Chapter 7
REGAN
Idon’t know what I’m doing back here.
There are a thousand reasons why this is a massive mistake.
Exhibit one: the sweaty, amazing sex we had the night before.
Exhibit two: the fact that I definitely want to have that sex again.
But worst of all, Exhibit three: I’m pretty sure Liam’s going to murder my ex.
I sit on the couch as Liam pours wine. He offers to order us something to eat, but it’s getting late, already past midnight. I was waiting down in the lobby for a while, not sure if I’d even run into him and thinking I was about to get out of there, when he appeared.
He hands me a glass. I accept, but don’t drink.
I know where that leads and I want to be better this time.
He lowers himself into the chair to my left and crosses his legs.
I love the shape of his thighs, the bulge of his arms, his sculpted chest and twinkling, confident eyes.
The man’s a beast and he knows it. There’s no shame in him, no hesitation.
He seems to walk through the world like he’s comfortable in every room, ready for any situation, and I’m deeply jealous of that.
I’m the total opposite.
“Alright, love, you wanted me, now you have me.” He reaches into his pocket and fiddles with something absently. I’m guessing it’s his phone and he’s thinking about how to get rid of me. “What do you want to chat about?”
I decide to get to the point. It’s already late and I don’t want to be out too much longer.
“I spoke with my father. He says Kieren stole something from the company and that it’s being handled. You’re the one handling it, aren’t you?”
He seems unsurprised. “That’s right.”
I hesitate at the honesty. I assumed he would try to dance around the questioning or outright lie about it. “You were looking for something in his car.”
“Documents. Storage devices. That sort of thing.”
“But there wasn’t anything?”
“Clean as a whistle. At least I hope so. Because otherwise—“ He flicks the fingers of his other hand in the air. “Poof. Ashes.”
“Right. Arson.” I shiver and take a sip of wine. Crap, I told myself I wasn’t going to drink, but I’m nervous and Liam puts me on edge. He’s too intense and handsome, and I keep thinking about what it feels like to have him buried between my legs. “Have you found anything else yet?”
“Not yet. I paid your apartment a visit just a few minutes ago, actually. That’s where I was coming from.”
My heart spikes. “Wait, hold on. You were in my apartment?”
“Nice place. Two bedrooms. Lovely decorations, except for all that baseball garbage.” His nose wrinkles with disgust. “I can’t believe you let him display his pathetic card collection.”
I laugh despite how violated I feel. “We fought about that, actually, but I had to give in. I mean, he was so serious about it—“ I clear my throat, drink again, hate myself a bit, and press on. “Did you find anything? In the apartment?”
“No, I didn’t.” He looks at me curiously. “You’re not going to make a bigger deal about me breaking into your home?”
“It’s not my home anymore. I haven’t been in that place since—“
Since I found him railing Vera in our bed.
He nods knowingly and seems to realize he’s got his hand in his pocket. He glances down and quickly pulls it back out, then covers the moment by taking a long drink. “Truthfully, if you’ve got any ideas about where Kieren might be hiding what he took—“
“I really have no idea.”
“Any email addresses I might not know about?”
“He’s got one for work, one personal email, and he made one in college, but I don’t think he uses that much.”
Liam looks interested and gets up to grab a pen and paper. “Can you give it to me?”
I spell it out and he writes it down. “You think that’ll help?”
“I think it won’t work. I have a feeling whatever he took, Kieren didn’t keep a hard copy. That’s good and bad. Means it’ll be more difficult to track down, but emails are relatively easy to break into. Do you know his password, by any chance?”
I cackle, because of course I do, I made it for him. “The idiot reuses it all the time. It’s his name, plus the name of his first dog, plus a number.”
Liam writes that down too, nodding to himself. “You’ve been a big help.” He taps the pen on the paper before tossing the pad on the table and sitting back down. His hand drifts into his pocket again.
“What are you going to do if you find what you’re looking for?”
“Can’t honestly say right now. How much do you know about your father’s business?”
I raise my glass to my lips for a beat before answering. “I’m his daughter and I work in his accounting department.”
“So you know what he’s been doing?”
I glance over at the windows, out at the city, and see numbers on a spreadsheet, strange numbers that don’t fully add up, but can be easily resolved by cleverly moving them around.
And once that’s done, the problem’s gone, like it was never there to begin with, and all I have to do is keep my mouth shut.
“I have… some vague ideas,” I say at last.
Liam grunts his acknowledgement, that cocky smirk returning.
“Well love, then you vaguely know that your father’s got some serious money running through that construction firm of his, and if certain other entities knew how that was structured, and they were motivated to do him and his partners harm…
” He trails off, leaving me to pick up the pieces.
Fucking Kieren. I breathe as steadily as I can, struggling to stay calm, but the scope of the problem becomes very clear—
And so does the solution.
I take a big drink this time, draining the glass. Liam gets up wordlessly, still fidgeting with his pocket, and grabs the bottle. He refills me before returning to his seat. I drink some of that, not even savoring it anymore.
“Can I ask you something?” My eyes drop to the carpet, to my feet, anywhere but Liam. “Are you… going to kill him?”
Liam doesn’t answer. My heart’s stuttering and sweat breaks out under my arms. Fear slides down into my core and I struggle to keep still.
“I don’t know,” he says at last.
I force myself to look up. He’s watching me curiously. “You’d do that? You’d really kill him?”
“It all depends on how the situation plays out. I don’t want to lie to you, Regan. I fucking hate liars. Do you really want to know?”
I feel sick. But I can’t help myself. I’ve been around men like Liam, men like my father, all my life, and I know what they’re capable of.
Most of the time they try to hide it, and there’s something strangely terrifying and refreshing about Liam coming out and saying the words like they aren’t truly horrific.
“No, I don’t,” I whisper as he stands and comes around to sit beside me. He takes the glass from my hand, and I realize my fingers were shaking so much some had spilled. He lifts my index up to his lips and kisses it, licks it, and sucks the wine clean.
His tongue is soft and warm. His lips are firm. I shiver, mouth hanging open, pulse going haywire, brain not working any longer. I’m not drunk, but I also can’t seem to get my breathing under control. I want Liam to keep touching me, but I also want to get out of here.
This man might kill Kieren.
On some level, I want that to happen. I want Kieren to suffer for what he did to me. We had a life, a future, a plan. Everything made sense. It wasn’t perfect, and it wasn’t a fairy tale, but it was mine. The pieces fit and everything had its right place, and I was comfortable if not exactly happy.
Then he shit all over that, fucked Vera, and ruined me.
Liam slips my finger from his mouth. His hand reaches around, back into my hair, his fingers slipping through the strands. I can stop this. If I tell him to back off, I think he will. I can still walk away.
But isn’t this why I’m here? If I’m honest with myself? I could’ve found some other way to contact him. I could’ve tried to find him on a weekday, asked him to talk somewhere public, done anything but follow him up here near midnight, when nothing good could possibly come of this.
He bends my wrist gently and pushes my own finger between my lips. He watches, fascinated, mouth open, as he makes me suck it. I taste his spit and whimper as I do it. His grip in my hair tightens as he pulls my wrist back and buries my mouth with his.
His tongue is wine and mint. I groan into his lips, losing myself in the moment, all awareness washing away.
This is what I came here for and I can’t keep pretending like it’s not.
I lied to myself when I left earlier, kept saying it was to get to the truth about Kieren, to figure out what’s going on with him, to see if I can’t make some kind of difference, but that’s all bullshit.
This is what I wanted.
Liam roughly wrenches me into his lap. I gasp, arching, bending down to kiss him harder as he unbuttons my blouse.
I moan when his hands cup my breasts, squeezing before he throws my top on the floor and removes my bra.
I let it fall off and pull his hair as he takes a stiff nipple into his mouth and sucks roughly.
I arch and grind into him, breathing hard, and god, this is fucked up, it’s all so fucked up.
I can’t keep kissing my ex’s potential killer, I can’t keep wanting to fuck the man that helped me light a car on fire, a man that broke into my apartment earlier tonight, but I also don’t want to stop.
I can be someone else with Liam. Someone with agency, with strength, at least for a while.
I push him back and kiss him, easing off his shirt.
I dig my fingers into his chest muscles and I like the way he grunts with delight as my nails furrow his skin.
He growls, turning me, and shoves me back onto the couch, pinning me with his massive, strong body, holding my hands above my head as I wrap my legs around his waist.
He’s hard as he grinds into my core.