“Fucking perfect,” he says.
I tug on his shirt, pulling him into me and catching his mouth with mine. His kiss matches mine, never once trying to take control or fight me for dominance.
Despite the control he craves me, he doesn’t force it. He reads me like a book, always knowing what I want even when I don’t know myself.
“I belong to no one, Liam Brenner,” I tell him, breaking our kiss.
Amusement settles across his handsome face as he watches me with a heated stare. He runs his knuckles down the side of my face.
“Are we still playing this game, Mila Williams?” He leans in and kisses me once more.
Liam calling me Mila is enough to snap me out of this moment I let myself get lost in. I
furrow my brows and step away before he can stop me. With whatever sanity I
have left, I need a break from this situation.
Lost in my head, I don’t realize I made it outside the club until my body is blasted with the numbing, cold air. A large hand wraps around my arm and spins me. Through years of training and being raised the way I was, my fist pulls back before flying forward.
Liam’s large hand easily stops my small one. If my mind had been more centered, I would’ve been able to land that hit. Using his strength, he pulls me into him by my fist and wraps his arms around me.
Liam looks as confused as I fucking feel. He searches my face for the answers I can’t give him. This isn’t who I am, finding comfort in a man’s arms and jeopardizing my entire future to be close to him. Liam makes it too easy to forget just how much of a lie all of this is.
I’ve compromised this mission, and it’s time to pull back. If my dad wants Liam protected, he needs to find someone else to do it. Liam has cracked the steel coating I’ve wrapped myself in all these years, and that he did it so easily terrifies me. And I haven’t been scared of shit since I was a child.
If I continue this mission, I’ll give him the power to decimate me. I’ve come too far and fought too hard in my life to allow something like that to happen. Over a lie, no less.
“What happened?” Liam asks, breaking through my thoughts.
“I just need to go,” I say.
Liam’s eyebrows fly up to his hairline in disbelief. He scoffs. His face hardens in anger I haven’t seen directed at me. I push my body away from his, and he doesn’t stop me. Turning on my heel, I take a few steps forward.
“Don’t you fucking dare walk away from me,” Liam demands.
My feet stop moving, and I curse myself under my breath for it.
“You don’t get to walk away after what happened in there, Mila.”
There’s that fucking name again. I grind my teeth, allowing my anger to override my need to turn around. Flexing my fists at my side, I look over my shoulder.
“I’m not who you think I am.” I straighten my back and raise my chin, calling to the woman I am. “You don’t want me, Liam. It’s time to let me go because this thing between us won’t happen. Find a new obsession.”
Liam wraps his arms around me from behind and nuzzles his face into my neck. I want to both recoil from him and give in to these fucked-up desires.
“I have always been a man who knows exactly what I want in life.”
He squeezes his arms a little tighter, unwilling to let me walk away.
“And what I want is you. Maybe I’m a little obsessed, but I think there’s more to it than that, love. Do you think walking away from me will stop me from making you mine?
“You call it an obsession, and maybe you’re right. I don’t doubt that I’m not the first, and I surely won’t be the last, but I’m the only one that fucking matters.”
Liam’s tone is so sure that I almost miss the slight desperation. He spins me around to face him and runs the point of his knuckle down my cheek.
Looking into his needy eyes, the longing for me to say to him the words he so desperately wants to hear, admitting that I am his. I realize I’d looked at his demands all wrong; the control I thought he took from me, denying me something I wanted until he heard those words.
Liam Brenner wasn’t taking control. He was giving me the power to hold him in my hands, to either capture or destroy him. He took nothing from me I didn’t hand over willingly. But as much as I fight against myself to reach out and hold tight, I will wreck him no matter what I do.