I threw my hands up in the air. “Do you realize how insane you sound right now?”
“How insane I sound? You begged me to get ahold of your father, begged me to figure out a way for you to talk to him. And now I found him and I brought you here, and you’re acting like it’s some big betrayal.”
“Yes, I wanted to talk to him, Liam. Get him on the phone, demand answers. Not be ambushed and brought here to see him.”
“And what would a phone call have done?” Liam demanded. “He would have told you he was sorry, he would have told you that he didn’t mean it, that he was in a bad spot, that he needed the money or that they were going to kill him, that he was drunk, that he was out of his mind, that it wasn’t his fault.”
“So what?” I said. “It would have been better than coming here and seeing it. God, Liam, just because you have no feelings doesn’t mean that I don’t!”
“This has nothing to do with having feelings,” he insisted. “It has to do with the fact that you needed to see for yourself the kind of man you were protecting. A phone call was the easy way out.”
“You mean the way you’re protecting your parents?” I shot back.
“I’m not protecting my parents,” he said.
“Oh, yeah?” I reached out and lifted up his shirt, ran my hands over the scars on his abdomen. “Where did you get these, Liam?”
His jaw twitched, a vein in his neck throbbing at my disobedience. “I told you. I did it to myself.” He grabbed my wrist again, this time to push me away, but I held the fabric of his expensive t-shirt tight, twisting it in my hand, taking pleasure in the fact that it probably cost hundreds of dollars and I was ruining it.
“Those don’t look like the kind of scars you give yourself.”
He stayed silent, his face stoic, the only indication that he was upset the throbbing in his neck, the set of his jaw, the way his hand tightened on mine.
“That’s what I thought,” I said finally, letting go. “So don’t talk to me about protecting people.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said quietly.
“I know exactly what I’m talking about,” I shot back. “I know because I’ve lived it, Liam, the protecting your parents, the lying, the – ”
Suddenly, his hands were around my waist, and he’d picked me up, tossing me over his shoulder like I was a bag of sand.
“Hey!” I screamed, pounding my fists against his back. “Put me down!”
He crossed the room to the chair in the corner, laid me over his lap, and pulled up my dress. The skin on the back of my thighs prickled with heat.
“You will not talk back like that,” he commanded, and then his hand spanked my ass. It was already raw from the spanking he’d given me on the plane, and the balm he’d used had helped, but my skin wasn’t ready for another spanking so soon. I yelped in surprise and pain.
“I’ll say what I want,” I said anyway, and his palm connected again with my bare flesh, harder this time. My core tightened, the desire and lust swirling together deep in my belly before settling in between my legs.
“Oh really?” Liam asked, and now he sounded amused. The vibe between us had completely changed – before, we’d been having what could have been a fight between any couple, a disagreement, a shouting match.
Now he was fully back in control, pushed there by the way I’d defied him, questioned his authority, pressed him for answers about his family.
He grabbed my panties. My breathing quickened, and I closed my eyes, trying to get control of my desire. But it was no use.
“You like this,” Liam said. It was a statement, not a question. “This is what you want.”
“No.”
“Yes,” he said, and he was pulling my panties down slowly now, the lacey fabric of the skimpy thong he’d made me wear sliding over my skin until it was bunched at the top of my thighs, right under my ass. “You need this.”
I wanted to protest, but I couldn’t.
“Remember what I told you?” he said, his voice low and ragged, so sexy I instinctively clamped my legs together. His hand pried them back apart, further even than they were before, and I felt my pussy lips spread the tiniest bit, my channel clenching in anticipation. “About your body?”
“That it was made to be fucked?” I whispered.
“Yes, baby,” he said. “It was made to be fucked. And you want this. Your pussy doesn’t lie.” His open palm slapped against my bare ass again, and he gripped my ass cheek, his thumb probing my asshole.
“Liam!” I said in panic, struggling to get up.