers.

  He was denying me.

  I could feel his cock behind me, could feel it pulsing with each thrust of his fingers, knew he wanted to be inside my ass just as much as I wanted him there. But he was punishing me.

  Punishing me for talking to another man.

  He fucked me with his fingers, though, over and over.

  “Please,” I whispered. I tried to wriggle around on his fingers. It was painful and pleasurable all at once, but I knew if I could just get his cock inside of me, the pain would slip all the way to pleasure.

  He had me so wired, so on the edge that I was out of my mind with want for him. I needed him inside of me, no matter where it was.

  But he held me tight, not letting me move, the only movement his fingers sliding in and out of me.

  “That’s it, baby,” he said. “Don’t fight it, just let it happen.”

  I closed my eyes and listened to the sound of his fingers sliding in and out of me, the wetness of my pussy making a squelching sound and the water lapping around us gently.

  He pushed me to the edge of orgasm and pulled me back again, teasing, fingering, fucking. When he finally let me come, he pushed his thumb roughly against my clit, and I was so sensitive that I immediately came, my body shuddering against his.

  I opened my eyes, my legs feeling like jelly, my arms limp, my body spent.

  He nipped at my ear aga
in, and I luxuriated in the feel of his body behind me, his arms wrapping me to him.

  I started to turn around, wanting to please him the way he had pleased me.

  But a second later, he got out of the water.

  His cock was rock hard, but he didn’t pull me toward him, didn’t push me into his mouth, didn’t take my hand and bring it to his shaft.

  Instead, he held a towel out for me. “Get out.”

  I stood up and stepped into the towel. He wrapped it around me.

  I stared at him, questioning. “I want to make you feel good,” I said, and I reached for his dick, but he caught my wrist.

  He grabbed another towel and tied it around his waist before walking out of the bathroom and back into the bedroom.

  And then I understood.

  He wasn’t punishing me.

  He was punishing himself.

  8

  EMERY

  Our food came a few minutes later, and I sat on the bed watching TV and waiting while Liam worked on his computer at a desk in the corner. He’d been withdrawn and seemingly distant after our bath.

  When I finished picking at my turkey club, I approached him.

  The bedroom was bigger than I would have expected in a jet, and if it weren’t for the round windows, it would have been easy to feel like we were in some kind of fancy hotel room instead of on a plane.

  “Are you going to eat?” I asked, standing a few feet away from him.

  “In a few minutes.” He sounded distracted and cold.

  “Your food is going to get cold.”

  He didn’t reply. He was staring intently at something on his computer screen, and I moved around to the other side of the desk and stared down at the monitor. On it played the security tape from the casino. He must have gotten someone from management to email it to him.

  I watched on the screen as Robbie led me down the hall, watched as he pressed his arm to my throat, watched my eyes widen in fear as I reached for his hand and clawed at his skin.

  Liam made no move to hide from me what he was watching. Instead, he began to replay it.

  I reached over and slammed his laptop shut.

  He swiveled the chair around toward me. He was shirtless, wearing only a pair of loose gray pajama pants. His hands gripped the arms of the chair, the veins in his biceps becoming more prominent.

  “Why are you watching that?” I demanded.

  “Because I’m trying to figure out who, exactly, did that to you.” He sounded cool, calculating, matter-of-fact, like whatever torture he’d planned for Robbie was non-negotiable.

  “You know who he is.”

  “No,” he corrected. “I know who he said he was.”

  “Isn’t he one of the people who my father owes money too?”

  He shook his head. “I’m not so sure. I told you that I paid those people off as soon as I left your room.”

  I thought about it for a beat. “So I’m free,” I said, speaking the words that had been on my mind ever since Liam had told me he’d paid my ransom, the words I’d been afraid to say.

  He nodded. “You’re free.”

  My head spun as he got up and left the room. When he came back, he was holding a bottle of red wine and two long-stemmed glasses.

  He uncorked the bottle, filling one glass halfway and the other all the way.

  He handed me the glass that was less than halfway and I took a sip.

  My mind was spinning as I tried to focus on what it was he’d just told me. One, that I was no longer a prisoner. My debt had been paid. I could leave anytime I wanted. Two, that even because of that, I was still here, he’d still come for me. Was it only because he feared for my safety, or was there something more? And three, if Robbie hadn’t been with the people my father owed money to, then who was he?

  “So if you paid the ransom, who was Robbie with?” I asked, the wine burning my throat. “What did he want? He knew all about you.”

  “I don’t know what he wanted,” Liam said, knocking back the rest of his wine. “But you can trust that I’m going to find out.” He looked at me, his eyes roaming my body. My hair was still up from when he’d tied it with the hair tie in the bathroom, and I was dressed in one of his silk robes. “You’ll stay with me until I do.”

  I swallowed another mouthful of wine and thought about it. The joy that squeezed at my chest was short-lived. This was what I wanted. To stay with him. But not like this.

  “No.” I shook my head. “Not like this.”

  “Please, Emery,” he said, instantly sound exasperated. “Don’t start.”

  “I’m not kidding, Liam.” I stood up crossed my arms over my chest. “I want to stay with you. I do. I love you.” He flinched at the words, but he didn’t move toward me. “I want to be with you, but not because we have to. I want this to be real. I don’t want this to be so fucked up all the time.” My throat constricted and my chest ached. “And if you don’t want that, then I will do everything in my power to get away from you. Not because I want to, but because I’ll have no choice.”

  He stared at me for a long moment and took a step toward me. I put my hand up. “Don’t,” I said. “If you come close to me, I’ll safe word. Then I’ll scream and cry and freak out and tell everyone I’m being held against my will until someone believes me.”

  He sighed, then reached over and picked up my wine glass and moved it away from him, apparently deciding I’d had enough.

  “What do you want?” he asked, after staring at me for a long moment. “To make this more real?”

  “No,” I said. “Not here.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t want to talk about this here.” I crossed the room to the suitcase that had been brought here for me, the things that had been gathered from the hotel room back at the casino. I rummaged through them, looking for something casual to wear. The yoga pants and casual clothes I’d bought at the casino were conspicuously missing, leading me to believe that Liam had gone through my things before bringing them in here. “Jesus,” I murmured. “How come everything in here is dress-up?”

  Liam crossed the room to his own suitcase, reached in and pulled out a soft grey Stanford sweatshirt, his alma mater, and handed it to me wordlessly, along with a pair of plain black shorts that were made out of soft sweatshirt material.

  I pulled the clothes on, savoring the feel of having something he’d worn against my skin, and then shoved my feet into a pair of flip flops.

  “I thought you wanted to talk,” Liam said.

  “I do.”

  “Then why do you look like you’re about to leave?” He was watching me wordlessly, still standing there bare chested, the masculinity and power radiating off of him in waves. I knew he wouldn’t try to do anything to me I didn’t want him to do, knew that if I safe worded, he would stop.

  But I also knew that he would try whatever he could if he thought I was going to leave. What that would be, I wasn’t sure.

  “Because if we talk here, you’re going to make it sexual,” I said.

  “I don’t make it anything. It is what it is.”

  I rolled my eyes, then pulled another sweatshirt out of his suitcase. This, too, had the Stanford logo on the front. “What’d you do, buy the whole student store?” I asked as I tossed it at him.

  “I own a chain of student bookstores in California,” he said. “One of them happens to be near the campus.”

  “Of course you do,” I said, shaking my head. Leave it to Liam to not only own a store that probably made him tons of money, but to also put it in proximity to campus, where it would be competition. Was he so cutthroat that he would try to effect the business of his alma mater, which, for all intents and purposes, had provided him with the education that had allowed him to become so successful?

  “I’m guessing you want me to put this on?” he asked, sighing as he pulled it over his head, his muscles straining.

  It was everything I could do not to rush to him and get down on my knees, begging him to punish m
e. He’d trained me well. But I held it together. If I wanted him, really wanted him, then I needed to do this.

  “Come on,” I said, reaching for his hand. “We’re going for a walk.”

  * * *

  Of course, there was nowhere to really go for a walk. We were parked on a private airfield in Las Vegas, which was part of the commercial airport, but far enough away that we were pretty secluded.

  We walked around the perimeter of the field, which was encased in a chain link fence. In the distance, we could see the runways of the normal airport, the planes taking off and landing even this late, their lights glittering.

  I spotted a picnic table on the other side of the fence, set up on a patch of grass. I started toward the door in the chain link fence, but Liam stopped me.

  “No,” he said, his hand tightening around mine. “We don’t leave the field.” The four beefy security guards hovered a few hundred feet away, patrolling the perimeter.

  I rolled my eyes. “I just want to sit on the picnic table,” I said. “Come on, it’s not even that much farther.”

  “Emery.”

  “Liam.”

  He started at me, not giving in. It was a small thing, wanting to sit on the picnic table, the kind of thing I would normally give into. I could still feel that pull to do whatever he said. But it was like working out, I told myself. It needed to be done to get where you wanted, even if was against what your body was telling you it wanted.

  He sighed.

  “If this is going to work, if any part of you wants this, then…I need to have some say in this relationship, too.” I raised my chin defiantly and waited for his response.

  He glanced behind him to the security guards.

  “Fine,” he said. “But you don’t leave the picnic table, you stay close to me, and if I tell you we have to go back to the plane, you go, no questions asked.”

  “Fine.”

  He opened the gate in the chain link fence and we stepped through and onto the grass. I was wearing a pair of flip flops that I’d found in the front pocket of my suitcase, the kind of flip flops that were supposed to look chic and casual but probably cost a hundred dollars. They had some kind of insignia in the middle of the toe strap that was made of gold and looked fancy. I didn’t recognize the designer, but I had a feeling she or he was someone important. The grass was dewy – the humidity in the air was non-existent, so it must have rained earlier, and the wet blades licked against the arches of my feet.