Prologue
Prologue
LIAM
FIVE YEARS AGO
The lights to the bedroom flicker on, and the gorgeous raven-haired beauty falters on her high heels when she sees me sitting in the corner, a glass of scotch in my hand that I’ve been nursing slowly in the dark for the past few hours.
Sophie’s ethereal corn-blue eyes flutter when she sees me. “Liam? You scared me,” she says, touching a delicate hand to the pearls around her feminine neck.
Her hips sway seductively as she walks over to the dresser, taking off her jewelry, piece by piece, and placing them in the velvet-lined box her mother gave her for her sixteenth birthday. She reaches a hand under her long, waterfall of hair and shakes it out, moaning softly as she does, and my cock twitches.
My eyes leisurely trail over her body from head to toe and back again. Sophie is wearing a body-hugging black silk wrap dress that vees down the front, showing off the creamy half-globes of her breasts. Her nipples are puckered underneath, and I can see the outline of each one through the thin, gossamer fabric. More pearls adorn her ears and a finger.
“We missed you at dinner,” she says conversationally, bending slightly to slide her feet out of her heels, one at a time. “I brought back a take-out box for you. It’s in the fridge if you’re hungry.” Her voice is husky and smooth like a fine-aged bourbon.
Everything about Sophie is beautiful. Her red-stained lips I’ve kissed a million times. The black kohl liner she uses to make her eyes look like a cat’s. The floral perfume she wears that follows me everywhere. Her long, milky thighs that I’ve spent hours between. She’s every man’s wet dream wrapped in a package of a fucking goddess. I should be down on my knees worshipping her every damn day. Grateful that she chose me out of all the other men she could have had.
But there was always something there, beneath the surface. Something that nipped and nibbled away at my subconscious. Something that never allowed me to love her. Never allowed me to fully give her my heart.
And now I know why.
Slowly standing up, I put my drink down on the side table next to the chair and walk up behind her. She arches back into me, her breaths panting out between those scarlet lips when I curve my hands around her waist, gliding them up her torso. I dip one hand inside the opening of her dress to cup a heaving breast. So fucking soft. Sophie purrs, her eyes glazing over as my lips brush up the side of her neck, her tuberose perfume instantly enveloping me.
“I love when you touch me,” she moans, pressing her spine into my chest, the back of her head tucking in at the dip of my shoulder, her eyes closed now.
When my lips get to her ear, I nuzzle behind it with my nose, squeezing her breast a little harder at the same time my left hand comes up.
“You’ve been a bad girl, Sophie,” I tell her, my voice low like a hum, and the pliant woman in my arms goes ram-rod rigid.
She knows my words are not foreplay. There will be no bending her over the dresser and fucking her like I normally would have done. There is no pleasure in my touch anymore as my left hand circles her neck, my grip crushing as I start to choke her.
Sophie knows she’s about to die.
“Liam, I love you. Does that count for nothing?” she rasps, the small tremor in her voice the only evidence of her fear.
“Not in this life,” I reply, and push the knife into her back.