“Alright, Ana. Shout for me if you need me, and I’ll be here.” Liam steps out, leaving me the way he did in the hotel, the door shutting firmly behind him, leaving me in the silent, steam-wreathed room.
If you need me, I’ll be here.
I almost believe him.
LIAM
FUCK.
Fuck!
I clench my hands into fists as I step out of her bedroom, my heart pounding in my chest, a dozen thoughts running through my head, and none of them good.
Ana affects me in a way that even I hadn’t anticipated from our interactions before. I want her so badly that I can barely stand it. I wanted to undress her there in that bathroom, strip away the clothes I’d bought her so that I could see her naked at last, touch and kiss every inch of her body until she forgets every bit of pain she ever experienced, replacing it all with pleasure. I want to sink myself into her, fuck her until I’m the only man she remembers, the only one imprinted on her body, the only one she’ll ever want or love again.
I feel as if it’s tearing me apart, waiting, forcing myself to resist, touching her only in small and gentle ways, and giving her space. I’d never understood overwhelming, primal desire before, only the most normal kind of arousal, the kind where you pick up a woman on a Friday night, take her home for some pleasant sex, and then call her a cab home. But Ana makes me feel almost insane, maddened with desire, rock-hard and aching just from brushing my fingers over her cheek.
And after what she’s told me just now, the possibility of there ever being anything between us feels even more impossible.
Franco Bianchi.
She’d mentioned him on the plane as someone who had hurt her, but I hadn’t imagined the depths of it. I’d known she’d been temporarily disabled in some way and lost her career. Still, I hadn’t known her feet were so terribly ruined, hadn’t realized the horrific way that she’d been tortured. I certainly hadn’t realized that Franco fucking Bianchi was the man who had been responsible for it.
“Fuck!” I grind the curse out through my teeth, running my hands viciously through my hair. I’d told myself that I needed to be honest with Ana. I needed to tell her everything plainly as things came up and lay it all out on the line so that if we were to be together, we could start with a foundation of truth and honesty.
I see now how fucking naïve that was.
I’m not an ordinary man. I’m an Irish King,theIrish King. Even if I’d kept my hands relatively clean of blood and torture before I’d helped Viktor with Alexei and before I’d shot Alexandre, my family is steeped in it, as much as any of the crime families. My father, Connor, Niall, Graham, any of the other Kings—their hands are all stained with plenty of blood. And as for Franco Bianchi–
The man is in the ground and has been rotting away with my—with our father—for some time, but he still haunts me. Even now, he threatens the only things I want, the only things that truly matter to me.
My father wanted to set him above hisotherown legitimate son after Connor left, over me, and Franco had gloried in it. He’d hated me as much as I’d hated him, and that hate is following me even now, past the grave.
If I tell Ana the truth, she’ll leave. I know she will, and I’d be hard-pressed to blame her. It’ll be another thing tainting the connection between us, another reminder of pain every time she looks at me, piling on top of what Alexandre has already done to us.
I already don’t know if it’s possible to overcome what Alexandre did, if I can ever touch Ana again without guilt, if she can ever want me without comparing me to Alexandre, if there’s anything that can ever make up for the fact that our first time was coerced by a madman. If I add this to it—
“God and all the saints forgive me,” I murmur as I stand in the hallway, doing my level best not to think of her in the other room, flushed and pink and naked in the bath, and how badly I want to yank the door open and stride back in there, pull her body out of it and carry her dripping to the bed before I ravish every inch of her with my fingers and tongue and cock. “I can’t tell her. I just fucking can’t.”
Ana ishere, in my house, living under my roof. I have a chance to make things right with her, get to know her under more ordinary circumstances and try to build something with her. I want to fucking marry her, if I can figure out how to break my betrothal to Saoirse without destroying the Kings entirely.
I want her to be mine, forever, but she has to want it too. I won’t force her, and I won’t be a second choice to a man who fucking owned her.
But if she knows the truth about Franco, it’ll be impossible.
The guilt that floods me burns through my veins, but I know my mind is made up. I can’t bear to lose her, not when I’ve only just gotten her here. Not when I finally have the hard-won chance that I’ve wanted for so long.
I grit my teeth, striding into the living room and dropping onto the sofa, burying my head in my hands. I can’t do this alone, but I don’t know who to talk to.
Max would have some advice for me, I’m sure, but I doubt it would be the advice I want to hear. I pull my phone out, tapping my finger against the screen, and I find myself texting Niall, asking him to come over.
And then I set my phone down, rubbing my hands over my face with a groan that seems to come from my very soul.
Just when I think that things might be changing, another roadblock is thrown in my path. But I refuse to let it stop me from everything I’ve worked so hard to obtain.
I can’t let the ghosts of my past keep me from the future that I want so badly.
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