“Cut it out, Rhiann,” he gritted at her across the table. He’d taken about all he could of her eyes devouring him at every turn. That hungry gaze was fracturing Liam’s control and if she didn’t fucking stop, well he didn’t know if he’d be able to protect her from the seething lust she evoked in him.
“No.” Her mocking smirk set his teeth on edge. “You may have control of my life right now,” she bitched, “but you most certainly do not have the power to control my thoughts.”
For good measure she wadded up her napkin and threw it on the table. The stupid fucking scrap of linen may as well have been a red flag for what it set off inside him. God dammit. Why couldn’t she just behave herself? Do what she was told? It was like she was put on this earth to push every one of his buttons and do it in such a way that he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, ignore the challenge.
“Keep it up, lady and I’ll be forced to teach you a lesson. I’m not a man you want to fuck with. I’d have thought that you of all people would know that.”
“Fuck you,” she hissed.
Pushing her chair back with a vengeance, Rhiann stood and for a brief second he wondered if she was going to pick up something, anything, off the table and throw it at him.
He was momentarily shocked when he caught the sheen of tears in her eyes, then frustrated as shit when she whirled away and tore off to her bedroom. Motherfucker. He certainly wasn’t acting like someone who was trying to keep things civilized. No matter his intentions, he taunted her at every opportunity – because he could. Didn’t help that after each confrontation he felt like a dick.
When she slammed the bedroom door he flinched. Out of the corner of his eye, Liam saw Roman lean out of the den; newspaper clutched in his hand, no doubt wondering what all the commotion was about. Shit. How the hell could one fucking female be so much trouble?
The smart thing to do was to let Rhiann have her little hissy fit. It would pass. Those things always did, but smart seemed to fly right out of his brain when she was around. Reacting on instinct fueled by an overabundance of frustration, Liam’s napkin ended up tossed on the table alongside hers as his chair also got shoved out of the way.
Thundering across the wooden floor he got to her bedroom in record time and snarled, “Come back out here and stop acting like a child.”
Wrong thing to say. He heard her angry gasp at his poorly chosen words followed a second later by a pithy, “No.”
“Rhiann,” he growled. His hands were gripping either side of the doorframe to keep from pounding on the door like a madman.
And then he heard it. The little bitch actually flipped the lock and did it about as loudly and deliberately as possible. She was trying to lock him out and he was having none of that shit. The sound exploded in his head and set off a chain reaction he couldn’t stop.
“Open the fucking door!” He was breathing like a marathon runner at the finishing line and his entire body vibrated. When silence greeted his demand he barked louder. “Open up right fucking now or I’ll kick the damn door in, Rhiann.”
She yelled, “I hate you,” and then all hell broke loose. She hated him? Well, fine. He hated himself too. Hated that he wanted her so badly. Hated how she’d haunted him all these years. Hated that he couldn’t keep the veneer of icy civility he was so damn good at around her.
With a half-assed kick, he sent the door flying open, hitting the wall behind it with a mighty thud. He vaguely heard Roman in the hallway behind him mutter, “Boss,” with a warning in his voice that had Liam turning to look at him through wild eyes. “Don’t interfere,” he ground out then strode into the bedroom like a conquering warrior hell bent on claiming the spoils of war. Slamming the door shut he marched straight at her where she cowered on the other side of the bed.
He could see from the wide-eyed expression on her face that he was alarming her but instead of backing off, the fright only spurred him on. Liam wasn’t stupid. He knew damn well he was intimidating on his best day and right about now with primitive anger and an overwhelming case of sexual desire fueling his actions, he was probably scaring the living daylights out of her. Good. She needed to know who the hell she was messing with.
Seizing her around the waist with one arm, he hauled her shaking body against his and grabbed a handful of her hair with the other, yanking forcefully on her head until her neck arched and she was forced to look at him.
“Is this what you wanted, little girl?” he rasped out. “Be fucking careful what you wish for.”
His mouth crashed onto hers in a head-on collision that left little of his intention to the imagination. It wasn’t a kiss so much as a conquest – his tongue invading her mouth with brutal intensity. At first, she was too startled to react and then she began struggling against him; pushing on his chest and wiggling frantically trying to escape his hold.
Her response wasn’t so much resistance as it was realization what her actions had unleashed because even though she tried to break his grasp, her tongue was dueling with his with the same rapacious ferocity. The power of his need for this woman was like a fever in his blood. He had her crushed to him from neck to thigh with his hand in her hair as he asserted his domination with savage precision.
Copyright 2017 Suzanne Halliday