But then all bets were off.

He had me stripped down entirely seemingly before I could blink again. His mouth found my throat, leaving a trail of hot, wet love nips that traveled down to the spot where my shoulder joined my neck, all the while trying to strip out of his own clothes.

It was like all those pent up feelings, all that angry and frustration, all chose that moment to burst out. And there was only one thing to quench that fire.

He managed to shrug and step and shake out of everything without dropping me. My legs fit so perfectly around his waist, and he held me there effortlessly.

I'd already thrown his hair into disarray, running my fingers through it as our faces moved this way and that while we kissed.

And then his mouth moved lower, enveloping one nipple so hot and erect it hurt. I sucked in a breath at the heat of his mouth, at the way his tongue rubbed against my sensitive flesh.

He wasn't stingy with his desire, either, moving from one nipple to the other, then kissing up between my heaving breasts. His lips moved up my throat, then found my mouth again even as he bore me down onto the bed.

It creaked alarmingly beneath us, but didn't give. Not that I think it would have mattered. We nearly beyond any sort of control by that point.

Every instant we spent not together tore at me. My need was real, palpable. Painful in its intensity. I nearly took him right then and there, and damn the consequences.

He, somehow (I still don't know), pulled his mouth away from where he worried at the sensitive skin of my throat. "Where?"

I managed the barest of nods towards my tiny nightstand which had somehow not fallen over when we fell onto the mattress.

My back arched beneath him, my body writhing and my hips grinding back against the mattress. Every instant without him inside of me was agony. Delicious, suspenseful agony.

He found the foil wrapper in the narrow drawer of the end table. Tearing it, he rolled the contents down his length.

Then I grabbed him and guided him inside of me, impatience demanding immediate action. He groaned at my touch, the noise deepening into a growl as he sunk himself into me.

My ankles locked at the small of his back, keeping him captive inside of me. My back arched again as he filled me, the feeling of it bordering on that razor line between pleasure and pain.

His arm shot around my waist, keeping me arched like that while his mouth again slid down to envelope one nipple and then the other. He sucked until I hissed, then moved to the other.

I ran my fingernails over his broad shoulder blades again and again, every tingle and shudder of pleasure he wrung from me makes me scratch him harder. He liked it, the strong muscles of his core slamming our bodies together again and again, pounding me into submission beneath him.

When I came I grabbed my pillow and stuffed it into my mouth, stifling the scream and the little groans and whimpers that followed.

Liam tore it away from me so that he could kiss me, riding me hard through my climax.

Given the intensity of our flaming passion, it lived a short life. We writhed together until again every muscle in me began clenching as my second orgasm wracked my body.

Liam lost control then, too, flinching at the intense pleasure of that moment, throbbing inside me again and again.

He rolled off me perspiring and shaky, his arm hanging over the side of the narrow bed. I was in worse shape, my toes refusing to unclench, beads of sweat rolling down from my temples, wetting my hair, darkening it with moisture.

"I think we understand each other, now," he said.

"I think so," I replied, rolling onto my side. He put his arm beneath my neck, and I rested my cheek against his chest.

Right away I heard it. Thump-thump, thump-thump. As strong and vital a sound as I'd ever encountered. Also comforting and real, so real. Liam was there with me.

Not the Mr. Liam Montgomery the world saw, the billionaire playboy who seemed to go through women like a scythe through wheat, or the Liam who'd taken the business world by storm.

No, none of the ones the public could claim familiarity with.

This was the real Liam, the one left when you stripped away all those facades. This was the Liam who'd tried to find the wisdom hidden in the bronze eyes of Marcus Aurelius, the Liam who'd held me while I shared the most painful experience of my life with him.

And this Liam was mine. Just as surely as I was his.

Chapter 10

Isabella and I sat at one of the tables in the quad outside the building where I had a class coming up in half an hour.

It was a nice day. Lots of sun. Slightly cool with the encroachment of fall. More a threat of coolness than an actual presence. The air even had those hints of the changing seasons in it.

Lately, over the past week, I'd found myself observing people more. Watching the way they interacted, the little intricacies of their lives.

The Romans around me, for instance, they seemed to be always doing one of two things: eating or arguing. Sometimes both at the same time. It was clear to me why so much history happened here, why so much art had been created on between, and around the city's seven hills.

They were a passionate people, and they let it show. When I say they spent so much time arguing, I don't mean that as a criticism, either. They did it in a loving way, and more often than not those arguments ended in laughter, or food. Both, usually.

Mercurial was the best term I could come up with. They flowed from one extreme to the other quickly and smoothly.

It was beautiful, really. So beautiful it was almost frightening, and definitely overwhelming. But then again, I'd begun to learn that just because something was frightening or overwhelming it didn’t mean that I couldn't stand up to it.

"Again, you look so happy," Isabella said. I realized that she'd been studying me while I'd been studying everyone else around us. Today was English day, the crude, Germanic language lent a lyrical quality by her accent.

I looked at her. "What does it mean when your heart skips a beat when someone steps into the room?"

She blinked as though the answer were as obvious as the smile on my face, and I suppose that it was. "Love. What else could it mean?"

My heart did more than skip a beat when Liam walked into the room. It broke free of the constraints of my ribs and danced. It did its best to launch itself up my throat.

But then, Isabella's answer frightened me. It wasn't possible to fall in love with another person so quickly, was it?

"I think I may have," I said.

"Have what?"

"Fallen for him."

"I am happy you have finally seen this," Isabella said, a small smile parting her perfect and full lips. Out here under the Roman sun she seemed to glow.

It was such an apt term, I realized. Falling in love. Just closing my eyes now was enough to give the barest hint of vertigo, as though I stood on the lip of a tall cliff and could sense the gulf of empty air so close to me.

And while that, too, was frightening, it was a tempered fear. I knew that Liam would be down at the bottom of any drop to catch me, and I, him.

But at the same time, it seemed as though all I needed to do was jump and I'd be flying away, soaring through the clouds. Like nothing could drag me down.

No one ever said that how you feel has to make sense.

"How are your courses?" Isabella said, deliberately ignoring a handsome, dark-haired young man who'd tried to get her attention.

That single question was enough to put some lead weights into my wings. I grimaced.