Liam pounded the ball against the asphalt, keeping it away from Kyan’s attempts to gain possession. The man wasn’t wrong, and Liam had no way of explaining why Jaz was different. Of confessing that for the past year, he’d found little interest in his usual fun. Not until Jaz.
“Jaz and I have an understanding.” Pivoting around Kyan, Liam closed in on the hoop. “I’ve been upfront about my history and intentions.” Lie. He’d never told her that his feelings had changed. How could he when he didn’t understand it himself? How could he even know his love for Jaz was real when he’d never felt this intensely toward a woman before?
“Well, good for you.” Kyan caught Liam’s missed shot on the rebound. “Except, if I know my sister, she’s too bighearted to believe that you really will walk away when the mood hits. Jaz thinks she can tame mountains and nature itself. That anything is possible. She’s the ultimate fucking optimist.” He threw the ball, scoring another point.
“What do you want me to say?” Liam took the basketball out to the edge of the driveway, but stayed in place.
Kyan drew a puffing breath. “Well, you can start by swearing to every deity known to man that you’re keeping your domination kink to yourself. Because God help me, Rowen, if I find out you hit my sister, I will dismember you limb by limb.”
The taut leash Liam had thus far managed to keep on his emotions finally snapped. He hurled the basketball at Kyan’s head and, when the man raised his hands to catch the ball, rammed him to the ground. There was a thump of impact, then a soft pattering as the ball dropped from Kyan’s hands and bounced away to disappear into the hedgerow between the lawn and the six-foot wooden privacy fence. Liam rose to his knees, straddling the other man.
“Did you just fucking ask whether I’ve assaulted Jaz?” He snarled, his heart pounding fury through his veins. “Or did you demand I tell you to get your sister off in bed? Because if you think either of those questions are appropriate, this little chat is going to end with you scraping blood off your driveway.”
To Kyan’s credit, the man lifted his palms in a gesture of surrender and stayed put until Liam got enough control of himself to keep from landing a punch that was already tingling in his knuckles. Stepping back with effort, Liam drew a slow, deliberate breath, then extended his hand to Kyan and pulled him up.
“I’m not going to harm Jaz in bed,” Liam said, his gaze on the crack in an otherwise pristine asphalt top. “We both know the kind of things I play at, but it takes two to tango, Keasley. And I’m smart enough to recognize no, whether it’s said aloud or not. I’m not asking you to like it, or bless or even condone it. I’m asking you to stay the hell out of it. We aren’t a fucking threesome.”
Kyan braced his palms on his thighs, his chest rising with heavy breaths that filled the silence between them. “I was out of line,” he said finally. “What you do in bed…” He shook his head. “None of my business. But the fact that you’re sleeping with her to begin with—that’s the part that scares me shitless. I don’t want her to get hurt. Physically or emotionally. So tell me you’ve thought about this. Tell me you’re treating her well. That you’ve, I don’t know, taken her to dinner or something.”
Liam scoffed. Then stopped. He hadn’t taken her to dinner, not in the way Kyan meant. Hadn’t done anything normal people did to get to know each other.
“Yeah.” Kyan’s voice was dark. “That’s what I thought.”
Liam rubbed his face.
“Jaz might be smart all the time and hold herself like some iron-strong superwoman in front of the cameras, but she’s always been tenderhearted beneath it all. You don’t understand just how easy it is for you to hurt her. I need you—I’m begging you— to do whatever needs to be done to keep her from getting hurt.”
Liam stood perfectly still, his heart in his throat, Kyan’s censure hacking into him with more force than that shrapnel ever could’ve. Kyan knew him. Probably knew him better than he knew himself. Now, with Kyan staring him in the eye with a look that was both pleading and demanding, Liam felt the walls of reality and uncertainty close in around him.
He loved Jaz. He wanted to be with her. But was he capable of such a feat? With a lifetime of proof to the contrary, it was hard to deny Kyan’s concern. Liam pivoted away, his hands going into his pockets.
“I will always put Jaz’s welfare before my own,” he told Kyan. He knew it wasn’t the answer the other man was looking for, but it was an honest one. The best Liam could do. “I… I’ve got an appointment to get to. I’ll leave Jaz with you for a bit.”
Nodding silently, Kyan let him go, and Liam didn’t know if he should feel relieved or disappointed.
30
Jaz
“A date?” Of all the things Jaz expected Liam to say when he knocked on her door three days before they were due to fly out to California for the championship Clash of the Titans round, a date ranked somewhere between a suggestion to get a poodle and an offer to plant lettuce. For all their time together, the only date they’d gone on included Sebastian and Devante—and that didn’t exactly go as expected.
Liam crossed his arms over his chest. “From what I understand, it’s what people who might like each other do together.”
“But we don’t like each other.”
“Which is why I’m going to take you someplace you’ll hate me for.”
“Oh good.” She swung off the bed, the alarm clock reading ten in the morning on a Saturday. Not that she’d actually slept in said bed last night, but she was lounging on it now. “At least I know the world hasn’t totally twisted up on me. And where is this place?”
“If I tell you, you won’t come,” Liam said reasonably. “And you’ll probably yell at me. Wear long pants and sleeves.”
“Wait!” Jaz was off the bed before he could leave the room. “I never said yes!”
He grinned. “But you never said no either.”
Unable to contradict that particular reasoning and too curious to know what passed for a date in Liam’s mind, an hour later, Jaz found herself getting into the BMW Liam had acquired to replace his destroyed truck. From what she’d overheard Aiden and Liam saying, the thing was equipped with every sensor known to man and could probably take flight in a pinch. Which still didn’t stop Liam from going over every inch of the car before allowing Jaz anywhere near it.
Neither the police nor Liam’s people were any closer than before on drilling down on how the original explosives had gotten into Liam’s truck, much less who put them there. The working theory from the authorities was that some resentful lone wolf took offense at Jaz’s existence and decided to do something about it. Liam and Aiden felt certain that the act was more deliberate and less passionate than the police’s theory maintained, but that didn’t change the fact that there was no camera footage. No witnesses. No leads.
“Are you ever going to actually tell me where we’re going?” Jaz asked, a newly suspicious wariness coming over her as Liam pulled up to a small, out-of-town airport. “And with who?” So far as she knew, the only pilots from Liam’s close-friend circle were Eli and Aiden, and she saw neither one’s car in the parking lot they were now circling. “Are we flying somewhere?”