His Property(14)

No, this was more serious than that.

This was real, this was raw, this was…

“I need to know what this is,” I whispered.

“It is what it is.”

“No, that’s not… Liam, you told me you were falling in love with me.”

He flinched at the words. “It’s time to eat, Emery. We’ll discuss this later.”

“I want to discuss it now. I’m not going to let this be some twisted situation you can use in order to justify the fact that you’re starting to have real feelings.” He stared down at me, his eyes dark and smoldering. He took a long breath and pulled me toward him, pressing my body to his.

“Is that what you think this is?” he demanded, his voice low and ragged.

“I don’t know what this is,” I said. “And I need to know. Because I’m falling in love with you, too.” The sides of his mouth twitched into a tiny smile, a genuine smile, and I saw the emotion well in his eyes, I saw the wistfulness and dare I say it, love, there. He wanted this to be real. I knew it, even if he couldn’t admit it. I felt it in the way he touched me, in the way he held me, in those small moments when his walls were down.

“You don’t know enough about me to love me,” he said. It was a warning of sorts, a test. His voice had that same sexy low growl, but now there something underneath it. Hope. Hope that maybe this could be real.

“I want to know,” I said. “I want to know about you, I want… I want this to be real.”

He closed his eyes for a second and I reached up and stroked his cheek. I studied his face, wanting to memorize the way it looked in that moment, his chiseled jaw and strong nose, his full lips, the way his hair curled over his forehead. This was him. The real Liam. Not the billionaire Liam, the one who terrorized his employees and tried to keep things from me, not the Liam who’d pulled me into the back of that car that night, but the real him, the one who had demons and raw spots that I ached to soothe.

I leaned up to kiss him, surprised that he was letting me touch him like this, that he was letting me be this in control, but he reached out and grabbed my wrist.

“Don’t.”

He began to move past me toward the restaurant, but I reached out and grabbed his sleeve again.

“Liam,” I whispered. “Please.”

He stopped and looked at me, his eyes softening. This was the moment in our interactions where he’d usually put an end to this kind of talk, where he’d pull me over his knee and spank me until I was raw, working out the emotions he had inside of him, the uncomfortable feelings he had from getting close t o another person by using me sexually, as if proving to himself that was all it was.

In that moment, standing there with him on that concourse, I felt everything stop. It was like we were poised at the edge of a cliff, deciding whether to jump together or turn around and call it a day. I was willing to take the jump with him on nothing but faith, was willing to jump off that cliff because I knew there was more to him than what he’d shown me.

Jump with me, I whispered in my head. Please, Liam.

But a second later, his expression hardened.

My chest ached, and I closed my eyes, trying to conjure up the memory of what his face had been like a moment ago.

“Get into the restaurant, Emery.”

“That’s all you have to say? Get into the restaurant?” My anger flared. “You know what, Liam? I think you’re happy my father left.”

“What?”

“You heard me. I think you’re happy my father left. I think you’re relieved because now you can keep me here, now you can continue with your little charade, now you can pretend this isn’t real while still being able to be near me.”

He shook his head. “You need to be careful with your smart mouth, Emery. You do not want to push me. Not now.”

But this wasn’t about pushing him anymore, this wasn’t about wanting to get a reaction out of him. This was real, and I wasn’t going to stop. “Tell me,” I said. “What would have happened if my father had paid my ransom?”

“He didn’t. So it’s pointless to talk about it.”

“Exactly. Because you like this. You like having an excuse to keep me, an excuse to tell yourself this isn’t real.”

“Then why the fuck would I bring you here in the first place? Why would I follow your father down to the parking garage?” He was getting going now. His eyes were stone cold, his throat pulsing with his words. I could feel the heat radiating off of him as I pushed him emotionally, and if we’d been alone I knew he would have taken me over his knee, brought me to the basement, pulled out a belt or a whip.