Freedom's Price

by Suzanne Brockmann

  Liam brushed his lips across her mouth. “I am so sorry I didn’t figure out what you were thinking,” he continued. “I knew something was wrong. I knew you were unhappy, and you were acting so strangely, but…”

  He kissed her again, harder this time. “You’re all I’ve ever wanted.” He turned her to face the mirror that was by the door. “You. Are exactly. Who. I want. This you. The you with the holes in your jeans. The you who’s going to go to medical school and become the best doctor San Salustiano’s ever had. The you with the messy hair.” He shook her shoulders very slightly, and she laughed. “Baby, you may not be Santiago’s idea of a perfect wife, but you’re not marrying him, you’re marrying me. You are going to marry me?”

  Marisala looked into the mirror. She looked as if she’d been dragged down a mountain by a donkey, and he looked as if he hadn’t slept since she’d left. Knowing Liam, he probably hadn’t. His eyes were filled with fatigue and rimmed with red, but his smile was pure tentative hope.

  “You can keep your own name if you want,” he told her. “Hell, I’ll take your name if that’ll make you feel better. We’re both young, we can wait to have kids until you’re out of med school, if you want. Or if you think you don’t want any children, I’m open to discussion. I’d like to have kids, but not if it’s going to make you miserable, and I guess what I’m trying to say is that my concept of marriage involves discussion and sharing and—” He cut himself off. “You’re very quiet. It makes me nervous when you’re so quiet.”

  He turned her to face him and gazed imploringly down into her eyes. “Marry me. Take a chance and say you’ll marry me. And then come upstairs and make love with me so that I can pass out afterward and sleep for about a week.”

  Marisala had to laugh. “Well, God, when you put it so romantically…”

  He kissed her, his unshaven face rasping sensuously against her cheeks. “Say yes.”

  Liam kissed her again, trying to melt away the reserve he could still see lingering in her eyes. “You know, I was prepared to make any kind of compromise necessary,” he told her. “I was ready to tell you, okay, we don’t have to get married. We can simply live together for the rest of our lives. I was ready to say that all I want is to be with you, but that’s not true. I want us to share what we’ve got. I want to jump onto that figurative tabletop and shout to God and the world that you own me, and I own you.”

  She smiled and kissed him, but still she didn’t answer. She didn’t say yes.

  “Tell me what you’re thinking,” Liam implored. “Tell me what’s holding you back.”

  “Sex.”

  He nearly choked. “What?”

  “You know what I want?”

  “Please tell me.”

  “I want to make love to you,” Marisala told him. “And then, after we make love—after I make love to you—then if you still want to marry me, you can ask me again.”

  Liam had to laugh. “Well, hey, let me think this over…. Yes. I can go for this. Definitely.”

  “Are Hector and Inez home?”

  “No, they’re—”

  “Good. Go upstairs and take a shower. And shave. And meet me in the living room in ten minutes.” She kissed him. “Bring a condom.”

  The living room? “But…”

  She was already all the way up the stairs, but she turned to look down at him. “I want to make love to you in every single room of this condo.” She tried to hide her smile, but couldn’t. “I thought we’d start with the living room.”

  “But…” Liam started up the stairs after her, but she’d already gone into her room and closed the door.

  He tried the knob, but she’d locked it.

  Buzzing with anticipation, he took the quickest shower of his life, spending most of those ten minutes she’d allotted him shaving the rough stubble from his cheeks and chin.

  His bathrobe was nowhere to be found, so he pulled on a pair of sweatshorts. He slipped a condom into his pocket and headed downstairs.

  Marisala was waiting for him, wearing his missing bathrobe. Her hair was damp from her own shower, and it hung in dark curls around her shoulders and down her back. She was sitting by the window, and as he came into the room she pulled the blinds, dimming the room and giving them privacy from the outside.

  “Come here,” she said.

  He did.

  She stood up, and he reached for her, pushing the robe from her shoulders even as she untied the belt.

  She was so beautiful. The sight of her naked body still left him breathless.

  She reached for him then, too, her hands slipping underneath the elastic waistband of his shorts and gliding down over his rear end as she pulled him closer. She kissed him, boldly claiming his mouth and pressing herself against him.

  Liam heard himself groan as he filled his own hands with the satiny smoothness of her skin. She opened herself to him, guiding one of his hands down to touch her.

  “You know what I want?” she whispered.

  “God, I hope I do.”

  She laughed. “I want you to sit on the couch.”

  “I want to take you right now, just like this, standing up,” he countered.

  “Hmm. That’s a good idea too.” Her hands swept around to the front of his shorts and her fingers closed around him.

  God, he’d loved making love to her even when she was holding back—and she had been holding back, that much was clear. But this was off the scale. This was…

  In one swift movement, she’d freed him from the confines of his shorts, pushing them down his legs. But now she knelt in front of him, and giving him a decidedly wicked smile, she touched him with the softness of her mouth, and sent him through the roof.

  “Do you like that?” she finally asked, just as he knew he couldn’t take any more. Her midnight eyes were laughing up at him. She knew quite well the answer to her question.

  He could barely speak. “Oh, yeah.”

  “Good, because I do too.”

  Somehow she’d found the condom packet he’d been carrying in his shorts. She ripped it open, and pushing him back onto the couch, she covered him with it.

  Liam couldn’t wait another second. He grabbed her arms and hauled her up on top of him. She sensed his need and didn’t hesitate, letting him guide her swiftly, fiercely down onto him.

  She cried out as he filled her, clinging to him, her obvious pleasure pushing him dangerously close to the edge. He lay back on the couch so that he could fill her even more as she moved on top of him, setting a fast, hard pace.

  He’d never dreamed that making love could be this good. This was the real Marisala, this wildcat in his arms. This was the woman he’d fallen in love with, the woman who spoke her mind and lived every moment of her life with pure, unrestrained passion.

  It was such an odd feeling—this tenderness in his chest combined with the heart-attack sensation of the most incredible sex he’d ever experienced.

  Not sex. Love. This was love unlike any he’d felt before. His heart was so full, it felt about to burst.

  She took his hands, pressing them against the sweet swell of her breasts as she smiled down at him.

  It was her smile that did it, her beautiful, wonderful smile that sent him roaring into orbit. And, as if she had been waiting for him, he felt her sudden release. She shouted her pleasure and it echoed around them as together they escaped the confines of gravity and shattered into a million perfect pieces.

  Liam floated back to earth. None of his muscles seemed to be working. They had all turned to Jell-O.

  A strand of Marisala’s hair tickled his nose, but he couldn’t move his hand to push it away. Besides, he liked the sensation. He liked that she was lying on top of him, seemingly as depleted and satisfied as he was.

  “So,” he said. His vocal cords still worked. That was good. “Let me see if I can figure out exactly what you were thinking. You thought maybe I’d have the best sex of my entire life and then not want to marry you?”

  Marisala li
fted her head, pulling her hair back from both of their faces. “I wasn’t sure if you’d like me being so…aggressive.”

  He ran his finger down the side of her face. “Well, I’m not sure I’m about to go out and buy you a collection of whips and chains, but I’m up for just about anything else.”

  She laughed. “That’s good.”

  “Oh, yeah.” He let her see the heat he knew was lingering in his eyes. God, he was already starting to get hard again, just thinking about it. “So…will you marry me? Wait,” he said, putting a finger across her lips. “Don’t answer that. I seriously think we have to try this again. You know, make sure it wasn’t just a freak occurrence?”

  Marisala laughed, leaning forward to kiss him. “Are you kidding? You can’t even move.”

  “Is that a challenge? Because you know I can’t resist a challenge.” With a groan, Liam sat up. He scooped her up off him, and holding her in his arms, he stood up. “My turn to pick the room, and I pick my room. My bed.”

  He carried her up the stairs. His tired muscles were aching, but he didn’t give a damn.

  Marisala was laughing as he threw her onto his bed.

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes. My answer is yes.”

  Liam fell back onto the bed with her and kissed her.

  The afternoon sun sparkled in through the windows and reflected off the white ceiling, lighting his bedroom with a heavenly glow. He saw the same beautiful light in Marisala’s eyes, and he knew that at last he’d come out of the darkness.

  At long last, he’d come home.

  EPILOGUE

  THE PHONE RANG, and Liam picked it up.

  Without hesitation, he reached for it. He lifted the receiver from the cradle.

  “’lo?” He tucked the receiver under his chin as he washed his hands in the kitchen sink, as if this was no big deal, as if he hadn’t spent nearly a year avoiding the phone. “Hey, Bud, I thought it might be you.”

  He glanced at Marisala as he grabbed the towel that hung on the refrigerator-door handle. “It’s Buddy Fisher,” he told her.

  Buddy Fisher. His agent. The man he’d worked so hard to avoid all these months.

  “Great,” Liam was saying into the telephone. “Eight months, okay, I’ll try, and then…Yeah, I’ll agree to that.” There was a pause, and then he said, “Great, I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  He hung up the phone and smiled at her. “Ready to go?”

  They were meeting Santiago for Sunday brunch. Her uncle had flown up from San Salustiano upon hearing the news of her and Liam’s engagement.

  Marisala laughed. “Do you really think I’m going to let you leave this room before you tell me what that conversation was about?”

  “Buddy Fisher called yesterday,” Liam told her. “My publisher saw the column in the Globe and has offered me an eight-month extension on my book deadline. They’ve also offered to double my advance on the condition that if I don’t write the book in eight months they can bring in their ghostwriter.”

  “Is that good?”

  He laughed. “Yeah, I’d say so. Considering that I expected them to sue me for breach of contract.”

  “Do you think you can do it?” she asked seriously. “Spend all that time writing about what you went through?”

  He held out his hand to her and she took it without hesitation. “I think I can try.” He brought her fingers to his lips, kissing them lightly. “Come on. We don’t want to make Santiago wait.”

  Marisala checked her hair in the entryway mirror. It was neatly combed, every curl in place. She wore one of her flower-print dresses, and she looked every bit the sweet young thing.

  “You look beautiful,” Liam said. He smiled. “Santiago will be pleased.”

  The Sunday newspaper was still sitting out in front of their condo door, and Marisala scooped it up. She would read her favorite columnist in the car on the way over to Santiago’s hotel.

  “Santiago will never know,” Marisala told Liam as they started down the stairs to the lobby, “what lies beneath this dress.”

  “You’re probably right,” he agreed. He could smell the sweet fragrance of her freshly washed hair. “He won’t realize that just because you look different, that doesn’t mean you’ve changed.”

  “Well, yes,” she said. “There’s that. But what I was thinking is a little more literal.” She gave him a decidedly wicked smile. “Santiago will never know that I am not wearing any underwear.” Her smile got broader. “But you will.”

  Liam laughed. Dear God. He was going to sit there at brunch with Marisala and her uncle, his old friend, and he was going to be able to think of little else.

  “I had to take steps to preserve my own identity,” she explained. “This dress is not me.”

  “But going without underwear to Sunday brunch at the Ritz—that’s you?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “God, I love you.”

  Marisala smiled. “I know. I read it in the Globe.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Since her explosion onto the publishing scene more than ten years ago, Suzanne Brockmann has written more than forty books, and is now widely recognized as a leading voice in romantic suspense. Her work has earned her repeated appearances on USA Today and New York Times bestseller lists, as well as numerous awards, including the Romance Writers of America’s #1 Favorite Book of the Year three years running—in 2000, 2001, and 2002—two RITA awards, and many Romantic Times Reviewer’s Choice Awards. Suzanne Brockmann lives west of Boston with her husband, author Ed Gaffney. Visit her website at www.suzannebrockmann.com.

  OTHER TITLES BY SUZANNE BROCKMANN

  All Through the Night

  Force of Nature

  Forbidden

  Into the Storm

  Ladies’ Man

  Heartthrob

  Bodyguard

  The Unsung Hero

  The Defiant Hero

  Over the Edge

  Out of Control

  Into the Night

  Gone Too Far

  Flashpoint

  Hot Target

  Breaking Point

  FREEDOM’S PRICE

  A Bantam Book

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Bantam Loveswept edition published January 1998

  Bantam mass market edition / March 2008

  Published by Bantam Dell

  A Division of Random House, Inc.

  New York, New York

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved

  Copyright © 1998 by Suzanne Brockmann

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  Bantam Books and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

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  www.bantamdell.com

  eISBN: 978-0-553-90551-9

  v3.0