He didn’t let me say anything else.
Didn’t let me retreat.
Didn’t let me breathe.
He just snatched my face and yanked my mouth to his.
I didn’t even try to fight him. I didn’t want to. So I kissed him back. Not like I was kissing the man he used to be. Not tender, playful. No, I kissed him like the man he was now. Hard. Passionate. Painful. Soul destroying.
He lifted me, and my legs wrapped around him without hesitation, I didn’t stop kissing him as he walked us into the room. The door slammed shut behind us.
One of his hands stayed on my ass, pressing my core into his cock. I bit his lip as he tore his hands through my hair, yanking it.
“You’re changing this back to how it was,” he demanded against my mouth.
“Nothing is how it was,” I breathed.
He threw me down on the bed.
Not softly.
It only turned me on more.
I lay on my back, while the man with the green eyes, the scar, the tattoos and the cut stared at me with a mixture of reverence and hunger. A mixture of Liam and Jagger.
“No. Everything is how it was,” he argued, shedding his tee and cut. He leaned down to rip off my sneakers, my jeans. My panties. All without ceremony.
Then he just stood there, staring at my pussy. Eating with his eyes. He leaned down, pressed his face into it. Inhaled.
I wasn’t even embarrassed with how intimate this was. There was no room for embarrassment with Liam.
“Everything important is exactly how it was,” he murmured, breath hot on my core. He spread me as if he were cataloging every inch of my anatomy with his eyes. Then he cataloged it with his tongue.
Then, after an orgasm, he fucked me. Still wearing his jeans. His boots. Then he fucked me again.
In the shower.
And then he put me to bed. In his arms.
We didn’t speak.
Because we both knew that at some point, before we left Castle Springs, there would be words, too many of them.
So we were silent.
Chapter Seventeen
“Are you sure you can’t stay for just one more dinner?” Mom asked. “Kent and Mary are coming for dinner tonight, they’ve been on vacation in Florida and I know they’d love to see you.”
I steeled myself not to flinch. I couldn’t. I had distanced myself from Liam’s parents too, the best I could. Though they accepted it, they never let me push them out of their lives. They never made me feel like I’d lost them as well as Liam.
But I couldn’t face them.
I could barely face myself.
I hated myself.
Even as I cried out into Liam’s neck this morning, clawing at his back in pleasure, in an attempt to tear the reaper from his skin.
I hated myself and I began to love him instead of hate him.
I couldn’t let myself love him when I didn’t even know the truth.
Which was why I slipped out of the motel room while he was showering. Left a note telling him I’d be back before my deadline. He’d have to believe me. He was all but prisoner here in this shitty and depressing room. I wanted to find satisfaction in that.
I didn’t.
First, I visited Kate and Archie—of course that’s what they’d named him—at the hospital. Checked in on my dad at the shop, and finally, when I didn’t have any other choice, I came home.
“I can’t, Mom, this deadline it’s…” I trailed off. “Important.”
She smiled. “Of course it is, darling.”
There was no venom in the words. It was my mom accepting me. She’d been forced to accept that her younger daughter was not going to marry well, become a housewife, head charities and Sunday at the country club.
I couldn’t help it. I walked over to her and hugged her, breathing in her perfume, the one that hadn’t changed since forever—because a lady always had a signature perfume—and let myself be comforted by someone that loved me for what I was, and for what I wasn’t.
She hugged me back without hesitation, knowing full well such things from me were rare.
Eventually, I let go.
Mom cupped my cheek in her hand regarding me with twinkling, smiling eyes. Despite the fact she was now a grandmother, with gray hair and wrinkles to help cement that fact, she was still incredibly beautiful. There was a timeless elegance etched within her that she’d always had.
I hadn’t seen her eyes twinkle like that when she looked at me, not in a long time. They were always clouded with worry, sadness, pain.
I hated that. Despised that my mother couldn’t look at me and be happy.
And I got it a little bit, Liam’s choice. He couldn’t face what would be tattooed into his parent’s eyes when they had to witness what he’d become. He’d pretend the best he could, but parents always saw pain in their children, no matter what they tried to hide.