Infinite Possibilities

by Lisa Renee Jones

I growl in frustration and swipe at my eyes. “Don’t make my decisions, Liam. They need to stay. I want answers and they want answers. It’s time to figure this out.”

  Tellar and Derek ignore me and walk around us. “Stay here,” I shout after them.

  “They aren’t staying, Amy,” Liam insists, like he is the Almighty and we are all at His command.

  I level him a scathing stare. “Because you can handle me on your own, right?”

  “What?” His brow furrows. “What does that mean?”

  The kitchen door opens and closes and we are left alone. “I heard you, Liam. I told you that. I heard it all that night in Denver. Derek was worried about my reaction to the camera and you told him ‘I can handle Amy’. You can handle me? Well, news for you, Liam. Not only did you fail to ‘handle’ me back in Denver, you’re failing now, too. And that comment was what made me run more than anything else.”

  He advances on me and backs me against the table, his powerful thighs capturing mine, his arms caging me. Heat washes over me, confuses my senses, and I hold onto the table so I won’t touch him. “I meant I’d make sure you felt safe and didn’t panic.” His voice is a low rasp of sandpaper, no caress of silk to be felt. “But you’re right. I failed and we both lived through hell because I did. You, far more than me, and I won’t let that happen again. I will protect you, Amy, with or without your consent.”

  “Like you own me.”

  “Call it what you want, but unlike that private detective who’s now dead, you’ll be alive on the other side of this.”

  “People are dying and that’s my point which you don’t seem to be getting. So let me repeat what I’ve already asked. Who protects me from you, Liam?”

  His head lowers, his breath is hot on my cheek, and there is an instant charge in the air. We are connected, he and I, and I don’t know if that is good or bad. It just...is. “Do you think you need protection from me, Amy?” he demands. “Is that where we still are?”

  Somehow, I do what I know will be my undoing. It is always my undoing with this man and proof he is claiming the control I so desperately need. I touch him. My hand goes to his chest, and again I feel the thrum of his rapid heartbeat and it affects me. He affects me. Deeply. Passionately. Completely. “I’m just...I’m confused.”

  “That’s not the answer I want.”

  “It’s the only one I have.”

  “I know. I do and I can’t even say I blame you but that doesn’t mean I like it.” He shoves off the table, steps away from me, no longer touching me, leaving me cold. “We’ll talk tomorrow. We’re both tired. Take my bedroom. It’s directly above the foyer on the second floor. There are stairs you can’t miss. I can’t take you there. Not...now. Not tonight. I’ll be in the spare bedroom directly opposite the kitchen down here if you need me.” He starts to turn.

  Desperation rises inside me. I can’t be without him. I don’t want to even try. I grab his arm, heat dashing up mine, our eyes colliding, torment burning in the depth of his. “Don’t go,” I whisper. Don’t leave me alone. I will him to touch me, to reach for me, but he doesn’t.

  Arms tightly by his side, he curls his fingers into his palms. “I meant what I said. I’ll force my protection on you, but I won’t force me, or us, on you. And I can’t be with you and not touch you.”

  Us. The word does funny things to my chest. “I didn’t tell you not to touch me. I’m just...” Raw and honest... “scared.”

  “I know and it kills me to think you’re afraid of me.”

  “That’s just it. I’m not afraid of you, Liam, and maybe I should be. Probably I should be. but I don’t trust myself. Not when I think about everything I could have done differently pretty much my entire life.”

  “So if I feel right, I must be wrong.” It’s not a question.

  “No. That’s not it. I mean...” I take a step toward him.

  He steps backwards. “I can’t touch you, Amy.”

  “I want you to touch me. I need you to touch me right now, Liam.”

  “I won’t just touch you. I’ll do anything and everything in my power to make you remember us.

  To make you believe your trust in us is as real and right as I know it is.”

  “And that’s bad, why?”

  “You aren’t hearing me, Amy. I’ve spent weeks of sleepless nights worried over you and now that you’re here, I won’t ask for what I want. I’ll demand.”

  No one worries about me. No one knows I’m even alive anymore. No one I love even exists anymore. But him. He worries for me and I’ve run from him. I think I love this man but I can’t even trust that. I’m so sick of not trusting. Emotion wells in my chest and I squeeze my eyes shut. “Please, Liam. Please demand.” I step forward and I grab his shirt before he can stop me this time, as desperate, or more, than when I’d done the same with Tellar. “Don’t you get it, Liam? I want you to make the doubt go away. I want you to force away the fears. But damn it, I want you to deserve it, too. I want it to be real. I need something in this world that feels real even if it isn’t.”

  He doesn’t move. He doesn’t so much as blink. He just stares at me with heat radiating from his eyes, and I don’t know what that means. What does it mean? “Or don’t,” I whisper, releasing his shirt. “Just don’t. Just let me go, then.” I rotate around and I don’t even know where I intend to go. The stupid table is right behind me and I run right into it.

  Liam’s hand comes down on my arm and he turns me to face him. “I’m not letting you go. Never again. I told you that.” And suddenly, I am being thrown over his shoulder and his hand has flattened erotically, possessively, on my backside.

  We are through the kitchen to the living room, and charging up a set of stucco stairs before I can fully process that he’s gone caveman on me. I can’t see what is before us, only what is behind us, but I feel him shove open a door, see the dim lights flicker on. Smell the wickedly spicy scent of him everywhere around me. We are in his room and I have only a glimpse of a giant space with more floor-to-ceiling windows before I’m on top of some sort of massive four poster black wooden bed.

  I lift to my elbows, and Liam is on one knee, one fist planted in the mattress by my hip, his thigh pressed to mine. Heat radiates from his impossibly hooded stare and he reaches down and strokes my hair. “You want to force away the fear?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you have to be willing to feel it.”

  I swallow hard. “What does that mean?”

  “Nothing goes away because you pretend it doesn’t exist.”

  “You think I haven’t figured that out?”

  “I’ve been where you are and you aren’t where you need to be yet. Not with me and not with life. But you’re getting there.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “Baby steps. You will.”

  “I’m tired of baby steps.”

  He strokes his thumb over my bottom lip, his eyes holding mine. “Then face your fears.”

  I make a frustrated sound. “I am. I’m trying. I want to. You have no idea how much I want to.”

  He stands up and pulls me to my feet, turning me and pressing my back against one of the posts. “Do you?”

  “Yes. Yes, I do.”

  He studies me, seeming to weigh my words, perhaps my conviction, and I wonder what he sees in me that I do not. “Lace your hands behind the post,” he says, his voice a gentle command.

  It is not like he has never tied me up before, but there is a crackle of energy around him I have never felt. But when I look into his eyes I feel that connection I always do, see a promise I don’t have to understand. I simply want whatever it is that he offers. I lace my fingers as he’s instructed. He leans a hand on the wooden surface above my head, touching me nowhere, leaving me aching for him everywhere.

  “Remember what I told you before,” he murmurs. “Choosing to give away control is frightening, but it’s power. It’s facing a fear and overcoming it. We start here tonight. We’ll work to
ward the rest.”

  I don’t ask what the rest is. I know. It’s me. Discovering the rest of me I’ve rejected or lost. The parts of me that hurt in a way no one should hurt. I nod. “Yes.” I want this and him.

  “Good. I may seem in control, but you’re in control. No matter what I say or do, any time you say ‘no’, it’s no. That is what you have to remember. When you make the choice, you have the power.”

  “Am I going to want to say no?”

  “You will think you should.”

  “But I shouldn’t?”

  “You say no if you feel no and I’ll stop. You have my word.”

  I am both terrified and aroused. “You’re confusing me.”

  “I’m willing to bet I’m about to make things crystal clear. Keep your hands where they are. Don’t move.”

  I nod. “Yes. Okay.”

  His finger touches my cheek, then caresses slowly downward to my neck, and I feel the barely there touch everywhere, inside and out. Goose bumps lift on my skin, and I all but moan when he drags his finger over my breast and nipple. He drops his hand and I shiver with the delicate teasing sensations that linger where he’s touched, where he has not touched. He leans in closer, careful not to press his body to mine when that is exactly what I burn for, then lightly, so very lightly, brushes his lips over mine. A breath later, he is gone, leaving me gasping as he disappears behind me and it is all I can do not to turn to watch him.

  My head dips as I inhale, trying to calm my raging hormones, and I can see only the finely woven rug overlapping the gorgeous dark wood beneath my feet. The room is silent but for a clock ticking somewhere nearby and the rasp of what I begin to realize is my breathing. I cannot hear Liam or see him and I can’t take it. I need to know where he is.

  My gaze lifts and then shifts to land hard on the oval mirror that sits directly in front of me on top of a massive black wood dresser. I suck in a breath at the drenched rat in the cheap pink waitress dress staring back at me, and I do not like how she is not me and yet she is so me, or how the image pulls me from the escape I crave and throws me back into reality. A drawer opens behind me, soft and somehow thundering and loud in the near silence. I welcome the way it shifts my focus back to anticipation, away from the reality in the mirror.

  Liam’s reflection appears in the mirror with me and I can see what I would not otherwise. Him. His chest is bare, his clothes gone, but I am the one who is naked, stripped of my many emotional walls by this man who moves me so deeply. The same man who tells me to invite fear, so I do. I invite whatever it is he is to me and I am to him. He reaches around me and flattens his hands on my stomach, a silk sash dangling from his hand, his eyes meeting mine in the reflection. “I’m going to tie you up now, Amy.”

  I wait for the fear I’m supposed to invite, but there is none. There is just anticipation, and the ache between my thighs, the heaviness of my breasts. For a moment, I study the finely carved lines of his handsome face, and I think about what he said to me. About what I need from him. What he needs from me. “You like tying me up.”

  His eyes meet mine in the mirror. “I like what it represents.”

  “Which is what?” I ask.

  He ties my hands, wrapping them gently but firmly, then walks around me, framing my body with his, one hand on my waist, the other dragging through my hair and tilting my mouth to his. “Which is what, Amy?” he asks, expecting me to answer my own question.

  “Trust,” I whisper, wishing his mouth on mine.

  “That’s right,” he says, his breath whispering over my cheek, my lips, teasing me with a kiss yet to happen. “Trust.”

  And when I think he will finally kiss me, he does not. He steps back and walks toward the dresser, giving me his back. I know then that he’s planned the direction I am standing, the placement of the mirror. Everything Liam does is calculated. Controlled. I think this quality in him is a drug for me. It is everything I wish I could be and cannot. I envy it in him, admire it. Find it sexy.

  I forget my hands are tied and tug on the silk. If I’m supposed to be afraid, it’s not working. I’m wondering why I have my clothes on. I really want the ugly pink uniform off my body and him next to me.

  He steps to the center of the dresser, directly in front of the mirror, and I expect him to look at me, but he does not. His head lowers, the dark thick waves of hair blocking my view of his expression. I can almost hear him thinking, debating, and I want to know what and why. I watch the mirror, wait with a hitched breath for his eyes to lift. When his eyes lift and collide with mine, the connection sizzles through me. Any hesitation he’d had is gone. I see the determination, the control, in his eyes, and I wonder if those things had been there only moments before.

  He reaches down and pulls out a drawer. I can’t see what is inside. I’m not supposed to see. I know that. The not knowing is part of his control. Part of the anticipation and the tease I know he intends. Seconds tick by and I can barely stand the waiting until finally, he turns and faces me. My gaze drops, seeking that delicious ‘pi’ tattoo I have always found so very alluring, taking it in, and the thick jut of his erection, before it hits me that he is holding something. My gaze shoots back to what is in his hands and shock rolls through me, my breath lodging in my throat at what I see.

  He is holding a gold dagger.

  Chapter Seven

  Liam starts walking toward me and I have to force myself to breathe. The dagger is sheathed in some sort of intricately designed casing, no blade exposed. Maybe it’s not even a real dagger. It can’t be real.

  He stops in front of me and holds it up. “Scared?”

  I wait a moment, expecting the fear to come, but it doesn’t. “What are you doing, Liam?”

  He presses his hand above me and rests the cold gold between my breasts. “Are you scared?” he demands.

  “I should be.”

  “But you’re not?”

  I wait for the fear again, but there is only liquid heat spreading low in my limbs. I like dominant Liam. I like him a lot and I’m not sure what that says about me. “No,” I whisper. “I told you, I seem to be confused.”

  He unsheathes the blade. “Now are you afraid?”

  I study the sharp edges so able to cause pain, and then meet his eyes, feeling the jolt of awareness Liam so easily creates in me. Instantly, I am consumed by heat, desire...passion. I do not see malice. “No. I’m not afraid.”

  He brings the blade to the top of my uniform and pops off a button. Then another, but I can tell how careful he is not to touch my skin. I can see how much he doesn’t want to hurt me. His gaze lifts to mine, a challenge in the depths. “Say the word and I’ll untie you.”

  My voice is steady, sure. “I’d rather you undress me.”

  His eyes narrow, then harden and before I know what is happening, he’s yanking the blade all the way down the front of my uniform, splitting it straight down the middle. My heart is thundering in my chest as he slices the center of my bra and exposes my breasts.

  He stands there, staring down at me, tall, and dark. Right now, I think he’s lethally sexy. His gaze rakes hotly over my exposed breasts, a heavy caress I feel in every part of me, then lifts to mine. “This,” he says, sheathing the dagger, “was to make damn sure you never wear that piece of shit uniform ever again.” He tosses the dagger onto the bed and then reaches down and yanks my panties off.

  I jerk at the unexpected action and already one of his hands curves around my backside, the other caressing up my bare back to mold me close, my naked breasts nestled against his chest. “You,” he says, his voice low, gravelly, “are the talented daughter of one of the most brilliant archeologists to ever live, not a waitress at a truck stop.”

  My chest tightens and frustratingly, my eyes prickle. “Damn you. Damn you, Liam. She is not a part of this. She is dead. You told me so yourself.”

  “You’re still his daughter. And they, whoever the hell they are, can’t take that from you any more than I’m letting them take you fr
om me.”

  His words both carve me open and fill some deep hole in my soul. An eruption is coming, a vicious, intense… “Liam--”

  He leans in and finally his lips brush mine, a soft, teasing caress. “Say my name again.”

  “Liam,” I whisper more urgently but not because he’s told me to. Because there is a storm brewing inside me that he has set fire to, and I can’t live through it tied to this post. “Liam I--”

  His hand slips to my face, his lips covering mine, his tongue licking into my mouth in a velvety hot caress, followed by another. Yes, I think. Make it all go away. This is what I need. The escape. The escape.

  “I’ve missed how you taste,” he murmurs, letting his lips trail over my cheek, my jaw, to my neck. “All of you.”

  Tension coils inside me, part arousal, part storm, and I moan, tugging on my wrists that are too snugly held in place. Panic rises inside me. I don’t like feeling trapped. Not now. Not tonight and in this moment. “Untie me,” I whisper.

  He flicks me a look, stroking my nipple and sending a wave of sensation colliding with my erupting emotions. “Not yet.”

  “Liam, untie me!”

  Leaning back to inspect me, his expression is stunned, in obvious confusion, and I try to explain what I barely understand. “I need...I just need to be untied. I need to be untied now.”

  He reaches behind me and releases me. The minute I’m free, my reaction is instinctive. I wrap my arms around his neck and my fingers are in his hair. “And I need you to hold me. I need--”

  “Me too, baby,” he replies, his voice low, raspy. “Me too.” His mouth comes down on mine and he is kissing me, sweet wonderful, passionate kisses, and somehow in this moment there is both wild heat and a peaceful sense of rightness all at once.

  I press into Liam, molding my body to his, trying to get closer, to be lost in him and us. And I am lost.Touching him, tasting him, wrapped in the warm male scent of him to the point that I barely know how the rest of my uniform and bra get discarded, or how I end up on the bed, on my back.There is just him on top of me, the thick ridge of his erection pressing between my thighs and me aching for him to be inside me.