I sink into his kiss, twisting around to press my chest to his, burning alive in a way only he can make me burn, and he is heaven in the midst of hell. Every swipe of his tongue is liquid heat and an escape I can find nowhere else.
“I swear to you, woman,” Liam vows, tearing his mouth from mine, framing my face with his hands, “from this point on, I’m going to keep you naked and in bed with me where I know you’re safe.”
Emotion thickens my throat. “If only it were that simple. But it’s not. We both know it’s not. “
“It is. It will be. I’ll make it that simple.” He dips his head to kiss me again and I don’t fight him. I need just a few moments of escape, a tiny promise that there is hope for me and us, and for some kind of peace in my life. But as his lips graze mine, that peace is shattered all too easily by the simple sound of a cellphone ringing, radiating through the car from the front seat.
I go still, the realization ripping through me like a cold blast of ice. We are not alone. I start to pull away from Liam.
He holds onto me. “Wait. Amy--”
“Making me feel like a prisoner isn’t going to earn my trust, Liam.”
He curses and lets me go. I scramble away, twisting around to sit in the center of the back seat of the sedan, too much like the one in my flashback, rain pounding hard and fast on the rooftop, echoing my heartbeat. The long rows of lights and the open space tell me we’re headed for a small airfield of some sort.
“We’re almost there,” the driver is saying to the caller, and his short haircut and hard tone are a little too much like the military types I’d seen on some of my father’s security teams. Just like this car is a little too much like the one in my flashback.
Liam touches my arm and heat flashes up it, forcing me to withdraw to lean on the opposite door. “Who is he, Liam? And where are we going?”
“Someone who needs a lesson in silencing his ringer,” he grumbles, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “His name is Tellar Phelps. He handles security work for me when I need him.”
“Translation. You hired him to help find me.”
“And protect you.”
My fingers curl into my palms. “Strangers do not make me feel protected. They make me nervous. Where are we going?”
Tellar halts the car. “Nowhere if we don’t move now,” he informs us. “The weather’s getting dicey. We have air clearance that could change at any moment.”
I don’t look at him. “Where are we going, Liam?”
He pulls me to him. “We’re going to get the hell out of here before whoever paid to find you at that diner catches up to us.”
My throat goes dry. I’d forgotten this warning back at the diner. “Who?” I whisper. “Who else is trying to find me?”
“That’s a good question, Amy.”
“You don’t know?”
“No, but don’t think I haven’t been trying to find out.”
In that moment I am as tormented over Liam as ever. If he really doesn’t know, then he is trustworthy, but he’s also in danger because of me. I do not want him, or anyone else, hurt because of me. Not again. Not ever again. “Liam--”
Thunder clamors loudly, swallowing my words, and he grabs my hand. “Let’s get out of here while we still can do it safely.”
Safely. There is the key word in all of this. I don’t know if anything about being with Liam is ever safe for him or me, but I’m not sure being without him is either. Good intentions or not, I have no doubt Liam will force me onto this plane. I’m his captive. The willing part is still up for debate.
He opens the car door and I gasp at the shocking blast of cold rain that blows over us. “Sorry, baby,” he murmurs, nuzzling my cheek and lacing his fingers with mine. “Let’s get this over with.” And then, in typical Liam style, I’m being pulled outside and into the storm with him, leaving me no time to object.
Beside us, Tellar exits the vehicle as well, the rain whipping around him as he cuts around the car toward the trunk. Liam’s arm wraps around my shoulders and he tugs me close to his side, sheltering me as much as he can. Protecting me, I tell myself, as we rush toward what looks like a fairytale large jet plane that normal people can’t afford to charter. But then, Liam is no more normal than I am. I’m reminded that this similarity has often felt like the sparkle in a diamond otherwise too damaged to shine. It’s how we connected the dots of him to me and me to him. And as the water pours off of us, I cannot help but wonder which of us is truly pulling the other into the storm.
We reach the ladder and he urges me forward, up the steps. A pretty forty-something woman in a navy blue uniform and a badge greets me at the entryway and wraps me in a large towel. “Oh, you poor thing,” she says, directing me down the slim hallway to make room for Liam.
I step into a high-end fancy cabin that is far from commercial, with a large tan leather couch on one side and several luxury seats on the other. “Past the curtain,” Liam directs, handing me another towel the stewardess must have given him. “Buckle in. I’ll be right there.”
Liam turns away from me and I jump as the cabin door slams shut, grinding my teeth as I do. I’m tired of more than the lies that carve out every piece of my life. I’m tired of always being nervous and twitchy.
Turning, I find Liam’s back to me, one hand on a seat, Tellar sauntering down the hallway, towel drying what little hair he hasn’t buzzed away. I study him, expecting a pinch of recognition but finding none. And still I do not look away, and not because his wet t-shirt and jeans hug a long and leanly muscled body, or the fact that he has a handsomely carved face. No. What has my attention, what keeps me from looking away, is the jagged scar down his jawline that tells me he has lived through hell.
His gaze lifts abruptly and meets mine and I should feel like a dripping wet trapped rat. I should look away, hiding as I always hide. But I have changed these past few weeks. I am on a mission to take my life back and waiting tables in a greasy diner wasn’t about hiding. It was about preparing and planning. I am done with looking away and I hold his stare. And what I see in his is not anger, or intimidation, or malice. I see concern.
Liam must see it as well, because he turns to face me, water clinging to the loose strands of hair draped on his forehead that he sweeps away. “You okay?” he asks, moving toward me, his hands coming down on my shoulders. The engines roar to life but I do not move, captured by his stare, a mix of burning fire and freezing ice. Worry. Sincerity. Possessiveness. Like I am his to protect and no one will touch me. Not unless he decides to let them. And when I walked onto this plane, I made sure it’s his choice to make. He is in Total control.
Chapter Four
I stand with my back to the curtain, while Liam’s back is to the front of the plane, his big body caging me…protecting me? It’s what I want to believe. It’s what some part of me needs to believe. We stare at each other, rain humming a song against the steel plane, wrapping us in a current of energy that pulses around us like a large charge. It’s power. His power. My lack of it. This is the what everything in my life has come down to. The control everyone else has that I don’t. The control Liam possesses as easily as he does his next breath. And staring into his piercing, aqua eyes, I think that no matter how I try to stop it from happening, I am possessed. He possesses me.
With that thought, a shiver races through me, one part chill from my wet clothes and hair, one part the impact of this man standing before me. What looks and feels like real concern seeps into Liam’s expression and he breaks the mesmerizing spell of questions that never seem to have answers as he begins rubbing my arms. “I’ll get you a blanket.” He starts to turn away and I grab his arm, silently willing him to wait. “I need to know where we’re going, Liam.” My lips tighten. “I need to know where you’re taking me.”
His head dips intimately lower, his hand caressing my head, cheek near mine.“You were right the first time, Amy. Where we’re going.”
I fight through the warmth his soft, velvety promise
creates in me. “By your choice.”
“I want it to be yours.”
“Until I don’t choose what you want me to.”
A turbulent look flickers over his handsome face. “If you mean, will I let you choose to hitchhike across the country and end up dead? Then you’re right. No more and never again. I’ve made that decision for you.”
“Mr. Stone,” says the flight attendant, urgency in her tone.
Liam’s lips thin, reluctance etched in his face as he glances over his shoulder, and I hear her say, “Weather reports show another system moving through. If we leave now we have a path to bypass it.”
“Right,” Liam agrees. “We’ll sit down and buckle up.” He turns back to me. “We need to--”
“Where, Liam?” I bite out, fighting a rising sense of claustrophobia that has me ready to bolt for the door that is already shut. “Where are we going?”
His hands come back down on my shoulders, light but somehow heavy at the same time. “Where I can protect you.”
“Which is where?”
“My home.”
Adrenaline surges through me. Not Denver. His home is not in Denver, where, somewhere in the haze of a flashback and fear, I’d assumed we were going. “New York,” I choke out.
“Yes,” he confirms tightly. “New York.”
“No.” I shake my head. “No. I can’t go back there. I left for a reason.”
“No one will ever know you’re there.”
No one will ever know. His words make my stomach knot. I could disappear tomorrow and no one would miss me.
“Mr. Stone,” the attendant calls from behind him. “I must insist you sit.”
I need off this plane. I try to step around Liam, and talk to the attendant, though I have no clue what to say or if it will matter. Liam seems to anticipate the move, shackling my waist with one arm, and molding me to his hard, wet body.
“Let go,” I order tightly, willing away the heat stirring low in my belly at his nearness.
“We’re going to sit down now, Amy.”
“I don’t want to sit down.”
He yanks open the curtain, and using his larger size to bully me, walks us into the cabin behind us, then all but physically lifts me and sets me down in a chair. I have only a moment to assess the cabin area as identical to the one we just left when his hands go down on the arms of my seat, his arms caging me, and the engines churn roughly to life.
We glare at each other and I both loathe and revel in the way his heated, angry stare burns through me like a brand. It’s unsettling to be this drawn to him beyond reason when I’m this at his mercy. “There was a reason I left New York,” I grind out through my teeth. “Were you part of that reason, Liam?”
Emotion flashes in his eyes, something I cannot name but find I want to understand. And it’s that something else that jabs at my heart, like I hurt him. Did I hurt him? I don’t know how to react or how to handle any of this. “Liam--”
“I’m doing what I have to do to keep you safe. We’re going to New York. End of discussion.” He grabs my seat belt and hooks it into place. “Don’t make me tie you up because if that’s what it takes to keep you here, I will.”
Tie me up? I swallow hard against a lump forming in my throat, but not from the threat. From the emotion vibrating in his voice as he’s issued it. The plane starts to move. Liam pushes away from me and walks to the curtain, yanks it shut, then claims the seat directly in front of me instead of beside me. His eyes meet mine and I do not like what I find there. I do not like the distance that I’ve spent nearly two months putting between us. I do not like that I think...I think I hurt him.
We start taxiing and the plane is one big jerky nightmare with the obvious impact of high winds and a promise that I’m going where it’s going. Where Liam has decided I will go but the worry over control and even New York fade into one thing. This man. Who he is and what we are together makes all the rest irrelevant. Those things define what comes next.
Tightening my grip on the armrests, I block out the loud rush of engines and wicked shudders of the plane as we lift off, squeezing my eyes shut. I replay moments with this man as I have so many times before. The first time our eyes met in the airport. The moment in my apartment when he’d trapped my hands and I’d instinctively trusted him when I had trusted no one but some invisible handler for six long years.
Trusted him.
Just as my gut had told me to trust my handler that day in the hospital, it told me to trust Liam. And he’s done nothing to hurt me and everything to help me. My lashes lift and he’s still staring at me, watching me. I do not like the hardness in his face I didn’t see before we sat down. He is angry and...hurt? Yes. I think he’s hurt.
“I’m just trying to survive, Liam,” I confess. “You gave me reasons not to trust you. I just...I need answers.”
“That’s what I was trying to find out when you got spooked and ran off.”
“Well I’m here now. Who are you in all of this?”
“Just a man who cares.”
It’s a perfect answer, if it comes from the right place with the right motives. “Why?”
“Every time you ask that question, I’ll answer the same.” He leans forward, resting his elbows on his powerful thighs. “I care. It’s that simple.”
“Nothing in my life is that simple.”
“I am.”
“No.” I laugh without humor. “We’ve had this discussion before. You are anything but simple or normal.”
“Well then, let me make at least one thing simple for you, Amy. Anyone who wants to hurt you has to come through me first.”
His vow punches me in the chest, a bittersweet, tempting promise that could easily be a deadly poison that tears away caution I can’t afford to let fall. “You’re right. You keep answering my questions the same way and saying all the right things. I can’t just take your word. I need more. I need...more.”
He scrubs his jaw and then sighs. “I wanted to wait to do this when we were alone and you felt safe, but I can see that to ever get to that point you need to know what I know. So here are the facts.” He runs both hands over his thighs to rest at his knees. “And when we get to New York, I’ll show you all the documentation.”
“I’m listening,” I whisper, unable to find my voice, hanging by a thread over what he might confess or where in my past he might lead me.
“I knew you were running scared,” he continues, “and I didn’t trust your boss. I told you that.”
“Yes,” I agree. “You were clear on that and I was clear when I told you not to look into my background. You were clear when you said you wouldn’t. I trusted you at your word.”
“You were terrified out of your mind. What kind of man sits back and just watches that? Your boss doesn’t exist beyond a shell on paper, Amy.”
“I told you not to dig.”
His eyes narrow on me. “So you knew he wasn’t real. It was a cover story.”
He’s too close to the real me, whoever she is, for comfort. “What matters is you broke a promise.”
“But you didn’t know about the camera,” he continues as if I haven’t spoken, adding things together far too quickly. “You couldn’t have or you wouldn’t have accused me of installing it. Interestingly, the fake boss is the person who set up the Amy Bensen identity.”
It’s not a question. It’s a sharp jab in my chest. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
His eyes narrow on mine. “Yes, you do. Amy Bensen has no school pictures, no connections of any sort, and no real life. She doesn’t even have fingerprints on file. But did you know that Jasmine Heights, Texas has an abduction prevention program that fingerprints kids? You were fingerprinted in kindergarten.”
I go still inside but my hands are shaking as I curl my fingers into my palms. “What?”
“That’s right, Amy. You were fingerprinted, or rather, Lara was fingerprinted and supposedly died in a house fire six years ago. That’s what her dea
th certificate says. That’s what your death certificate says.”
I can barely breathe just hearing my real name being spoken out loud for the first time since the fire, but even more so at the news he’s delivered with it. I’m dead. The real me didn’t just leave Jasmine Heights behind. Someone buried me alive. The finality of all that once was and can never be again. There is nothing left. Nothing. The shaking has turned to trembling all over. “I...no. I...no...” I squeeze my eyes shut, the flames flickering in my mind’s eye, hearing my brother’s shout. My mother’s screams. “No.” I press my hand to my face.
Liam curses and then I don’t even remember him moving but he is kneeling in front of me, wrapping a blanket around my shoulders. “I knew I should have waited until we were safe and dry.” He caresses hair from my face. “It’s going to be okay. You’re not alone anymore.”
“Nothing is okay,” I rasp out, grabbing his shirt “Nothing has been okay for six years.”
“I know, baby, and I’m going to try to change that for you now.”
“Were you involved? Tell me if you were involved. Good or bad or right or wrong, I have to know.”
“No. God no, Amy.” His hands go to the sides of my face. “I would never hurt you.”
“Then tell me, who is making my life hell?”
He looks stunned and his hands go to my shoulders, almost as if he’s steadying me. “You don’t know?”
“Do you?”
“No. But I’m trying to find out. I’m going to find out.”
A confusing mix of relief and disappointment fills me. “You really don’t know?”
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