Cleansed by Water: The Nature Hunters Academy Series, Book 3

by Quinn Loftis

  He closed his eyes and released a slow breath. “I love it when you say my name. Please, say it again.”

  Gabby bit her bottom lip. Her stomach danced with butterflies on crack at his words.

  “Please,” he said, sounding a little more desperate.

  “Liam,” she said so softly she barely heard it.

  His eyes snapped open. They swirled even faster, like a hurricane in the ocean. “Let me show you what love is supposed to be. I can’t promise I won’t inadvertently hurt your feelings. But I can promise I’ll do everything to make it right when I do. I can promise you that, short of death, I will never leave you.” He tilted his head slightly and said, “In fact, if it were up to me, you’d never leave my side. I’d never let you out of my sight.”

  “I don’t understand this,” Gabby admitted. She felt like the floor was dropping out from underneath her and there was nothing left to stand on. The principles she’d built her life around were crumbling, and she found herself needing desperately to believe him. Gabby wanted to let Liam in. She wished she could grab onto what he was offering with both hands and hold fast to it. She knew if she did, she would take out anything that threatened to take it from her grasp.

  “Let me hold you, Gabby,” Liam whispered. “Let me love you.”

  Gabby didn’t want to cry, but her body betrayed her, and the tears fell anyway. Her entire body began to tremble.

  Liam scooped her up and carried her over to the bed. He sat and held her in his lap, tucking her head under his neck, and ran his hand down her hair. “It’s okay to cry. You have every right, baby. And I bet you’ve only ever cried alone. But not anymore. Never again, Gabby. You will never cry alone again.”

  His words only made her cry harder. Her hands gripped his shirt, balling it up and tugging it close as if holding on to him would keep her from falling apart. She never wanted to fully fall apart because she didn’t know if she’d ever be able to put herself back together again. But she wasn’t alone now. If she fell apart, would Liam put her back together again?

  “Always,” he said with such conviction she felt it through the new yet fragile bond. She must have spoken out loud again and not even realized it. “Let it go, baby. Let it all out, and if you pick it back up again and need to let it all go again tomorrow, I’ll hold you and then put you back together again.”

  Gabby pressed her face tighter against his neck, seeking the warmth from his flesh and loving the way he smelled.

  She cried and let her heart break. A heart she’d once upon a time taped together in hopes that she could have some sort of life. But she’d only been surviving, not really living. She had honestly wished that one day she would die in battle. That she wouldn’t have to continue breathing, fighting her daily war with her emotions. Up until she’d met Liam, Tara, and Shelly, she’d just wanted it to be over.

  “I’m so tired,” she finally said. She didn’t know if he’d heard her, but then he spoke.

  “I know. And you’ve been so strong for so long. You don’t have to be strong anymore. Let me be strong for you. I’ve got broad shoulders, babe. Let me bear it for you.”

  Gabby didn’t respond. She just let herself lean on him. She let herself accept his comfort, though she had no idea what was going to happen when the tears finally stopped falling and her mind began working again. All she wanted in that moment was to be with Liam, to let him do the things he was saying he would do. She wanted to accept his offer and believe he would be true to his word. But could she trust him? And if he did hurt her, would she survive it?

  He continued to stroke her hair. Every now and then, he would say something encouraging to her, letting her know it was okay to fall apart. She hadn’t realized she’d needed permission. She’d fought so long to keep it all together, and she hadn’t realized how close to the edge of the cliff she’d been. Not until now, with Liam holding out his hand, offering to pull her back to safety.

  When the tears finally stopped and the sobs quieted, Gabby took a deep breath. She wasn’t ready to move, so she didn’t. If Liam wanted her out of his lap, she was sure he’d tell her or just move her. So, she just let him hold her.

  She didn’t know how long they sat there like that, him holding her tightly and her soaking up his strength and warmth, but she wished it would never have to end. She dreaded the light of day and the reality that would soon come knocking.

  “Will you talk to me?” he eventually asked.

  “What do you want me to say?” Gabby’s voice was rough from the sobs that had choked out of her for so long.

  “Anything,” he answered. “I just want to hear your voice.”

  She felt something through the bond, tugging deep in her chest. “What was that?”

  “You felt it?” he asked.

  “Yes. What was it?”

  “That’s the bond and me pushing my love through it. We can use it to give the other our emotions.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “I decided to ask Elias some questions since he’s been at this a little longer than us,” Liam admitted. “He said the bond can be used like a lie detector. You can feel the truth in my words and vice versa.”

  Gabby sat up and looked at him. “You can’t lie to me?”

  “Not with the bond open. You’ll be able to feel what I’m feeling. You’d know if what I was saying wasn’t true because it wouldn’t match my emotions.”

  “Say something not true and do that thing, push something through the bond.” She was being bossy, but she didn’t care. This information might be a game changer, or at least give her some hope that maybe this had a chance.

  “I disliked you the moment I saw you.”

  Gabby felt a stabbing sensation, and her eyes widened. “What the hell was that?”

  “That is what it felt like to my heart to say something so horrid and untrue,” Liam confessed. “It’s like a knife twisting in my gut. Hurting you is not something I could ever do without paying the consequences myself. It hurts me physically.”

  Gabby’s mouth dropped open, shut again, and then reopened. She didn’t know how to respond. Could it be true? Would she be able to tell if what he was saying wasn’t true?

  She frowned as a thought hit her. “But can you hide it from me? The truth?”

  “If the bond is closed, which either of us has the capability to do. But then you’d know without a doubt I was keeping something from you or lying to you. And then you’d kick my ass.”

  Her lips quirked up as she tried to keep from smiling. “Damn straight.”

  “I would expect nothing less. Of course if we fought, that would lead to make-up kissing and—”he waggled his eyebrows at her—“more.”

  Gabby shook her head as a quiet laugh huffed out of her. “Always goes back to that.”

  Liam shrugged. “I’m attracted to you, and I’m not ashamed of it. I will always make sure you know how sexy and beautiful you are.”

  Words from her past jumped unbidden into her mind. Liam must have felt her pain because he shook his head.

  “No,” he said firmly. “Those were lies. Whatever those jackasses said, they were lies.”

  It would take a long time to reprogram her thinking. If ever. When someone tells you something often enough and long enough, you start to believe it.

  “Gabby, I will remind you all the time that those were lies, and the truth is quite the opposite,” Liam promised.

  Gabby wondered if she would ever be able to let go of the pain her parents had caused her. It seemed like they had ingrained it in her since she was young so her mind always went back to that way of thinking, no matter how many times she tried to convince herself that she wasn’t what they claimed.

  Could Liam help her change her outlook?

  “What’s going through that beautiful head of yours?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

  “Do you want to?”

  She wanted to yell, YES, absolutely. But she he
ld back because she’d be revealing too much. It would show weakness to admit she wanted him.

  “We’ve got to start somewhere, Gabby,” Liam said gently. “At some point, we have to trust one another.”

  He was right. Nothing good came without some risk. She’d taken a risk when she’d come to Crimson Academy. She took the risk every day of being judged by her peers when she gave everything she had to be the best in her class. Risks were a part of life. Could a person really live without them?

  She took a deep breath and then said something she had been so sure she’d never say to anyone. “I want this.” Those three words seemed to break through the dam she’d managed to build between her mind and emotions, and the words came flowing out as freely as her tears had moments before.

  “I want it more than you could ever imagine,” Gabby admitted. “I’ve never been held, Liam.” His arms tightened around her as if letting her know he was never going to let her go. “I’ve never had a gentle touch. The closest thing has been a pat on the back from Professor Frost. There have never been kind words from someone I loved. There has never been anyone to lean on or seek comfort from.”

  Liam’s face seemed to grow darker and darker the more she talked, but she knew he wasn’t angry at her.

  “It shouldn’t have been like that. Your life shouldn’t have been so empty.”

  He was right. Parents were supposed to love their kids. They were supposed to be proud of them and want the best for them. The older she grew—the more she saw other kids with their parents showing up at school functions to support them, hugging them before dropping them off in the morning—the more she knew her parents weren’t right. But she was powerless to change it.

  “It wasn’t,” she agreed. “But it is what it is.”

  “Not anymore,” he growled. “Never again.”

  “You can’t fix me.”

  “You don’t need to be fixed, my love. You need to be adored.”

  Gabby’s eyes widened as she stared up at him. Even in his lap, she was still shorter than him. “I don’t understand that kind of emotion.”

  “You will,” he said with a small smile. “One day, you will completely understand it.”

  She hoped so.

  “Say it,” Liam ordered.

  Her brow rose. “Say what?”

  “Your face is very expressive, babe. It’s quite obvious when you have a thought you don’t want to share with someone.”

  “If you know I don’t want to share it, why are you trying to make me?”

  “Because that’s how relationships work. Communication, Gabs. It’s important.”

  “You’re a relationship expert now?” she asked with a smirk.

  “Kind of,” he replied, as he brushed a piece of hair out of her face. “I wasn’t exaggerating when I said my parents had an amazing relationship, and they taught me a lot.”

  “What was that like?” she asked, genuinely curious what it felt like to have parents who cared about you.

  “Sometimes, it was annoying,” he said, his eyes twinkling with the memories that were obviously filled with affection. “They used every opportunity to try to teach me stuff. If they had an argument, it was always civil. There was never any name calling. There was no yelling. They discussed, sometimes with strong emotion” —he winked at her— “which often led to them disappearing up the stairs.”

  Gabby laughed. “TMI, Liam.”

  “They had a healthy intimate life and weren’t afraid to let me know it.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I honestly wanted to one day have what they did, but somewhere along the way I just decided it wasn’t going to happen for me. I dated, but no one ever meant that much to me.

  “My dad said he knew the minute he laid eyes on my mother that she was the one for him. But she said it wasn’t that way for her. In fact”—he chuckled—“she turned him down ten times.”

  “Ten?” Gabby’s mouth dropped open. “And he just kept asking her?”

  “The men in my family, present company included, are nothing if not persistent.”

  Gabby pursed her lips. “Truth.”

  “My dad said he wasn’t giving up until she said yes because he knew there was no one else that would make him feel the way she did.”

  “I don’t see how that’s possible. He didn’t even know her.” She frowned as she thought about what it must have been like to want someone so completely from the first moment you saw them.

  “It’s how I felt about you when I saw you on that training field for the first time.”

  “That was the soul bond,” she pointed out.

  “Who’s to say my parents weren’t soul mates? Who’s to say if they’d been elementalists that they wouldn’t have been soul bonded?”

  Gabby considered his words. It was an interesting point. Were there humans that were soul mates? She didn’t know what she believed about soul mates because she’d never even thought she’d be with a guy, soul mate or not.

  “I knew you were mine the second I saw you, Gabby. That hasn’t changed, and it won’t change. Even if you never want me, I will always be yours.”

  She started to shake her head but stopped herself because she felt the truth of his words through the open bond. “You really mean that,” she said, not even trying to hide the awe in her voice.

  “I do,” he said with a sharp nod. “I’ve never meant anything more in my life.”

  “Where do we go from here?” Gabby asked.

  “We take it one second at a time,” Liam said, lifting one shoulder as he pulled her closer. “You let me hold you when I need to, and at some point, you will be comfortable admitting to me when you need to be held.”

  She opened her mouth to speak, but he put a finger on her lips to stop her.

  “I’m not saying that will happen tomorrow. It will take time, Gabby. I know that. Believe it or not, I can be patient.”

  She laughed and pushed his hand away. “For some reason, I find that really hard to believe.”

  “Why?” he asked, sounding offended, though the laughter in his eyes betrayed his voice.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because it’s only been three days since we talked and instead of knocking on my door like a normal person, you broke in, in the middle of the night, and climbed into my bed”—she put her finger over his mouth when he started to speak—“while I was in it.”

  His eyes took on a laziness that made him look sensual, and his lips kicked up in a crooked smile. “Okay, so maybe that was a little rash.”

  “A little?”

  Liam lifted his hands and cupped her face. “I missed you,” he said, staring into her eyes. “I wanted your attention.”

  “I guess you got it.”

  “Damn right, I did.”

  Gabby shook her head at him. “Are you sure your parents didn’t drop you on your head when you were a baby?”

  “I am sure of no such thing, and if they did, it probably did me some good. I might be a stalker if they hadn’t.”

  “You think you’re not a stalker?” Gabby laughed. “Dude, you could write the handbook on stalking.”

  “I’m a man who knows what he wants and whom he wants,” he said shamelessly. “And I wasn’t about to lose you to some other idiot.”

  “Liam, I’ve never been pursued by a guy. Ever.”

  “That’s because they’re terrified of you. You’re hot and intimidating,” he told her.

  “But you weren’t intimidated?”

  He shook his head. “Not a chance, baby. That shit is sexy as hell.”

  She closed her eyes and sighed. “Your mother never washed your mouth out with soap either.”

  “I’ve heard you curse, babe. You can hold your own with the best of them. Don’t even act like you’re all prim and proper. Besides…” he said as he leaned closer to her. He’d yet to drop his hands from her face. “I don't want prim and proper. I want a hellcat.”

  She stared at him, unable to process that this crazy, handsome, and no doubt unst
able man wanted her.

  “Gabby,” he said quietly as he leaned even closer, “I want to kiss you.”

  Her eyes widened, but she didn’t try to pull away from him. Did she want him to kiss her? Yes. Yes, she did. But what would happen? Would the world cease to exist as she knew it? Because it sort of felt like it would.

  His lips were a hair’s breadth away from her own. She could practically feel the heat from them.

  “Do you want me to stop?” Liam asked. His lips brushed hers as he spoke, and electric shocks shot through Gabby’s body.

  Different parts of her body came alive, as if the nerves had been asleep and had suddenly awoken. Liam's hands against her back felt as if they were branding her as his. Her stomach did flips as he pulled her closer.

  “Gabby,” he spoke again.

  “Yes?” She breathed out, unable to process anything because she was on sensory overload.

  “Do you want me to stop?”

  “No,” she answered. And it was the truth. She’d never wanted anything more than to have Liam kiss her.

  He closed the small distance between them, and though Gabby knew it took less than a second, it felt as if it was longer before his lips pressed firmly against hers.

  All at once, her world turned upside down. Everything she thought she knew fell away, and all that was wrong became right. It was a kiss, she thought, just a kiss, and yet it was so much more.

  Goosebumps rose on her arms as his fingers trailed down her spine. She felt his tongue brush against the seam of her closed lips. Gabby didn't think, she just parted her lips and granted him the access he desired.

  His flavor filled her taste buds and completely new sensations took over. Why the hell weren’t people doing this all of the time? It was exciting and terrifying and wonderful all at the same time, not to mention, it just felt amazing.

  Liam moaned as he leaned into her, and Gabby pressed forward in response. His hand slid into her hair, and he tilted her head to the side and kissed her deeper. She couldn’t have stopped the small noise that escaped her even if she’d wanted to, which she didn’t, because holy hell.

  When she thought things couldn’t get any more intense, they did. Gabby could feel her magic welling up inside. The heat that always simmered deep in her chest rose and pushed forward. Then it flowed from her chest into Liam’s body.