His Property(30)

He stared at me for a long moment and took a step toward me. I put my hand up. “Don’t,” I said. “If you come close to me, I’ll safe word. Then I’ll scream and cry and freak out and tell everyone I’m being held against my will until someone believes me.”

He sighed, then reached over and picked up my wine glass and moved it away from him, apparently deciding I’d had enough.

“What do you want?” he asked, after staring at me for a long moment. “To make this more real?”

“No,” I said. “Not here.”

“What?”

“I don’t want to talk about this here.” I crossed the room to the suitcase that had been brought here for me, the things that had been gathered from the hotel room back at the casino. I rummaged through them, looking for something casual to wear. The yoga pants and casual clothes I’d bought at the casino were conspicuously missing, leading me to believe that Liam had gone through my things before bringing them in here. “Jesus,” I murmured. “How come everything in here is dress-up?”

Liam crossed the room to his own suitcase, reached in and pulled out a soft grey Stanford sweatshirt, his alma mater, and handed it to me wordlessly, along with a pair of plain black shorts that were made out of soft sweatshirt material.

I pulled the clothes on, savoring the feel of having something he’d worn against my skin, and then shoved my feet into a pair of flip flops.

“I thought you wanted to talk,” Liam said.

“I do.”

“Then why do you look like you’re about to leave?” He was watching me wordlessly, still standing there bare chested, the masculinity and power radiating off of him in waves. I knew he wouldn’t try to do anything to me I didn’t want him to do, knew that if I safe worded, he would stop.

But I also knew that he would try whatever he could if he thought I was going to leave. What that would be, I wasn’t sure.

“Because if we talk here, you’re going to make it sexual,” I said.

“I don’t make it anything. It is what it is.”

I rolled my eyes, then pulled another sweatshirt out of his suitcase. This, too, had the Stanford logo on the front. “What’d you do, buy the whole student store?” I asked as I tossed it at him.

“I own a chain of student bookstores in California,” he said. “One of them happens to be near the campus.”

“Of course you do,” I said, shaking my head. Leave it to Liam to not only own a store that probably made him tons of money, but to also put it in proximity to campus, where it would be competition. Was he so cutthroat that he would try to effect the business of his alma mater, which, for all intents and purposes, had provided him with the education that had allowed him to become so successful?

“I’m guessing you want me to put this on?” he asked, sighing as he pulled it over his head, his muscles straining.

It was everything I could do not to rush to him and get down on my knees, begging him to punish me. He’d trained me well. But I held it together. If I wanted him, really wanted him, then I needed to do this.

“Come on,” I said, reaching for his hand. “We’re going for a walk.”



* * *

Of course, there was nowhere to really go for a walk. We were parked on a private airfield in Las Vegas, which was part of the commercial airport, but far enough away that we were pretty secluded.

We walked around the perimeter of the field, which was encased in a chain link fence. In the distance, we could see the runways of the normal airport, the planes taking off and landing even this late, their lights glittering.

I spotted a picnic table on the other side of the fence, set up on a patch of grass. I started toward the door in the chain link fence, but Liam stopped me.

“No,” he said, his hand tightening around mine. “We don’t leave the field.” The four beefy security guards hovered a few hundred feet away, patrolling the perimeter.

I rolled my eyes. “I just want to sit on the picnic table,” I said. “Come on, it’s not even that much farther.”

“Emery.”

“Liam.”

He started at me, not giving in. It was a small thing, wanting to sit on the picnic table, the kind of thing I would normally give into. I could still feel that pull to do whatever he said. But it was like working out, I told myself. It needed to be done to get where you wanted, even if was against what your body was telling you it wanted.

He sighed.

“If this is going to work, if any part of you wants this, then…I need to have some say in this relationship, too.” I raised my chin defiantly and waited for his response.