“We need to think before we act. They’ll be watching. They could take whatever you’re after from you and kill him.”
“If they haven’t already.”
“They won’t kill him if they think he’s the way to motivate you to give them what they want. And they won’t kill you if they think you know what that is. Chad isn’t a fool. He’s knows how to spin information.”
I shove his chest. “We can’t just stand here. What I’m thinking of might not even be what they want. I have to get it. There’s no time.”
“I just told you. They aren’t going to kill him if they think you have what they want.”
“You don’t even know who ‘they’ are or what they want so you can’t be sure.”
A knock sounds on the door and Liam’s voice follows. “Amy.”
My heart lurches, and a mix of dread and absolute happiness fill me but Jared pulls me to him, keeping me grounded in the reality of my life and the hell I live in. “What ‘they’ might do is kill lover boy out there as an example and leave Chad alive. Get rid of him. Tell him you’re fucking me. Tell him that you used him for money to save your brother. Whatever you have to say, you get rid of him. And if you can’t, be worried he’s one of them. Understand?”
“Yes. Yes, you’re right.”
He studies me a moment, his stare probing, then sets me away from him, reaching for Berta. “Why do you need that?”
“Amy, damn it, open up,” Liam shouts.
Jared ignores the demand and answers me, “Making sure neither of us end up dead,” he replies, walking toward the door. There’s a grace and comfort to the way he handles the weapon that says experience. Lots of experience. He is far more than a hacker and I suddenly want to warn Liam.
I turn for my purse, intending to reach for my weapon, but I never get the chance. Jared unlocks the door and it bursts open. Tellar stalks into the room, and his empty shoulder holster is resting over his t-shirt and jeans, his gun pointed at Jared.
I blink and Tellar and Jared are split at the foot of each bed, both stiff-armed and pointing weapons at each other. Watching them, I back against the nightstand but then Liam steps into the room, and I see no one but him. In distressed jeans and a pale blue t-shirt, he oozes exactly what he did the first night I met him. Money, power, sexy, but he is so much more to me now. He is compassion, trust...love.
His eyes land on me, and I see the terror he has felt for me and the relief that washes over him that I am here and safe. He steps toward me and I start for him. That’s when Jared shouts, “Go anywhere near her and I’ll shoot your buddy here.”
Liam freezes and Tellar promise, “You’ll take a fucking bullet doing it.”
I glance between them, the long-haired renegade that is Jared and the bulkier military man with a buzz cut that is Tellar, both with jaws set, both with steady hands, and I truly believe they are each just as willing to pull the trigger of their weapons.
“Amy,” Liam says softly, easily commanding my attention, those aqua-blue eyes finding mine. A storm erupts inside me. I love him. I love him with all my heart and I cannot let him die. I won’t let him die.
“Go away, Liam,” I force myself to order. “I’m not with you anymore. I’m with Jared. I was always with Jared.”
“You don’t really expect me to believe that, do you?”
“It was about your money,” I press, but the words are lead on my tongue. “I needed it to get to my brother but it’s handled. He’s safe and you and your arrogant, bossy self can just go away.”
His gaze slips to Jared and back to me “So you’re fucking him?”
“I...yes. Yes I am.”
“While you’re pregnant with my child.”
I ignore Jared curse’s at the surprising news, and stay focused on Liam, “Why do you think I was so pissed when you didn’t use a condom?”
I hit a nerve and anger hardens his handsome face. “Whatever you’re doing, stop.” His voice is ice laced with pain and it’s just too much. This is all too much. I hurt. I do not want Liam to hurt. Regret shakes me to the core and I do not know what insanity made me listen to Jared. There is only one way to handle Liam and this isn’t it.
I grab my purse and fumble with the flap, pulling the gun from inside. Liam doesn’t move. He stands there, unmoving, unreadable. I point the gun at Tellar and Jared. “Both of you get out.”
Tellar curses and Jared flicks me a shocked look. “Amy--”
“I won’t kill either one of you but I’ll shoot you in the legs and knock some of the damn testosterone out of you. Now, get out! Fight outside. Figure it out and let us figure it out.”
“Get out, Tellar,” Liam orders softly.
Both men hesitate and seem to come to a silent understanding. They harness their weapons and head for the door. It shuts behind them, leaving Liam and me alone.
Chapter Eighteen
Liam doesn’t move. He just stands there looking good enough to lick and mad enough to tear down the walls of the dingy motel. He owns this room. He owns me and I can’t do anything about it. I don’t even want to try, and yet the hell of my life keeps forcing me to push him away.
The gun shakes in my hand. “I told you not to get killed. Charging in here is not the way to stay alive.”
He advances on me slowly, and each step is like a band stretching around us, ready to pop at any moment. I’m not sure what to expect when it does. “And holding a gun on me makes sense in this equation how?”
“Everything isn’t an equation. It just...is.”
“Like me coming for you?” He stops in front of me, and just as Jared had in the truck, he closes his hand over mine where I hold the gun, but it is nothing like that earlier moment. I gasp as the sensations rush over me, and I have this undeniable sense of us being two parts of one whole. Of not fully breathing while we were apart. “You had to know I wasn’t going to leave you in a motel room with Jared.”
My lashes lift at the intensity of his tone. In the depths of his gorgeous blue eyes, there is a promise that I am his and that he will never let me go. That I am as rooted in his soul as he is in mine, and he is going to fight for what that means, while I am fighting to save his life.
“I told you to go to Denver,” I whisper.
“I sent Derek.”
“What if I was in Denver?”
“You aren’t.”
Electricity charges the air and the tension that is building seems to jolt up one more notch. “You didn’t know I wouldn’t be.”
“Yes I did, and as sure I was in the air traveling here, I got the alert that you were headed here too.”
“From my ID at the airport,” I say, and it’s not really a question. “And I went straight to my old house. I made it easy for anyone to find me.”
He gives a nod of confirmation anyway. “You wanted me to find you.”
Yes. “No. I wanted to find you when this was over.”
“Together, baby. We’ve talked about this.” He sets the gun on the bed and I swear the few seconds he isn’t touching me is hell. His hands come down on my shoulders. “Do you know how much what you said about Jared killed me after I’d already died a million deaths in the past twenty-four hours?”
My heart squeezes with the vulnerability of his confession, the intensity of his tone, and I wrap my arms around him, absorbing the heat of his body, the power and strength. “I didn’t mean anything I said. I hated it. I just…” I look up at him, urgency roaring to life. “They’ll kill you. You have to leave. Go underground. Please. I’m begging you. Go underground like you wanted to take me. They won’t kill me. Not when they think I have what they want.”
His hands slip into my hair. “I’m not going anywhere without you. I leave when you leave. And you’re not going anywhere with Jared.”
“Liam--”
His mouth comes down on mine, and it’s pain and heartache, but there is more. There is a harder edge, a demand, anger.
I’m angry, too, and I don’t think i
t’s at him. I just am, and he is angry too, and we are all over each other, wildly kissing, tugging at clothes. My shirt is tossed to the ground and I shove his up his body, seeking skin against skin, a moment of no barriers when there seems to be so many between us, too many.
My hand flattens on his “pi” tattoo where I want my mouth to be, but when he unhooks my borrowed bra, and I hear the rumble of Tellar and Jared arguing outside, I grab it, holding it in place. “We can’t. Tellar and Jared.”
“Ask me if I care about Tellar and Jared right now?” He tugs the bra away, wrapping his fingers around my neck and dragging my mouth to his again. “You said you fucked Jared.”
I forget my hesitation of moments before. “I told you. I was trying to scare you away. I know you know that.”
“That didn’t make it easy to hear. That doesn’t stop this burn inside me that says I need to remind you who you belong with.”
“I don’t need a reminder.”
“I think you do.” He lifts me and carries me to the bed, setting me on the mattress. My shoes and jeans, and even my panties, are gone before I can protest. Not that I want to. And as much as I hate that I’ve made him feel he has something to prove, this fierce, intense, dominant man he is now calls to me. Liam calls to me. He speaks to me on some level beyond words, deep in my core, like an expression of something I have inside me, and that I find within him.
He drags me to the end of the bed and turns me over, his hands going to my hips to pull me onto my knees. I’m submissive to him like this and I think I get him more in this moment than I ever have. He needs the control he’s felt he’d lost the past few days. And the truth is, I need to give it to him. He’s my escape, the only place I can let go, the only place I can trust.
He leans down and cradles my body, caresses my breasts, brushing my hair off of my back, the long, blonde strands falling to the bed, over my cheeks, blinding me. But I don’t need to see. That’s what is so erotic, so perfect, with Liam. I really do trust him.
His lips settle at my nape, his hand kneading my breast, teasing my nipple. My breasts are heavy, my sex aching, my thighs damp. He kisses between my shoulder blades, then flattens his palm there, slowly dragging his hand down my back to cup my backside.
I should spank you, he’d threatened once. It’s confusingly erotic, teasingly sensational. But he doesn’t and somehow I knew he wouldn’t. He cups my cheeks and then caresses down my thighs and back up. His fingers slip intimately between my legs, into the slickness of my swollen, aroused body and I fall to my elbows, unable to hold myself up on my hands.
He begins to stroke me, playing with my clit, and then slips two fingers inside me, filling me, stretching me. I find myself leaning back into the touch, arching my back, pushing for more. And I know he could take me over the edge but he doesn’t. He teases me. Pulling his fingers out. Pressing them back inside me. Repeating until I think I will go crazy. Finally, oh yes, finally, he takes me to that edge and I am ready. So very ready, when suddenly, his fingers are gone and I am panting in agony.
He flattens his hand on my back and leans over me, his mouth moving to my ear. “Not without me. Not this time. You need to remember the meaning of ‘together’. Don’t move.”
Don’t move. Easier said than done, but I can hear him undressing and I focus the idea of him being inside me. How good it will feel when that first touch of his cock becomes a deep push. And I get what I crave. His hands come down on my hips. His shaft settles between my thighs. “Mine,” he growls, and he thrusts into me, driving hard and deep.
I moan and expect another thrust, but instead he goes down on the bed and molds my back to his chest, his hand covering my breast. His lips are back at my ear as he whispers, “Mine.”
“Yes. Yours.”
“He wants to fuck you.” He tugs on my nipple, almost as if he is punishing me with pleasure, his hips grinding into me.
“And I want to fuck you,” I pant.
He pulls out of me, turns me to face him, presses his cock inside me and cups my backside to bury himself deep inside me again. We lay there then, our eyes connecting, as he murmurs, “The best fucking, baby, is when it’s--”
“Raw and honest,” I whisper.
His sensual, amazing mouth curves slightly. “And when it’s wicked hot and driven by love.” His fingers settle on my face. “Like I love you with everything I am and ever will be.”
He loves me. I knew, I did, but hearing it is everything. “I love you too, and I didn’t want to tell you in a note, but I didn’t want to risk never telling you at all.”
“I know,” he murmurs, his fingers caressing down my arm to slide up my back and mold my chest to his. “Don’t ever leave me again.”
It’s an order, but somewhere in the depth of the command is a plea, and pain. I hear the pain etched in his words, see it in his eyes. Not for the first time, I am struck by the way we speak to each other beyond words. The way my soul knows his soul. Love and loss have touched our lives, but with all his money and power, he has never felt what family truly means. He has never felt that unity and peace.
I twine my fingers in the dark strands of his hair. “You have to know that leaving you was about not losing you. Please tell me you know that.”
“I know but I can’t go through that again, Amy. Together means together. Whatever happens, you come to me and we will handle it.”
“I just--”
He cups my head and kisses me. “No excuses. Together. That’s what you say you want.”
“It is.”
“No exceptions.”
“No exceptions,” I murmur and his tongue sweeps against mine, tender and sweet, and where I’ve tasted possession and need in him in the past, I taste love and heartache now. I moan and deepen the kiss, trying to wash away the hurt in him I know runs deeper than me and this moment in time. It’s why he understands mine.
I don’t know when we start moving. We just do and it is passion and pleasure and absolute perfection in the midst of the danger surrounding us. All that matters are these moments and every touch, every lick, every move, is about the forever we want to share together. The family we want to be together. I want it to last, but too soon, I tumble into those blissful spasms of release and he shudders with his own. It is truly bittersweet.
In the aftermath, we hold each other, neither of us caring about the stickiness on our thighs, or the two men hanging out beyond the room. We lie there together...breathing. Eventually, Liam pulls out of me and walks to the bathroom, returning with a towel, helping me clean up, and it doesn’t make me blush. It somehow makes me feel closer to him.
We lay on our backs and stare at the stained ceiling. “Is the house okay?”
“It’s fine, but even if it wasn’t, it can be replaced.” He turns to look at me. “You can’t.”
I roll to my side to face him. “I wouldn’t have been able to forgive myself if Alex’s home had been destroyed.”
“I told you--”
I touch his lips. “I know. You’re worried about me, but what is important to you is important to me.” I think of Meg’s claim that she’d set the fire, but now it seems to have been done with help. “Was there a bomb?”
“No bomb.”
I let out a breath. “That’s a relief.”
“How did you end up with Jared instead of Meg?”
“When I got here, I went to my old house--”
“Red Heaven Restaurant,” he supplies.
A burn starts in my chest. “You know?”
“Derek figured it out after he put Sheridan on the radar.” He takes my hand. “I should have been there when you found out.”
“I know you wanted to be and that’s enough.” I lower my lashes a moment, reining in my emotions before I look at him again and say, “It feels like a slap.”
“It’s meant as one.”
“So you think he’s involved.”
“Yes. I have no proof, but I’ll get it. Meg. What happened to her?”
“Jared showed up at the restaurant and she took off.”
“Interesting. I’ve been checking on her.”
“And?”
“Her identity is a nothing but a shell like yours.”
This doesn’t surprise me. “She says she’s Chad’s wife.”
“Nothing in any of the data I received on her suggests she’s married to anyone, let alone Chad.”
“Jared seemed surprised too when I told him, especially since Chad didn’t mention her. He has a picture of her with the man who was having the affair with my mother.”
Liam scrubs his jaw. “There’s one from right field. I didn’t expect that. Does he know who the man is?”
“No. He’s just this perpetual mystery we can’t solve.”
He studies me with hooded eyes, several seconds ticking by. “About Jared--”
“I’d been with him all of an hour. He tracked me from my travel just like you did.”
“Why is he even involved in this?”
“He’s an old friend of my brother’s,” I explain and detail everything Jared has shared with me.
“You believe him?” Liam asks, sounding more than a little skeptical.
“He had a voice message from my brother begging him to protect me. I heard it, Liam. He’ll play it for you.”
“So your brother’s...alive.”
“Yes. Or he was. All these years he’s been alive and living a few blocks from me. But now--” Meg is gone. “Oh God.”
I sit up and Liam follows. “What is it, Amy?”
“Meg was my connection to whoever has Chad. I was so taken aback by Chad’s voicemail, I forgot how important her link to my brother is.” I scramble of the bed and cringe with cramps.
“Amy.” Liam is by my side in an instant, arms around me. “Easy, baby. What’s wrong?”
I swallow hard and straighten. “Nothing. I’m fine. It’s over. Just some cramps. From sex, I think.”
His brows furrow. “Is that normal?”
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