The number of times he got called to the principal’s office for bad behavior?
Zero.
Until today. His expression when he appears at the door is hard. Remote. His green eyes promise punishment. This is the Liam that enemies see when he’s in the field, and I shiver in response. I’m the enemy in this situation. I’m sitting in a chair beside the receptionist’s desk—probably the same chair where Laney was sitting when she stole that security card.
Thankfully I managed to shut the door in Laney’s face before Principal Keller saw her, which means she’s in the clear. My fate is yet to be decided.
I make a sound of dismay, of apology.
“Samantha?” he says, his voice severe. I think he wants me to have some easy explanation for what’s happening, but I don’t even know. How did Keller know I would be there?
“I’m sorry,” I say, feeling miserable. I’m not only sorry for him being called in. I’m sorry that I can’t confide in him, that as close as we are, we’re not close enough for that. Judging from the dark cloud that passes over his expression, he knows what I mean.
Principal Keller appears at the door, a tall man who seems to become more slender every year. His mouth is set in a severe line. “Mr. North. Thank you for taking the time to come today. Please come in.”
Liam looks at me. Apparently he wants me to come in with them. I follow the principal inside with my head down. I take the seat nearest the door, as if I could bolt. Liam sits in the seat beside me, reclined in a pose that’s deceptively casual. He shouldn’t even fit in the chair. Six-foot-something with lean muscles. The itchy gray fabric on top of a hard-plank of a chair is designed for teenagers. Or maybe adults from fifty years ago. Liam doesn’t look bothered by the size of the chair or its questionable stains. Discomfort can’t touch him. He looks like he could sit there for years, or that’s what it feels like, his gaze heavy on me. My face flames.
Principal Keller clears his throat. “I’m afraid that Ms. Brooks faces serious charges today. We found her with a security pass belonging to a teacher. She used it to leave the building, when she should have been in calculus.”
“Is that true?” Liam asks softly.
The principal looks affronted. “I found her outside holding the—”
“I asked her a question,” Liam says, without taking his gaze from me. He’s going to make me say it. He’s going to make me admit the shame out loud.
“Yes,” I whisper, not sure whether I’m more humiliated that I did it or that I got caught.
“I’m afraid it gets worse,” Principal Keller says, pulling out a familiar white envelope. He sets it on the desk as if it’s a proclamation of guilt—and well, I suppose it is. “She had this on her person. A rather large amount of money to be carrying around on a Monday, don’t you think? I suppose she wanted to purchase an extra snack at lunch.”
Oh great, now he’s a comedian. Of course no one laughs. Liam opens the envelope and glances inside, his thumb rifling through the hundred-dollar bills. He’s probably counted the money down to the exact amount.
“No doubt she was going to buy drugs,” Principal Keller adds.
“Leave,” Liam says, his voice low.
My stomach sinks. It’s only my worst fear for the past six years, that I would have no place to go, that the one person in the world who cared about me would have enough. Every muscle in my body knots hard enough to make me throw up. I’m clenched on the edge of the hard chair, panic thick in my throat.
Liam looks toward the principal. “We need a minute.”
“This is my office, sir.” Principal Keller’s mouth opens and closes like a fish. “Well, I can see that this is a very serious matter. Probably you want to… one minute, only.”
Then we’re alone.
I can’t relax. He wasn’t speaking to me then, but that doesn’t mean I’m off the hook. It was only a matter of time until he got tired of you. I should be grateful that he kept me around this long. At least I’ll have graduated high school, assuming St. Agnes gives me a diploma. I won’t have a violin if he kicks me out, but I know how to play.
“Stop that,” he mutters.
I swallow hard. “Stop what?”
“Whatever it is you’re thinking. It makes me feel like I’m kicking a damn puppy. Don’t give me those eyes; you’re going to explain yourself. Where did you get this money?”
“It’s my violin money.” There have been some performances in the space between school—a few concerts over the summer and a trip to Italy last winter break. They pay pretty well. It would have been within Liam’s rights to keep the money. After all, he’s the one who pays for my school and my clothes. He paid for the violin I used to play.
But he’s always kept the money in a bank account under my name only.
“You were going to spend your violin money on drugs,” he says, his voice flat.
“I wasn’t going to buy drugs,” I say, affronted. Bad enough that he knows I lied to him, that I kept a secret. The thought of disappointing him makes my stomach turn inside out. He doesn’t need to think I’m trying to get high on top of that.
“Then what the hell is the money for?”
I press my lips together. Cody and Laney are two of my best friends in the world. I promised them I wouldn’t share this secret, but that was before Liam looked at me like I’d disappointed him. “It was for a good cause,” I say. “We were going to speak truth to power.”
“We?” he asks, his eyebrow rising.
Shit. I’m sure he can guess who my partners in crime are, even if I did manage to keep Laney out of trouble. “Look, the truth is… I can’t tell you everything. It’s about loyalty and doing the right thing, even when it’s hard.”
“Christ,” he says.
I take a deep breath, tears stinging my eyes. “And if you want me to move out, I’ll understand that. I’m almost eighteen, almost graduated high school, and then the tour—”
He makes a slashing motion with his hand. “Move out? You’re clearly upset and caught in the middle of something, so I’m going to pretend like that’s not a goddamn insult. Did you think that when I took custody of you, it was just for when things were easy? That I would only want you around if you made the goddamn dean’s list?”
The way he says it means the answer is no, but I lived too long without any approval to really believe otherwise. My whole life has been about pleasing other people—about making my fingers move fast enough so that someone would clap at the end of the song.
“We’re going home,” he says, almost growling the words. “Where you will go to your room and think about what you’ve done. Because you are officially grounded.”
Chapter Sixteen
When violinist Fritz Kreisler served in WWII, his aural sensitivity helped him determine the location of large artillery by listening to the changing pitch of incoming shells across the battlefield.
SAMANTHA
Liam gets called away for work on the drive home, which is a relief. It gives me time to rebuild my defenses. Grounded? I’ve never been grounded in my life. He has no right to do that. And I still don’t trust him to do the right thing where Coach Price is concerned.
He might decide to do nothing and to block me from helping. That’s what he said about the guy at the club, after all. That he would look the other way for local criminals, as long as they left him alone.
That hasn’t changed, but we’ve run out of options. The tapes that we were going to use to blackmail Coach Price disappeared along with the club owner. Liam has the money that I was going to use to buy them, anyway. My violin money—gone.
There’s nothing left to do but trust Liam, and the knowledge rises like acid in my throat. I’ll have to tell him that Coach Price was doing bad things. That Cody needed us to do this. Maybe he’ll consider it his civic responsibility to help. Like me.
That night I wander through the halls of the darkened house. Our bedrooms have never been close together, one of the many ways that he�
��s kept distance between us. Ironically I sleep in what’s formally the family wing of the house, in the master bedroom. Liam uses a room beside his office to sleep. I have to pass the music room along the way, the shadows heavy, the silence dark. My violin rests in its case, but I feel its uneasy heartbeat as I pass.
A sound comes into the hallway, and I pause on the hard wood.
It was almost an animal sound, grumbling and dangerous. I take another step. Another. There’s only quiet now, but the hair on the back of my neck rises.
Then I hear it again—a growl of warning.
Blood races through my veins. I may not fully trust Liam, but he’s the only place I feel safe. His door is cracked open, revealing only a blanket of darkness. I push inside to safety, glancing over my shoulder, my pulse a hard staccato in my throat. Closing the door, I lean against it, panting.
Only to realize the sound is coming from inside the room.
A form writhes on the bed, large, menacing. A wild sound of rage. Of pain?
“Liam?” I whisper.
My eyes adjust so slowly, revealing a feral animal, revealing a man in sleep. White sheets are tangled around his waist. His shoulders are thick with muscle. He grasps the sheets, the pillows, fighting something. My heart clenches at the realization.
Liam North is having a nightmare.
I put my hand on his shoulder. Tension ripples beneath my palm. He’s facing down, fighting some invisible enemy, sweat a faint gleam across a landscape of strength.
He goes still.
“It’s just a dream,” I say, soothing. Only it doesn’t feel like a dream. There are terrible demons in the room, as living and breathing as I stand here. Maybe more.
A crash of motion, and then I’m pulled, twisted, pinned onto the bed. I land hard on the expanse of cool sheets. Breath leaves me in a rush. A large body cages me from above, an arm pressed across my neck. It’s not hard enough to keep me from breathing, but I definitely can’t move.
“Liam,” I say, gasping. “Liam!”
He trembles above me, around me. He’s become my whole world—and it’s a dark place to live. His breath saws through the air like a serrated blade.
“How dare you,” he says, his voice guttural.
He’s asleep, he’s still asleep, and I don’t know how to wake him up. Only then his hand moves from my neck to my jaw.
His thumb brushes over my cheek. “Samantha,” he mutters.
“I’m sorry,” I say, more for whatever horrors haunted him in the nightmare than for waking him. Someone should be here every night, to pull him back to the land of the living.
“I could have hurt you.” He sounds hoarse but coming awake. “Do you have a goddamn death wish, Samantha? I could have killed you.”
I’m trembling underneath him, still trying to make sense of how I ended up on his bed, how I ended up between his thighs, the heavy weight of something on my stomach. “You wouldn’t hurt me,” I say, the words coming breathless and unsure.
The smell of him—earth and musk and salt. It’s all I can think about, the way he surrounds me. The way he moves over me. This is how it would feel if we made love. Even his arm across my neck… it’s meant to be a violent act, but it feels sensual. My nerves pick apart every sensation: the heat of him, the rasp of hair across his forearm, the throb of his pulse.
This is every erotic dream I’ve ever had, everything I see when I close my eyes, my hands between my legs. It would be perfect—if he wasn’t still trembling from aftershocks. What kind of terrible thing would make Liam so scared he would lash out like an animal? He’s the most controlled person I’ve ever met.
He dips his head, his lips against the curve of my ear. “I would,” he murmurs, but it sounds like he’s trying to convince himself. “You aren’t safe with me.”
The words resound inside me. I’m not sure they’re true, but I’m sure he believes them. Don’t they match what I thought when I came here? That I can’t trust him. That I would be a fool to trust him… and yet, seeing him in the throes of his nightmare has changed everything. He’s two hundred pounds of solid muscle straining above me, but he’s the vulnerable one right now.
I run my hand over his back as if I can soothe him.
As if I can tame him.
LIAM
My mind reels from the sudden break of night.
Darkness blankets the bedroom, but not like my dreams. It’s not the lack of light that makes dreams dangerous. It’s the lack of hope.
Breath saws through my throat. Every muscle is pulled tight, ready to strike. Slowly, slowly, the shadows form into the shape of a person. Samantha looks up at me, her eyes wide with fear.
“Christ,” I say, my voice hoarse. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
She blinks at me, her mouth open. That’s when I realize that I still have my arm across her neck. She can’t breathe. I’m hurting her. I swore I’d never hurt her.
I pull back enough to let her breathe, but something strange happens. I can’t stop touching her. I’m clutching her, feeling her, making sure she’s not broken or bruised. My hands are rough. I’m probably making it worse, but I need to feel her solid and warm and alive.
A ragged breath. Another. Her slender body shakes underneath me, her eyes watering. “I’m fine,” she says even though it’s clearly a lie. “Fine.”
“Fine,” I repeat, grim and sick with it. “You’re the furthest fucking thing from fine. I could have killed you, Samantha. Do you understand that? I could have crushed your windpipe in a second.”
A shiver takes her body. She’s scared of me.
As she should be.
It’s not a regular man who got custody of her six years ago. I hide the feral part of me, but it’s inside, waiting to get out. “Don’t ever do that again—Jesus, don’t. Don’t cry.”
Tears slip from her eyes, but she doesn’t make a sound. That hurts almost more than if she’d sobbed in my arms. I learned violence in my childhood. She learned to hide her pain.
“I’m not hurt,” she whispers.
“You are,” I say, insistent. She’s hurt in so many ways she can’t even count them all. She came to me shattered. The bastard of a father had neglected her in a thousand ways for the first twelve years of her life. And then he’d died. My fault. It was my fault he was gone, and the worst part is that I’d never once regretted it. Not when it brought her to me.
Her palm cups my face, rubbing gently. Her skin is so soft, impossibly fragile as it rasps against a day’s growth on my jaw. “What were you dreaming about?”
My entire body reacts to that—a sudden jerk, as if she slapped me instead of caressed me.
What was I dreaming about? I don’t want that near her. Not even the description of it. Not even the thoughts. “It doesn’t matter.”
Her eyebrows draw together. “Was it from when you were overseas?”
From my time as a soldier. Yes, there were some dark moments. Blood and death. That’s probably what I should be having nightmares about. I’ll send my brain a fucking memo, because it can’t seem to get over what happened years before that. “No.”
“You sounded…” She swallows. “Afraid.”
Afraid. Yeah, I’d been afraid. It had buried itself deep in my skin, and all these years later, even knowing that no one can hurt me, it hasn’t left. The irony is that it made me a beast on the battlefield. I wasn’t afraid of a goddamn IED blast. Nothing in that godforsaken desert could scare me. There’d been a time in my life it would have been a blessing.
Another tear rolls down her face, and I realize she isn’t crying because I hurt her. She’s crying because I’m hurt. Something strange tightens in my chest. I basically attacked her like an animal, like a fucking animal, and she’s worried about me.
“It doesn’t matter what I dream about. The important thing is that you never do that again. Why did you come here?” But for some reason I can’t make myself let go of her.
She’s still underneath me, her body warm and
quivering.
My cock is hard. The warmth of her, the sweet scent of her. She must feel my erection where I’m straddling her. Does she know what it means? Of course she does, you bastard.
“It does matter,” she says, squirming a little in ways that make my cock flex against her flat little stomach. “It matters what you’re dreaming about.”
My body doesn’t feel like it’s under my control. I want to blame the nightmare, but this isn’t something I ever thought about when I was five years old in a goddamn well. I dip my head to breathe her in. Maybe the scent, one deep breath—it might be enough. It’s not. I need more. I press my face against her neck. The bristles on my jaw rasp against her. My lips follow to soothe away the sting. Her breath catches, and I can’t make myself stop.
“I’ll prove it to you,” I mutter, my voice almost a growl.
Her eyes widen, dark pools that I could drown in, but she doesn’t look afraid.
She looks curious.
How can I send her out into the world like this? So damn innocent. So trusting, when she has no idea all the ways I want to use her. I close my fist hard, pulling her hair taut, exposing her neck, a pale column against the wild shadows of her hair.
A squeak escapes her, but that’s not enough to make me stop. She’ll be alone on that tour, at the mercy of men like Harry March, men who don’t have any morals. Men like me.
I press my hips down, rubbing my erection against her small body. She has to know what she’s up against. She has to know what I want.
She wriggles underneath me, probably trying to escape. All it does is make me harder. I’m so much bigger than she is, so much stronger.
“Tell me no,” I say, my words hard and cold. “Fight me.”
“What?” she gasps.
“You have to be safe.” It’s become a prayer. A promise. “If a man tries to touch you… You have to protect yourself from people like me.”
Falling For The Forbidden Page 46
