Chapter 51 Geneva
GENEVA
I OPEN MY EYES.
The ceiling comes into focus first. Then the setting sun peeking through the curtains.
“Ghost,” I croak.
His head snaps up from where it’s resting on the pillow next to mine. His gaze roams over my face, and for a second, he doesn’t speak. Just stares, like he’s not sure if I’m real.
“You’re awake.”
“How long have I been out?”
Ghost sighs. “I had Benedetto give you something to knock you out, so you’d actually rest. It’s been almost sixteen hours.”
“Oh.” I try to sit up and pain sears through my side. “Shit—okay. Still broken.”
He’s quick to gently press me back into the pillows. “Not broken. Just scraped by a bullet you had no business catching.”
I grin weakly. “I guess I missed that part of the plan.”
He doesn’t laugh. Doesn’t even smirk. His jaw tightens, and then there’s a flash of emotion in his eyes. The wreckage he’s trying to hide.
“How bad is it?” I ask, more quietly now.
“You’ll live. But next time you decide to take a bullet for me, I’m handcuffing you to the damn bed.”
I smile. “Is that a threat or a promise?”
He doesn’t smile back. Instead, he leans in, brushing his thumb across my cheek like I might break if he presses too hard. “You scared the hell out of me.”
“I’m okay.”
“Not good enough.” His voice drops to a whisper. “I need you breathing, thinking, and arguing with me. Not bleeding in my arms.”
The rawness in his voice punches straight through my chest. It’s not just fear. It’s fury. From a grief that never came but could’ve if I’d died.
“I didn’t mean for it to happen,” I say softly. “But I’ll never regret saving your life.”
“You think I’d trade your life for mine? You think I can function if you’re gone?”
His jaw flexes, like he’s trying to shove the words back into his throat, but it’s too late. They’re out. And what’s left of him is breaking apart in the aftermath.
I reach for him, fingers curling into the material of his shirt, pulling him close so he’s hovering over me. “You’re functioning now.”
“Barely.” He leans closer, resting his forehead against mine.
A silence descends on us. The kind that could fall into something dangerous or tender, depending on the next breath.
So I kiss him.
It’s soft. No heat, no fire. Just lips against lips, a reminder that I’m still here. That he didn’t lose me. That he won’t.
When I pull back, he exhales slowly. “You don’t get to die. Not until I’m done loving you.”
“How long will that take?”
“Whatever is beyond eternity, and even that won’t be long enough.”
My heart stumbles over his words.
No one’s ever said something like that to me. But with Ghost, it doesn’t feel like poetry. It’s a vow carved into the bones of something much older and much deeper than love.
It’s obsession.
Possession.
Devotion, in its most dangerous form.
That’s what this is. Not love the way I was taught it should be. Not patient or kind.
It’s Unforgiving.
Unrelenting.
Unnatural.
And still, I feel it anyway. Not in spite of what he is, but because of it. Because no one’s ever fought for me like this. No one’s ever bled for me. Killed for me.
I reach for him, my fingers brushing the stubble along his jaw. His eyes search mine, like he already knows what I’m about to say but is only daring to hope.
He needs to hear it. And I need to say it.
“Liam,” I whisper.
He stills. Completely.
“I love you.”
“Fuck,” he breathes.
His eyes close like he’s in pain, and then he exhales, slowly wrapping his arms around me and dragging me to his chest like he’s trying to pull me inside his ribs, where nothing can ever touch me again.
He doesn’t answer right away. Just continues to bury his face in the curve of my neck. His breath grazes my skin, uneven and quickening. Then, finally, he speaks, like it’s being torn from somewhere deep inside him.
“Say it again.”
My chest tightens. Because he’s not asking for reassurance. He’s starving for it.
I thread my fingers into his hair and hold him there, heart to heart, wound to wound. “I love you.”
This time, it breaks something in him.
His arms shake around me. “You have no idea what that does to me.”
But I do. Because I feel it too.
His hand cradles the back of my head as he presses his lips to my forehead, then my cheek, then the corner of my mouth. “Say it again, Doc. And never stop.”
“I’ll say it until we find whatever is beyond eternity.”
“And it still won’t be enough.” Ghost kisses me softly. “Never enough.”
His lips brush mine again, slower this time. Reverent. But I feel the tension in him. The tremor in his hands.
Ghost slides his fingers deeper into my hair, holding me in place like I might disappear if he lets go. But I’m not going anywhere. Not now. Not ever. So, I kiss him back, pouring everything I feel into it.
His breath stutters against my mouth, like the weight of everything between us is too much to bear. Like I’m fragile and sacred.
When he finally pulls back, barely an inch, his forehead rests against mine. His voice is aching, the words pulled from some place only Liam can access.
“I didn’t know I could want like this…” He grinds his teeth. “But I don’t want to fucking hurt you.”
“You won’t.”
His eyes snap to mine, blazing with need and guilt and something even darker. “You don’t understand. This is more than fucking or some depraved desire. It’s unadulterated need. The need to fuck you. To feel you. To know that this is real.”
I reach up and cup his face with both hands. “You didn’t imagine it.”
“Tell me this isn’t someday,” he begs. “Tell me it’s now. Today.”
“It’s now, Liam. And I love you. Today, tomorrow, and always.”
He groans, the sound low and broken. His restraint doesn’t fracture. It shatters. He kisses me like he’s trying to taste every syllable of what I just said. Not rough. Just desperate.
Desperate to believe I’m alive.
Desperate to believe I’m his.
And that he’s mine.
He pulls back, his gaze narrowed. “Tell me if I hurt you.”
“I’m fine.”
“Just tell me…”
His touch is tentative at first, as if cataloging every reaction. Every sound I make. Every time I gasp or moan or whisper his name.
His body vibrates against me with a fevered hunger. He skims his hand down my side, pausing just above the bandage. He pulls back, breathing hard.
“I can’t risk it…”
“You can and you will, Liam.” I thread my fingers into his hair and pull him back to me. “I want you too.”
“Fuck.”
He covers my body with his, one hand braced beside my head, the other trailing down my thigh, guiding it around his waist. I arch to meet him, pain, past, present, everything else forgotten.
Again, he touches me slowly at first before growing bolder and sliding two fingers inside me. He doesn’t move, letting my body adjust.
I can’t help but arch into his hand, needing more. Needing everything.
He groans, his eyes fluttering closed. “Jesus, Doc. I love the way you feel. Instantly fucking wet. For me.”
He brushes his thumb over my clit, and my hips jerk. He does it again and again. Until I’m panting, grinding against his hand, desperate for release.
I know I should be mindful of my wound, but I can’t control myself. Can’t stop the sounds spilling from my lips. My entire world is centered on him and what he’s doing to me.
Ghost leans forward, his lips brushing mine. “I need you. Now.”
He withdraws his fingers to remove my panties and his clothes, before gripping his cock and slowly easing it inside me.
The sensation is overwhelming, making my head spin.
When I gasp, he stops, giving me a moment to adjust. Once I relax, he pushes farther, inch by inch, until he’s completely inside me.
Ghost stays like that for a moment, his body shaking and sweat beading his brow. “You better fucking tell me if I’m hurting you.”
I brace myself, but his thrusts are slow and measured, his gaze locked on mine. “Geneva,” he rasps, like he’s warning me. Or himself.
When I dig my nails into his back, urging him on, he falters. His rhythm loses its careful control, replaced with urgency. His thrusts become frantic. Feral.
He grabs my hip with bruising force, his fingers digging into the soft flesh. Each movement is rough and reckless, pulling me further under his control. He says my name again, but this time it’s not a warning. It’s a yielding.
“Fuck.” He groans, his eyes squeezing shut. “I don’t know how much longer I can wait.”
My entire body is burning. My blood is boiling. The pressure inside me building.
“Ghost, I’m coming.”
He thrusts harder, his hips slamming into mine. “No, it’s Liam.”
The sound of his voice, the way he says his name, makes me come harder. He grunts, his cock twitching inside me. A second later, he’s following me into ecstasy.
He doesn’t collapse on top of me, sparing me the weight of his body. But he does roll onto his back and gather me to his side, his arm wrapping around me like a shield.
I rest my cheek against his chest and listen to the sound of his heartbeat, the cadence a steady drum beneath his skin.
He idly traces patterns along my spine. “You okay?” he murmurs, voice frayed at the edges.
I nod.
“Don’t lie to me, Doc.”
I close my eyes. “I’m… sore.”
His hand stills against my back. “Damn it.”
“No, it’s okay. Really. After what happened, I needed that. I needed you, Liam.”
He turns his face into my hair and breathes me in. “I keep thinking: What if that bullet had killed you?”
“It didn’t,” I whisper. “I’m still here.”
He shifts, just enough to tilt my chin and meet my eyes. “You don’t get it,” he says softly. “For a moment I thought I lost you. And it did something to me. Broke something in me. It was like I lost Abby all over again, but somehow this was worse.”
His words hurt me more than the bullet ever could.
He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t backtrack or apologize. Just stares at me.
“I thought I was broken back then,” he says. “But you rewired me. Made me fully grasp what it meant to be alive. And when I saw you bleeding, I—” He cuts off, jaw tight. “I didn’t just see death. I saw a world without you in it. And that is fucking unbearable.”
I press my palm to his chest, right over his heart. It’s racing. Erratic and alive.
“I’m here,” I whisper.
“I don’t understand second chances. But you… you feel like mine.”
I thread my fingers through his hair and pull him down to me, breath to breath. Heart to heart.
“Then don’t waste it,” I whisper. “Live with me. For me.”
“As if I don’t already. As if I haven’t been since the first time I saw you.”