“Needed you to come on my cock first,” he growls into my ear. “I’ve been obsessing about it for a week.”
He kisses me, giving me his weight. I sink into the mattress, rolling my hips in a rhythm to meet his.
Everything takes on a dreamlike quality. The air is soft and shadowed. The warm, clean smell of his skin and hair fills my nose. I’m stretched open by his girth, frantic for the friction, for every slide and thrust, for his deep-chested grunts, for the way I feel so small and safe underneath him.
For the way my heart feels like it’s cracking open wide.
He breaks the kiss to moan my name into my ear. It’s soft and desperate, tinged with a sadness I don’t understand.
As I build toward orgasm, emotion builds inside me, too. I fight it, not wanting to give into it because I’m afraid of how huge it feels. How overpowering.
He knows. Somehow, he knows.
Slowing the movement of his hips, he lifts his head and gazes down at me. In a husky voice, he says, “Don’t you dare hold back on me, baby. If this is all we get, you better give me everything.”
The hot prick of tears stings my eyes. I look away, my heart pounding, but he frames my face in his hands and forces me to meet his eyes.
“Come on,” he says. “Give me all of you.”
“I’m scared.”
“I know. Do it anyway.”
My throat closes. He stares down at me, trapping me in the dark depths of his gaze, fucking me slower but deeper.
It’s a thrust like all the others, but it takes me and tears me apart.
I gasp, arching, staring wide-eyed up at Liam as contraction after contraction rocks me. My arms, thighs, and pussy all clench around him at the same time.
He breathes, “Fuck. Fuck yes. You’re so beautiful, Tru. Look at me. Don’t look away.”
The smallest sob escapes my throat. The bed drops out from under me, and I have to cling to him so I don’t fall along with it, tumbling down into the terrifying darkness waiting far below.
Whatever he sees in my eyes as I come makes him lose control of himself.
With a groan, he closes his eyes and kisses me. It’s savage. Rough. He starts to buck, driving into me hard and wrapping a hand around the back of my thigh to push me open wider.
I’m still coming, drunk with pleasure, moaning into his mouth as he owns me.
When he comes, it’s hard, with his head thrown back and a shout to the ceiling, every muscle in his big body clenched.
I feel him throbbing inside me and watch breathlessly as he gives himself over to his own violent orgasm as my contractions begin to slow.
Then I’m boneless underneath him, spread open and panting, my fingernails sunk into the hard muscles of his back.
He collapses on top of me. His heart pounds hard against mine.
After a moment when he catches his breath, he rolls over, taking me with him. He positions my body on top of his—chest to chest, belly to belly, thighs to thighs—tucks my head into the crook of his neck, and holds me in a crushing embrace.
We lie like that in silence for what seems like a very long time. Listening to each other’s ragged breathing and heartbeats as they begin to even, the nighttime sounds of the city drifting up faintly from the streets below, until Liam murmurs something in Gaelic.
I turn my head on his shoulder and look up at his face. He’s gazing at the ceiling with an expression that looks eerily like anguish.
I whisper, “What is it?”
He closes his eyes. Swallows. Exhales a slow breath. When he answers, it’s in a raspy voice. “I don’t get close to people. Not ever. It’s how I’ve lived for a very long time.”
My heartbeat starts to tick up again. I watch him struggle for a moment, anxiety singing along my nerve endings.
He turns his head and meets my eyes. In his own, oceans of darkness are churning.
“I had it all under control,” he whispers, caressing my cheek. “But I never expected you.”
24
Tru
I don’t know what to say. My throat has closed, anyway, so it’s probably just as well that I’m speechless. I simply stare into Liam’s eyes with a sinking feeling that this thing between us is going to get rapidly out of control.
If I’m being honest, it’s out of control already.
I know because what I see reflected back at me in the dark depths of his eyes is the same craving I feel myself. The same powerful, burning need.
If it’s this good now—this scorching, this satisfying, this raw—it can only get better from here. Better and more addicting.
Making it ultimately more painful when it ends.
For the first time since I’ve known him, fear sinks long, icy fingers into my heart.
I whisper urgently, “Promise me something.”
“Anything,” he says instantly. “Name it.”
I swallow, working up my courage. My voice comes out small. “Don’t let me fall in love with you.”
His lips part. He gazes at me in silence while my heart pounds frantically, until he rolls me over onto my back and settles his weight on top of me. He throws a heavy leg over both of mine.
Propped up on an elbow, he cups my jaw in his big hand and stares at me with fevered eyes. He whispers, “Could you?”
Oh god. He wants it. He wants me to fall in love with him. He wants me to give him every single thing I’ve got to give, including my fragile heart.
I consider lying to him. I consider making a joke. I consider a hundred different safety nets that could catch me to soften my fall, discarding them all in an instant.
The truth is the only thing that might save me.
My voice shaking, I say, “I’m halfway there already.”
He looks like I’ve just stabbed him in the gut.
His eyelids flutter closed. He exhales slowly, his dark brows drawn together, then gives me a gentle, lingering kiss.
I don’t understand how this man—this powerful and violent man—can also be so incredibly tender. There’s another side of him I glimpse at times like this, a raw, emotional side that wells to the surface, breaking through all his iron self-control. He wanted so badly to stay away from me, yet he kept coming back, inexorable as the moon-pulled tide.
And I kept welcoming his return into my orbit.
The attraction between us feels like that: irresistible as a gravitational force. We’re two planets in motion held together by something much larger than our individual parts. Something fundamental and undeniable.
Something I sense will be incredibly destructive for us both.
But it’s too late to walk it back now. I’m in the wolf’s den, deep under his spell. There will be time soon enough for me to figure out how I got here.
And how I’m going to piece myself back together when he’s gone.
Hours later, I wake alone.
It’s disorienting. Mainly because I don’t like it.
I rise and use the toilet, then put on a pair of yoga pants and a T-shirt. Then I wander out of the bedroom and through the dark apartment, looking for Liam.
A seam of light glows under his office door. I head toward it, wondering if it would be a better idea for me to go back to bed and to sleep, but that idea gets tossed out when I hear Liam’s voice coming from inside his office.