I’m going to come, and I can’t stop it, I can’t, I can’t.
My hands are coming up, grabbing at his arms, my back arching as the wild pleasure washes over me, my pussy tightening around Liam’s cock as I cry out, and I hear Alexandre curse aloud. I can feel my heart breaking, my chest clenching with pain at the same moment that my body is shuddering with pleasure. It’s the strangest, worst, most beautiful thing I’ve ever experienced all at once.
“I’m sorry,” I gasp out. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”
I’m still fluttering, clenching, when Liam pulls out of me. I don’t know how he does it, how he has the strength of will to stop. Still, Yvette is caught off guard by the force of my orgasm up close, distracted by the sudden howl of anger that Alexandre lets out. Liam slips out of me, lunging for her. I see him disarming her out of the corner of my eye, see the blur as he strikes her in the head with the butt of his gun. I hear thethudas she hits the ground, and I’m sliding off of the table into a heap on the floor, crying and crawling towards Alexandre, who is sinking to the floor as well.
“Anastasia, I thought you loved me, Anastasia, Anastasia—” he’s whispering it over and over, his hands outstretched, and I’m crawling towards him, crying. I want to get to him, apologize, and tell him that I do love him, that I didn’t mean it, that it was my body and nothing else.
“I thought you loved me. How could you do that? How could you enjoy another man, how could you—” Alexandre switches to French, his words a blur, and I dimly hear the sound of his guests trying to get out of the dining room, Liam shouting for them to get the fuck out while they still can as he steps between us.
I see him lower the gun, pointing it at Alexandre’s head, and I scream, clutching at Liam’s leg.
“No! Don’t kill him, please, please, no, don’t kill him, I love him, Liam, please don’t, please don’t—” I’m shrieking now, panicking, crying, the words tumbling over each other faster than I can say them aloud. Somehow Liam has managed to get himself in order, his cock back in his pants. However, he’s still hard, the gun leveled evenly at Alexandre’s head, and the terror I feel that I’m about to see Alexandre die in front of me is unmatched by almost anything else I’ve ever felt, even when Franco trussed me up in that warehouse.
“Fuck.” I hear Liam hiss, and then he bends down, scooping me up with his free arm as he keeps the gun leveled at Alexandre. “I’m taking you out of here, Ana. I don’t know what the hell you’re thinking. You can’t stay here. Not with him.”
“Fuck you!” Alexandre shouts it, lunging for Liam, but he steps back, neatly aiming the gun and shooting Alexandre squarely in the knee. “You can’t escape me, Anastasia. I’ll come for you. You won’t leave me like the others. You’ll never escape me—"
The cry of pain that Alexandre lets out feels like a dagger in the heart, but Liam doesn’t stop. He shoots again, in the other knee and then in the shoulder, until Alexandre is crumpled on the carpet, his wounds not fatal but still bleeding, his body twisted with pain, and I can barely see past the tears streaming out of my eyes and down my face.
“You can’t, you can’t—” I cry, twisting in his grasp. “Please, Liam—”
“God, Ana, stop fighting!” I can hear the exasperation in Liam’s voice. “The man wants to keep you prisoner,fuck, Ana—Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, please be reasonable!”
I’m fighting him so hard that we haven’t even made it to the doorway of the dining room. I can see Alexandre bleeding, writhing; I try to go to him, but Liam has an iron grip on me.
“Fuck, I don’t want to do this,” Liam groans. “I hoped—fuck, Levin was right. Just calm down, I know you’re panicking, Ana, please listen—”
But I can’t. It’s all too much, the voices crowding in. I don’t know who to believe anymore, Liam or Alexandre, which one is really trying to keep me safe, which one I should want to be with, which one I should trust.
I know what my heart feels, at this moment, and it wants to go to the man lying on the floor, the man who just this afternoon brought me a pretty dress and called me his lover, who—
There’s a cloth on my face, a thick smell filling my nostrils.
“I’m going to keep you safe, Ana.”
It’s Liam’s voice, filling my ears as something else fills my nose, making me dizzy. Or maybe it’s Alexandre.I’m going to keep you safe, Anastasia.
They blend together, overlapping until I don’t know which man is which. Until I feel limp and heavy, and I don’t know what’s happening, only that once again, I’m losing everything I ever believed I could trust in.
And then, as I feel Liam lift me into his arms, everything goes black.
* * *