The gun shakes in my hand. “I told you not to get killed. Charging in here is not the way to stay alive.”

He advances on me slowly, and each step is like a band stretching around us, ready to pop at any moment. I’m not sure what to expect when it does. “And holding a gun on me makes sense in this equation how?”

“Everything isn’t an equation. It just...is.”

“Like me coming for you?” He stops in front of me, and just as Jared had in the truck, he closes his hand over mine where I hold the gun, but it is nothing like that earlier moment. I gasp as the sensations rush over me, and I have this undeniable sense of us being two parts of one whole. Of not fully breathing while we were apart. “You had to know I wasn’t going to leave you in a motel room with Jared.”

My lashes lift at the intensity of his tone. In the depths of his gorgeous blue eyes, there is a promise that I am his and that he will never let me go. That I am as rooted in his soul as he is in mine, and he is going to fight for what that means, while I am fighting to save his life.

“I told you to go to Denver,” I whisper.

“I sent Derek.”

“What if I was in Denver?”

“You aren’t.”

Electricity charges the air and the tension that is building seems to jolt up one more notch. “You didn’t know I wouldn’t be.”

“Yes I did, and as sure I was in the air traveling here, I got the alert that you were headed here too.”

“From my ID at the airport,” I say, and it’s not really a question. “And I went straight to my old house. I made it easy for anyone to find me.”

He gives a nod of confirmation anyway. “You wanted me to find you.”

Yes. “No. I wanted to find you when this was over.”

“Together, baby. We’ve talked about this.” He sets the gun on the bed and I swear the few seconds he isn’t touching me is hell. His hands come down on my shoulders. “Do you know how much what you said about Jared killed me after I’d already died a million deaths in the past twenty-four hours?”

My heart squeezes with the vulnerability of his confession, the intensity of his tone, and I wrap my arms around him, absorbing the heat of his body, the power and strength. “I didn’t mean anything I said. I hated it. I just…” I look up at him, urgency roaring to life. “They’ll kill you. You have to leave. Go underground. Please. I’m begging you. Go underground like you wanted to take me. They won’t kill me. Not when they think I have what they want.”

His hands slip into my hair. “I’m not going anywhere without you. I leave when you leave. And you’re not going anywhere with Jared.”

“Liam--”

His mouth comes down on mine, and it’s pain and heartache, but there is more. There is a harder edge, a demand, anger.

I’m angry, too, and I don’t think it’s at him. I just am, and he is angry too, and we are all over each other, wildly kissing, tugging at clothes. My shirt is tossed to the ground and I shove his up his body, seeking skin against skin, a moment of no barriers when there seems to be so many between us, too many.

My hand flattens on his “pi” tattoo where I want my mouth to be, but when he unhooks my borrowed bra, and I hear the rumble of Tellar and Jared arguing outside, I grab it, holding it in place. “We can’t. Tellar and Jared.”

“Ask me if I care about Tellar and Jared right now?” He tugs the bra away, wrapping his fingers around my neck and dragging my mouth to his again. “You said you fucked Jared.”

I forget my hesitation of moments before. “I told you. I was trying to scare you away. I know you know that.”

“That didn’t make it easy to hear. That doesn’t stop this burn inside me that says I need to remind you who you belong with.”

“I don’t need a reminder.”

“I think you do.” He lifts me and carries me to the bed, setting me on the mattress. My shoes and jeans, and even my panties, are gone before I can protest. Not that I want to. And as much as I hate that I’ve made him feel he has something to prove, this fierce, intense, dominant man he is now calls to me. Liam calls to me. He speaks to me on some level beyond words, deep in my core, like an expression of something I have inside me, and that I find within him.

He drags me to the end of the bed and turns me over, his hands going to my hips to pull me onto my knees. I’m submissive to him like this and I think I get him more in this moment than I ever have. He needs the control he’s felt he’d lost the past few days. And the truth is, I need to give it to him. He’s my escape, the only place I can let go, the only place I can trust.

He leans down and cradles my body, caresses my breasts, brushing my hair off of my back, the long, blonde strands falling to the bed, over my cheeks, blinding me. But I don’t need to see. That’s what is so erotic, so perfect, with Liam. I really do trust him.

His lips settle at my nape, his hand kneading my breast, teasing my nipple. My breasts are heavy, my sex aching, my thighs damp. He kisses between my shoulder blades, then flattens his palm there, slowly dragging his hand down my back to cup my backside.

I should spank you, he’d threatened once. It’s confusingly erotic, teasingly sensational. But he doesn’t and somehow I knew he wouldn’t. He cups my cheeks and then caresses down my thighs and back up. His fingers slip intimately between my legs, into the slickness of my swollen, aroused body and I fall to my elbows, unable to hold myself up on my hands.

He begins to stroke me, playing with my clit, and then slips two fingers inside me, filling me, stretching me. I find myself leaning back into the touch, arching my back, pushing for more. And I know he could take me over the edge but he doesn’t. He teases me. Pulling his fingers out. Pressing them back inside me. Repeating until I think I will go crazy. Finally, oh yes, finally, he takes me to that edge and I am ready. So very ready, when suddenly, his fingers are gone and I am panting in agony.

He flattens his hand on my back and leans over me, his mouth moving to my ear. “Not without me. Not this time. You need to remember the meaning of ‘together’. Don’t move.”

Don’t move. Easier said than done, but I can hear him undressing and I focus the idea of him being inside me. How good it will feel when that first touch of his cock becomes a deep push. And I get what I crave. His hands come down on my hips. His shaft settles between my thighs. “Mine,” he growls, and he thrusts into me, driving hard and deep.

I moan and expect another thrust, but instead he goes down on the bed and molds my back to his chest, his hand covering my breast. His lips are back at my ear as he whispers, “Mine.”

“Yes. Yours.”

“He wants to fuck you.” He tugs on my nipple, almost as if he is punishing me with pleasure, his hips grinding into me.

“And I want to fuck you,” I pant.

He pulls out of me, turns me to face him, presses his cock inside me and cups my backside to bury himself deep inside me again. We lay there then, our eyes connecting, as he murmurs, “The best fucking, baby, is when it’s--”

“Raw and honest,” I whisper.

His sensual, amazing mouth curves slightly. “And when it’s wicked hot and driven by love.” His fingers settle on my face. “Like I love you with everything I am and ever will be.”

He loves me. I knew, I did, but hearing it is everything. “I love you too, and I didn’t want to tell you in a note, but I didn’t want to risk never telling you at all.”

“I know,” he murmurs, his fingers caressing down my arm to slide up my back and mold my chest to his. “Don’t ever leave me again.”

It’s an order, but somewhere in the depth of the command is a plea, and pain. I hear the pain etched in his words, see it in his eyes. Not for the first time, I am struck by the way we speak to each other beyond words. The way my soul knows his soul. Love and loss have touched our lives, but with all his money and power, he has never felt what family truly means. He has never felt that unity and peace.