“I know and it kills me to think you’re afraid of me.”

“That’s just it. I’m not afraid of you, Liam, and maybe I should be. Probably I should be. but I don’t trust myself. Not when I think about everything I could have done differently pretty much my entire life.”

“So if I feel right, I must be wrong.” It’s not a question.

“No. That’s not it. I mean...” I take a step toward him.

He steps backwards. “I can’t touch you, Amy.”

“I want you to touch me. I need you to touch me right now, Liam.”

“I won’t just touch you. I’ll do anything and everything in my power to make you remember us.

To make you believe your trust in us is as real and right as I know it is.”

“And that’s bad, why?”

 “You aren’t hearing me, Amy. I’ve spent weeks of sleepless nights worried over you and now that you’re here, I won’t ask for what I want. I’ll demand.”

 No one worries about me. No one knows I’m even alive anymore. No one I love even exists anymore. But him. He worries for me and I’ve run from him. I think I love this man but I can’t even trust that. I’m so sick of not trusting. Emotion wells in my chest and I squeeze my eyes shut. “Please, Liam. Please demand.” I step forward and I grab his shirt before he can stop me this time, as desperate, or more, than when I’d done the same with Tellar. “Don’t you get it, Liam? I want you to make the doubt go away. I want you to force away the fears. But damn it, I want you to deserve it, too. I want it to be real. I need something in this world that feels real even if it isn’t.”

He doesn’t move. He doesn’t so much as blink. He just stares at me with heat radiating from his eyes, and I don’t know what that means. What does it mean? “Or don’t,” I whisper, releasing his shirt. “Just don’t. Just let me go, then.” I rotate around and I don’t even know where I intend to go. The stupid table is right behind me and I run right into it.

Liam’s hand comes down on my arm and he turns me to face him. “I’m not letting you go. Never again. I told you that.” And suddenly, I am being thrown over his shoulder and his hand has flattened erotically, possessively, on my backside.

We are through the kitchen to the living room, and charging up a set of stucco stairs before I can fully process that he’s gone caveman on me. I can’t see what is before us, only what is behind us, but I feel him shove open a door, see the dim lights flicker on. Smell the wickedly spicy scent of him everywhere around me. We are in his room and I have only a glimpse of a giant space with more floor-to-ceiling windows before I’m on top of some sort of massive four poster black wooden bed.

I lift to my elbows, and Liam is on one knee, one fist planted in the mattress by my hip, his thigh pressed to mine. Heat radiates from his impossibly hooded stare and he reaches down and strokes my hair. “You want to force away the fear?”

“Yes.”

“Then you have to be willing to feel it.”

I swallow hard. “What does that mean?”

“Nothing goes away because you pretend it doesn’t exist.”

“You think I haven’t figured that out?”

“I’ve been where you are and you aren’t where you need to be yet. Not with me and not with life. But you’re getting there.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Baby steps. You will.”

“I’m tired of baby steps.”

He strokes his thumb over my bottom lip, his eyes holding mine. “Then face your fears.”

I make a frustrated sound. “I am. I’m trying. I want to. You have no idea how much I want to.”

He stands up and pulls me to my feet, turning me and pressing my back against one of the posts. “Do you?”

“Yes. Yes, I do.”

He studies me, seeming to weigh my words, perhaps my conviction, and I wonder what he sees in me that I do not. “Lace your hands behind the post,” he says, his voice a gentle command.

It is not like he has never tied me up before, but there is a crackle of energy around him I have never felt. But when I look into his eyes I feel that connection I always do, see a promise I don’t have to understand. I simply want whatever it is that he offers. I lace my fingers as he’s instructed. He leans a hand on the wooden surface above my head, touching me nowhere, leaving me aching for him everywhere.

“Remember what I told you before,” he murmurs. “Choosing to give away control is frightening, but it’s power. It’s facing a fear and overcoming it. We start here tonight. We’ll work toward the rest.”

I don’t ask what the rest is. I know. It’s me. Discovering the rest of me I’ve rejected or lost. The parts of me that hurt in a way no one should hurt. I nod. “Yes.” I want this and him.

“Good. I may seem in control, but you’re in control. No matter what I say or do, any time you say ‘no’, it’s no. That is what you have to remember. When you make the choice, you have the power.”

“Am I going to want to say no?”

“You will think you should.”

“But I shouldn’t?”

“You say no if you feel no and I’ll stop. You have my word.”

I am both terrified and aroused. “You’re confusing me.”

“I’m willing to bet I’m about to make things crystal clear. Keep your hands where they are. Don’t move.”

I nod. “Yes. Okay.”

His finger touches my cheek, then caresses slowly downward to my neck, and I feel the barely there touch everywhere, inside and out. Goose bumps lift on my skin, and I all but moan when he drags his finger over my breast and nipple. He drops his hand and I shiver with the delicate teasing sensations that linger where he’s touched, where he has not touched. He leans in closer, careful not to press his body to mine when that is exactly what I burn for, then lightly, so very lightly, brushes his lips over mine. A breath later, he is gone, leaving me gasping as he disappears behind me and it is all I can do not to turn to watch him.

My head dips as I inhale, trying to calm my raging hormones, and I can see only the finely woven rug overlapping the gorgeous dark wood beneath my feet. The room is silent but for a clock ticking somewhere nearby and the rasp of what I begin to realize is my breathing. I cannot hear Liam or see him and I can’t take it. I need to know where he is.

My gaze lifts and then shifts to land hard on the oval mirror that sits directly in front of me on top of a massive black wood dresser. I suck in a breath at the drenched rat in the cheap pink waitress dress staring back at me, and I do not like how she is not me and yet she is so me, or how the image pulls me from the escape I crave and throws me back into reality. A drawer opens behind me, soft and somehow thundering and loud in the near silence.  I welcome the way it shifts my focus back to anticipation, away from the reality in the mirror.

Liam’s reflection appears in the mirror with me and I can see what I would not otherwise. Him. His chest is bare, his clothes gone, but I am the one who is naked, stripped of my many emotional walls by this man who moves me so deeply. The same man who tells me to invite fear, so I do. I invite whatever it is he is to me and I am to him. He reaches around me and flattens his hands on my stomach, a silk sash dangling from his hand, his eyes meeting mine in the reflection. “I’m going to tie you up now, Amy.”

I wait for the fear I’m supposed to invite, but there is none. There is just anticipation, and the ache between my thighs, the heaviness of my breasts. For a moment, I study the finely carved lines of his handsome face, and I think about what he said to me. About what I need from him. What he needs from me. “You like tying me up.”

His eyes meet mine in the mirror. “I like what it represents.”

“Which is what?” I ask.

He ties my hands, wrapping them gently but firmly, then walks around me, framing my body with his, one hand on my waist, the other dragging through my hair and tilting my mouth to his. “Which is what, Amy?” he asks, expecting me to answer my own question.