It was all up to her. Her choice. Choose me, he was saying. Choose this. Choose love. “Please,” she whispered. “Please touch me. Please make love to me. Oh please, Liam, please.”
She’d released a whirlwind. That was all she could think of as he guided her hips, showing her how to ride him like a wild stallion. Each time he left her body she ached to have him back, moving on him faster and faster, slick and smooth and so hot and tight the friction was sending her toward oblivion again, but it didn’t hurt. She moaned his name, not wanting to go anywhere without him, wanting to know she’d pleased him as much as he was pleasing her. Then his hips grew frenzied, thrusting upward as he pulled her down onto him. He cried out her name, his body bucking beneath hers as hers milked his, and they came together.
Cate collapsed onto Liam’s chest, boneless. Floating again, but this time was even better because he was inside her. Because she could hear his heart pounding in his chest as if he’d just run ten miles—just as hers was doing. Because his arms were holding her so close it was as if they were one.
When her pulse finally slowed, when she could finally breathe enough to speak, she touched her fingers to his cheek and murmured, “Thank you.”
He made a sound as if he was suppressing a laugh, and she could feel him twitching inside her as his body shook. Then said, “You’re very welcome.” Just like a boy who’d been taught to be polite no matter what, and it made her gurgle with laughter. She sighed dreamily and rubbed her cheek against his chest, loving how it made her feel so warm and contented. Loving him.
“You planned it,” she said an eternity later, after he’d discarded the condom and they’d settled back into each other’s arms.
He seemed uncomfortable with that assessment. “Not exactly.”
“Yes, exactly.” She let one fingertip circle a flat male nipple. “That’s when I knew I loved you,” she added quietly.
His hand, which had been slowly stroking her back, stilled. “Say that again.”
“That’s when I knew I loved you,” she dutifully repeated.
He sat up abruptly, bringing her with him. “Cate, are you sure?” He grasped her arms and held her away from him, as if he needed to see her face in the moonlight. “Don’t say it because you’re grateful and you think you have to.”
“I’m not.” She didn’t care anymore that she was gambling her heart in one reckless move. “When I realized how careful you were to make everything so perfect for me, I knew there could never be another man in the whole world as perfect for me as you. And that’s when I finally admitted to myself that I loved you.” She smiled tremulously. “I think I loved you almost from the beginning, but I wouldn’t let myself.” She suddenly realized just how absurd that contradiction sounded, and she laughed softly. “I wouldn’t let myself acknowledge it,” she clarified.
Liam smiled, but then his smile faded. “So where do we go from here, Cate? D’Arcy told me the original plan was for you to disappear after you testify. That the Witness Security Program would provide you with a new identity, a new life somewhere. I want that for you. I want you to be safe. But I...”
After you testify...after you testify...
Those were the only words she could hear. It wasn’t the plan for her to disappear that drove a stake in her heart without any warning at all. It was the reminder that once she testified, Liam would know the truth about her. “I don’t know,” she said, all lightheartedness gone. “I don’t even know if I will live to testify.”
Liam shook her once, as if to shock her out of the negative mind-set. “Don’t say that. Don’t even think it. You are not going to die.”
“You can’t know that.” Suddenly she remembered saying the same thing to him earlier in the evening, about something completely different.
“Yes, I can.” In his eyes was the memory that he’d said those same words to her, too. “I won’t let anything happen to you, Cate. You hear me? I won’t. Even if I die for it.”
“Don’t.” She placed her hand over his mouth. “You think that makes it better for me? Imagining you sacrificing your life for mine?” Her breath was coming fast and ragged. “You really think if you died I would want to go on living?” She threw her arms around him and held him tight, laying her head against his shoulder. “I just found you,” she whispered, as if that said it all.
His arms were just as tight around her, and his voice was husky. “I feel the same way. I just found you, Cate. I’m not going to lose you. I won’t let it happen.”