by Lucy Lambert
I sat near the back, the vinyl cover on the seat creaking slightly as I put my weight on it.
I tried not to look back out the window. I really did. Unable to resist the impulse, I let my eyes scan out the window just as the bus huffed and lurched away from the curb.
When I didn't see him, I turned bodily towards the window, pressing my hand to the cool pane. Liam wasn't anywhere to be seen on the bus loop.
I'd been certain—certain—that he'd chase me outside, try to stop me, try to explain himself. That's what a player would do, wasn't it? But he wasn't there.
And then it was my turn to feel hurt. Even though I knew I shouldn't. If he accepted this so easily, it was a good thing. I could get on with my life and he on with his.
"Fine," I said, then again, "Fine," with a bit more venom. My voice didn't hitch there at all. No, it definitely didn't.
My flat looked even smaller, somehow. More cramped. The walls pressed in on me. The window seemed more a tiny jail cell porthole peering out onto a world barred from me.
I tossed my messenger bag onto the bed that I noticed was more a cot than anything. Then I yanked my chair out, the screech of the feet across the scratched old floor shivering up my spine.
I supposed I was so angry because of how good things seemed to be. Liam had seemed so genuinely interested in me, and I in him. He'd appeared so perfect, outside and in. A handsome man on the outside and a good one on the inside, such an apparently rare combination.
I'd begun to let myself be happy again, because of him, to let the world in. And now it was all a part of some game or scheme.
Or maybe it was because I wanted so badly to believe that all the evidence that secretary had presented me was wrong, that all the things I'd heard about him were wrong.
Again and again, I returned to that image of him examining that statue of the philosopher king, or the intimate knowledge and appreciation he had of and for the city.
What I knew about him simply didn't reconcile with what the world thought it knew about him. Yet, I also knew that if I brought up any search engine on my laptop there'd be no shortage of pictures of him with his various exploits, no shortage of articles about the trail of broken hearts left in his wake.
Or of the meteoric rise and success of Mass Systems. No company became that successful while also retaining any sense of morality or ethics.
Who knew what Liam Montgomery had done for his success?
No, I had to take away from this only the positives and move on with my life. The pleasant memories, the renewed sense of purpose. None of the heartache or the sense of betrayal.
A task about as easy as herding cats.
However, my mind kept returning to one point, over and over: Why didn't he come after me?
So when he knocked on the door and said, "Emma?" a bizarre triumph and excitement ran through me almost as intense as my anger.
"Just go away!" I said.
"You know that isn't going to happen. Talk to me."
Again, that strain of concern in his voice.
When I didn't reply, he tried the latch. And of course, in my distracted state I'd forgotten to throw the deadbolt into place when I'd come in.
He came in and closed the door behind himself. I faced away from him.
"You know," he said, "How?"
"Not from you." That was satisfying. Especially since he took it like a punch to the gut. Despite my attempt at schadenfreude, it didn't feel as good as I'd expected. In fact, the urge to apologize welled up in me so fast I had trouble stifling it.
"I deserve an answer," Liam said.
"I don't know her name. Your secretary. Your cold and beautiful statue of a secretary. The one you're involved with. If that's all, I'd like to be alone now."
"Abigail? That makes sense. But you have to know that the moment I met you it was over between the two of us. I'm not that kind of man."
"That's rich," I said, punctuating it was a humorless laugh, "The liar isn't a cheater. You should add that to your CV." Even in my angry state, I knew I was being harsh. Except I couldn't help it. There was something cathartic, letting all my feelings spill out in a torrent of vitriol.
"I never lied to you, Emma." Even though I couldn't see him, I knew that he'd set his jaw in a hard line, that he'd balled his hands into fists.
"Then why is it I learned who you really were from your most recent jilted lover instead of you?" And that was really the heart of it, that broken trust, that obscuring of identity.
"If you know who I am, then you also have to realize that I didn't want all of that changing the way you felt about me. I wanted you to like me for me, not for the money. You have no idea what it's like to see the dollar signs pop up in the eyes of every woman you meet."
I wanted to lash out again, if only because it relieved some of that angry pressure inside of me. Yet I couldn't. What he said made sense, even though I wanted so very badly for it not to.
The desire to be loved for who you are is, in my opinion, one of the greatest equalizers on earth. Beggars felt it just as truly as kings and oil barons.
"Judging by the procession of bimbos you've paraded in front of the media, you've never seemed to mind women throwing themselves at you before this." Again I sensed him flinch behind me. But there was more.
"You've never searched for anything so desperately before?" Liam said, his voice clouding with anger, "You've never wanted something so much that you let yourself accept something less than what you truly wanted?"
I squeezed my eyes shut. I won't let him get to me. "Then maybe you should have told me. How do you think it makes me feel to know that you didn't think you could trust me? Especially after I let myself trust you so completely? I guess you're not as good at reading people as you think you are."
Besides, it wasn't like he'd hidden the fact that he was well off. A five star hotel suite that probably cost more a night than most people paid the bank for the mortgage each month. A great, brand new luxury car. Although I supposed there was still a difference between Clearly Well Off and Richer Than Croesus.
"So you're telling me that wouldn't have changed things? Not at all?" he replied.
I wanted so badly to say that it wouldn't have, but even as my lips tried to form the syllable I knew it wasn't true. But I still didn't think it would have given me the dollar sign eyes he feared so much.
He took me silence as a tacit agreement with him. "I think that maybe we've both made some mistakes. But are they really worth throwing this away?"
This time I did turn to face him. Passion had flushed his skin. His hair was in slight disarray, as though he'd forgotten to roll the windows up in his rush to get over here.
Despite the fight, I felt myself run hot and cold for him. Maybe my body knew something my heart and mind didn't. I tried to ignore it.
"What is it that you think we have? You've known me for, what, a week and half? Newsflash, we have nothing."
"You're wrong," he said, "I am good at seeing people for who and what they are. And I knew as soon as I saw you that you are different, special. I knew that instantly. And I know now that it's something worth fighting for, something worth nurturing. Something so not worth throwing away like this. Look me in the eye and tell me you don't feel the same damn thing."
I burned for an answer, for some quick quip to rock him back on his heels. None came. Because the truth was, as soon as I looked him in the eye I knew that I couldn't say that I didn't.
And I could tell that he knew that I couldn't, too. That galled me.
Except then the door swung open again. This time it disgorged the rather squat figure of Mrs. Rosselini. She had her hair pulled back into its usual tight bun, a bit of netting over that to keep stray strands from getting into the dough.
Smudges of flour dusted her bared forearms, her white apron, and most notably from the large wooden rolling pin she clutched confidently in one hand, in prime clobbering position.
"Get out," she said to Liam. She squinted up a
t him, not caring about the way she had to arch her neck to do so, not caring that Liam was more than head-and-shoulders taller than her.
"Madam, please, this isn't what you think. I would never..."
"Go," Mrs. Rosselini said. She shook the rolling pin for emphasis, some flour dust floating and eddying to the floor.
Even my heart melted at that. And no matter how part of me would feel oh so satisfied at watching him catch a couple good whacks, I knew that wouldn't be right.
Even I couldn't help but smile at the sudden maternal display.
"It is okay, Mrs. Rosselini. We were just having a discussion. It's okay. But thank you, really."
"You cannot trust the handsome ones," she said, still squinting up at Liam, who still wasn't certain how to react to her, "My husband, he was handsome. But the handsome, it goes away with the years. Then you see what is left behind. Yes, then you will see."
She prodded Liam in the shoulder with the rounded handle of the pin. It left an irregular flour smudge on the fine tailored jacket that had me cringing.
Liam could have easily shooed her back down the stairs, rolling pin or not. But he didn't. And then I got an inkling of what I would see should the years ever take from him his "handsome," as Mrs. Rosselini put it.
In order to defuse the situation I had to get up and lead Mrs. Rosselini back to the door, assuring her as she went slowly down the stairs that I could take care of myself. She smelled of fresh baked bread and the icing sugar she used on some of the pastries.
"Take it," she said, offering me the rolling pin, more flour dust floating away from it.
"I will be fine," I insisted, waving away the offer. I listened with some amusement as she mumbled a few particularly colorful Italian curses as she rounded the corner. The door to her shop opened and closed and I knew Liam and I were alone again.
My anger rekindled when I turned and saw Liam there still. There was the ghost of a smile on his laps. Enough of one to stir the embers of my anger.
"That was... unexpected," Liam said, his anger also apparently deflated in the face of Mrs. Rosselini's display. He wiped at the smudge of flour on his jacket.
"Next time I won't send her away," I said.
"So there will be a next time, then?"
I grabbed my messenger bag from my bed, slung it over my shoulder. The weight of the books had it biting into my skin, but I didn't mind. Seeing Mrs. Rosselini disappear at the bottom of the staircase had given me an idea. And Liam here was a perfect excuse to leave my suddenly cramped flat.
"Not any time soon. I am still angry with you," I replied.
He'd moved so that he stood in front of the door, so that I'd have to get past him to leave. I shouldered him aside, Liam taking a step back to maintain his balance. I grabbed the latch and yanked the door open.
"Don't go," he said.
"Don't try and stop me."
He grabbed my upper arm as I set foot on the landing, his grip not quite painful, but close.
"Let me go," I said, baring my teeth.
"I'm not letting you slide back into your rut, all comfortable in your misery again. I care about you, Emma."
I tugged at his grip, but he held firm. That fire started inside of me again. No one, it seemed, could make me run as hot and cold as Liam Montgomery could.
"Let. Go!" I said, tearing savagely.
"Not until we finish this conversation." He tugged me closer. Close so that I could smell the musk of his aftershave, see the wild glint in his baby blue eyes, the way his pulse pounded in his throat.
I grabbed the loose knot of his tie, squeezing it so hard my knuckles went white. I couldn't believe the nerve he had, not letting me go, grabbing me like that. Looking at me with eyes so blue they should have been frozen but instead burned with an incredible intensity.
I don't know who pulled the other closer, me or him. Maybe it was both of us at the same time.
In any case, it came to the same result. One moment we stared each other down, the next I felt the heat of his mouth pressed against mine, his arm snaking around my waist to pull my body against his.
I kissed him just as hard as he kissed me, pulling his bottom lip between my teeth and relishing the way he groaned when I bit down on him.
That fire inside me I'd mistaken for rage earlier was something else. Desire. My inner thighs burned with the heat of it.
"This doesn't mean anything," I said, my chest and shoulders suddenly heaving as I gulped in air, trying to meet my body's increased demand.
My breath hitched in my throat when I felt how much he wanted me, too.
"Keep telling yourself that," he replied.
"Just shut up and kiss me." I grabbed the back of his head, my fingers squeezing cruelly when I pulled his face to mine again.
He wrenched my messenger bag off my arm and threw it to the other side of the room. Then he started tearing at my clothes. Rather, we began tearing at each other's clothes.
His jacket dropped into the flour dust on the floor, not caring about it one bit. He popped the button on my jeans and then shoved his hands down the back of my pants, manhandling me, picking me up off the ground, his fingers digging hard into my ass with the sudden ferocity of his desire.
Somehow, I had the presence of mind to reach out and swing the open door shut before inquiring eyes could see what all the commotion was about. More surprising, I remembered to throw the deadbolt into place as well.
But then all bets were off.
He had me stripped down entirely seemingly before I could blink again. His mouth found my throat, leaving a trail of hot, wet love nips that traveled down to the spot where my shoulder joined my neck, all the while trying to strip out of his own clothes.
It was like all those pent up feelings, all that angry and frustration, all chose that moment to burst out. And there was only one thing to quench that fire.
He managed to shrug and step and shake out of everything without dropping me. My legs fit so perfectly around his waist, and he held me there effortlessly.
I'd already thrown his hair into disarray, running my fingers through it as our faces moved this way and that while we kissed.
And then his mouth moved lower, enveloping one nipple so hot and erect it hurt. I sucked in a breath at the heat of his mouth, at the way his tongue rubbed against my sensitive flesh.
He wasn't stingy with his desire, either, moving from one nipple to the other, then kissing up between my heaving breasts. His lips moved up my throat, then found my mouth again even as he bore me down onto the bed.
It creaked alarmingly beneath us, but didn't give. Not that I think it would have mattered. We nearly beyond any sort of control by that point.
Every instant we spent not together tore at me. My need was real, palpable. Painful in its intensity. I nearly took him right then and there, and damn the consequences.
He, somehow (I still don't know), pulled his mouth away from where he worried at the sensitive skin of my throat. "Where?"
I managed the barest of nods towards my tiny nightstand which had somehow not fallen over when we fell onto the mattress.
My back arched beneath him, my body writhing and my hips grinding back against the mattress. Every instant without him inside of me was agony. Delicious, suspenseful agony.
He found the foil wrapper in the narrow drawer of the end table. Tearing it, he rolled the contents down his length.
Then I grabbed him and guided him inside of me, impatience demanding immediate action. He groaned at my touch, the noise deepening into a growl as he sunk himself into me.
My ankles locked at the small of his back, keeping him captive inside of me. My back arched again as he filled me, the feeling of it bordering on that razor line between pleasure and pain.
His arm shot around my waist, keeping me arched like that while his mouth again slid down to envelope one nipple and then the other. He sucked until I hissed, then moved to the other.
I ran my fingernails over his broad shoulder blades
again and again, every tingle and shudder of pleasure he wrung from me makes me scratch him harder. He liked it, the strong muscles of his core slamming our bodies together again and again, pounding me into submission beneath him.
When I came I grabbed my pillow and stuffed it into my mouth, stifling the scream and the little groans and whimpers that followed.
Liam tore it away from me so that he could kiss me, riding me hard through my climax.
Given the intensity of our flaming passion, it lived a short life. We writhed together until again every muscle in me began clenching as my second orgasm wracked my body.
Liam lost control then, too, flinching at the intense pleasure of that moment, throbbing inside me again and again.
He rolled off me perspiring and shaky, his arm hanging over the side of the narrow bed. I was in worse shape, my toes refusing to unclench, beads of sweat rolling down from my temples, wetting my hair, darkening it with moisture.
"I think we understand each other, now," he said.
"I think so," I replied, rolling onto my side. He put his arm beneath my neck, and I rested my cheek against his chest.
Right away I heard it. Thump-thump, thump-thump. As strong and vital a sound as I'd ever encountered. Also comforting and real, so real. Liam was there with me.
Not the Mr. Liam Montgomery the world saw, the billionaire playboy who seemed to go through women like a scythe through wheat, or the Liam who'd taken the business world by storm.
No, none of the ones the public could claim familiarity with.
This was the real Liam, the one left when you stripped away all those facades. This was the Liam who'd tried to find the wisdom hidden in the bronze eyes of Marcus Aurelius, the Liam who'd held me while I shared the most painful experience of my life with him.
And this Liam was mine. Just as surely as I was his.
Chapter 10
Isabella and I sat at one of the tables in the quad outside the building where I had a class coming up in half an hour.
It was a nice day. Lots of sun. Slightly cool with the encroachment of fall. More a threat of coolness than an actual presence. The air even had those hints of the changing seasons in it.