Chapter 17
Elexia
“Nana?!”
The word rushes out of me. I’m frozen.
She’s there, sitting at the table. The woman who knits scarves but sews a hidden blade into each one. After she mentioned she would reach out to her “connections”, I did exactly as she told me. But with everything that’s happened, my visit with her went completely out of my head.
Now, she’s sipping coffee from a bone china cup as she belongs there.
Her eyes pierce mine, assessing. She seems…mildly annoyed that I’m late.
“Don’t stand there like a codfish, Elexia.” She sets her cup down with a delicate clink. “Come give your Nana a hug.”
My feet move automatically, carrying me across the room. I wrap my arms around her, smelling the familiar scent of lavender and pipe smoke, but my body is rigid. I hug her, but the moment I pull back, I find myself drifting toward the other end.
Toward him.
I step closer to Liam and grip the back of his chair. He’s watching me with that familiar, wicked knowingness. He knows something I don’t.
Is she here to take me? Or him? Is this the end?
“Your grandmother and I were having a wee bit of conversation, so we were.” Liam is smooth and utterly unbothered. He lifts his teacup, his eyes dancing over the rim.
I dart my gaze between them, my heart hammering. “And…how was your conversation?”
Liam doesn’t answer. A cockiness carves his very features.
My grip on his chair tightens until my knuckles turn white. I don’t sit. I can’t sit. Too terrified.
“Oh, good gracious, child,” Nana huffs, picking up her fork. “Sit down before you have a stroke. I am not going to pull out my handcuffs.”
Liam sips his tea and chuckles. The sound vibrates through the chair and into my hand. “Lexie already beat you to it.”
I blink, heat flooding my face. “What about your gun?” I unintentionally squeak as I look at Nana. “Will you pull that out?”
Nana smiles mischievously, meeting Liam’s eye. They’re sharing some joke. A secret language. Like they’ve been friends for years and not minutes.
“Will I need one, Mr. Donovan?” She arches a brow.
Liam puts down his tea. He turns in his seat, his large hand reaching out to take my hand, his palm warm and calloused. Before I can even gasp, he tugs.
I stumble, but he catches me easily, his arm sweeping around my waist and lowering me onto his lap.
“Liam!” I hiss, trying to scramble up, but his arm is a band of steel.
“Settle, Luv,” he murmurs, his lips brushing the shell of my ear.
I stop struggling, mostly because my legs have turned to jelly. My chest heaves. Arousal pulses through my blood. He kisses the side of my head, then drapes his knuckles down my cheek.
“You look lovely, Darlin’.” The compliment makes my toes curl. “There is no need to feel like a petrified rabbit, Lexie.”
I glance to the side, meeting his gaze, admiring the flecks of silver in the blue.
“She’s not here to take me away?” I whisper, glancing at her.
Nana rolls her eyes, stabbing a piece of potato pancake. But she doesn’t interrupt. She lets Liam handle it.
Liam cups my chin, turning my face fully toward him. His thumb strokes my bottom lip. “Your gran is quite shrewd, Luv. To ease your fears, Claire knows she would need to contend with me—or heaven forbid, you—if anything were to…interrupt our beautiful relationship.”
His wolfish but charming grin makes my heart stutter.
“Eat before the food gets cold, Elexia,” Nana directs, pointing her fork at the empty plate set before me.
I hesitate, squeezing Liam’s shoulder. I don’t want to move.
Liam seems to sense it. So, he reaches for the empty plate and pulls it toward us. He starts piling items onto it—Eggs Benedict, two of the crispy potato pancakes with the applesauce on the side. Then, he reaches for the basket and pulls out a cinnamon roll.
My lips twitch. He remembered my favorite.
He holds the roll up to my mouth, challenging.
Something feisty sparks in me. I lean forward and bite into the roll—and I make sure to nip his fingertip with my teeth.
Liam freezes. His pupils dilate. He chuffs a dark, surprised laugh. “Naughty girl. I will address your attention-seeking immaturity after breakfast.”
I swallow the sweet, cinnamon-y bite, a flush spreading. “Looking forward to it.”
“I will be staying at the bed and breakfast nearby,” Nana announces loudly, coughing into her napkin.
Relieved, I sag against Liam. She’s staying. But she’s not staying here.
We eat together, and I feel like a queen on Liam’s lap while he feeds me bites between his own. Nana talks, and it almost feels normal. She shares stories of her “consulting work” overseas in the nineties—Paris, Rome, Berlin.
“The art in the Louvre is breathtaking,” she says, lost in the memory. “But the security…deplorable.”
“Not as bad as the National Gallery in London,” returns Liam. “I walked out of there with a Vermeer once just to see if I could.”
“You put it back, I hope?” Nana asks, raising a brow.
He pauses, then smirks. “Eventually.”
They launch into a discussion about European cities. I listen, chewing on a piece of bacon, but a small, cold knot of jealousy forms in my stomach. They’ve been everywhere. They’ve seen the world.
I’ve seen Queens and Manhattan. And the inside of a flower shop.
I shift, fidgeting with the hem of my dress. Liam’s hand tightens on my waist instantly. He breaks off his sentence about the cliffs of Moher and turns to me.
“What is it?” he wonders.
“Nothing,” I mumble, looking down at my lap. “Just…sounds nice. Traveling.”
His intensity ignites my nerve endings. He leans in, pressing a kiss to my cheek. “Don’t worry your pretty head, Luv. I’ll be takin’ ye to Ireland someday. I’ll show ye the world.”
I beam at him. “Promise?”
He kisses my nose. “I promise.”
Breakfast ends, and Nana excuses herself to head to her B&B, declining Liam’s offer of a driver. Maybe she has a stealth helicopter waiting on the lawn.
As soon as the heavy oak doors close behind her, the air in the foyer shifts. The coziness evaporates, replaced by the questions scratching at my throat.
When Liam rises, I quickly stand and step before him. “So,” I start, crossing my arms over my chest. “A ‘wee bit of conversation,’ was it?”
Liam stops, his hands sliding into his pockets. God, why does he have to be so roguishly handsome? It’s disarming. Especially with a few of his curls falling along one cheek. He stares at me with that maddeningly calm expression. And half-predator. “It was, aye. Just getting to know the family.”
“You were sharing inside jokes about guns and security and the freaking Da Vinci Code,” I point out, stepping closer. “And she threatened you, didn’t she? What did you say to her before I came in? And don’t tell me it was nothing.”
“It was nothing you need to worry about, Luv.”
I pinch my lips together. “The overprotective, secretive trope where you have all the answers? Really, Liam? We’re doing that one?”
His gaze is sinful, the kind that signals danger. “Is that a complaint, Lexie?”
“It’s a critique of your character development.”
“Is it now?”
Before I can blink, he moves and forces me backward. I stumble, but he guides me, backing me out of the foyer and into a shadowed alcove tucked behind a tapestry. It’s a small, intimate space, dim and smelling of stone and dust.
My back hits the cool stone wall, and Liam is there, pressing his body against mine. He doesn’t stop. He grips my waist and lifts, effortlessly hoisting me up until my feet dangle and I have no choice but to wrap my legs around his hips. A gasp catches in my throat.
“Well then, Luv,” he murmurs, his face inches from mine. “To avoid the dreaded controlling mafia boss dynamic, would it surprise you to know I’ve been burning up the chaff of my business? Gleaning the good things, cutting away the bad?”
I blink, breathless from the sudden shift. “What?”
“I haven’t lost me money, Lexie.” His unflinching voice sets my heart pounding.
“I’ve evolved. I stopped moving drugs and started moving semiconductors.
I stopped selling weapons to cartels and started investing in cybersecurity and global logistics.
I turned a smuggling empire into the most efficient, untouchable shipping network in the hemisphere. ”
He tilts his head, his eyes smoldering into mine. “I’m still rich as a god. But criminals…they don’t like change. That’s why they came for me. Not because I failed, but because I succeeded in leaving them behind.”
I stare at him, processing. He didn’t just inherit the darkness. He’s transforming it into something strictly…gray.
Arousal ransacks my insides. “Why would that surprise me? You’re you.”
He searches my face for doubt, but he’ll find none. “Disappointed I’m not the bad boy criminal in your books?”
I lean in, brushing my lips against his. “Maybe one of my favorite tropes is the redemption arc.”
“Hmm…” He trails his lips along the sensitive column of my neck, sending shivers racing down my spine. “What other tropes do you love, Elexia Carter?”
“Um…” I mumble, my brain short-circuiting.
He slides his hands down from my waist, skating over the silk of my dress. “Oh, you can do better than ‘um’, Luv. Wait…”
He pauses. His hands have moved beneath the hem of my skirt, expecting to find lace or cotton. Instead, they find…bare skin.
He freezes, then pushes his hand higher, his palm cupping my bare cheek. My heart skips a ripple of beats. His cock twitches behind his pants.
He pulls back, his stare dark with a sudden, predatory hunger. “Has my woman been a dirty girl, wearing no underwear, hoping I would find out?”
I shrug sweetly, looping my arms around his neck. “I hoped you would find out at breakfast. Under the table. But…this will do.”
He glances around the dimly lit alcove, then back at me. He digs his fingers into my ass, making me whimper. “Ye healed enough, Darlin’?”
I touch the collar of his shirt, undoing the top button with trembling fingers. “You know I have. You’ve been rubbing oil onto it every night. And I know those hands can do far more than a simple massage.”
He twists his smile with pure, unadulterated intent. “That they can. Wait…does that mean you don’t like my massages?”
“Liam, please!” I groan, tipping my head back against the stone wall, arching into his touch, desperate for him.
“You’re mighty pretty when I get ye all hot and bothered, Darlin’,” he whispers against my throat. “Now…about those tropes.”